Since the time Google introduced the PageRank in the search algorithm the importance to links was an obvious development. This also brought with itself the issue of spam. To combat this spam especially the comment spam, in 2005 Google introduced the “nofollow” attribute.

Its been 15 years now and Google announced on its webmaster blog that the web has evolved and it’s high time this attribute also evolves.

Google has  announced two new link attributes by which  webmasters can specify to Google the nature of concerned links. These are:

rel="sponsored":

This attribute to be used to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements.

rel="ugc":

UGC stands for User Generated Content, and the ugc attribute value is recommended for links within user generated content, such as comments and forum posts.

rel="nofollow":

This attribute to be used to for cases where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.

When "nofollow" was introduced in 2005, Google had not integrated its signals in the search algorithm. I mean to say the attribute was there but its purpose for indexing and crawling was not achieved. This will change soon.

Google mentioned :

All the link attributes, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, now will work as hints for us to incorporate for ranking purposes. For crawling and indexing purposes, nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020. Those depending on nofollow solely to block a page from being indexed (which was never recommended) should use one of the much more robust mechanisms like:

• robots.txt files
• meta tags
• password-protection of web server files

The sponsored, ugc and nofollow attributes are basically to specify the nature of the links for which these will be used.

Google also added on the blog :

• Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe content they point at.
• Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns.
• By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information.
• The site owners get the option to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.

From the SEO perspective the most important aspect to understand is:

The link attributes of “ugc” and “nofollow” will continue to be a further deterrent. In most cases, the move to a hint model won’t change the nature of how Google treats such links. Google will generally treat them as they did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes. But, Google will still continue to carefully assess how to use links within Search, just as they always have and as they have had to do for situations where no attributions were provided. But, for crawling and indexing purposes, nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020.

Google has also answered the following FAQs on its blog:

• Do I need to change my existing nofollows?
• Can I use more than one rel value on a link?
• If I use nofollow for ads or sponsored links, do I need to change those?
• Do I still need to flag ad or sponsored links?
• What happens if I use the wrong attribute on a link?
• Why should I bother using any of these new attributes?
• Won’t changing to a “hint” approach encourage link spam in comments and UGC content?
• When do these attributes and changes go into effect?

you can find the answers on: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify.html

A Mobile Ready website is much more than just having a Responsive Website. Let’s explore - PWA , AMP and Responsiveness.

Today if your website needs to be called mobile-ready it needs to be:

• Responsive
• (Accelerated Mobile Pages) AMP Enabled &
• Should also be a Progressive Web App (PWA)

Mobilegeddon & The Google Mobile Friendly Updates. 

Google in November 2014 had announced the ‘mobile friendly’ labels for responsive websites in their search results.

In August 2016 Google stopped displaying these labels to keep the results uncluttered. As by then 80% of the websites in the Google index met the mobile-friendly criteria.

In August 2016 Google started showing the icon  for  AMP pages  in search results.

What Is AMP?

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are pages which are light weight and load quickly on mobile devices. AMPs are served from the Google AMP Cache, which is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically.

AMP can load quickly but cannot retain the same low speed in case of complex functions like online payments and other, dynamic functionality.

To give a great user experience to the user usually people develop mobile apps. But to avoid the drawbacks of the native apps PWA comes to your rescue.

 What are Progressive Web Apps (PWA)?

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web app that uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users. These apps meet certain requirements (checklist below), are deployed to servers, accessible through URLs, and indexed by search engines.

This can work in along with Cordova to provide a multiple deploy targets for all your users.

Why do I need a PWA ?

• PWA adds the advantages of a native app to the website.
• According to, Flurry Analytics, 80% of the mobile user’s time was spent inside apps and 20% on the mobile web. This continues to grow year by year.
• With mobile devices becoming smarter, the time inside apps is surely going to increase.
• The app needs to be installed on the mobile device which takes up a lot of storage space. PWA runs from the server leaving a lot of free space for the user on the mobile device.
• According to, a test, some native apps took up 460 MB of space whereas the PWA just needed 1 MB.
• In the case of an app, the user needs to be notified to update it. The PWA lives on the server so there is no update distribution lag.
• PWA can work offline.
• PWA, being a website fortified with the benefits of an app, is linkable, searchable, and indexable.
• com had decided to discontinue their website and go app only, but that did not go well with the users.After their PWA named FlipKart Lite the statistics showed 40% returning visitors, +63 conversions from home screen visits and more time spent on FlipKart Lite.

Case Study on https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/flipkart

(Walmart Inc. has announced acquisition of 77 per cent stake in Flipkart in its biggest takeover till date)

Technical Details About PWA:

To give a Fast, Integrated, Reliable and Engaging user experience PWA uses features like Service Workers, Push Notifications, and Web App Manifests.

