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Top SEO News, 2017

Google will keep in secret the number of search quality algorithms Oct 08/2017 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 08/2017 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 08/2017 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 2016, 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 08/2017 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 2016, Google received about 35 thousand messages about spam from users every month. About 65% of all the reports led to manual sanctions.

Google keeps ignoring the Last-Modified meta tag Aug 14/2017 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 2011 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, 2017 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 2011 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 will no longer trust WoSign and StarCom certificates July 25/2017 Google reports that in the coming months, it will completely stop cooperation with certificates issued by WoSign and StarCom certification centers. The change will take effect with the release of Chrome 61, which is expected in mid-September. It will affect the certificates issued before October 21, 2016, the period of validity of which has not yet expired. Last year, Google Chrome 56 stopped trusting the certificates from WoSign and StarCom, released later October 21, 2016. After the release of Chrome 57, the browser partially stopped trusting the old certificates. An exception was made for websites that are among the first million in the Alexa rating. From now on, all certificates from these centers will be banned. 'Starting with Chrome 61, the white list will be removed, which will lead to a complete cessation of trust in the existing root certificates of WoSign and StarCom and all certificates that they have given out. Websites that still use certificates from StarCom and WoSign should urgently consider replacing them, so as to minimize any inconveniences to Chrome users,' reports Google. It should be recalled Mozilla announced about freezing its cooperation with WoSign and StartCom in September 2016. Starting with the Firefox 51 the certificates are considered to be invalid. At the same time, the support of certificates issued before October 21, 2016 is still preserved.

Cyber attack that took place on May 12 affected 200,000 users from 150 countries July 11/2017 The victims of the mass cyberattack that occurred on May 12 were 200 thousand users from 150 countries. This information was stated by the press-secretary of the European police department (Europol) Jen Ohn Jen Hurt. According to him, there are many affected companies, including large corporations. He also noted that the cyber attack may continue on May 15, when people come to work and turn on their computers. The virus, called WannaCry blocks access to files and requires affected users to pay $ 300 ransom in bitcoins. Unless the price is paid in three days, hackers threaten to double this amount, and after 7 they remove all files from the computer. The first reports of cyber attacks appeared in the media and social networks on Friday, May 12. According to Europol, the malware was launched from the National Health Service of England. Then it affected networks in other countries. The virus infected computer networks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Megafon and other organizations in Russia. Proofpoint specialist Darien Hass and author of the MalwareTech blog managed to stop the spread of the virus using code to access a meaningless domain on May 13. However, the WannaCry creators released a new version of the virus, which no longer refers to this domain name. It is noted in Europol that the motivation of hackers is not fully understood. Typically, this type of attack is revenue-oriented. However, in this case, the amount of the repurchase is small. According to the ministry, only a few companies and individuals agreed to pay $ 300 to attackers, following the recommendations of law enforcement agencies. According to The Guardian, the accounts of the creators of the extortion virus received $ 42,000 from approximately 100 people. The intruders have not been revealed yet.

Google ignores canonical links when an error is suspected Aug 03/2017 Google ignores canonical links if it is suspected that an error could have been made during their implementation. This was told by the search representative, John Mueller during the last video meeting with webmasters. One of the participants asked Mueller at the meeting: 'If a large number of canonical links points to the same page, can this lead to some problems with website?' Mueller replied the following: 'No, it is not necessary. The only problematic situation that may occur is when all these pages point to the main page as canonical. In this case, our systems understand that the rel = canonical attribute was wrongly implemented and thus, they ignore this data. But if the website contains a large number of pages with the same content (URLs with different parameters, etc.), using the rel = canonical attribute is an ideal option in this situation.' It should be recalled that earlier this month the Moz founder, Rand Fishkin, prepared a review of the best practices for the URL canonicalization.

Google intends to improve the interaction of a person with AI July 25/2017 Google announced the launch of a new research project, which goal is to study and improve the interaction between artificial intelligence (AI) and human beings. The phenomenon was named PAIR. At the moment, the program involves 12 people who will work together with Google employees in different product groups. The project also involves external experts: Brendan Meade, a professor of Harvard University and, Hol Abelson, a professor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research that will be carried out within the framework of the project is aimed at improving the user interface of 'smart' components in Google services. Scientists will study the problems affecting all participants in the supply chain: starting from programmers creating algorithms to professionals who use (or will soon be using) specialized AI tools. Google wants to make AI-solutions user-friendly and understandable to them. As part of the project, Google also opened the source code for two tools: Facets Overview and Facets Dive. Programmers will be able to check the data sets for machine learning for possible problems using the tools mentioned. For instance, an insufficient sample size.

The Italian authorities fines WhatsApp for $ 3 million euros July 11/2017 The Italian Antimonopoly Authority fined WhatsApp service developers for 3 million euros. This information was reported reported by Reuters. According to the agency, WhatsApp imposed conditions on the users that obliged them to agree to data transfer to Facebook parent company. In particular, they were persuaded that without agreeing on this they would not be able to continue using the service. The WhatsApp press service commented on this situation the following way: 'We are considering this decision and preparing a response to the authorities.' The supervisory authorities of all EU countries demanded that WhatsApp last year to suspend the transfer of Facebook data because of users’ doubts' in agreeing on the conditions. The fact that WhatsApp will open Facebook access to the user base became known in August 2016.

