Weekly SEO news: 3 July 2012

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

Google's recent updates have rattled many webmasters. Are your rankings safe? Do you have to worry about Google's next updates? There are three things that you can do to stay ahead of future Google updates.

In the news: the latest search engine statistics, Google announces another Panda update, Google ignores some links, there's no penalty for having many nofollow links, Bing enables webmasters to disavow links and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO
1. Three things you can do to stay ahead of Google's updates

Google's recent updates have rattled many webmasters. Are your rankings safe? Do you have to worry about Google's next updates? There are three things that you can do to stay ahead of future Google updates.

Stay ahead of Google - hare and tortoise

1. Understand that Google wants the same as you

Google wants to offer web searchers the solution to their problems. Your products and services also solve the problems of your customers. Show Google that your website offers the best solution to a problem.

2. Focus on your visitors and Google will follow

Some webmasters try to create the perfect backlink profile for Google. That's not how you should work. A backlink is a good link if it delivers targeted visitors to your website.

There's only one question that you have to ask to find high quality backlinks: "Can I get good website visitors through this link?"

If the answer is yes, you should try to get the link. Do not worry too much about backlink profiles. If you only create links that are useful for real people, Google will like your links.

3. Diversify

Getting visitors through Google is great, but it should not be your only source. Each new channel that drives visitors to your website will make you less dependent from Google:

Google wants to show high quality sites in the search results. If your website offers compelling content that offers the solution to a problem then Google will give your pages high rankings. Don't try to please Google. Try to please your website visitors.

Offer good content, get backlinks that deliver visitors and offer a valuable website. That will place your business in a secure position.
2. Search engine news and articles of the week

StatisticsBing has taken 5% of searches from Google

"Google accounted for 65.02 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending June 2, 2012. The combined Bing-powered search comprised 28.12 percent of searches for the month, with Yahoo! Search and Bing receiving 14.95 percent and 13.17 percent, respectively.

The remaining 65 search engines1 in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 6.86 percent of U.S. searches."



Google announces a new Panda update

"We're pushing a new Panda data refresh that noticeably affects only ~1% of queries worldwide."



Bing enables webmasters to disavow links

"Over the past few months we’ve being hearing from the industry that webmasters wanted more control and the ability to tell us they didn't trust a link pointed at their content. [...]

Using the Disavow Links tool, you can easily and quickly alert Bing about links you don’t trust. [...]

You should not expect a dramatic change in your rankings as a result of using this tool, but the information shared does help Bing understand more clearly your intent around links pointing to your site."

Editor's note: Bing's official position is that links from spammy sites won't hurt your rankings. For that reason, it's not clear why they offer this disavow feature.



John MuellerGoogle's John Mueller: Google also ignores some links

In an online discussion, some people were worried that the links from a page with the domain updowner.com could have a negative effect on their Google rankings.

Google's John Mueller said that these links do not influence other sites: "Just to follow up here -- for what it's worth, we do ignore the links from updowner.com."



Google's John Mueller: there is no nofollow penalty

In another online discussion, John Mueller said that there was no penalty for websites with many nofollow links:

"Having links (even a large number of them) with rel=nofollow pointing to your site does not negatively affect your site. We take these links out of our PageRank calculations, and out of our algorithms when they use links."



Search engine newslets
  • 1 out of 5 Google Knowledge Graph entries for trending keywords are outdated.
  • Google enables users to 'mute' ads.
  • Google releases a new version of the AdWords editor.
  • This exec may have the hardest job at Google.
  • Google is running another interface test without the black bar at the top.
  • Google+ History API will bring in your past updates from around the web.
  • UK Study: top Twitter stories shared '350 times more' on Facebook than Google+.

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3. Recommended resources

Check the backlink profile of your website & spy on your competitors:

SEOprofiler is a full-featured SEO solution that can analyze the backlink profile of your website and much more.

You can also use it to spy on the Google rankings and Google AdWords campaigns of your competitors, it helps you to get new backlinks, it helps you to optimize your web pages, it checks your rankings on search engines and much more.

seoprofiler

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4. Previous articles

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