What is a “Pure Spam” Manual Action?

A manual action is manually applied by a human reviewer at Google. Sites may be algorithmically curated for human review, but the penalty is manually applied.

The March 2024 Pure Spam Manual Action description reads: “Pages on this site appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or repeated or egregious violations of Google’s spam policies for web search.”

How did Google identify websites to target?

The vast majority of sites had very terrible AI generated content and were plastered with ads. But, a wide range of websites received the Pure Spam Manual Action in March, for a wide variety of reasons.

Some of the reasons for the Pure Spam action include:

• Inaccurate, terribly worded AI generated content.
• A tremendous amount of ads on site.
• Very spammy backlinks.
• Domains associated with known spammers. I have no evidence of this but the chatter on the street is that Google looked to turn up spam networks by looking at domain registration, Google Search Console connected accounts, etc.

How To recover from a “Pure Spam” Manual Action:

In most cases I personally would simply scrap the domain name.

In the extremely rare event a domain has high quality links and terrible content, to recover, you would want to:

1. Identify and remove AI content, or other low quality content
2. Write excellent, helpful content
3. Request a review.

Is all AI content spam?

No. While I personally do not use AI tools, Google has been very clear on AI generated content.

Regardless of if your content came from an underpaid content writer in India, or an AI tool, it can be extremely low quality. If you’re not sure, you could try reading it out loud, or having a friend read it. If you still aren’t sure if your content is any good or not, you might want to find a new career path.

In February 2023, Google put out guidance about AI generated content. In it, they provide examples. Many spammers generate mass content via automated tools. In fact, a section of the aforementioned document specifically states that “When it comes to automatically generated content, our guidance has been consistent for years. Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies. Google has many years of experience dealing with automation being used in an attempt to game search results. Our spam-fighting efforts—including our SpamBrain system—will continue, however spam is produced.”

For additional clarity on “helpful content”, see Google’s guide to creating helpful, people-first content.

Examples of deindexed, Pure Spam websites:

Originality.ai created a large list of sites which were deindexed from Marth 5th – March 7th. In that list, they mention a few sites which went from over 1 million organic hits per month straight to zero. Those sites are:

• zacjohnson.com
• beingselfish.in
• equityatlas.org

Search Quality Rater Guidelines Updated March 2024:

In March 2024, Google also released the latest round of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines.

X user Natzir (@natzir9) pointed out that there is a new section dedicated to AI often producing untrustworthy content, giving it the lowest E-E-A-T.

The post Google “Pure Spam” Penalty Deindexes Sites March 6 2024 appeared first on telapost.

Alden Global Capital had been received approval to purchase Tribune Publishing on May 21, 2021 with a bid of $633 million. Source: ‘Vulture’ Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune Papers.

As of August 18th, users are simply greeted with an error message in their Internet browser such as “This site can’t be reached”:

What was ChicagoNow.com?

The ChicagoNow about page used to read “ChicagoNow is an online community created by Chicagoans for Chicagoans.”

Launched in 2009, ChicagoNow was a blogging site. Tribune Publishing owned the site. They also own the Chicago Tribune. ChicagoNow was operated by a custom WordPress blogging platform.

There were several great blogs on ChicagoNow and I can’t do them all justice by naming a few here, but let’s just say that even I, a guy from North Carolina, visited the website.

Why was ChicagoNow shut down?

According to traffic estimates, ChichagoNow has been losing web traffic for quite some time. When a website loses this much traffic, it’s hard to make money from it. This may have been due to content problems on the site. Regardless, here are the traffic estimates from August 2020 – August 2022 via Semrush which show a ~90% traffic decline over the last two years:

Backlash:

Former ChicagoNow manager Jimmy Greenfield posted on Facebook that the way the closure was handled was cowardly and unprofessional:

I’m not at all surprised that today the Tribune (aka Alden Global Capital) killed ChicagoNow. It’s their site, they can do what they want. But it’s important you know that this was done in a cowardly and horribly unprofessional way.

For those of you who don’t remember ChicagoNow, it’s the blogging site I helped launch and then ran for about eight years. In its heyday, we were putting up 25 million page views a month. The bloggers were not employees or even freelancers though initally some were paid. They were — are — writers who had a platform to express themselves on whatever topic they wanted.

We played softball together, had blogger gatherings (my friend and CN blogger Teppi Dachman Jacobsen reminds me that SHE coined the term “Blatherings”) and held blogging seminars at Tribune Tower where groups would come in and we’d talk about writing and blogging for a couple hours. It was so much fun.

We had monthly blogging nights called “Blogapalooz-Hour” where I’d give a topic and then anyone who wanted to participate would write and publish in one hour. The first night we did this 106 posts were written. This was not a small community.

There were signs that ChicagoNow was ending. The guy who had been overseeing it since I left in 2017 announced one day in late June that he was leaving the company and somebody from the Tribune would get in touch. Nobody ever did.

The bloggers who had stuck together all these years — some for over a decade — weren’t dumb. They had organized to get the word out amongst themselves that if you wanted to keep your content then you better move it because it could all disappear at any moment.

Still, I don’t think anybody really expected the Tribune to first begin to unpublish posts critical of the Tribune, and then just kill the whole site. The Tribune never reached out, never responded and never gave anybody an opportunity to take their content with them before taking it offline. Nobody can access the back end of the WordPress-hosted platform. It’s all gone.

What an awful thing to do.

RIP ChicagoNow, and F Alden Global Capital.

Users took to Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to express their unhappiness.

For over 10 years, I wrote a blog that made a difference in the worlds of education and Latino issues.

Tribune Media has ended ChicagoNow but The White Rhino will redefine itself. Something is in the works. Thank you for the support over the years. We ain’t done yet. pic.twitter.com/7nQN8cBB1X

— Ray Salazar (@WhiteRhinoRay) August 20, 2022

How can I get old content back from ChicagoNow?

People are asking: Where are my articles? Where did my content go? What if I do not have backup copies? I want my work back! I want to recover my work!

Apparently, all of the content has been deleted. However, you can likely retrieve it – at least for now.

To get your content back, follow these steps:

1. Locate a URL for your previously published content. If you emailed an article to anyone or shared it on social media, you’ll be able to find a link to your old content. Without this link, you’ll have to dig through archives and look for your old articles.
2. Go to the Wayback Machine. You can do so here: https://archive.org/web/
3. Enter the URL. The “Wayback Machine” archives the web. It does an amazing job. Please note, the archive may not have each and every single URL from ChicagoNow.
4. Once you’ve found one of your pages, you may be able to click on your author name or your blog name to find the rest of your long lost content.

