Weekly SEO news: 18 October 2016
Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter!

Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please forward this newsletter to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. Insider talk: more about Google's new Penguin algorithm

In a podcast, Google's Gary Illyes revealed more information about Google's latest Penguin algorithm update. Here are the most important statements of Gary Illyes from that podcast.

insider information

1. Penguin is mainly (but not exclusively) about link spam

Although Google says that Penguin is a web-spam algorithm, it focuses mostly on link spam. If your website was penalized because of the Penguin algorithm, you have to focus on the links.

"[Penguin is] not just links. It looks at a bunch of different things related to the source site. Links is just the most visible thing and the one that we decided to talk most about because we already talked about about links in general.

But [Penguin] looks at different things on the source site, not on the target site, and then makes decisions based on those special signals."

2. The linking site is important

It's not just the link that can cause problems, it's the website that links to your site (the 'source site'). If the majority of links to your site come from empty profile pages, forum profile pages and similar sites, Google's new Penguin algorithm will discount those links.

"For example, like I was looking at the negative SEO case [...] and basically, the content owner played hundreds of links on empty profile pages, forum profile pages. Those links with the new Penguin were discounted.

But like if you looked at the page, it was pretty obvious that the links were placed there for a very specific reason, and that’s to game the ranking algorithms. But not just Google’s but any other ranking algorithm that uses links.

If you look at a page, you can make a pretty easy decision on whether to disavow or remove that link or not. And that’s what Penguin is doing. It’s looking at signals on the source page. Basically, what kind of page it is, what could be the purpose of that link, and then make a decision based on that whether to discount those things or not."

3. The new Penguin algorithm ignores these links

The old Penguin algorithm penalized websites that had a lot of these links. The new Penguin algorithm simply ignores these links, i.e. they have no value at all (positive or negative).

"So in general, unless people are overdoing [links from these sites], it’s unlikely that they will actually feel any sort of effect by placing those. But again, if they are overdoing it, then the manual actions team might take a deeper look."

4. Google labels your links

Google adds labels to links and a link can have multiple labels. For example, a label can classify a link ('is footer link') or add an attribute ('was disavowed'). These labels help Google to rank a web page, and they can be used by Google's manual action team to determine if they should apply a manual penalty to a site.

"If [the manual action team sees] that most of the links are Penguin real-time labeled, then they might actually take a deeper look and see what the content owner is trying to do. [...]

There are tons of different kinds of links on the Internet. There are footer links, for example. There are 'penguinized' links, and all of these kinds of links have certain labels internally attached to them, basically for our own information.

And if the manual actions team is reviewing a site for whatever reason, and they see that most of links are labeled as Penguin real-time affected, then they might decide to take a much deeper look on the site."

Do not use automatically created links to get better rankings on Google or other search engines. Better use white-hat SEO methods that lead to lasting results. If you haven't done it yet, try SEOprofiler now:

Try SEOprofiler now

2. Internet marketing news of the week

GoogleGoogle Panda demotes or adjusts your rankings down — it does not devalue

"Gary Illyes from Google told us Google's new Penguin 4.0 algorithm devalues spam, ignores it -- but Panda demotes the spam by adjusting the rankings down. [...]
Gary told us in the interview, when we asked about Panda devaluing versus demoting, '[S]o essentially, if you want a blunt answer, it will not devalue, it will actually demote.' [...]

As you may remember, Penguin 4.0 now devalues links by ignoring them, as opposed to demoting or penalizing the links. But that is not how Panda works."


Google: if you're spamming, we will discount all your links, good or bad

"[Google's Gary Illyes] said that if Google [...] sees mass manipulation, it can decide to discount all of the links, including all the bad ones and even all the good ones. And having no links, no PageRank, no link signals can be devastating for a site. Discounting all links, will feel as bad as a demotion. [...]

The algorithm doesn't do this but rather a manual action can lead to not trusting all the links."


John MuellerGoogle to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content

"Currently, Google has a single index of documents for search. Google's Gary Illyes announced they plan on releasing a separate mobile search index, which will become the primary one. [...]

It’s unclear exactly how the mobile index will work. For example, since the mobile index is the 'primary' index, will it really not be used for any desktop queries? Will it only contain 'mobile-friendly' content? How out-of-date will the desktop index be? Desktop usage is now a minority of Google queries but still generates substantial usage."

+++ SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++ TICKER +++

  • Google: the quality of links doesn't depend on their nationality or the languages they speak [links from other countries are fine].
  • Google: Penguin is not a machine learning algorithm.
  • Labeling fact-check articles in Google News.
  • Ozlo is a new digital assistant for iOS.
  • Google's Gary Illyes: Penguin rollout is complete.
  • Google has a new AMP testing tool.
  • Verizon just raised a big warning flag for Yahoo.

3. Previous articles