Google: Leave Your Authorship Markup On Your Page

Gary Illyes from Google said today at SMX East that webmasters and publishers should leave the authorship markup on their page.

In August 2014, Google removed support for Authorship markup completely, not just the author image which dropped the June before.

But to everyone’s surprise, Gary Illyes told the audience to keep authorship live in your source code. The question surprised Danny Sullivan, the founding editor of Search Engine Land, and most of the audience.

I am pretty sure John Mueller from Google told webmasters it was safe to remove the authorship markup from their sites. But now Gary Illyes is saying to keep it.

Why keep it? Gary said that you never know when the Google search team may want to start using it again. Yes, that is a head scratcher response.

I am pretty sure Google uses a form of authorship and author rank for determining when to show in depth articles in the search results. So maybe that is why he told people not to remove the authorship markup?

We will try to get clarification from Google on this statement.

The post Google: Leave Your Authorship Markup On Your Page appeared first on Search Engine Land.

from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/1WAhGP3
via IFTTT

Apple Devices Driving More Search Than Android In US — [comScore]

This week at SMX East I moderated a session called The New Search Landscape, which asked what the near term future of search will look like. It was a very lively and interesting discussion. For a full overview of the session read Casie Gillette’s recap.

At the outset, however, comScore’s Eli Goodman presented some overview data. It was predominantly about the impact of mobile devices on search activity. The several charts below are from his presentation.

Desktop search is flat or declining. Even though there is some “time-spent” growth on desktop or laptop computers, search appears to have peaked; query volume growth is now all mobile (including tablets).

Search queries coming from tablets are showing the highest growth but that’s because they are growing from a smaller base. As a matter of absolute query volume, there’s more search happening on smartphones.

What’s interesting in the following chart is that comScore says there are still more queries coming from PCs than mobile devices. However Google previously said that mobile query volume now exceeds desktop search queries.

It could be that the discrepancy is explained because comScore is including Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL search data in the overall volume numbers. The majority of the queries on those engines are coming from the PC.

The slide below is responsible for the headline. It indicates that in the US, iOS devices are now seeing more search query volume than Android or Windows phones. The data don’t measure or reflect search activity on maps or vertical search in apps (except for search-engine apps).

It’s important to point out, however, that the vast majority of search volume coming from iOS devices is happening through Google.

Outside the US it’s a somewhat different story, with Android generating the majority of search query volume except in Canada, the UK and Australia.

The post Apple Devices Driving More Search Than Android In US — [comScore] appeared first on Search Engine Land.

from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/1heZB97
via IFTTT

A Super Fresh Google Index? Server Errors & Rankings Impacts

Any SEO professional will tell you that server errors (defined as status codes in the 5xx range) on one’s website should be minimized. Generally speaking, if a page cannot be accessed by a search engine, it cannot be accessed by a user. Though server downtime is sometimes necessary to implement fixes and update websites, be sure to handle server downtime properly and serve a 503 response — but not for too long.

But how exactly do server errors impact a site’s search engine optimization? What effects, if any, do server errors have on search engine visibility and rankings?

In early 2015, the effects of a fresh index began to emerge. Our team collected data on 5xx errors and evaluated keyword rankings. The impacts were startling, specifically with 500 Internal Server Errors and 503 Service Unavailable Errors.

When a 500 response was encountered, the page could immediately drop from ranking. When a 503 response was encountered, the impacts were not immediate, and the 503 response needed to be consistently returned to drop a page from ranking and potentially be de-indexed (impacts began as soon as one to two weeks). This experience occurred on a page-by page basis.

Following are three case studies showing the impact of server errors on search rankings:

1. 500 Internal Server Errors Occurring Intermittently

By intermittent, it means that that one specific URL would sometimes return a 200 Success or a 500 Internal Server Error. The 500 error occurred due to server instability. Crawl stats such as pages crawled per day declined significantly. This resulted in a negative rankings shift for the pages that had intermittent 500 errors.