What do you think about the ChicagoNow closure?

Please feel free to sound off below. Please keep it PG.

Thanks and if you need help starting a blog of your own please let me know & I’ll try to provide some free advice.

The post What Happened to ChicagoNow.com? appeared first on telapost.

When a personal injury lawyer calls me and asks for the fastest way to get more clients, I always recommend Local Service Ads (LSAs), also known as Google Screened. If you haven’t heard about LSAs, they are Google’s relatively new Pay Per Call service that displays at the top of the search results page when someone Googles for a personal injury lawyer/car accident lawyer/bicycle accident lawyer/etc.

When a prospective client clicks on the LSA, they can immediately call the law firm. Google is able to track the call and charge for every lead generated. What makes LSAs more appealing than the traditional ad, other than the top placement on the page, is the ability to dispute calls that aren’t relevant to the law firm’s core practice.

Every call that comes through LSAs is recorded so that the law firm can listen to the call afterward and dispute it if it doesn’t align with the law firm’s services. For example, if a prospective client calls a personal injury firm about a civil case, the law firm can dispute the call and be reimbursed.

The dispute function means that the law firm isn’t wasting money on an ad that isn’t converting callers into clients.

Fake LSA Accounts

Since LSAs produce such a great ROI, many law firms try to dominate the LSA landscape by creating fake accounts that all direct to the same law firm. There are a few unethical strategies that they use to hog more than their fair share of the listings.

Fake Law Firm Names

When getting an LSA account onboarded, Google puts law firms through a rigorous verification process. Law firms are required to present documents to verify their existence, proof of good standing with the state bar, pass a background check, and a few other identity confirmation hoops.

However, the vetting process doesn’t cover changes after the LSA account is established. Some lawyers have taken advantage of this oversight and change their business names after they have been established. So, Joe Schmoe Law Firm can change its name to “5 Star Personal Injury Firm” in an attempt to capture more attention. Fortunately, this tactic doesn’t seem to work, and we are seeing less of this cheesy approach.

Multiple LSA Accounts for the Same Law Firm

A more sophisticated approach to cheating the LSA system is creating multiple LSA accounts for the same law firm. While Google doesn’t allow a single law firm to have multiple accounts that point to the same address, unethical law firms have found another loophole. They have individual lawyers from their firms create unique LSA accounts.

The individual accounts are often made to look like legitimately different businesses. They use individual lawyer pictures and create dummy websites to create a facade of an individual practice.  However, with a quick glance at LinkedIn, you can easily see that they are all working for the same law firm.

These practices violate Google’s Terms of Service. They create unfair marketing conditions for legitimate law firms that are playing by the rules. However, Google doesn’t have the resources to take a deep dive into each law firm’s listing…unless it is reported.

How to Report Fake LSA Accounts to Google

Seeing as Google is a huge company that strives to provide the most accurate information to customers at all times, you would think they would extend that diligence to LSA fraud. Not so much. In fact, reporting falsified LSA accounts is difficult if you don’t know where to go.

When you see a fake account, you can click on their listing to be taken to their profile page. Buried in almost illegible font under the “At this business” section is some clickable text that says, “Report inaccurate info.”

While this link USED to take you to a portal where you could report the fake accounts, it now displays as a broken link. Google is hopefully addressing the issue and has taken down the reporting issue to enhance it and focus on removing fake LSA accounts. Time will tell.

In the meantime, you can venture over to the generic Local Service Ads Help page and report the issue. Since this is the page used for all Local Service Ads support, you will need to fill in the information yourself.

There are two ways of going about this.

• You can write in as your law firm and complain about the fake, SPAM lawyer listings. You can then threaten to remove your LSA listings until they clean up the SPAM problems. This approach is good because it hits Google in the pocket.
• You can write in as a consumer who is upset by the misleading business information. You can threaten to share the information with others so that they are aware of the problem. This approach is good because it hits Google’s credibility – which is their leading edge over other search engines.

Either way, it will try to direct you to other resources before giving you contact options. One option is a chat feature where nobody is available to chat. The other option is to email them. When you send an email, be sure to provide detailed information on who the fake accounts are, how you know they are fake, and screenshots/page snips of your evidence.

How Google Responds to Fake LSA Accounts

As you can see, Google doesn’t make it super easy to report fake LSA accounts. They are equally unhelpful in responding to the accounts. They have removed the ability to directly report the fraud. They don’t offer chat support for reporting the claims. And they tend to not respond quickly to the reports.

However, the more times the problem is reported, the more likely they are to resolve it. Additionally, the more lawyers who threaten to remove their LSA accounts and the more customers who share the information, Google will be forced to acknowledge how unethical these bogus accounts are. Google is aware of this issue and will hopefully take appropriate action to create a fair playing field for all lawyers who want to use this great (in theory) advertising channel.

The post Fake Lawyer Listings in Local Service Ads (LSAs) or Google Screened appeared first on telapost.

What did the Local Pack Algorithm Update change?

Google announced that the algorithm update “involved a re-balancing of various factors we consider in generating local search results”.

Google advised business owners with questions about ranking in the Local Pack to review their page about improving local rankings. Of course, Google’s page is very vague, mostly telling readers that their algorithm measures relevance, distance and prominence. (Don’t worry, we’ll cover local search ranking factors in a moment.)

From our observations, Google basically twisted the dials of their primary ranking factors determining which business is the most relevant to display. That said, a few specific changes we noticed:

• Keywords in the business name are less important
• Google could have adjusted the distance factor for certain business types

The December 2021 Google Local Pack Algorithm Update did not change organic results.

Local Pack Ranking Factors

In the vast majority of cases, business owners can expect to rank in the local pack based on a handful of factors. The most important factors are:

• Organic. In general, businesses that rank well in organic search results have a better shot at ranking in local search results.
• Distance. User proximity is a ranking factor, and the local pack changes based on a user’s location.
• Reviews. Overall rating score, review quantity, and recent reviews play some sort of role. In short, you should get good reviews now & forever into the future. At the very least, you’ll look good in the Local Pack if/when you display there.
• Business name. Keywords in the title of the business name have clearly been a factor for many many years.

Bizarre changes?

While we focus on personal injury law firms here, we’ve seen a wide variety of business types appear and disappear in & out of the local pack with this algorithm update.

• Lesser known businesses have finally made it to the local pack, based on a user’s distance to the business. I think this is good and should be more fluid.
• Some law firms which have enjoyed Local Pack rankings for several years have been pushed down in the Local Pack, however it is not clear if this is due to their name, the distance of the user, or their organic rankings slipping.

