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perfect, just what I needed.  I just hope these "old school" ping efforts still work.  The client won't let us access their Google Search Console and yet we need their website crawled asap.

Thanks!

Thank you very much.  Do you know where I can find more information about HTTP ping?  The google articles don't really provide step by step information on how to do this.

We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why).

Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC?

Thanks

Excellent answer.  Thank you very much.

Yesterday we had a client discover that our staging URLs were being indexed in Google.  This was due to a technical oversight from our development team (forgot to upload meta robots tags).

We are trying to remove this content as quickly as possible.   Are there any methods in the Google Search Console to expedite this process?

Thanks

I heard a rumor that Adwords Express offers a tool that lets you check real time Marketing Google ranking results (colleague brought this up)

Has anybody heard of this?

We have a enterprise (well known brand) client who is asking about the Google guidelines on embedding reviews from a 3rd party website(s).  Essentially the client wants a "summary" of reviews on their landing pages.

We are well aware that the Google best practices do not permit structured data for curated reviews.  However are there any guidelines saying that a review summary in general is in violation of webmaster best practices?

Thanks

In the past I have seen most clients create new Google Search Profile when they update to a https URL.  However a colleague of mine asked if just updating the change of address option will suffice https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106.

Would it be best to just update the change of address for the Google Search Console profile to keep the data seamless?

Thanks

Hey Paul

Did you get any response after tweeting Google? Thx.

Paul
That was an excellent response.  I also appreciate you going out of your way to hit up Google directly about this as well.

Yes we believe that this it is completely unnecessary to employ valuable resources to resolve a very minor issue.  However our client would is going to ask us to back our argument.

Thanks again

Thanks Thomas.  The challenge we have is providing our client with a reputable source (not saying your not credible..lol) that states this is a negligible issue.

We had an enterprise client ask to remove mobile URLs from their sitemaps.  For their website both desktop & mobile URLs are combined into one sitemap.  Their website has a mobile template (not a responsive website) and is configured properly via Google's "separate URL" guidelines. 

Our client is referencing a statement made from John Mueller that having both mobile & desktop sitemaps can be problematic for indexing.  Here is the article https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-sitemaps-20137.html 
We would be happy to remove the mobile URLs from their sitemap.  However this will unfortunately take several billing hours for our development team to implement and QA.   This will end up costing our client a great deal of money when the task is completed.

Is it worth it to remove the mobile URLs from their main website to be in adherence to John Mueller's advice?  We don't believe these extra mobile URLs are harming their search indexing.   However we can't find any sources to explain otherwise.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thx.

Thanks everyone.  I sure don't intend to use this tactic because it looks awful on a website and I would hate to have Google decide it was spammy .

Rosemary

I had a client ask me a difficult question about impression reporting via Google Local Insights.  Lets say a client is a popular ice cream chain and somebody does a local brand search for "San Francisco Exotic Tasty Ice" and three locations for the same company all show up in the Google Local Pack.  Does each one of these locations receive their own impression via Google Local Insights?  Or does Google just count this as one impression for one location altogether?

Logically speaking I would think that each location would get its own impression in the insights report.  However I'm wondering if there is anything to negate that.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Hi:  Thanks for your response.

I am not sure that has anything to do with it because both people are searching for the company name.  One person, the person sitting in the office where the headquarters is located sees the knowledge panel, while the other person, sitting in another city does not.

This happens all the time - where one person sees it and the other person does not - for the same phrase.

The people in my client's office get different results when they search for their company name in Google.  For example one person ALWAYS gets the right rail knowledge panel with full details about the company while her boss NEVER sees it.

They are both on desktop search.

Rosemary

In addition, with symantic search Google knows that these two phrases are the same:

CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms

They also do the same with Cybersecurity agency or firm.

Imagine telling a client to have all these individual landing pages!

I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble.

On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer:

9 footer links:
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms

Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other.

The canonical for each page links back to itself.

I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy.

Interested in your view.
Rosemary

Thanks Andy
We are trying to find a method to better utilize the library of content we created.  I was hoping to find a content distribution service that assist with this process.

I am helping a client with Local SEO efforts who has hundreds of blog posts (they have been doing 5 a week for the last 3 years) that contain full length articles about their industry.  The client's website itself has been very well optimized for all regards (CRO, Mobile, download speed, citations).  However they have very weak domain authority compared to their competitors.

I am looking for a bona fide content distribution network I could use to promote my client's blog posts/articles.  I have used Linkvana in the past but I have become wary of them after the penguin update.  I also had functionality problems using their interface.

Are their any bona fide content/article distribution networks out there?

Thanks