These pages would mostly return 200 Success responses when crawled by our SEO team, but the infrequent 500 Internal Server Error would still happen. What is intriguing is that the errors couldn’t be replicated on the same magnitude with crawlers such as Merkle’s proprietary crawler, “Scalpel,” or other crawling tools.

However, Google would report these errors via the Google Search Console (GSC) Crawl Errors report. As much as SEOs try to emulate Google crawlers with crawling tools, these results indicate that it’s very difficult to replicate the exact way Google crawls.

The implementation that began this issue was a Single Page Application (SPA) developed with Angular JavaScript. Google crawls in many crawl threads simultaneously, and if those threads were requesting different files/URLs in the SPA at once (such as many facets within a given category), then the server could have failed intermittently.

Documented Impacts: Server errors increased considerably. Crawl stats were negatively impacted, and rankings subsequently suffered in Google for the pages returning the error. No immediate impacts were recorded in Bing.

Rankings shifts during the intermittent 500 responses:

Google:

• 2,122 keywords dropped from the top 10 in rankings.
• 2,959 keywords that previously ranked 11-20 dropped to lower than 20.

Bing: No change in rankings.

Screenshot from Google Search Console

Screenshot from Google Search Console

Screenshot from BrightEdge Keyword Tracking Tool

As the BrightEdge graph above conveys, the number of keywords ranked on page one moved from about 9K keywords to 6K keywords in one week. These rankings shifts resulted in immense losses in Google traffic. Bing wasn’t impacted.

For this particular case study, organic traffic decreased by around 25 percent, which had a direct impact on the bottom line. These server errors continued for a few weeks due to ongoing issues with the Angular JavaScript implementation. Once the server errors subsided (the server instability was addressed by the domain), the rankings and traffic returned.

2. 18-Hour Downtime With 500 Responses

For a certain page type, 500 error responses to Googlebot requests occurred over the course of about 18 hours. Crawl logs convey that these pages were consistently returning a 500 error during this time, but it is unknown exactly how long each page was returning this error.

For tracked keywords, the domain would drop in ranking anywhere from five to 100 positions, depending on whether another relevant page existed on the domain. If there was a similar page, and Google chose to rank it, the drop wouldn’t be as large (~five–20 positions), as Google would consider the domain as still relevant to the query.

It was interesting that Google would rank a page that wasn’t exactly what the user was looking for but it still considered the domain as relevant to the query. As mentioned, the similar page wouldn’t rank as well. It is unknown why Google did this, but this was the behavior that was observed.

Documented Impacts: This scenario showed that for all 239 tracked queries, there was a change in the top ranked page. All of these pages were reported as returning 500 Internal Server Errors during the downtime.

These keywords were tracked using BrightEdge. Because BrightEdge does multiple analyses over the week to produce an average rank, the 18-hour downtime was enough to shift the top ranked page report for the entire week.

• For all 239 queries, there was an average ranking drop of about 10 positions. (This is particularly significant considering that 233 of these queries were ranked 12 or better before the server errors occurred, and total monthly search volume was around 500K.)
• Some ranking shifts were small for certain queries when a similar page was found. “Dyson vacuums,” for example, dropped three positions because the top ranked page shifted from the general Dyson vacuums page to a specific Dyson vacuum model page.
• A particularly large drop occurred when a site sold dryers but didn’t have any dryer type subcategory pages. In this instance, the keyword “dryers” dropped from 7 to 33.

3. 503 Service Unavailable Responses Over Long-Term

Over the course of three months, a domain returned 503 Service Unavailable responses for certain page types on a semi-frequent basis. The domain had developed an SPA framework with AJAX that would begin timing out when the SPA host file couldn’t support multiple requests to the file variations (or in this case, facets) requested of it.

In this case, we were able to replicate the experience with our crawling tools. Our crawlers would experience numerous 503 responses, as well as connection timeouts. While the connection timeouts could conflate the findings, they were not nearly as numerous compared to the 503s.