Here’s an example of a Milwaukee personal injury attorney who has lost some visibility in the latest update. The circles represent his ranking position in the Local Pack based on a user’s GPS coordinates. As you can see, they still rank well miles away from their location, even though they may not rank in the 3 pack nearby. It’s strange.

Google Local Pack Layout Update December 9, 2021:

On December 9, 2021, Google changed the layout of the Local Pack on desktop.

We have been documenting Google’s test of this change since July 2021.

Here’s a before and after of what the local pack looks like:

Did you Lose rankings in the Google Local Pack?

If you lost rankings in the Local Pack, all hope is not lost. To regain the most visibility possible, make sure that you are:

1. Ranking well organically
2. Getting as many positive reviews as possible
3. Make sure your Google My Business profile is filled out 100% with as many pictures as possible and monitor it for changes.

If you lost visibility during The December 2021 Google Local Pack Algorithm Update contact us today and we’ll take a look at what you’ve got going on.

The post The December 2021 Google Local Pack Algorithm Update appeared first on telapost.

Here’s a screenshot of a Philadelphia Accident Lawyer search:

Here’s another screenshot of a Personal Injury Lawyer search in Sacramento:

Is this new?

I saw some tweets where other people briefly saw this test occur on July 22, 2021. Google often tests things before they roll them out.

This could be a sign of things to come. Or they may not be happy with their test and never roll this change out.

If they do go with the change it will be interesting to see if they make any other changes to the search results page.

The post Map Displaying to the Right of the Local Pack in Google Test in July 2021 appeared first on telapost.

This has been repeatedly documented on this blog with my coverage of the algorithm updates.

It’s a Mistake. Enjoy Them While They Last.

Nicknamed “Starmageddon” by some of us in the SEO niche, Google announced the end of reviews in search results, aka “Review Rich Results” as they call them. Obviously, businesses and websites showing these stars in search were hand selecting review counts and rating averages to display. Google correctly called this “self-serving” and took the reviews away.

Review Stars Increase Click Through Rates.

I work with several personal injury lawyers, and what I love about displaying review stars in search results is in the increased Click Through Rate (CTR). I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but when your pages are displaying review stars, you’ll get 15%-25% more clicks, especially when competitors are not displaying them.

Here’s an example of Review Rich Results displaying in search results in July 2021:

Correctly Diagnosing Increased Traffic After a Core Algorithm Update.

Unless you’re infatuated with traffic and user behavior and have access to hundreds of sites (like myself) it’s easy to log in to Google Search Console or Google Analytics, see some increased traffic and think that it’s caused by a ranking position, a featured snippet, an algorithm change or even a title or meta description change.

This has happened with multiple clients of ours with the June Core Algorithm change. I have multiple clients who saw a sudden uptick with the update, and I had to be the bearer of bad news… That traffic will be brought back down again soon. Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.

Google is already aware of the review snippet issue and working on a fix to prevent them from displaying. Expect them to remove them again in the near future, either in a sole update focused on the stars or with the next Core update.

The post Review Stars Temporarily Showing in Search Results after Google’s June Core Algorithm Update appeared first on telapost.

Note: I a not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice.

Fan Made Video – Dogecoin Super Bowl Commercial (2021):

A YouTube video circulating the web right now is called “Dogecoin Super Bowl Commercial (2021)”. The video features clips of Elon Musk. However, the clips do not shop the entire context of Musk’s comments. Here is the video:

For content, be sure to watch a video by TMZ showing exactly what Musk had said:

Robinhood does have a Super Bowl LV ad. You can see Robinhood’s advertisement here:

To sign up with Robinhood, please use my link here and we’ll both get a free stock.

Dogecoin: A Joke? Or The People’s Crypto?

Elon Musk very famously tweeted that “Dogecoint is the people’s crypto”. However, according to Yahoo! Finance, Dogecoin (DOGE) started out as a joke in 2013 and is still a joke today. Wikipedia also has an informative page on Dogecoin.

To be clear, I am not a financial advisor. I am not buying Dogecoin. It is interesting though to see Elon Musk, Gene Simmons, Snoop Dog and others posting about Dogecoin. KISS star Gene Simmons says he is buying Dogecoin:

I bought Dogecoin…six figures

— Gene Simmons (@genesimmons) February 5, 2021

What if there is a Dogecoin Super Bowl Commercial?

Not all Super Bowl commercials air nationwide – some appear locally. For example, some personal injury attorneys and auto dealerships air commercials in their area. I personally have no way of knowing if there will or will not be a commercial which mentions Dogecoin or not. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The post Is the Dogecoin Super Bowl LV Commercial Real? Will There Be One? appeared first on telapost.

With that out of the way, let’s get on with identifying low quality links in case you want to take a shot at this yourself.

Were You Sold Low Quality Backlinks?

I’ve written this guide for business owners who have paid an SEO agency to help them rank higher in Google’s search results. That’s because everyone who has come to us for a link audit knew they needed backlinks but didn’t understand that the backlinks they were being provided could have a negative impact on their website’s visibility and performance in Google search. Unfortunately, at least 90% of SEO agencies out there get some really shady links.

I’ll admit, in some niches, linkbuilding is mandatory. For example, I work with personal injury attorneys. In any city in the world, each and every attorney on the front page is building links. However, better links come from “outreach”.

You were likely sold low quality backlinks if you paid for a certain number of links each month or the links were obtained rapidly. Quality linkbuilding takes a lot of time. In general, any purchased link is often a low quality backlink.

What are Low Quality Backlinks?

High quality backlinks have a positive impact on your site’s performance in search engines, such as Google. While this ranges from niche to niche, the highest quality link you can receive is generally from a reputable source, used in context, and in a topic relevant article.

A low quality backlink is easily identifiable by a search engine due to it’s obvious intent of algorithm manipulation. Some people call these “toxic links”. A toxic backlink will either provide no value to your site or have a negative impact. While it is necessary to seek out links in some competitive niches, you should always avoid low quality links. They will never help you and the only possible impact from low quality links is a negative impact.

A Brief History of Links:

Before we continue, you should understand how we got here.

When the hyperlink was invented, long before the web, it was specifically created so one document could cite a second document for further reading. It was basically for scientists. For example, in this article, I may want to cite this article about the invention of the hyperlink.