What Is a Service Worker?

• A Service Worker is a scriptable intermediate layer between the web page and the network. It is a script that the browser runs in the background, separate from a web page. It includes features like push notificationsand background sync.
• A Service Worker gives access to an API that provides a programmable network proxy within the client-side context.
• It makes it easier to create web applications that can handle network requests offline while browsing in varying network speeds.
• At times, an HTTP request is made but a response is not received on the mobile devices, which can happen when the user goes through a tunnel, or the network varies from 2G to 3G, or the user automatically joins a saturated WiFi network. The Service Worker allows developers to cache assets when connected and offers a seamless experience when offline so user experience is maintained.

Some Technicalities to Note About a Service Worker

• A Service Worker is not HTML or XML. It is a JavaScript Worker.  Hence, the Service Worker does not access the DOM directly.
• The script communicates with the relevant pages by responding to messages sent by using the postMessage interface, and those pages can then access the DOM if required.
• A Service Worker is basically a proxy server which serves between apps, browsers, and the network when available.
• It allows you to control and handle network requests from the pages.
• The Service Worker script does not run when not in use, and restarts when it’s next needed. Hence, you cannot rely on global state handlers.
• If there is information that you need to reuse on restart, service workers do have access to the IndexedDB API, which stores data inside the user’s browser.
• Service Workers use Javascript Promiseson a large scale. Technically, a Promise is a proxy for a value not necessarily known when the promise is created.
• The browser needs to support Service Workers.

Web App Manifests

The web app manifest is a JSON file. It is a simple text file which has the metadata for the app.

This JSON allows you:

• to control the look and feel of the app
• to control how the app is launched
• to display icons for the user home screen and splash screen which is displayed while the app is loading
• When the app is launched, you can specify which page gets loaded as well as the screen orientation (portrait/landscape view).

PWA Checklist:

• Site is served over HTTPS
• Pages are responsive on tablets & mobile devices
• All app URLs load while offline
• Metadata provided for Add to Home screen
• First load fast even on 3G
• Site works cross-browser
• Page transitions don't feel like they block on the network
• Each page has a URL
• Site's content is indexed by Google
• org metadata is provided where appropriate
• Social metadata is provided where appropriate
• Canonical URLs are provided when necessary
• Pages use the History API
• Content doesn't jump as the page loads
• Pressing back from a detail page retains scroll position on the previous list page
• When tapped, inputs aren't obscured by the onscreen keyboard
• Content is easily shareable from standalone or full screen mode
• Site is responsive across phone, tablet and desktop screen sizes
• Any app install prompts are not used excessively
• The Add to Home Screen prompt is intercepted
• First load very fast even on 3G
• Site uses cache-first networking
• Site appropriately informs the user when they're offline
• Provide context to the user about how notifications will be used
• UI encouraging users to turn on Push Notifications must not be overly aggressive.
• Push notifications must be timely, precise and relevant
• Provides controls to enable and disable notifications
• User is logged in across devices via Credential Management API
• User can pay easily via native UI from Payment Request API.

How do I Test the PWA?

To help teams create the best possible experiences Google hasput  together a checklist which breaks down all the things Google thinks it takes to be a Baseline PWA, and how to take that a step further with an Exemplary PWA by providing a more meaningful offline experience, reaching interactive even faster and taking care of many more important details.

You can run ‘Lighthouse’ which is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. You can run it against any web page, public or requiring authentication. It has audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, and more.

You can run Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools, from the command line, or as a Node module. You give Lighthouse a URL to audit, it runs a series of audits against the page, and then it generates a report on how well the page did. From there, use the failing audits as indicators on how to improve the page. Each audit has a reference doc explaining why the audit is important, as well as how to fix it.

Can I submit a PWA to Google Play Store and App Store?

The PWAs are available through the browser on Android . However the PWA can also be submitted to the APP store and the Google Play Store after packaging it for the relevant store.

Converting your responsive website to a PWA and making it AMP enabled is the new mobile-ready website.

Related Posts:

The Benefits of Combining Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) & Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

In August 2014 Google announced that security is a top priority for us. They also added that:

“Beyond our own stuff, we’re also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of that is making sure that websites people access from Google are secure. For instance, we have created resources to help webmasters prevent and fix security breaches on their sites.

We want to go even further. At Google I/O a few months ago, we called for “HTTPS everywhere” on the web.”

Hence, HTTPS was officially acknowledged as a ranking signal in 2014.

Since then, Google has been advocating the use of SSL Certificates (HTTPS encryption)  for a safe and secure web. Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure”.