Additionally, 503 responses were reported by GSC. It is noted that GSC doesn’t have a mechanism for reporting connection timeouts.

Documented Impact: Around 1K keywords dropped from page one during a period where 503 errors spiked from an average of 3K errors to an average of 25–30K errors reported by GSC. During this time, no improvements were made to these pages, and most other factors remained constant on the website. Therefore, the 503 errors over time had a direct, negative impact on rankings.

Situation 3 does coincide with John Mueller’s comment on server errors in early June:

If they persist for longer and don’t look like temporary problems anymore, we tend to start dropping those URLs from our index (until we can re-crawl them normally again).

There’s also a decent chance that these URLs are put in a queue to get crawled a bit sooner than the crawl frequency of a traditional crawl-cache cycle, but this statement has not been confirmed.

Implications For Your Website

Google’s index and rankings are now updated so frequently that a 500 Internal Server Error response can almost immediately impact rankings. The 503 service unavailable responses can affect rankings over time. Both of these 5xx errors will reduce the crawling of your site by Google’s bots.

While there is no label for it, it seems that Google has a very fresh index on a page-by-page basis. The page-by-page concept ties directly to the recent Mobile Algorithm Update and how mobile friendliness is analyzed/updated.

It was commonly held in SEO that server errors over time could hurt a domain’s rankings. That is likely still the case, but now there is a page-by-page element, as well.

Long story short, server downtime (i.e., 503 responses) is bad if it goes on for too long, and having pages respond with a 500 Internal Server Error when they should serve a different header response is not advisable. Pierre Far has a nice breakdown on server downtime.

How Long Has This Caffeine-Type Update Been Observed?

It is unclear how long this “very fresh” index has been around. We do have data from the summer of 2014 conveying similar instances of server errors with no impact on page-specific rankings.

Google did comment in the fall of 2014 on crawl budget and how it will throttle crawls when server errors occur but didn’t mention how it would impact the index or rankings. That may have been an indication of things to come.

On a given week in July 2014, a domain’s 503 Service Unavailable errors spiked from 2K errors to 72K errors.

The impact on the pages crawled per day and SERP rankings? None.

There was absolutely no change in the High, Average or Low pages crawled per day. The average pages crawled per day actually increased by 9 percent the two weeks following the spike in server errors.

Additionally, the rankings did not change for any of the pages reporting server errors. Unlike the experience in February 2015 documented in example 3, this server error issue over a long period of time did not result in throttling by Google or rankings impacts.

It should be noted that Google throttled its crawls at times dating back to at least 2012 when encountering 5xx responses, but it wasn’t as immediate as it is now. Based on evidence, Google now throttles its crawls more rapidly when it experiences server errors.

A Few Ideas To Think About Moving Forward

For large enterprise sites, it is highly recommended that engineering teams consider the amount of load SPAs will need to handle when Google requests numerous sub-files within the host URL. Do server-side rewrites need to occur from the base URL? If they are numerous, it could lead to server errors if load is not anticipated and handled.

As mentioned above, if a 500 Internal Server Error occurs for a page, Google is finding and ranking a similar page from the same domain if it can find it. Note the “similar” page will likely appear at a lower ranking. Why would Google do this? Oftentimes, the page is not what the user intended to find.

How soon does Google return after a 500 or 503? Is it in a separate queue that gets crawled again in a shorter time frame than the traditional crawl-cache cycle?

Is it a Caffeine Update or a different type of Server Error Fresh Index Update? Either way, the impacts are real and can be immediate.

The post A Super Fresh Google Index? Server Errors & Rankings Impacts appeared first on Search Engine Land.

from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/1LTKizw
via IFTTT

Looking Ahead: The New Search Landscape

It’s a question that’s always on our minds: Where is search going?

At SMX East Monday, several panelists took to the stage to provide their thoughts on the subject and offer some insights into what they are currently seeing. The panelists included Eli Goodman, comScore; Rebecca Lieb, Conglomotron; Dave Schwartz, Criteo; and Ben Spiegel, MMI Agency.