Early search engines ranked pages based on how many sites linked to them. That was about it. Of course, this was abused faster than you can spell SEO. Google’s engineers largely ignored this issue as they had bigger fish to fry such as making search safe, keeping adult content out of regular searches and legal problems. Eventually they had to change algorithms to reward quality over quantity. This was explained very well at a presentation by Google’s former head of webspam Matt Cutts. Great guy – I met him:

Jesse Wojdylo, Matt Cutts, & Me.

Next, “anchor text” (the text linked to another page) was the easiest way to spam Google. This came to a peak in 2007 when George Bush ranked for the term “miserable failure”. This forced Google to evolve again. Here’s a screenshot of the results of the most infamous “Google Bomb”:

In 2021 and beyond, Google is looking at the topical and geographical relevance of your links. If your want to rank in Fresno as a Fresno attorney, the best link you could get is from a high authority site in Fresno such as the Fresno Bee. For further reading, see my article on what natural anchor text really looks like.

Problems Caused by Low Quality Links:

There are many problems which can arise from having low quality links:

1. Manual Action. A manual action is when a human reviewer at Google manually penalizes your website. When this occurs, your website is completely kicked out of the search engine.
2. Algorithmic Penalty. In 2012, Penguin 1.0 rolled out, killing sites that were abusing anchor text links. Fast Forward to 2016, and Google made Penguin part of their main algorithm. Websites which have suffered an algorithmic penalty will receive a drastic, sudden drop in rankings and suffer a loss of traffic.
3. Loss of Trust. There are many ways Google evaluates how much they trust a website, including the type of links you’re getting and how long you’ve been getting them for. This impacts rankings. Think about it, if you are an attorney, do you want referrals and mentions from the media, the Bar association, and other attorneys? Or do you want to be mentioned by a recipe website in Timbuktu?
4. Nothing. Lucky for you, in many cases Google simply ignores low quality links. When Penguin 4.0 launched the search engine began devaluing links instead of demoting them. In a nutshell, this means they “usually” ignore low quality links instead of killing your rankings.

Identifying Low Quality Links:

Unfortunately, there are agencies in the SEO world who continue to intentionally misinform clients. However, identifying a bad / toxic / low quality links is simple and not up for debate. I’ve watched every tiny evolution of Google since day 1, and before them I watched Infoseek, Yahoo, Lycos and others. But you don’t have to take my word for it; every step Google has taken has been very well documented and is most definitely not a mystery.

Here are well known types of low quality links:

1. Links from spun content.

This is the most well known and glaringly obvious form of webspam. Obtaining links from spun content. Spun content is when someone takes an article and runs it through a piece of software which turns it into Jibberish. In the Google search rater guidelines this type of content is actually called the “lowest” quality content on the web. Google actively penalizes sites that do it. Even when this worked (10-15 years ago) I refrained from ever trying it as I have no intention on killing any of my own sites or client sites. This one is common sense.

As a note, Google considers a few types of content the lowest quality possible…  “auto-generated content”, content which results in fraud, hate speech, scams, hacked sites, and pages which exist to deceive users. You do not want to associate yourself with anything Google considers low quality. To be honest, their standards aren’t even that high.

2. Anchor text stuffing.

Links pointing to your site for the exact phrases you’re trying to rank for are huge red flags.

Google clearly defines anchor text spam as “guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links“.

In 2004, Google got this patent which clearly defined anchor text spamming: “Anchor text spamming involves obtaining a large number of web documents to link to a particular document using the same anchor text with which the document is to be associated.”

In 2007, Google made clear that they’re well aware of link manipulation which occurs in press releases and link building campaigns. They specifically state they pay special attention to “article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links.”

As you can see, this is an extremely old tactic which should never be used. Any search engine has been able to spot this for at least 14 years now. In general, any simple “tricks” will be worn out. If you use SEMrush you’ll even get warning alerts like this in your inbox if you happen to get an exact match anchor text link:

3. Blog comment spam.

I wish I didn’t have to mention this but apparently some people haven’t gotten the memo. Do not comment on other blogs just to get a backlink. Google ignores this type of user generated content and was penalizing sites for it long, long ago, since at least 2009.

4. Forum spam.

In 2020 I did a link audit for someone and they had fresh forum spam. This is unbelievable and one of the oldest tricks in the book. What happened was, software was created to make people accounts on forums, and in the user’s bio was a link to their website. Of course, this does not work, and it’s a gigantic red flag. In 2019, Google stated that they ignore Forum links. Over the years, plenty of people have been penalized who had forum spam links, but these days Google generally ignores UGC (User Generated Content).

5. Links from sites which abuse their outbound links.

If a site is linking out to casinos, locksmiths, or exists just to link out to other websites it should be avoided at all costs. The SEO community calls these “bad neighborhoods”. Low quality sites like this can be spotted by a search engine from 10,000 miles away. Do I really need to say more?

6. Link insertions on old content.

These links are sometimes called “niche edits” and usually cost between $5 and $20.

The way that it works is someone inserts a link to your site in an article that is a few years old.

Every website I’ve ever seen offering link insertions is part of a “PBN”, although niche edit spamming hacked websites is a new tactic being offered by the lowest of the low in SEO.

Rest assured, if someone is adding your links to old articles on the web, they most definitely do not have your best interests in mind. It doesn’t matter what you are paying, you have overpaid. If at all possible, it is best to get the work reversed. Keep in mind you are dealing with some extremely shady people.

7. PBN / Private Blog Networks.

A PBN, aka “Private Blog Network” is a batch of sites, maybe 100-500 sites, which exists to link out from each individual site to a destination site.

Unless you have spent many years carefully building your own PBN, any PBN you encounter in the wild is extremely dangerous as it leaves a huge, glowing footprint on the web which is very easily identifiable.

Google has been identifying these networks and crushing them for many years.

Your competitors can also simply tweet John Mueller (@JohnMu) or click this link to report a PBN.

8. Reciprocal link building.

This is another form of link building the Google killed many many years ago. It is sometimes called a “link exchange”. In 2020, I saw a law firm SEO agency still using the tactic. Unbelievable.

9. Paid links.

Technically, any paid link is spam. Can Google identify all of these? No. However, if your article is on a page which says “sponsored post”, it is very easy to tell that you paid to put it there. If it is easy for you to tell a link was paid for, it’s easy for Google to tell. If you’re going to pay webmasters to add content to their site, you have to be very very sneaky about it.

