If you earn a powerful link, you should receive that link. Unfortunately, many news and media publishers are nofollowing those links, which tells Google to not pass signals, including PageRank, downstream to the pages that earned those links.

I cover the situation, including examples of that happening, why it’s happening, how Google’s view of nofollow has changed over the years, and even include an example of it happening to me! In addition, I cover important FAQs for news and media publishers that might be nofollowing links now (in order to clear up any confusion about when to link normally versus using nofollow).

A link is a terrible thing to waste, so please link out normally. Site owners will appreciate it, Google will appreciate, and the entire web ecosystem will appreciate it.

Blog post covering the topic:

https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/news-media-publishers-link-out-ditch-nofollow/

Chapters:

00:00 When links go wrong. Why some news and media publishers are nofollowing links.

02:08 Examples of news and media publishers nofollowing earned links.

03:30 Link Madness Inception: When it happened to me recently!

04:47 But wait, nofollow is just a hint to Google now.

06:00 Help me, help you. FAQs for news and media publishers.

08:57 Just link out normally. It’s the way the web works.

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Google recently rolled out two additional waves of manual actions for site reputation abuse targeting the EU (including Germany in the second wave). As I’ve been analyzing those drops, I noticed that sites are handling content violating the spam policy in several ways (and some are not the correct ways). For example, disallowing via robots.txt and canonicalizing are NOT valid approaches. Instead, noindexing or removing the content completely are the correct methods for dealing with a manual action for site reputation abuse.

In this video, I cover four methods that are being employed now by site owners and why only two are valid. I provide specific examples of sites using each approach and how that worked, or didn’t work, for the site at hand.

Companion blog post covering the topic: https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/how-to-block-content-site-reputation-abuse/

Chapters:

00:00 New manual actions for site reputation abuse and how sites are trying to block content

00:49 Disallowing via robots.txt (NOT VALID)

03:39 Canonicalizing site reputation abuse content (NOT VALID)

04:35 Noindexing content (VALID)

05:44 User-agent blocking

06:15 Removing content completely (VALID)

06:50 Summary: Two valid choices for blocking content for site reputation abuse

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GSC data for AI overviews, including clicks and click-through rate, has been nearly impossible to view... UNTIL NOW. But there's a catch. You need a manual action! My latest episode covers my blog post titled The Twiddler That Didn’t Twiddle – How To Track Clicks and Click Through Rate For Google’s AI Overviews (but only if you have a manual action.)

In this video I explain the loophole in Google right now where sites with manual actions can still rank well in AIOs even when they are heavily demoted (or removed) from ranking in the core search results (10-blue links). But I also explain that you better move fast. I don't know how long it take before Google closes that loophole.

This may be one of the few times (or only time) a manual action will benefit a site owner.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction - When the Twiddler Doesn't Twiddle

00:50 Murky and Confusing AIO Performance Data

01:29 Google's loophole where sites with a manual action can rank in AI overviews

02:42 Lily Ray's tweet and my retweet about sites ranking in AIOs with manual actions

03:07 Twiddler Down! When Twiddlers don't Twiddle

03:54 How deindexing with manual actions works

04:40 The maddening adventure of tracking AIOs

05:39 You couldn't see pure AIO performance data... until now!

06:20 Steps for tracking pure AIO data in Google Search Console

08:10 Examples of AIO clicks and CTR in Google Search Console

09:20 Click-through rate with #1 AIO rankings.

10:20 A note about using regex in GSC to combine queries.

11:17 Summary - The only time a manual action can benefit a site owner.

Blog post: https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/how-to-track-aio-performance-gsc-manual-action/

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