SEARCHENGINES
Google Says Rich Results Manual Actions Can Lead To Removal Of Rich Results & Broader Spam Penalties
Google’s Danny Sullivan said that not only can a rich result manual action result in the removal of your rich results from displaying in Google Search but also it can lead to a wider “broader spam manual action that involves ranking.”
Just for some history, in 2015 John Mueller of Google said a rich results manual action would only lead to a site’s rich results being illegible (removed) from displaying in Google Search. He said it would not result in a site having a ranking decline because of a rich result manual action.
So this is a bit of a change in what the messaging is around this, or is it?
In 2015 John said “Rich snippet themselves don’t give you ranking boosts. So it would’t kind of make sense to demote a site in rankings if they are doing something wrong with rich snippets. So essentially we just turn off the rich snippets until we are sure that we can trust them.”
And here is what Danny Sullivan said a few days ago on Twitter, “It’s possible that a manual action involving structured data might simply remove eligibility to have that appear. But it is possible it could be seen as a broader spam manual action that involves ranking.”
It’s possible that a manual action involving structured data might simply remove eligibility to have that appear. But it is possible it could be seen as a broader spam manual action that involves ranking.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 16, 2022
Danny then added “In general, it’s probably useful to have a reset here. We don’t say that structured data is a ranking factor, because it’s designed primarily for rich snippets — really a display thing, if content is deemed eligible for it to be supported. In contrast, we have a variety of *policies and* that can potentially involve ranking if violated. The help page is talking about those *policies* in the discussion about ranking.”
In contrast, we have a variety of *policies and* that can potentially involve ranking if violated. The help page is talking about those *policies* in the discussion about ranking.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 16, 2022
So maybe it is not the rich results manual action causing the ranking decline but since the site did get a rich results manual action, then maybe it also got flagged for other policy violations resulting in a ranking decline?
Here is more of the context around this conversion:
They just clarified this https://t.co/tiBuhLSRfQ
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) November 15, 2022
I read it as – if your site violates their general content guidelines, your rankings may go down *and/or your ability to get rich results*
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) November 15, 2022
Content that violates our content policies — which includes things like spam — might not rank as well. Those policies (as linked to on that page) is here:https://t.co/kZ5G908N4W
If you violate structured data guidelines, typically you’re not eligible for rich results…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 15, 2022
If structured data is considered to be spammy on a page (not the content that’s visible to users, just the structured data), will that impact the rankings for that page?
— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) November 16, 2022
It’s possible that a manual action involving structured data might simply remove eligibility to have that appear. But it is possible it could be seen as a broader spam manual action that involves ranking.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 16, 2022
In contrast, we have a variety of *policies and* that can potentially involve ranking if violated. The help page is talking about those *policies* in the discussion about ranking.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 16, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: More from Danny Sullivan of Google on this that pretty much validates what I thought above:
But if you’ve been spammy there, maybe you’ve been spammy elsewhere which could produce — as our docs explain — automatically ranking issues or manual action.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 18, 2022
I mean it’s “More on why Google structured data manual actions that lead to a loss of eligibility for rich results could mean you’re separately doing things against its spam policies that might produce ranking changes.”
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 18, 2022
Source: www.seroundtable.com
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.
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