10. Low quality directories.

Last but not least, low quality directories are garbage. Using these is unlikely to hurt your site, but it is definitely not going to help it. In the world of attorney marketing, there are a handful of agencies who submit your site to 10 new directories each month so that they can check off your linkbuilding deliverable. This is a scam. There are hundreds, if not thousands of low quality directories on the web. If your links only come from directories, search engines will be forced to conclude that your website is worthless.

Recap:

This is not a one size fits all article. The way Google ranks a website about cancer is much different than the way they rank a website about finding an attorney. However, for most business owners, attorneys and bloggers reading this, they should now at least be aware of what a “bad backlink” is.

If you have bad links pointing at your site, you should have them assessed. Proactively removing them is always the best option. If you’re been penalized, you will likely need to disavow the bad links, which is a painful, slow process.

The post Were You Sold Low Quality Backlinks? appeared first on telapost.

On November 11, 2020, Twitch addressed this issue head-on with an official blog post. In addition to apologizing for its lack of preparedness, the company charted a potential path forward to help creators stay within the law when making Clips or VODs.

According to Twitch, it was rare for the company to receive over 50 DMCA violations annually. Therefore, it was quite surprising that at the start of May 2020 the site faced a deluge of DMCA notifications on content creators’ Clips.

To appease DMCA laws, Twitch made the tough decision to delete many of the videos that were singled out. The company also forbade content creators from archiving any videos or leveling counterclaims. Executives said they were sorry they didn’t have a better program to address these DMCA concerns.

Looking ahead, Twitch says it’s developing new technologies to help creators pinpoint potential copyright violations. There’s also a new service called “Soundtrack” that could help Twitch users get rid of copyrighted material from live streams before sending them into their archives.

Twitch is also investing heavily in educating users on the proper use of music on its platform. For instance, the company recently created a page called “Copyright and Your Channel” to address Twitch users’ concerns.

However, since DMCA notices continue to pour into Twitch, the company strongly encourages users to be proactive about their music selection. To avoid future legal issues, Twitch advises all creators to avoid playing copyrighted music on live streams.

For more detailed info on Twitch’s response to these DMCA notifications, you can read the company’s official blog on this page.

The post Twitch Reaches Out to Creators After Dozens of DMCA-Related Deletions – November 2020 appeared first on telapost.

First let’s clear up some terminology then we’ll get on to determining if your content is indexed.

Crawling, Indexing and Ranking, oh my! What’s the difference?

• Crawling: When you add a page or a new article to your website or blog, Google will eventually discover your content with their crawler. A crawler is also sometimes called a bot, spider or spiderbot. A spider crawls/browses the web, looking for new pages to add to the index. This is usually an automatic process, especially if you have a sitemap submitted to Google via Google Search Console. There are a variety of factors which determine how often Google’s spider visits your website.
• Indexing: Once content is crawled it gets added to Google’s index, a huge database of everything it has crawled. Once content is added to the index, it can display in search results.
• Ranking: When a user performs a search, Google, and all other search engines, will display results from their index. These “search results” are ranked by Google’s algorithm as they attempt to deliver the most relevant results first.

Note: Google can be very slow to pick up some content or mistakenly lose content.

3 Ways To Tell if your Content is Indexed in Google Search:

Here are the 3 fastest ways to quickly see if your content is in Google search results:

1. Google the page title in quotes.

The first thing I do when trying to determine if a page has been indexed or not is to simply search for the page title. If the page title is “How to fly a kite”, I’ll just search for that exact phrase. If that doesn’t work or it’s a highly competitive search term, I’ll perform the search again with quotes around the search term. If I’m still not sure if the content has been indexed I’ll move on to step 2.

2. Google the page’s URL in quotes.

Searching for a page URL (with quotes) is a quick, easy way to see if a page has been indexed or not. I leave off the HTTP or HTTPS prefix. For example, we can see if this page is indexed or not by doing a search for “telapost.com/how-to-tell-if-content-indexed/”. If the content is indexed it should show right up at the top of Google’s search results. You could also do a site search which would look like this:
site:telapost.com 3 Ways To Tell if your Content is Indexed in Google Search

3. URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console.

If you have access to the site’s Google Search Console, you can simply drop the URL into the “URL Inspection Tool” and see the current index status of a URL. If the URL is not added to Google’s index, you can click “Request Indexing” here to get the page crawled right away. This is also very helpful for time sensitive content and page updates or fixing mistakes Google has made, such as dropping your page out of the index.

Note: At the time of this article, “request indexing” is not working. Google temporarily disabled this feature on October 14, 2020, but it should be back soon.

The post 3 Ways To Tell if Google has Indexed Your Content appeared first on telapost.

Recently, Wikipedia said it will tighten its editing restrictions on its “2020 Election” article. Only people who’ve had a Wikipedia account for at least one month and made 500 edits could contribute to this webpage. It’s expected these changes will go into effect on October 28th, 2020.

In addition to restricting editor access, Wikipedia will use its “alert system” to immediately let long-standing editors know of any recent changes. The online encyclopedia already uses the strategy on hot button topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many Wiki editors who have administrator status say they’re carefully monitoring the hundreds of state and congressional elections slated for November 3rd. Administrators also believe Wikipedia will only source election results from a trusted organization like the Associated Press.

Indeed, one of the main ways Wikipedia builds trust is by providing a list of reliable references throughout every article. Unlike posts on Facebook or Twitter, Wiki entries must contain precise citations so readers could verify every claim. Even academics skeptical of Wikipedia’s anonymous editing system admit the robust reference lists make it a useful “tool to get started” doing research.

You could find Wikipedia’s “2020 United States Presidential Election” page on this link.

The post Wikipedia Wages War On “Fake News” – New Content Restrictions Announced for 2020 Election Page appeared first on telapost.

Prior to October 14, 2020, website owners and bloggers could log into Google Search Console and request that Google index their new or updated content and display the page in the Google search results. Now, bloggers are unable to request to have their new content indexed immediately.

This will slow the spread of some time-sensitive content.

Here’s a screenshot of the feature being disabled:

Google’s Shocking Announcement:

On October 14, 2020, the “Google Webmasters” official Twitter account tweeted “We have disabled the “Request Indexing” feature of the URL Inspection Tool, in order to make some infrastructure changes. We expect it will return in the coming weeks. We continue to find & index content through our regular methods, as covered here https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-indexing”

The announcement is a huge problem for many webmasters. The message below could also been seen here:

What is the “Request Indexing” Feature?

When you add a new article to your website or blog, Google will eventually discover your content, crawl it (read it), and add it to their “index”. Once content is added to the index, it can display in search results.