While there were three main themes that stood out, what I found interesting was that nobody was in absolute agreement on exactly what the next big thing will be. That’s great! After all, we can’t predict exactly what is going to happen in search, and in this multi-platform world, there are a lot of ways search could go.

However, it was fascinating to hear some of the data provided by Eli Goodman at the beginning of the session. Take, for example, some of these statistics:

• There is still 25 percent of the US population over the age of 13 that doesn’t have a smartphone and 60 percent that doesn’t have a tablet.
• Total digital media usage has grown 49 percent, with mobile apps having grown 90 percent (June 2013 vs. June 2015).
• Mobile search accounts for ~30 percent of all search activity (Q4 2014), with smartphones driving a greater share (20 percent) than tablets.
• 80 percent of time spent on the internet (via mobile) is spent on three apps.

The takeaway from this?

Mobile growth is still happening, and there is a huge opportunity for marketers. Which leads us to the three main themes of the session:

• Mobile Apps
• Attribution Challenges
• Voice Search

The Growth Of Mobile Apps

According to Goodman, people are spending more time with digital media than ever before, and much of this is due to mobile apps.

Mobile apps give users another vertical for search — and for Google, this is a big deal. People are going directly to these apps to find information versus searching on Google.

Dave Schwartz gave the excellent examples of Pinterest and Houzz. These are two apps where people go to look for things they can use in both everyday life and life events. These apps offer users significantly more than a search engine result can.

Does this mean trouble for Google?

Not really. As Goodman pointed out, Google controls what apps are shown in search results and which apps traffic is being driven to.

I also thought Spiegel had an insightful point around discovery. Apps aren’t necessarily great for discovery and that top-of-the-funnel buyer. People need to have an idea of what they are looking for before searching on an app (excluding the Google search app, of course).

The Challenge Of Attribution

The rise of mobile apps has presented a challenge that isn’t necessarily new to marketers: attribution.

The panel gave a couple great examples of this, including the fact that someone could go to Google, search a product, access the product through their Amazon mobile app, and buy it. To which channel do we attribute that sale?

Rebecca Lieb also pointed out that 90 percent of purchases are still made in a store. And while someone may discover a product online, in many cases the actual sale occurs in the store.

Lieb gave an impressive example of how Home Depot is trying to bridge the gap. She noted that Home Depot allows you to make an online shopping list, and when you walk into the store, it gives you a map and information on where each item is within the store. This is a cool way of connecting how your customers are interacting with you online and offline.

Voice Of The Future

One of the biggest talking points was around voice search and the rise of personal assistants (Siri, Cortana, Google Now).

While everyone was in agreement that voice search isn’t there yet, it is something that’s growing and may play a prominent role in the future of search — primarily in that voice search will be integrated into our lives beyond just phones.

While we already have things like Amazon Echo, it doesn’t seem crazy to think that we’ll be using voice search on our TV, our appliances, our cars and more. As Schwartz pointed out, voice is an interface, and it’s what’s under that interface that matters (e.g., personalization, knowledge graph).

The problem is, the technology needs to be more sophisticated before we see the true impact of voice search. As Spiegel pointed out, we currently have to talk to our phone, then see if it’s the right result, click on something, put in information and so on. Until a seamless conversation can occur, we likely won’t see massive growth numbers.

What Else?

Mobile apps, attribution and voice search were the main themes, but of course, the topic of where Yahoo and Bing fit in was brought up. The biggest takeaway was the split of Yahoo/Bing (i.e., Gemini) and how that may end up hurting each company in the long run.

According to the panelists, the key to success in this age is information — and by splitting up their database into two parts, the two companies are each losing a lot of info. On top of that, Google is continuing to grow its database, especially in mobile, where (as we saw above) a lot more opportunity exists.

What will that mean for Yahoo and Bing? Everyone seemed hopeful that the companies will figure out a way to grow.

Overall, it was a great panel, and I’m excited to see how these things play out both in the near future and down the road.

