This week Google came out swinging the penalty hammer at sites with “sneaky” mobile redirects. Google also announced a new design for AdWords is in the works, and revealed a surprising statistic about how many penalties it delivered in 2015. Full details about each of these headlines, and more, in this week’s wrap up of search and inbound marketing news.
New AdWords Design in the Works
AdWords aficionados! Set your calendars for May 24th, as that’s the date when Google will reveal a new redesign for AdWords before it gets a full scale roll out. In other words, you get to see and familiarize yourself with it before the vast majority of other users. According to AdWords product management director, Paul Feng, the redesign may take up to 18 months to be fully completed; but that won’t stop them from previewing it at the end of the month. Watch the event live on May 24 by registering for the stream here, which begins at 12 noon Eastern time. If you can’t watch it live, you’ll be able to view a recording any time afterward.
Google Taking Action Against Sites With “Sneaky” Redirects
Google announced this week it has been delivering manual penalties to sites with “sneaky” mobile redirects. Sneaky mobile redirects are considered links which lure the visitor into navigating somewhere that wasn’t intended. That type of behavior is firmly against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and the company is finally taking massive action. Google even warned people several months ago it would be issuing penalties for this very thing, but that wasn’t enough to thwart some website owners away from engaging in sneaky mobile redirects.
If your site has been affected, you could tell by a significant decrease in organic search traffic. A manual penalty means that Google will completely stop ranking your site in organic search results. If that’s the case, then the company invites you to visit this help center article. After going through the process described in the article, you may have a chance of Google reconsidering the manual penalty it delivered.
Google Delivers 4 Million Manual Penalties in 2015
Speaking of manual penalties, how many do you think Google gives out in a given year? If you guessed anything less than 4 million, you’d be wrong. Yes, 4 million penalties were delivered manually last year. That means 4 million penalties in addition to the penalties that are handled automatically by Google’s algorithms. In order to accomplish that, Google must have an extremely vigilant team of spam fighters working around the clock to clean up the web. Let that be another warning to any violators of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Google has the resources and will eventually catch on to spammy tactics.
Search By Images Using Bing
It’s not often Bing makes the news, but the company released a highly useful new update to its iOS app this week. Bing has added the ability to search for information by taking a photo or uploading an image. Sometimes you see something in an image that you just don’t know how to describe, at least not to search engines. Now you can search the entirety of the image, including all of the information contained within, to identify what it is you’re looking for. This could be just as useful while visiting a foreign country as it is in day-to-day life.
Conclusion
Google is going hard and heavy on manual action penalties, not just for sneaky mobile redirects, but for violators of all kinds. A new AdWords redesign will be previewed on May 24th, and Bing’s iOS app now lets you search within an image. If you have any questions about any of this week’s developments, please leave a comment below.
Pam Aungst
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