However, Google is often slow at indexing new content, even high quality, unique content written by subject matter experts and placed on authoritative sites. Many website owners with a WordPress based website can expect to wait 1, 2 or even 7 days for a new article on their blog to be indexed, and Internal pages may take months to be indexed for the first time or re-crawled once published.

Historically, the “request indexing” feature gets content crawled and indexed by Google in just a few seconds.

This is very important for webmasters who don’t have time to wait for Google’s crawlers.

Examples of Usage of “Request Indexing”:

Requesting indexing is absolutely critical for webmasters who:

• Publish time sensitive content.
  (Many bloggers cover events such as politics, town halls, presidential debates, the stock market, or what Kim Kardashian is doing on Snapchat. Law firms provide in depth commentary on current legal events such as police shootings, major accidents, and Coronavirus outbreaks on cruise ships. Affiliate marketers cover what the hot kid’s toys are on Amazon Prime Day, etc. The list goes on.)
• Make important updates to evergreen or older content pages.
  (Let’s say you just updated your “Celebrating Halloween in Charlotte NC in 2019” page to a newer 2020 page of information. Without being able to get the new title and page content updated in Google’s index, the page will look irrelevant in search results.)
• Are attempting to recover from miscellaneous Google bugs.
  (When pages go missing, you need to request indexing. Here are a few recent problems Google has had with their index: On Sept 11, 2020, Google’s Top Stories feature had an indexing problem. On September 28, 2020, Google had a problem indexing News content. There’s been an ongoing mobile-indexing issue, fixed October 8th, and also canonical issues they’ve been working on. On October 16th, users are reporting even more pages being lost from Google’s index.)

As you can see, manually requesting indexing of a webpage is extremely important for a wide variety of reasons.

Technical Troubles or Terrible Timing?

For years now, several people have suspected that Google and various social media outlets will attempt to suppress content in the weeks leading up to the 2020 US Presidential Election.

And now many webmasters suddenly can’t get new content indexed (quickly)…. just weeks before the election.

The move from Google was announced just hours before the televised Trump and Biden Town Halls.

The timing is extremely strange.

On October 19, 2020, Google’s John Mueller tweeted that the feature would likely be down a “few weeks”.

Is Google Trying to Influence the Election?

It’s a valid question.

Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai has said “We do not bias our products to favor any political agenda.” Google also has a transparency report here.

However, not everyone completely trusts what Google says about Google…

President Donald Trump once tweeted this below (it is incorrect, according to Politifact):
The tweet may have been based on a paper called “A Method for Detecting Bias in Search Rankings, with Evidence,of Systematic Bias Related to the 2016 Presidential Election”, however, many have called the methodology ridiculous.

In June 2019, Project Veritas released released video of an alleged Google insider who said Google is “bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again.” Veritas also released footage from a hidden camera. The video appears to show Google’s Jen Gennai saying large companies like Google shouldn’t be broken up because “smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation.” (Gennai responded to this here). In October 2020, Veritas released more videos.

And of course there’s the new antitrust suit.

From my personal experience:
I can say that Google does indeed appear to be diligently working to improve search and the way that it works. I have not personally seen any evidence of the algorithm changing in a biased way (although, a study on what shows up in “Top Stories” would be interesting). I would hope that Google took away the “request indexing” feature to improve it, although, the timing is really, really strange.

Recap:

Bloggers who post daily, Google News approved sites, and some other types of sites do actually get content into the index almost immediately without any manual intervention of the “request indexing” feature.

However, “request indexing” is a tool that many content creators depend on for getting search traffic to time sensitive content. Some people are downplaying this or suggesting that Google indexes content fast enough organically. For many webmasters, that’s most definitely not the case.

The feature being disabled in the weeks leading up to a major election is extremely weird.

You can read more about the crawling and indexing process here and more about the request indexing feature here.

The post Google Slows New Content from Entering Search Results in October 2020 appeared first on telapost.

On August 16, 2020, it appears that results reverted to their previous state.

The SERP flux was noted by all the major SERP monitors, including RankRanger:

I personally have limited data on this algorithm update, however, an eCommerce site in the UK which we work with, who has been previously affected by the August 1, 2018 update (AKA “Medic”), and many other Broad Core algorithm updates, was affected. Below is a screenshot of their hourly organic traffic during the flux:

Early August 16, 2020, their trends returned to normal.

Several other sites we monitor which have been previously impacted by other Google Core Algorithm Updates were not impacted.

On August 10, 2020, there was a glitch. You can read about that here: August 10, 2020 Google Algorithm Glitch.

We will update this article as we learn more about what occurred on August 12, 2020. Currently, some people speculate it was a split test, an algorithm update, or a glitch similar to the one which occurred last week.

Update from Google:

A few days later Google mentioned in this video that there was indeed some kind of error and there will not be any additional information provided. They did say that sometimes employees notice something is off and fix it without making any special announcements.

Was your traffic impacted 8/15/2020?

If your traffic was off on August 15, 2020, we would love to hear from you to compare notes and look at correlations.

The post August 15 2020 Google Algorithm Update and Organic Traffic Fluctuations appeared first on telapost.

Traffic fluctuations on August 10, 2020, and August 11, 2020 were temporary. The issue resulted in several very odd results surfacing on the front page of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

On Tuesday, August 11, Google Webmasters tweeted:

On Monday we detected an issue with our indexing systems that affected Google search results. Once the issue was identified, it was promptly fixed by our Site Reliability Engineers and by now it has been mitigated. Thank you for your patience!

Another Google rep stated:

The indexing system, Caffeine, does multiple things:
1. ingests fetchlogs,
2. renders and converts fetched data,
3. extracts links, meta and structured data,
4. extracts and computes some signals,
5. schedules new crawls,
6. and builds the index that is pushed to serving.

If something goes wrong with most of the things that it’s supposed to do, that will show downstream in some way. If scheduling goes awry, crawling may slow down. If rendering goes wrong, we may misunderstand the pages. If index building goes bad, ranking & serving may be affected.

Don’t oversimplify search for it’s not simple at all: thousands of interconnected systems working together to provide users high quality and relevant results. Throw a grain of sand in the machinery and we have an outage like yesterday.

We still had the index (the index db), but something was wrong with it, because of how it was built by Caffeine. That’s why we said it was an indexing issue, which manifested as a ranking issue externally. Also, we can rebuild the whole serving index (db) within hours, yes.

August 10, 2020 Google Algorithm Glitch Recap:

Something at Google broke and Google fixed it. Not much else to see here. Caffeine is a web indexing system which was initially released in 2010. You can read more about it here.

