It is that time of the month again, where I recap the most important topics (in my opinion) for webmasters related to Google core organic search topics.
The biggest item by far is the launch of the Google Panda 4.2 update. Many didn't notice, it was confirmed on the record and it is the slowest rollout of Panda ever. It isn't slow to confuse webmasters but just for technical reasons. And those that doubt it, I see a Panda recovery based on data on this site.
Outside of Panda, we had Google announce the new Search Analytics API, which is a huge upgrade for webmasters. We had Google send out two new webmaster notifications including cannot access CSS or JavaScript and incorrect hreflang implementation. Finally, Google told us they have a hard time giving advice on algorithmic issues.
That being said, here is my best effort to sort the topics for the past month in priority order:
Google Panda & Some Penguin:
- Google Releases Panda 4.2 & You Didn't Notice
- Google Panda Refresh Confirmation Posted By Google's Gary Illyes
- Data On My Google Panda 4.2 Recovery
- Google: The Slow Panda Roll Out Is Not Designed To Confuse Webmasters
- Did Google Push Out A Spam Algorithm Update This Weekend?
- No, Google Did Not Refresh Panda Yesterday
- You May Be Too Late To Save Your Site With The Next Google Panda Refresh
- Google: Penguin Refresh Is Months Away
- New: Google Search Console Search Analytics API
- New Google Warning: Googlebot Cannot Access CSS & JS
- Google Incorrect Hreflang Implementation Search Console Notifications
- How To Quickly Unblock Google From CSS & JavaScript, What Google Looks At & Number Notified
- Google: We Don't Give Advice On Algorithmic Penalties
- Was That A Google Phantom Update Last Week?
- Google: New TLDs Have No Magical SEO Bonus
- Google: We Check To See If Your Mobile & Desktop Site Are Vastly Different
- Google Schema Now Supports Movie Critic Reviews In Knowledge Graph
- Google: We Won't Index Dynamic Content Behind Tabs
- Google: display:none May Backfire; Google Weighs It Less
- SPA (Single-Page Application) Web Pages & Pre-Render Services Is Okay With Google
- Google Search Console Search Analytics Report Missing July 28th
- Google: Incorrection hreflang Implementation Won't Hurt You
- Google: Again, Rich Snippets Don't Generally Belong On Home Pages
- Google Mysteriously Drops The App Interstitial Notice In The Data Anomalies Page
- Google Hints At Removing App Interstitials Again
- Google: Bad HTML Validation Doesn't Hurt Rankings But Can Impact Structured Data
- Google Increases Their Index Capacity; GoogleBot Indexing More URLs
- Google: We Mostly Ignore The LastMod Tag In XML Sitemaps
- Google: We Don't Recommend Changing Your Links To HTTPS, Redirects Are Fine
- Google: Links Within PDF Documents Pass PageRank
- Google: Top Ten Verified Web Sites Go Over HTTPS
- Google Feedback Requested: How Would You Improve The Search Console Messaging
- Google Sitemaps Shows Declines In Index Count, It's A Bug
- Google Image Search Dropping Images From The Index?
- Google: Do Not Even Ask For Links!
- Google: Sorry, We Meant Don't Ask For Links That Violate Our Guidelines
- Google's "People Also Ask" Search Feature Going Live?
- Google's German Spam Fighter Johannes Mehlem Interviewed
- Google Is Hiring SEOs To Help Them Rank Better
- Google's Matt Cutts Went Undercover At Search Conference
Here is the recap from last month.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.