Better page titles in search results

By Navjot Singh
navjot singh
Page titles are an important part of our search results: they’re the first line of each result and they’re the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets) to describe to searchers what the page is about.
We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the

Essential SEO Tips & Techniques

By Navjot Singh
navjot singh
1.. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.
2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.
3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.

Google Announces “Megasitelinks,” Image Search Improvements & Better Byline Dates

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Megasitelinks (Localized, Too)

By Navjot Singh That’s Google’s internal project name for what the post say is an algorithmic improvement for selecting sitelinks. Google’s post doesn’t offer much color about why the name “Megasitelinks” was chosen for this update, but it does share one interesting new implementation: localized sitelinks.

“…we may show sitelinks specific to your metropolitan region, which you can control with your location setting.”

Google has been making a fair amount of updates to its Sitelinks in recent months. We’ve noticed them showing up not only on home pages, but also more frequently on sub-pages. Sitelinks have also expanded to include Google+ data in certain cases, as we reported back in November. And last summer there was the addition of the 12-pack of sitelinks.
I’ve yet to find a query that produces localized sitelinks, but not for lack of trying. (Feel free to leave a comment below if you’ve found/seen one.)

Image Search Improvements

There are two items related to Google Image Search in today’s post:

Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World

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By Navjot Singh

Google’s search results are undergoing their most radical transformation ever, as a new “Search Plus Your World” format begins rolling out today. It finds both content that’s been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings.
The change is live now, though not everyone will see it until it fully launches over the next few days. It’s only for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English. You’ll know when it happens, because Google will alert you with a message like this above your search results:

Spring Cleaning out of Session

Announcement by Google
• Aardvark: Aardvark was a start-up we acquired in 2010. An experiment in a new kind of social search, it helped people answer each other’s questions. While Aardvark will be closing, we’ll continue to work on tools that enable people to connect and discover richer knowledge about the world.

Google Removes Author: Search From Google News

By Navjot Singh
navjot singh
You can no longer search for articles from specific authors in Google News.

As Barry Schwartz reported this morning on Search Engine Roundtable, using the author: firstname lastname command at Google News brings up no results now, and Google has disabled it on purpose. If you think it has something to do with the rel=author movement, it seems that you’re correct. Here’s what a Google employee named Erik explained in the Google News help forum:



The author: search operator is no longer available. For author-specific Google News content, I would recommend use of the Authorship capabilities in Google News, introduced last month. Integration with Google+ circles means easier following and engagement between authors and readers.

Google Adds Author Stats To Webmaster Tools

By Navjot Singh

Google has introduced a new report in Google Webmaster Tools named “Author Stats.”

Author Stats shows you how often your content is showing up on the Google search results page. This will show up under Google Webmaster Tools in the “labs” section in Webmaster Tools. It shows the impressions and clicks of the stories found in Google and shows up when you associate your content with your Google Profile.

What Is “(Not Provided)” in Organic Search Traffic Keywords on Google Analytics?

For about two months we’ve noticed a (Not Provided) item on Google Analytics traffic reports under “Traffic Sources/Google Organic” section. This is an article that has done a good job explaining it. The basic answer is that the keywords surfers used to find this particular site were not shown because the searchers were logged into their Google account when conducting the search.

Raising awareness of cross-domain URL selections

A piece of content can often be reached via several URLs, not all of which may be on the same domain. A common example we’ve talked about over the years is having the same content available on more than one URL, an issue known as duplicate content. When we discover a group of pages with duplicate content, Google uses algorithms to select one representative URL for that content. A group of pages may contain URLs from the same site or from different sites. When the representative URL is selected from a group with different sites the selection is called a cross-domain URL selection. To take a simple example, if the group of URLs contains one URL from a.com and one URL from b.com and our algorithms select the URL from b.com, the a.com URL may no longer be shown in our search results and may see a drop in search-referred traffic.

Ten recent algorithm changes

Ten recent algorithm changes by Google.com

Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.