SEARCHENGINES
Authorship, Links & Disavows A Lot Less Important Than SEOs Think
Gary Illyes from Google gave a keynote and a Q&A session yesterday at PubCon and while the keynote was pretty vanilla stuff, the Q&A did reconfirm a lot of what has been said in the past around authorship, links and disavowing links.
Safe Keynote
First, Gary went with a safe keynote address because often enough folks like me see what people are tweeting about his presentation and I take it out of context and get the message wrong.
“I’m sharing info from Wikipedia so I don’t accidentally share more info than I’m supposed to and get fired”@methode #pubcon
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) February 27, 2023
SEOs taking photos of presos out of context? Never LOL. So @methode got his RankBrain info from wikipedia to ensure he didn’t say anything not public. @methode #pubcon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) February 27, 2023
It worked, he basically repeated stuff Google already said, that was referenced on Wikipedia, and stuff we covered at least once here with product announcements.
Authorship & Authors
In short, Google does not give too much weight to who writes your content. So if you get a Walt Mossberg to write a piece of content on your site, just because it is Walt, doesn’t make it rank well. If the content is written well, it will rank well, but by default, just because Walt wrote it, doesn’t make it rank well.
I know, this sounds weird, Walt would not publish anything that isn’t above and beyond what anyone else would write. But if Walt was having an off day, and he published something poor, it wouldn’t rank well because his name was on it.
Here are some tweets covering Gary saying this:
When asked if having a big name author write for your site would help the content rank in search @methode said: “Meh”. #Pubcon
— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) February 27, 2023
Authorship markup may be useful to users (humans), but not to search engines. @methode #pubcon
— Kenichi Suzuki🇺🇦鈴木謙一 (@suzukik) February 27, 2023
Authorship is less important than most people think: @methode @Pubcon #pubcon pic.twitter.com/WQtprMXkvO
— Clark Taylor (@clarktaylor) February 27, 2023
He was saying that if for example, you hire a big name author to write for a little/unknown blog…not as important as most people think.
— Clark Taylor (@clarktaylor) February 27, 2023
Links Importance
Gary also said that links are not as important as SEOs think they are. This is not new, I mean, last November, Google said links are less important these days than previously and links will be less important in the future.
But links are just not as important as SEOs think, he said. Here are some new tweets covering he said this:
You can get top rankings with a single link if there’s no relevant content on the web. @methode #pubcon https://t.co/mdRPoW5yey
— Kenichi Suzuki🇺🇦鈴木謙一 (@suzukik) February 27, 2023
I have documented this in a number of my posts about major algorithm updates. In some verticals, sites with much weaker link profiles are beating behemoths. https://t.co/qB28JNhV79
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 27, 2023
Links are important but not as important as most people think. You can still rank without links: @methode @pubcon #pubcon
— Clark Taylor (@clarktaylor) February 27, 2023
“Links are important, but not as important as people think.” – @methode #pubcon
— Tony N. Wright (@tonynwright) February 27, 2023
Disavow Links
This is a repeat from the 2019 Q&A with Gary, where Gary said disavowing hurts too many sites. He said it again:
Disavowing links are just for comfort. Probably stupid to disavow links: @methode @Pubcon #pubcon
— Clark Taylor (@clarktaylor) February 27, 2023
Discussing disavow files @methode said it most likley isn’t doing anything.
He clearly stated that the number of sites who shot themselves in their foot with these is higher than the number of sites he thought would of benefitted from a disavow file. #Pubcon
— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) February 27, 2023
Gary says he thinks personally that the # of people who shot themselves in the foot with a disavow file is greater than the people who probably need to disavow. #pubcon
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) February 27, 2023
So there are a few topics that are good reminders for SEOs.
Forum discussion at the tweets above.
Image credit to @RyanJones
SEARCHENGINES
Google Again Says Ignore Link Spam Especially To 404 Pages
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing to pages that 404/410 are links that do not count – but John Mueller from Google said it again.
In a thread on X, John Mueller from Google wrote, “if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped.” “They do nothing,” he added, “If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link.”
John then added, “I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.”
Asking if it would hurt to disavow, after responding with the messages above, John wrote:
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
Earlier this year we had tons of SEOs notice spammy links to 404 error pages, John said ignore them. In 2021, Google said links to 404 pages do not count, Google also said that in 2012 and many other times.
Plus, outside of links to 404 pages, Google has said to ignore spammy links, time and time again – even the toxic links – ignore them. The messaging around this changed in 2016 when Penguin 4.0 was released and Google began devaluing links over demoting them.
Here are those new posts in context:
I’d say add both. Lol
— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) April 11, 2024
Sure. But also, save yourself the work completely :-).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
Re-reading your initial post – if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped. They do nothing. If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link. I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
… but still… is this a dumb idea?
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 11, 2024
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
And in general, Google says it ignores spammy links, so you should too (not new) but this post from John Mueller is:
I would just ignore them, Google ignores them too. Sometimes they’re just more visible in tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re a problem.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 18, 2024
And then also on Mastodon wrote about a similar situation, “Google has 2 decades of practice of ignoring spammy links. There’s no need to do anything for those links.”
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Needs Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important
Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”
Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”
I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.
Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.
Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More
For the original iTunes version, click here.
The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings in the search results. Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy will be fought both algorithmically and through manual actions. Google responded to The Verge mocking its search rankings over best printer. Google Search Console has a new unused ownership tokens page. Some sites may see the Google Indexing API work for a limited time on unsupported content types. And having two sites won’t result in your sites search ranking decline. BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will test Zstd compression soon. Google Search is testing thumbs-up and down buttons for product carousels. Google is testing new sitelinks designs. Google Notes on Search may not go away in May. Google Maps no longer supports draft reviews. Google Maps released a bunch of new maps, directions, travel and EV features. Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns now support AI image generation. Google Ads is testing a similar product carousel. Google Ads reminds advertisers that ad customizers are going away. Google Ads is testing a new horizontal ad card format. Google AdSense has these new ad intent formats. Google AdSense publishers are reporting lower RPM earnings since mid-February. Google threatens to drop links to California news publishers amongst link tax bill. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
SPONSOR: Wix Studio lets digital marketing agencies get all of the benefits Wix has to offer from best-in-class SEO capabilities to 99% up-time with the added value of an extensive client and team management system baked right into the platform.
Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:
Search Topics of Discussion:
Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
-
PPC4 days ago
19 Best SEO Tools in 2024 (For Every Use Case)
-
MARKETING7 days ago
Will Google Buy HubSpot? | Content Marketing Institute
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 16, 2024
-
SEO7 days ago
Google Clarifies Vacation Rental Structured Data
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Streamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024
-
SEO6 days ago
An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO
-
PPC6 days ago
97 Marvelous May Content Ideas for Blog Posts, Videos, & More
You must be logged in to post a comment Login