The post August 10, 2020 Google Algorithm Glitch appeared first on telapost.

As far as LSAs for professionals go, Google has been testing this with immigration lawyers and estate attorneys for quite some time.

Don’t worry, organic rankings and the local pack will still remain far superior to LSAs. An extensive study shows LSAs receive only 13% of clicks.

As you may know, I work with several personal injury law firms. I’m currently recommending setting up LSAs and shifting budget from Google Ads to Local Service Ads to test it out. I have about a dozen firms in the signup process on the day of the rollout and I’ll update this article as new information becomes available.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so without further ado, let’s take a look at exactly what a Google page will look like with LSAs present. Please keep in mind that I crafted this image below to help you visualize what a page with LSAs, Google Ads and a 3 pack will look like. Not all pages will show all three.

I should point out here that Personal Injury Attorneys will get their headshot in the ads. That’s new. Plumbers, HVAC techs and other Home Service providers didn’t get this feature, just professionals.

What I like about Local Service Ads.

It’s brand new, so much remains yet to be seen, but so far, I like Home Service ads for several reasons:

• Guaranteed Leads. You won’t pay for clicks on LSAs, only calls.
• Headshots. Every lawyer at your law firm can be in the headshots.
• Google screened. It’s a neat badge and Google is obviously going for click through rate here. Spammers won’t be eligible for a screened badge as there is a real screening process.

What You’ll Need to Setup Local Service Ads

Don’t even bother starting the process unless you have a whole bunch of information handy. If you’re having myself or another marketing expert configure your LSAs they’ll need to get into your Google Account and act on your behalf.

Here’s a list of what you’ll need to sign up:

• Business name (exactly as appears with the Secretary of State and/or Business License)
• Owner’s name (The majority shareholder or partner you’d like to account name under)
• Total # of “professionals” (The total number of State licensed attorneys at your firm)
• Year founded
• Languages spoken
• Headshots (You need at least one. You will need photos for all additional attorneys who would like their photo in LSAs.)
• License information (You will need the bar number and expiration date for each and every attorney.)
• Background check with Pinkerton (You will need to run a business background check. More on this later.)
• Budget.
• Attorney names (Hopefully you know these! You will need their full, exact name.)
• EIN

How To Set up Local Service Ads:

Here’s a list of steps to take to configure LSAs if you’d like to do it yourself:

1. Visit the Local Service Ads Signup form: https://ads.google.com/localservices/signup/eligibility

2. Setup your service area.

3. Select your service types. For personal injury lawyers, service types include medical malpractice, dog bites, auto accidents, etc.

4. Add your business hours.

5. Preview your ad. Don’t worry about your headshot not showing up on this screen.

6. Begin the verification process. This is where you will need all of the information as mentioned above. Once you’ve submitted the information, Google will need time to verify all of it. Pinkerton will need to run a background check. There’s a lot of information needed, as mentioned above. Here’s what the screen looks like:

FAQs about Local Service Ads

As soon as the rollout began and I let my law firms know about it, my inbox exploded with questions. In fact, I sent over 100 emails today. These are great questions and I’ll keep posting them here as I learn more.

Will Local Service Ads replace the 3 pack?
No. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, in comprehensive studies, 87% of people scroll past LSAs. Lots of people won’t click ads. Simple as that. The 3 pack is not being replaced by LSAs.

Isn’t this just Google Ads (Adwords)?
No. This is different because you are not charged per click. You are charged per call.

When will I see Local Service Ads?
As of July 29, 2020, I’m not sure. But they’ll be in search results soon, so I’d recommend signing up right now.

Will my reviews transfer?
Yes. Your existing reviews from Google My Business will be shown in the LSAs.

What should my budget be?
This depends on what your competitors are doing, how congested your area is and the service area that you’re targeting. You will give Google a weekly budget. LSAs will display when you have budget remaining.

What types of lawyers are eligible for LSAs? 
Practice areas currently allowed by LSA include Bankruptcy lawyers, Business lawyers, Contract lawyers, Criminal lawyers, Disability lawyers, DUI lawyers, Estate lawyers, Family lawyers, Immigration lawyers, IP lawyers, Labor lawyers, Litigation lawyers, Malpractice lawyers, Personal Injury lawyers, Real Estate lawyers, Tax lawyers and Traffic lawyers.

I need to talk to Google about my ad.
Local Service Ads support is available Monday – Friday, 9 am – 9 pm ET at 1-833-272-1444, however, as of August 2020 the phone is not being answered. For help with an existing Local Services account use this number: 650-260-5700. You can also email Google LSA. And there’s a help page here: http://g.co/ads/contact-localservices.

Will Google call to sell me these?
No! If someone calls to sell you LSAs, they’re impersonating Google.

What do you think?

Local Service Ads look like they’ll be an interesting addition to organic, Ads and the 3 pack. Please feel free to comment below with any questions or suggestions you may have about Local Service Ads for Personal Injury Lawyers.

The post Google Local Service Ads for Personal Injury Lawyers – What Are They and How To Set Them up appeared first on telapost.

Although Pinterest’s algorithm will analyze your previous activity to determine suggestions, it will place a greater emphasis on video-based content. Since videos are more likely to engage viewers, Pinterest believes they will keep the homepage from getting “stale.”

In addition to promoting video posts, this new algorithm will prioritize the most up-to-date Pins. So, to increase the odds of appearing on someone’s homepage, Pinners should invest in constant content creation and plenty of video-based Pins.

Another reason Pinterest decided to update its algorithm was to promote minority voices. Shortly after the Black Lives Matter protests began, Pinterest made it clear it would work to recommend content “from diverse backgrounds.”

The announcement of the algorithm update was made by Yaron Greif who said:

Every day millions of Pinners visit the home feed to find inspiration on Pinterest. As a member of the home feed ranking team, it’s my job to not only figure out what relevant pins to show Pinners but also to make sure that those Pins will help maintain the health of the overall Pinterest ecosystem. For instance, relative to ranking just for relevance, we might display more newly-created Pins to ensure our corpus doesn’t become stale, or more video Pins to surface actionable ideas from creators.

Traditional click-through prediction models are designed to maximize user engagement, but they don’t help achieve those other business objectives. To solve those other objectives, the home feed ranking team introduced controllable distribution, a flexible real-time system applied after the traditional ranking layer to control the tradeoff between areas like relevance, freshness, and creator goals by boosting and demoting the ranking scores of content types.

