December was a pretty quiet month, like usual. Google tends to be shy when pushing out updates, but we did see several potential updates which are linked to below. Google did not go forward with Penguin 4.0 and should be pushing it this coming month.
Google began indexing HTTPS by default, they made a change to how they measure search analytics in the Google Search Console and updated a report for App Indexing. There were some issues with Google NCR that are still unresolved and John Mueller spent his holidays helping webmasters.
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is very quiet now.
Here is the recap:
Google Updates & Penguin:
- Was There A Google Update Yesterday: I'm Not Too Sure.
- Small Google Update Yesterday? Webmasters Reporting Positive Traffic Signals.
- Potential Google Search Update On December 16th
- Google Search Ranking Update Continue : December 10th Update
- Google: Confident Google Penguin 4.0 Is Good Enough For A January Release
- Google: Still No Release Date For Penguin 4.0
- Google Not Launching Penguin 4.0 This Year; 14+ Months Since Refresh
- Google Indexing HTTPS By Default
- Google: You Can Expedite Processing Of Your New Robots.txt File
- Google: There May Be An Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Ranking Boost
- John Mueller: Fetch As Google Renders AngularJS But Cache Doesn't Currently
- Google: Links Activated By On Hover Action Are Invisible To GoogleBot
- Google: You Can Remove Mass Links From Your Disavow File
- Google: You Can Cloak Your XML Sitemap Files
- GoogleBot Treats 307 Redirects As 301s?
- Google: Capital Letters In URLs Doesn't Impact Rankings
- Google Pilots Schema To Update Your Local Business Knowledge Graph Data
- Google My Business API Has Launched
- Google Updates Rich Snippets For Articles Documentation For AMP
- Google: Self-Signed SSL Certificate Won't Work For HTTPS Ranking Boost
- Google: Decimal Points In URLs Are A Bad Idea
- Updated Search Engine Roundtable App & App Indexing Stats
- SEO Tips For 2016 By Google's John Mueller
- Google Updated Their App Indexing Documentation
- Google: No Technical Advantage To Splitting Up Sitemaps But Useful For Debugging
- Google Rich Snippets For Articles Now Requires Author Name
- Google: Avoid Using Special Characters In URLs
- Google: Remove A 301 Redirect? You Need Patience & Convincing...
- Large Influx This Week Of Google Manual Actions?
- New Google Reconsideration Requests Language More Confusing?
- Google Traffic Soars After SEO Drops Links From Disavow File
- Matt Cutts Shares His Raw Notes On The Google PageRank
- Google: We Are Logging Data Differently & It May Impact Search Analytics Reports
- New Google Search Appearance Filter In Search Analytics Report For App Install Buttons
- Google: We Don't Forward Retroactively Your Reconsideration Requests
- Google Search Console Now Showing AMP Related Errors
- Almost Real-Time Google Featured Snippets
- Google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect) Not Working For Some
- Google: Google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect) Should Work Again In Future
- Google Localizing Desktop Search Based On Your Phone's Location History
- Google Officially Replaces "Web" Results With "All Results" In Search
- John Mueller Helping Webmasters On Christmas With Google Questions
- John Mueller Helping Webmasters On New Years With Google Questions