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Google will keep in secret the number of search quality algorithms Oct 08 How many search quality algorithms does Google use? This question was put to the John Mueller, the company’s employee during the last video conference with webmasters. The question was: "When you mention Google's quality algorithm, how many algorithms do you use?" Mueller responded the following: "Usually we do not talk about how many algorithms we use. We publicly state that we have 200 factors when it comes to scanning, indexing and ranking. Generally, the number of algorithms is a casual number. For instance, one algorithm can be used to display a letter on the search results page. Therefore, we believe that counting the exact number of algorithms that Google uses is not something that is really useful [for optimizers]. From this point of view, I can’t tell you how many algorithms are involved in Google search."

Gary Illyes shares his point of view on how important referential audit is Oct 08 At the Brighton SEO event that took place last week, Google rep called Gary Illyes shared his opinion about the importance of auditing the website's link profile. This information was reported by Jennifer Slagg in the TheSEMPost blog. Since Google Penguin was modified into real-time update and started ignoring spam links instead of imposing sanctions on websites, this has led to a decrease of the value of auditing external links. According to Gary Illyes, auditing of links is not necessary for all websites at the present moment. "I talked to a lot of SEO specialists from big enterprises about their business and their answers differed. These companies have different opinions on the reason why they reject links. I don't think that helding too many audits makes sense, because, as you noted, we successfully ignore the links, and if we see that the links are of an organic nature, it is highly unlikely that we will apply manual sanctions to a website. In case your links are ignored by the "Penguin", there is nothing to worry about. I've got my own website, which receives about 100,000 visits a week. I have it for 4 years already and I do not have a file named Disavow. I do not even know who is referring to me. Thus, in the case when before a website owner was engaged in buying links or using other prohibited methods of link building, then conducting an audit of the reference profile and rejecting unnatural links is necessary in order to avoid future manual sanctions. It is important to remember that rejecting links can lead to a decrease in resource positions in the global search results, since many webmasters often reject links that actually help the website, rather than doing any harm to it. Therefore, referential audits are needed if there were any violations in the history of the resource. They are not necessary for many website owners and it is better to spend this time on improving the website itself, says Slagg.

Googlebot still refuses to scan HTTP/2 Oct 08 During the last video conference with webmasters Google rep called John Mueller said that Googlebot still refrains to scan HTTP. The reason is that the crawler already scans the content that fast, so the benefits that the browser receives (web pages loading time is decreased) are not that important. "No, at the moment we do not scan HTTP / 2. We are still investigating what we can do about it. In general, the difficult part is that Googlebot is not a browser, so it does not get the same speed effects that are observed within a browser when implementing HTTP / 2. We can cache data and make requests in a different way than a regular browser. Therefore, we do not see the full benefits of scanning HTTP / 2. But with more websites implementing push notification feature, Googlebot developers are on the point of adding support for HTTP in future.” It should be recalled that in April, John Mueller said that the use of the HTTP / 2 protocol on the website does not directly affect the ranking in Google, but it improves the experience of users due to faster loading speed of the pages. Therefore, if you have a change, it is recommended to move to this protocol.

Google does not check all spam reports in manual mode Oct 08 Google employee named John Mueller stated that the search team does not check all spam reports manually during the last video conference with webmasters. The question to Mueller was the following: "Some time ago we sent a report on a spam, but still have not seen any changes. Do you check each and every report manually?" The answer was: No, we do not check all spam reports manually. " Later Mueller added: "We are trying to determine which reports about spam have the greatest impact, it is on them that we focus our attention and it is their anti-spam team that checks manually, processes and, if necessary, applies manual sanctions. Most of the other reports that come to us is just information that we collect and can use to improve our algorithms in the future. At the same time, he noted that small reports about violations of one page scale are less prioritized for Google. But when this information can be applied to a number of pages, these reports become more valuable and are prior to be checked. As for the report processing time, it takes some considerable time. As Mueller explained, taking measures may take "some time", but not a day or two. It should be recalled that in, Google received about 35 thousand messages about spam from users every month. About 65% of all the reports led to manual sanctions.