The New Search Landscape By Eli Goodman from Search Marketing Expo – SMX

The post Looking Ahead: The New Search Landscape appeared first on Search Engine Land.

from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/1PPKY8q
via IFTTT

Google My Business Portal Gets A Facelift & Design Update

Google quietly announced in the Google Business forums a new design update for the Google My Business portal. The new update has a new navigation to make it easier to access the primary features, and more straightforward to access multiple locations if you use Google My Business Locations.

You will see new tabs and buttons to more common actions you want to take such as editing, photos, insights, and reviews. Google also said, Merchants with multiple locations or Google+ brand pages will see an updated management experience with two tabs: one for “Locations” and another for Google+ “Brand Pages” where you can view your listings or pages in either a card and a list format. There are also “Contact support” links that provider faster support.

Mike Blumenthal posted a video tour of the new portal calling the changes “improved organizational structures, better menus, easier navigation and faster response times.”

The post Google My Business Portal Gets A Facelift & Design Update appeared first on Search Engine Land.

from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/1KOruQb
via IFTTT

Nebo Agency, iProspect Score Multiple Wins At 2015 Landy Awards

Nebo Agency accepts the award for Best Overall Search Marketing Initiative (SEO & SEM).

Nebo Agency and iProspect were among the big winners Wednesday night at the first annual Landy Awards in New York City honoring the best search marketing agencies and consultants around the world.

An estimated 200+ search marketers gathered at B.B. King’s Blues Club to learn the winners from more than 100 entries across a dozen categories that covered both SEO and SEM, as well as both enterprise-level and small business search marketing campaigns. Ten categories were judged by a select group of industry professionals, including representatives from Google and Bing, as well as Search Engine Land’s editorial team and contributors. Two other categories — male and female Search Marketer of the Year — were judged by members of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

Nebo Agency, based in Atlanta, won the final award of the night — the coveted Best Overall Search Marketing Initiative (SEO & SEM). Moments before that, Nebo’s Stacy Sutton Williams was named female Search Marketer Of The Year. Meanwhile, Boston-based iProspect also picked up two awards on the night: Best Overall SEO Initiative (Enterprise) and Best Retail Search Marketing Initiative (SEO and/or SEM).

Without further ado, here’s the full list of winners of the first annual Landy Awards:

Best SEO/SEM Effort For A Charitable Organization

Brainlabs Digital, on behalf of Which?

Best Retail Search Marketing Initiative (SEO and/or SEM)

iProspect, for LIDS.com

Best Mobile Search Marketing Initiative (SEO and/or SEM)

HotelTonight

Best Local Search Marketing Initiative (SEO and/or SEM)

TopSpot Internet Marketing, for Klein Custom Pools

Search Marketer of the Year (Female)

Stacy Sutton Williams, Nebo Agency

Search Marketer of the Year (Male)

Larry Kim, Wordstream

Best Overall SEM Initiative (Small Business)

SearchMarketers.com, for Surf Air

Best Overall SEO Initiative (Small Business)

Go Fish Digital, for Reston Limo

Best Overall SEM Initiative (Enterprise)

Point It, for Microsoft

Best Overall SEO Initiative (Enterprise)

iProspect, for Chevrolet Performance/Chevy.com

Best Integration Of Search Into Cross-Channel Marketing Campaign

Piston Agency, for Mophie

Best Overall Search Marketing Initiative (SEO & SEM)

Nebo Agency, for Belgard Hardscapes

In the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing profiles of the winning entries in those categories where the winner is allowed to share campaign details publicly.

iProspect accepts the award for Best Overall SEO Initiative (Enterprise).

Search Engine Land organized and hosted the Landy Awards to recognize search marketers around the world who’ve demonstrated excellence in either organic or paid search marketing campaigns on behalf of clients or their employer.

Profits from the Landy Awards (via entry fees, sponsors and ceremony ticket sales) will be given to two charities: BeTheMatch.org and Code.org. Event host Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land’s founding editor, announced during the ceremony that this year’s donation will amount to $25,000 (USD).

