Google Releases Rich Snippets Guidelines!

Google has always stressed on the importance it places on rich snippets while placing a site’s page on its search results. The search engine has illustrated time and again that rich snippets that summarize the content of a page by using structured data markup have a much better shot at being placed high in search results. Moving in the same direction, Google has launched a new set of guidelines that will allow webmaster to create a structured data markup for rich snippets.

As Google said, “Once you've correctly added structured data markup to you site, rich snippets are generated algorithmically based on that markup. If the markup on a page offers an accurate description of the page's content, is up-to-date, and is visible and easily discoverable on your page and by users, our algorithms are more likely to decide to show a rich snippet in Google’s search results.”

The search engine also warned that in case webmasters create spammy or incorrect snippets, the bots will filter and ignore the markup. Google also added that they may also manually disable rich snippets for a site abusing these snippets. Google will consider it spammy if a retailer has general store reviews on the page and not the specific product’s reviews. You can find more information at the Help Center.

Google Confirms Release of the 20th Panda Update: Panda 20 is Out!

On September 27th, Google rolled out what they call as the 20th Panda update which is a major rollout as compared to the refreshes released in the last few months. This update is said to impact 2.4% of English search terms. 

Webmasters noticed the rankings slip over the weekend and earlier it was thought that the EMD update was responsible for it. But later it was confirmed by Google to Search Engine Land that a new Panda algorithm update has been rolled out which “affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice.”

Google has also said that they will continue rolling updates for this Panda algorithm and Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team has been quoted in the media as saying, “Google began rolling out a new update of Panda on Thursday, 9/27. This is actually a Panda algorithm update, not just a data update. A lot of the most-visible differences went live Thursday 9/27, but the full rollout is baking into our index and that process will continue for another 3-4 days or so. This update affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice, with a smaller impact in other languages (0.5% in French and Spanish, for example).”

Have you noticed your rankings slipping? Do share your experiences. For more on the Panda update, read our full coverage.

Google Updates Webmaster Guidelines!

This is an important piece of news for all webmasters. Google has announced that they have released and updated version of their Webmaster Quality Guidelines. As per Google, the updated quality guidelines have many more articles on specific issues like links schemes etc. The entire information directory is updated so that webmasters can create websites that are in line with what Google expects to be followed in terms of quality standards.

As the search engine giant said, “the main message of our quality guidelines hasn’t changed: Focus on the user. However, we’ve added more guidance and examples of behavior that you should avoid in order to keep your site in good standing with Google’s search results. We’ve also added a set of quality and technical guidelines for rich snippets, as structured markup is becoming increasingly popular.”

Do check out the new updates guidelines and let us know how you find them.

Now Get Google & Bing Weather Reports with SERPs.com Volatility Index!

Shortly after the MozCast Tool for weather reports on Google, SERPs.com has introduced a SERPs Volatility Index to keep track of any fluctuations that come in search results. The tool will inform webmasters of any algorithmic rollouts made by both the search engines: Google and Bing. MozCast tracks just Google whereas with SERPs you get to keep an eye on both Google and Bing.

SERPs tool is updated daily and it keeps track of the leading keywords for a thousand sites on both the search engines. The Volatility Index tracks volatility changes for a 30-day as well as a 90-day period. What do you think of this tool? Do share your views.