Top SEO News, 2017

Google will keep in secret the number of search quality algorithms Oct 08/2017 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 08/2017 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 08/2017 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 2016, 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 08/2017 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 2016, Google received about 35 thousand messages about spam from users every month. About 65% of all the reports led to manual sanctions.

The Italian authorities fines WhatsApp for $ 3 million euros July 11/2017 The Italian Antimonopoly Authority fined WhatsApp service developers for 3 million euros. This information was reported reported by Reuters. According to the agency, WhatsApp imposed conditions on the users that obliged them to agree to data transfer to Facebook parent company. In particular, they were persuaded that without agreeing on this they would not be able to continue using the service. The WhatsApp press service commented on this situation the following way: 'We are considering this decision and preparing a response to the authorities.' The supervisory authorities of all EU countries demanded that WhatsApp last year to suspend the transfer of Facebook data because of users’ doubts' in agreeing on the conditions. The fact that WhatsApp will open Facebook access to the user base became known in August 2016.

Google will no longer trust WoSign and StarCom certificates July 25/2017 Google reports that in the coming months, it will completely stop cooperation with certificates issued by WoSign and StarCom certification centers. The change will take effect with the release of Chrome 61, which is expected in mid-September. It will affect the certificates issued before October 21, 2016, the period of validity of which has not yet expired. Last year, Google Chrome 56 stopped trusting the certificates from WoSign and StarCom, released later October 21, 2016. After the release of Chrome 57, the browser partially stopped trusting the old certificates. An exception was made for websites that are among the first million in the Alexa rating. From now on, all certificates from these centers will be banned. 'Starting with Chrome 61, the white list will be removed, which will lead to a complete cessation of trust in the existing root certificates of WoSign and StarCom and all certificates that they have given out. Websites that still use certificates from StarCom and WoSign should urgently consider replacing them, so as to minimize any inconveniences to Chrome users,' reports Google. It should be recalled Mozilla announced about freezing its cooperation with WoSign and StartCom in September 2016. Starting with the Firefox 51 the certificates are considered to be invalid. At the same time, the support of certificates issued before October 21, 2016 is still preserved.

How Google processes pages with the Canonical and noindex attributes Aug 14/2017 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 Image Search loses market share to Amazon and Facebook Aug 14/2017 The share of Google in the search market grew from 58.84% in October last year to 64.8% in March 2017. At the same time, the share of Google Image Search fell to 21.8% in favor of Amazon and Facebook. This information has come from analysts of the American company Jumpshot in partnership with co-founder Moz Rand Fishkin. During the research, they analyzed search data in Google Search, Images, Maps, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia for the period from October 2016 to May 2017 with a sole purpose to determine the resources that accounted for the largest number of search engines Sessions and traffic. Generally, at this period Amazon's share went up from 0.4% to 2.30%, and Facebook's 0.8% to 1.5%. Bing and Yahoo both showed growth of up to 2.4%, while Google Maps was ranked up to 1.2%. The activity of Google Search, Bing, Amazon and Facebook showed growth, while Google Images, YouTube, Yahoo and Google Maps lost their positions. The report also included data on search volumes and CTR in the US. The number of search sessions in Google has exceeded 30 billion a month (as of October 2016). By May 2017, the growth trend remained at the level of 10-15% compared to the previous year. The results of the organic search in 2016 went down to the bottom. In December they were ranked at 54% (despite the fact that in January and February of the same year their level was at 57% and 56%, respectively, and taking into account the traditional activity stop after the winter holidays). November 2016 gave the highest rates of search activity without clicks and was ranked at 45.5%. At the same time, the lowest indicator was in October, which is only 40.3%. According to Jumpshot, the largest traffic is generated by Google: about 63% in May 2017, with about 60% in October 2016. During this period, YouTube also showed better results and went up by 0.2%, while Amazon rose by 0.1%. Traffic from Facebook, Yahoo, Reddit, Imgur and Bing almost died, and that’s only Wikipedia that remained at the same level.

Google Drive will become a backup tool June 17/2017 Google plans to make a backup tool out of Google's cloud service. Soon it will be available to track and archive files inside any folder the user specifies. This can also be the contents of the entire hard disk or the Documents folder. The backup function will be available from June 28 after the release of the new Backup and Sync application, which is the latest version of Google Drive for Mac / PC. It is assumed that users will have the opportunity to open and edit files located in the cloud. It is still not clear whether they will be able to synchronize information between multiple PCs using Disk as an intermediary. Since the auto update to Backup and Sync is not planned, the company recommends installing a new application immediately after being released. The new feature is primarily targeted at corporate Google Drive users.

Google intends to improve the interaction of a person with AI July 25/2017 Google announced the launch of a new research project, which goal is to study and improve the interaction between artificial intelligence (AI) and human beings. The phenomenon was named PAIR. At the moment, the program involves 12 people who will work together with Google employees in different product groups. The project also involves external experts: Brendan Meade, a professor of Harvard University and, Hol Abelson, a professor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research that will be carried out within the framework of the project is aimed at improving the user interface of 'smart' components in Google services. Scientists will study the problems affecting all participants in the supply chain: starting from programmers creating algorithms to professionals who use (or will soon be using) specialized AI tools. Google wants to make AI-solutions user-friendly and understandable to them. As part of the project, Google also opened the source code for two tools: Facets Overview and Facets Dive. Programmers will be able to check the data sets for machine learning for possible problems using the tools mentioned. For instance, an insufficient sample size.