On behalf of Search Engine Land, congratulations to all of the winners and everyone nominated! Thank you to all of our judges, our sponsor, Google, and to everyone who came out to support the inaugural Landy Awards.

The post Nebo Agency, iProspect Score Multiple Wins At 2015 Landy Awards appeared first on Search Engine Land.

from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/1JFSJIS
via IFTTT

Cash In! Charitable Donors On Facebook: Psychographic Targeting Hot House

A powerful factor affecting communities across the world is the work of non-profit organizations. The services they provide can be a vital source of support in their communities. However, most non-profit professionals will tell you that one of the largest struggles is getting their message in front of people willing to support services with actual money. In this week’s Psychographic Targeting Hot House, aimClear Social Account Manager Chris Davis shows how non-profits can combine location, income, and interest targeting to get their message in front of the right people and increase the donation base.

 

For our use case this week, we’ll be looking at how the Human Development Center (HDC), a local mental health non-profit, can advertise to potential donors in the community for its annual fundraising gala.

Local Community: First Area of Focus

The starting point for any community-based non-profit looking to advertise is to start with people who live in the area served by the non-profit. We’ve noticed donors are more likely to support causes that affect them and their community directly.

 

Via Facebook geo-location, target people who live within a reasonable distance to your office or within the communities you service. If the company only serves a small neighborhood or area of a city or region, take advantage of Facebook’s zip code, address or pin-drop targeting — and then set your desired radius.

 

For the HDC, a Duluth, Minn.-based organization that serves the surrounding communities (including those in Wisconsin), we’ve selected a healthy radius of 25 miles around the city of the non-profit.

Discover Disposable Income

A second challenge for non-profits looking for potential donors is finding people in their area that have enough disposable income to support services. When it comes to donations, it’s not enough just to target users who may be passionate about the HDC or mental health, as they may not be in a position to donate, even if they wanted to.

 

Fortunately, Facebook’s income targeting makes it a breeze to focus your audience to those who do in fact earn a significant income based on the community. In the case of Duluth and the HDC, we will target only those who have an income of over $100,000. But take note marketers: Align this targeting with average or above average income levels for your own community. Targeting income of $100K in Duluth may be sufficient, but if you’re targeting for a non-profit in San Francisco or New York City, you’ll likely need to reach higher incomes.

Other worthy indicators of wealth or disposable income are net worth and liquid assets, especially for gala dinners hosting silent auctions for big-ticket items!

Another way of tapping into income is to add the life event of a “new job” in your targeting. Many people look to give back or a support a cause when they land a new job that allows them to make more money. Perhaps they have always wanted to give, but didn’t have the financial means to support a non-profit in the past,. If they are looking for a non-profit to support, we would like it to be ours!

Bleeding Heart Behaviors

Finally, just because someone has the income to donate doesn’t mean they  actually want to or will. The challenge for non-profits is to locate those people who not only have the ability to contribute, but also those who have the desire.

 

Facebook targeting has pinpointed users who have either self-disclosed they are donors and/or modeled after offline behavior. The variety of charitable causes donated to by categories ranges from the environment to veterans, politics and beyond. For the HDC, we’ll use charitable behavior based around heath-related issues.

 

Heartstring-Tugging Interests

Don’t see your non-profit type listed in Facebook’s charitable donor categories? No worries, you fund-raising phenom!

 

Select interests and national associations that directly relate to or impact your non-profit to capture uber-focused donors with creative that tugs at their interest-revealed heartstrings.

 

Utilizing one of these targeting methods is a great way for non-profits to get in front of potential donors who live in their area. Utilizing the targeting parameters together is a winning tactic to dominate donations this year to do more good.

Happy targeting!

The post Cash In! Charitable Donors On Facebook: Psychographic Targeting Hot House appeared first on Search Engine Land.

from SEO Rank Video Blog http://ift.tt/1KOhE0R
via IFTTT