In Chrome 68, the omnibox will display “Not secure” for all HTTP pages.

 

Since Google made the above announcement , HTTPS usage has already made some incredible progress. You can see all of this in the Google public Transparency Report:

• 64 percent of Chrome traffic on Android is now protected, up from 42 percent a year ago.
• Over 75 percent of Chrome traffic on both ChromeOS and Mac is now protected, up from 60 percent on Mac and 67 percent on Chrome OS a year ago
• 71 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default, up from 37 a year ago.

HTTPS is easier and cheaper than ever before, and it enables both the best performance the web offers and powerful new features that are too sensitive for HTTP.

SSL Certificates protect your customer's personal data including passwords, credit cards and identity information. Getting an SSL certificate is the easiest way to increase your customer's confidence in your online business.

Some FAQs regarding SSL Certificates:

1. What is an SSL Certificate?

An SSL Certificate is a digital certificate issued for a domain by a central authority called the Certificate Authority. To be issued an SSL Certificate, you must purchase an SSL Certificate and then go through a verification process conducted by the Certificate Authority.

2. Why should I buy an SSL Certificate?

An SSL Certificate does 2 things: a. Encrypt the information sent from your user's browser to your website b. Authenticate your website's identity.
By doing these 2 things, an SSL Certificate protects your customers and in turn increases their trust in your online business. This is especially important if your website requires users to login using passwords or enter sensitive information such as credit card details.

3. Do SSL Certificates work in all browsers?

SSL Certificates are compatible with all major browsers.

4. Do I need technical expertise to set up an SSL Certificate on my website?

While it isn't difficult to install an SSL Certificate, it does involve following a series of steps.

Want to know how Chrome will inform users about insecure pages ?

Read an in-depth article on https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sets-https-deadline/236225/

Want to buy an SSL Certificate for your website ?

Check out the options on: http://webshop.webpro.in/digital-certificate we will be glad to help.

 

 

There is no doubt that mobile search is huge and the number of searches from mobile devices are increasing exponentially day by day.

Gary Illyes, Google webmaster trends analyst, during a SMX Advanced conference in Seattle in Seattle in June 2017 had mentioned that the Mobile-First index is going to be huge.

Illyes had said:

"We don’t have a timeline for the launch yet but, we have some ideas for when this will launch, but it’s probably many quarters away. Our engineers’ timeline was initially end of 2017. Right now, we think more 2018.

 

On March 26th 2018, Google announced that after a year and a half of careful experimentation and testing, we’ve started migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.

Some FAQs regarding mobile-first indexing are as follows:

 

What Does Mobile First Indexing Mean?

Historically, the Google index primarily used the desktop version of a page's content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user's query. Since majority of users now access Google via a mobile device, the index will primarily use the mobile version of a page's content going forward.

Does Google Have a Separate Mobile First Index?

No, Google continues to use only one index.

How does Google evaluate sites for Mobile First Indexing?

Google evaluates each site individually on its readiness for mobile-first indexing based on the best practices and transition the site when the site is ready.

What are the best practices for Mobile First Indexing?

If your site has separate desktop and mobile content, which means you have a dynamic serving or separate URLs (or m-dot) site, make sure you follow the best practices below to prepare for mobile-first indexing:

Your mobile site should contain the same content as your desktop site.

• Structured data should be present on both versions of your site.
• Metadata should be present on both versions of the site.
• Verify both versions of your site in Search Console
• Ensure your servers have enough capacity to a handle potential increase in crawl rate on the mobile version of your site.
• Verify that your robots.txt directives work as you intended for both versions of your site. In most cases, sites should use the same directives for both mobile and desktop versions of their sites.
• Make sure you have the correct rel=canonical and rel=alternate link elements between your mobile and desktop versions.
• If Your site has both AMP and non-AMP versions of a page. Users see two different URLs then, Google prefers the mobile version of
  the non-AMP URL for indexing.

Does Mobile First Indexing affect rankings?

Mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content.

Though mobile-friendly content performs better for those who are searching on mobile. But, as always, ranking uses many factors. Google may show content to users that’s not mobile-friendly or that is slow loading if many other signals determine it as the most relevant content to show.

How does the page load time affect mobile-first indexing?

Recently Google announced that beginning in July 2018 page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches. Content that loads faster may perform better for both desktop and mobile searchers.

However, the “Speed Update,” as Google is calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

How will Google notify webmasters/site owners that their websites have been migrated to mobile-first index?

Google will notify webmasters/site owners that their sites are migrated to the mobile-first indexing process via messages in the Google Search Console. Here is a screen shot of a notification: