February SEO news round-up

February was filled with rumours and mutterings in the SEO world: was there a search algorithm update? Was it Penguin or Panda, or neither? Read on for our round-up of everything worth knowing from February — in the SEO world anyway.

Good news for manual action recipients

For any website that has been hit with a Google penalty, the information and support given by Google can be extremely frustrating in its lack of clarity and even, at times, vague. In early February, via the Google Webmasters Google+, it was announced that step-by-step information on how to submit a reconsideration request, and the process that goes on behind reconsiderations, had been added.

Tips on how to best present your request and potential problems were also added here. Hopefully you’ll never have to submit a reconsideration request or clean up a site affected by an algorithm update, but if you do, this new information should shed some light on how Google looks at these types of actions. For more information on getting out of a Google penalty, talk to our Devon SEO services team.

That Google update?

On 5thFebruary, it looked a lot like Google were updating a search algorithm. Of course, being Google, nothing was really confirmed or denied, but upon pestering from Barry Schwartz at SEO Roundtable, Google at least confirmed that the update was neither to do with Panda or Penguin. Whatever it was, a ‘tweak’ or an update to an as yet unnamed algorithm, some websites saw large fluctuations in their Google search results.

Mobile-Friendliness is becoming a mobile ranking factor

Ok, not a huge surprise, but it’s always nice to get clarification from Google, especially when it comes to ranking factors. On Thursday 26thFebruary, the Webmaster Central Blog was updated with confirmation that as of 21stApril 2015 worldwide, “[Google] will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal”. This is big, as this is the first time a Google algorithm has been announced pre-release with a specific date.

Google has certainly been hinting at this for a while, with the release of their mobile-friendly tool in October 2014.

Image Credit: Cory Doctorow (Flickr) This image has been edited from the original.