MattGSouthern

Google has removed the public version of its URL submission tool, which allowed users to submit any page to Google’s index.Google is now advising people to use Search Console’s Fetch & Submit tool. Alternatively, site owners can notify…

Google updated its Quality Rater Guidelines this week, which includes new information regarding the assessment of “low quality” and “lowest quality” pages.Of all the changes made to the guidelines, the sections on page quality received the…

Google’s John Mueller has revealed that content length is not an indicator of its level of quality.“Some pages have a lot of words that say nothing,” Mueller says. By the same token, pages with few words may be highly relevant to a user’s…

YouTube is testing a new tab in the iPhone app that is designed to help users find videos they may not have discovered on their own.The new ‘Explore’ tab surfaces videos based on a user’s viewing activity.However, since YouTube emphasizes…

Twitter has started locking out users who created their accounts when they were underage, regardless of how old they are now.Users who have recently updated their date of birth to reflect their current age are getting locked out if they…

Google’s John Mueller has advised that rel=canonical does not necessarily guarantee Google will recognize a page as the canonical version.This was stated by Mueller in a Twitter reply to a user who asked why Google is indexing the “wrong”…

Google has collaborated with schema.org on a new set of structured data that publishers can use to optimize content for Google Assistant.The new markup, called “speakable,” can be used to indicate that content is especially appropriate for…

Google’s Danny Sullivan has confirmed, once and for all, that off-site sentiment does not impact search rankings.In other words — positive chatter about a particular website will not influence its ranking position.Similarly, negative press…

Google has been spotted testing a new design for image search results pages.The new design features the now-familiar rounded corners — one of the most prominent changes in Google’s latest redesign of regular search results.In addition, the…

Google’s John Mueller advises site owners not to mix signals like noindex and rel=canonical.The two signals are contradictory pieces of information, Mueller says, and Google will end up picking one over the other.In general, Google will…