How Google processes pages with the Canonical and noindex attributes Aug 14 During the last video conference with webmasters, John Mueller answered the interesting question: how does the search engine process pages that both contain the Canonical and Noindex attribute? The question to Mueller was: "I once was at a seminar where I was told that if you use rel = canonical and Noindex on a page, then Canonical will transmit the Noindex canonicalized page. Is that true?". Answer: "Hmm. I don’t know. We discussed this issue for a long time, at least inside the team. In particular, what should we do in this case. Using Canonical, you are telling that two pages should be processes identically. Noindex reports that the page that contains it must be removed from the search. Therefore theoretically our algorithms can get confused and decide that you need to delete both pages. Correct? Or they can process them in different ways, taking into account Noindex attribute. As a matter of actual practice, it is most likely that algorithms will decide that the rel = canonical attribute was added by mistake."

Google adds tags for recipes, videos and products in the image search Aug 03 Google added tags for recipes, videos, products and GIF to the image search results. Now when searching for images, users will immediately see which type of content the individual results are related to. The Google rep commented on the new feature saying the following: "These badges will help you find those images that involve additional actions or contain more detailed information." To display a label on a website page, appropriate marking of structured data should be added: for recipes, goods or video. GIF-images Google algorithms will recognize and mark automatically, thus, markup is not needed for them. New badges will not always be displayed just like extended snippets. Filling in the fields for the recommended properties of the markup increases the chances of getting them. Google also updated its structured data verification tool. Now it processes markups for images. It should be recalled that Google started showing videos and recipes in the search results for pictures starting from last month.

Google updates the guidelines for assessors third time this year Aug 05 It's third time this year that Google has updated the guidelines for assessors (experts assessing the quality of search results and the pages displayed in it). This time, the changes are even smaller than in the previous version of the document, which was published in May. The latest innovations will mainly be interested to SEO specialists who work with non-English pages. For instance, the pseudoscientific and fake content details have been clarified, comments displaying pornographic ads on websites that do not contain adult content have been removed, new examples of pages with the lowest quality have been introduced, as well as a completely new section on the display of results in English for non-English-speaking locales. There are changes that are purely of a natural style: for example, the selection of some words in italics has been removed. The section on using the Foreign Language label for pages in a foreign language like Ukrainian and Russian is replaced with an example of Catalan and Spanish. A complete guide for assessors Google is a 160 pages book. It should be recalled that the Google assessors guide has already been updated in March and May this year. The main changes aimed at combating dubious content in search results took place this March. The largest May updates affected the assessment of the quality of news websites, in particular the use of the "Upsetting-Offensive" label that was introduced in March.

Google does not consider a sticky footer as a violation of the rules Aug 04 In most cases Google does not penalize or lower websites for using a sticky footer. Thus, there is no need to worry about possible problems due to the use of this technique. This information was stated by the Google search representative Gary Illyes on Twitter. At the same time, Illyes advises to avoid obsession, so as not to cause irritation among users when sticking the footer. Nah, I would not worry about that, but do not try to make them as less obtrusive as possible. You really do not want to annoy your users. - Gary "鯨 理" Illyes (@methode) July 28 It should be recalled that in April the search rep, John Mueller, said that Google does not punish websites for posting end-to-end text and links into the footer of the page. The content of this block is not regarded by the search engine as the main page on the website. Earlier this month it became known that the location of internal links on the page does not affect their weight.

Google keeps ignoring the Last-Modified meta tag Aug 14 Google still ignores the Last-Modified meta tag in the search. This was stated by the company’s employee, John Mueller providing a response to a question from one of the webmasters on Twitter. The question was: "In you said that Google does not use the http-equiv =" last-modified "tag for crawling. Is that still so? ". Mueller replied the following: Yep, we still do not use it. - John ☆ .o (≧ ▽ ≦) o. ☆ (@JohnMu) August 11 The tag was originally used to alert the crawlers that the page was updated, or to specify the date the page was last refreshed. In John Mueller made a post on the Webmaster Central Help forum in which he stated that Google does not use the Last-Modified meta tag for scanning, indexing, or ranking. This tag is also not included in the list of meta tags considered by Google. With all this, other search engines can still use it.

Google is speeding up the mobile pages in the ranking June 17 Google is changing its approach to assessing the speed of page loading. In the near future, the ranking will take into account the speed of mobile pages and not desktop. This was reported by the Goole search representative Gary Illyes at the SMX Advanced conference. As you know, at the moment Google measures only the loading speed of the desktop pages. These data are used both in desktop ranking and mobile. However, mobile speed is more important for Google. Therefore, it was decided to make changes to the search algorithm. This approach is already under consideration. Illyes also stressed upon the fact that Google will actively inform webmasters about any changes before launching the mobile-first index. So not to make a surprise for specialists. Earlier it was reported that Google has not been planning to take into account the downloading speed for mobile pages in the ranking.