Objectionable Posts:

One issue Pinterest didn’t address was whether it intended to change its policy on objectionable posts. According to recent reports, Pinterest doesn’t wholly take down controversial posts; instead, the site steers users away from potential disinformation by blocking specific keywords.

Although this strategy helps diminish the spread of allegedly misleading content, that doesn’t mean users couldn’t find it on the site. Indeed, investigative journalists recently found anti-vaccination threads and unscientific DIY sunscreen recipes on Pinterest.

Currently, Pinterest has not made a public statement regarding these findings.

If you’d like to read Pinterest’s official post concerning this algorithm change, then be sure to click this link. For more details on Pinterest’s current Terms of Service, please visit this website.

The post July 2020 Pinterest Algorithm Update – Home Feed to get More Diversity & Video Content appeared first on telapost.

As TikTok’s popularity continues to soar, more people are interested in how the company goes about selecting and screening content. For instance, many users want to know how TikTok executives determine what appears on their personalized “For You” playlist.

Although TikTok has traditionally been tight-lipped about its technology, it recently published a fascinating blog post on this very topic. According to company leaders, TikTok primarily uses data related to personal preferences and video engagement to determine what content appears on your “For Me” feed.

The “For Me” algorithm takes dozens of features into account, but the most significant factors appear to be:

• How long you watch a selected video.
• Whether you share the content with friends.
• If you choose to follow the creator.

The TikTok algorithm also takes into account whatever preferences you set when you start using the app. You could also significantly impact the TikTok algorithm by liking or disliking videos.

Most of the other data points TikTok uses to create your “For Me” page don’t influence what videos appear all that much. For instance, the company does take into account where you live, what language you speak, and what phone you’re using, but they aren’t determining features.

Interestingly, the “For Me” algorithm doesn’t seem to be too concerned with whatever is currently trending. Indeed, many of the videos suggested on “For Me” filters could be a few months old. Once again, the company highlights that it’s far more interested in user preferences than promoting viral content when making suggestions.

Later in the post, TikTok said it was aware recommendation filters have a habit of creating what it termed “filter bubbles.” In other words, since algorithms only suggest what users are interested in, it could deprive them of access to alternative viewpoints and exciting new artists.

To help deal with this issue, TikTok says it sometimes suggests videos with hashtags or topics unrelated to previous search history. By including these random recommendations, users can see content they might not otherwise search out.

Another issue TikTok addressed in this post was whether the algorithm took visual info into account when recommending different videos. Apparently, the company only scans videos to ensure they meet their safety standards (e.g., no abusive content or illegal activities). You could find a full list of posts that violate TikTok’s policies on this page.

While this blog didn’t answer all the specifics of TikTok’s “For Me” algorithm, it was a significant glimpse into how the Chinese-based company operates. We can expect to learn more about the TikTok platform after the company opens its first “Transparency Center” in Los Angeles.

If you would like to read the TikTok blog post in full, please visit this official webpage.

The post What Makes You “Tik”? – TikTok Shares Secrets of its “For Me” Filter and #ForYou Algorithm – June 2020 appeared first on telapost.

In a blog post published on June 30th, Facebook announced it would employ this updated algorithm to scan news articles for credibility. Now, stories with reliable citations, robust editorial departments, and clear bylines have a better chance of ranking in your News Feed.    

Even though this algorithm will bump up original content, Facebook said it shouldn’t have a dramatic impact on user experience. Instead of suggesting the most credible article online, this system will only filter pieces from your preferred outlets. 

Facebook says it has been working with dozens of publishers, media organizations, and professors to refine its News Feed scanning system. A few of the groups Facebook mentioned it collaborated with include the Trust Project and Reporters Without Borders’ Journalism Trust Initiative.  

At this time, Facebook is only testing its new algorithm on articles published in English. Although the company would like to expand this algorithm to other languages, it didn’t announce when it would do so.     

Facebook said publishers might notice an uptick in original content due to the new algorithm, but it shouldn’t have a significant impact on news publishers. Also, Facebook made it clear it was only using this updated algorithm on news-related pieces.    

To find out more about these changes to the News Feed algorithm, please click on this link to Facebook’s official blog.  

The post Facebook June 30 2020 Algorithm Update Affects News Feed Content – Ahead of the Election appeared first on telapost.

The feature has been available for some time for other industries and is new to lawyers.

Here’s a screenshot of what the feature looks like when a client goes to leave a law firm a review:

How will this help my Internet presence?

How this impacts law firms remains to be seen. However, the feature has been available for a while in some niches, such as HVAC repair. In those niches, reviews do display the new attributes in people’s profiles like this:

I personally just left a law firm a review. At the time of this article, the attributes are not yet displaying on their profile, however, this is likely just due to the feature being new or delays at Google My Business stemming from COVID-19. When the attributes DO begin displaying, potential clients browsing reviews will see the attributes and be reassured. This could also help when someone simply leaves a star rating and no text review.

The post New Google Review Attributes for Lawyers June 2020 appeared first on telapost.

In some cases Google will display a message such as:

#1 rated Personal injury attorney in Sacramento by Google users, or
#1 rated Dentist in Charlotte by Google users

In other cases Google will display a message such as:

“Top-rated Roofing contractor in Charlotte by Google users”

Example:

Variations:

When Google displays “ratings”, some businesses may be ranked #1, #2 or #3 or not at all.

When Google displays “Top-rated”, multiple businesses may have the same message of being a top rated company. In rare cases, ALL listings may show up as “top-rated”:

Some local packs have a combination:

What causes certain businesses to be “top rated” and not others?

This is the first question that popped into my client’s head and my own. Fortunately, they are listed as #1 in their city. So, that’s great for them. But how did they get this designation, and how do they keep it?

At the time of this article, I’ve only spent a few minutes looking around, but at first glance it appears that if your business displays in the local pack, Google may display various top rated designations to businesses with good review scores.

However, some results make no sense. An example of this is “Chapel Hill Dentist”. Below is a screenshot. As you can see, the dentist in this result with the MOST reviews and a perfect 5.0 review score is given a label of “#3 rated Dentist in Chapel Hill by Google users”, and a dentist with less reviews is given the label of “Top-rated Dentist in Chapel Hill by Google users”.

Is this a new feature?

I just Googled around and this was spotted on Twitter and reported by Search Engine Roundtable back in December 2019 as a quick test. Google is obviously testing the feature again. If it becomes a permanent feature or not remains yet to be seen. At the moment, it does not appear ready to be rolled out. But, it could be coming to the local pack in the future.

The post “Top-Rated By Google Users” Coming to the Google Local Pack? appeared first on telapost.