They say that seven is a lucky number, but it seems as though Google doesn’t agree. Last month, the leader in search dropped the number of business listings in its "local pack" to three, when it had previously been set to seven. Google has also modified the information included in the local pack. Here’s a quick look at what else has changed: Phone Numbers Are No Longer Present LocalRead more
Two weeks ago, Engage Interactive’s head of SEO Shree Vaidya discovered that Google had expanded sitelink listings in mobile search. The recent expansion has profound implications for apartment communities with search engine optimized websites, and may lead to a change in the way users navigate sites. Sitelinks are hyperlinks to website subpages that appear under certain Google listings in order to help users navigate the site. Google awards sitelinksRead more
The newest update to Google’s search algorithm, Panda 4.2, slowly started making its way across the web less than three weeks ago. And while there’s no way of knowing what the final effects of Panda 4.2 will be until several months down the line, nerves are high as search engine marketers in every niche and industry report a rollercoaster of ranking results that seem to fluctuate daily. Google hasRead more
Every property management company that’s looking to up their search game would do well to read Searchmetrics’ fourth annual Google ranking factors study. But to help those who don’t have the time to comb through Searchmetrics’ massive amount of data, we assembled the following three need-to-know takeaways. Check out these bite-sized paragraphs to quickly review highlights of the study’s most important discoveries. #1 – Technical SEO Still Matters TechnicalRead more
We’re a big fan of data-driven insights. So when Google announced last week that it had updated its Trends tool to deliver cleaner data sets in real-time, our geek levels reached an all time high. For those readers who are not data-junkies, Google Trends is a free tool that allows anyone to collect insights about trending stories around the web. With Google Trends, you can search for a specificRead more
Google's "mobilegeddon" algorithm update was rare in the sense that it made national news. It was covered by outlets like NPR and USA Today in stories touting the possibility that sites which weren't "mobile-friendly" would see their search engine results positions fall. But "mobilegeddon" wasn't really rare: despite the coverage, it was just the latest of a number of algorithm updates Google's constantly making to improve the usefulness ofRead more
Google will be rebranding its Webmaster Tools suite as Google Search Console in the coming weeks, according to a blog post published by the search engine giant on Wednesday. A simple name change, the rebrand will not affect any of the features or functionality of the original platform. Webmaster Tools is a free website insight suite that was first made available almost a decade ago. Since its release, webmastersRead more
As the rest of the SEO community continues to chat about Google’s forthcoming mobile-friendly algorithm update, we’d like to send out a friendly reminder that there’s more than one change on the horizon this April. Last month, the Google Webspam Team’s Brian White quietly released a statement regarding a new update that will hammer the final nails into doorway pages, effectively ending a process that has long plagued theRead more
Hilton Hotels is witnessing incredible bumps in both conversion rates and Return On Investment since launching Google’s newest version of the Hotel Ads feature, according to an article by ClickZ reporter Emily Alford. While an earlier version of Hotel Ads has existed for some time, the search company quietly released an algorithm update in November of 2014 that has since disrupted the user flow of major travel sites likeRead more
In an effort to continue delivering the most relevant search results in a landscape increasingly dominated by mobile devices, Google will start punishing websites that are not mobile-friendly by lowering their rankings within the search index. The new development is expected to become official next month. For search engine marketers, the new algorithm update is hardly a surprise. Google has hinted that they would eventually reward mobile-friendly experiences sinceRead more