Posted March 29, 2019, 3:40 pm CDT
Image from Shutterstock.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Proposed lactation-room legislation should cover all courthouses, ABA president urges
Legislation & Lobbying
Image from Shutterstock.
ABA President Bob Carlson sent a letter to the congressional sponsors of the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2019, expressing the association's support for the legislation–with a caveat.
U.S. Senators Steve Daines, R-Mont., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced the bill in February to require federal buildings that are open to the public and contain a public restroom to provide a lactation room, other than a bathroom, that is hygienic and available for anyone who is breastfeeding.
Carlson told the senators in his Wednesday letter that the ABA addressed the same issue at the Midyear Meeting in January, adopting a policy drafted by the Young Lawyers Division that encourages governments and court systems to establish lactation areas in courthouses.
However, he also pointed out that the Senate bill differs in the scope of coverage, and its authorization of exemptions for public buildings that do not contain a lactation room for employees, or have a space that could be repurposed or built at an impractical cost.
“We urge that all courthouses, without exception, maintain a private, separate lactation room, equipped with chair, table, and electrical outlet for use by lactating employees and members of the public,” Carlson says.
He sent a similar letter to members of the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works Wednesday.
Image from Shutterstock.
Judge strikes down expansion of association health plans that does ‘end-run’ around health law
Posted March 29, 2019, 11:38 am CDT
A federal judge said Thursday the Trump administration had tried to do “an end-run” around the Affordable Care Act when it expanded the availability of “association health plans” with fewer health protections and lower costs. U.S. District Judge John Bates of Washington, D.C., said the Department of Labor rule exceeded the statutory authority delegated in ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and scrapped its “careful statutory scheme.” The Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico have coverage of the March 28 opinion; a press release is here. The rule expands the kind of employers who can band together in association health plans to avoid ACA rules that require coverage for such things as mental health services and prescription drugs. Bates said the administration rule had stretched the definition of “employer” too far by including people without any employees and allowing associations of disparate employers linked only by geographic proximity. He struck down both provisions and sent the rule back to the Labor Department for an analysis of how other provisions are affected. The suit challenging the rule was filed by 11 states and Washington, D.C. Bates ruled as the Department of Justice filed notice this week that it will argue that the entire ACA should be struck down. The position differs from that taken by DOJ attorneys under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They had argued that only parts of the law were unconstitutional after Congress effectively repealed its tax penalty in 2017 for people without insurance. The lawsuit is New York v. U.S. Department of Labor.Clerical error could send man back to prison after 13 years of freedom
Criminal Justice
A Connecticut man freed from state prison in 2006 might have to give up his freedom after an audit found that he was not turned over to serve a 16-month federal sentence for crimes he committed in Philadelphia.
Jermaine Demetrius Anderson, 43, has two jobs and attends church, report the New Haven Independent, Philly.com and CNN. He stayed out of trouble since his release.
But he was arrested by U.S. marshals last week after an audit of custody detainers found that he was never transferred to federal custody to serve his sentence for identity theft and passing counterfeit currency—crimes committed in Philadelphia. His Connecticut prison time was for similar counterfeit currency charges.
A spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Correction told Philly.com there is no record of anyone ever lodging a detainer against Anderson, which cleared the way for his release after serving time in Connecticut. An official with the U.S. Marshals Service told the publication the service thinks a detainer was issued, but Anderson was mistakenly released.
Anderson said he assumed the two sentences had run concurrently, and he reported to his parole officer after release. “I wasn’t evading,” he told the New Haven Independent. “I wasn’t on the run.”
New Haven lawyer Michael Dolan said he has contacted federal prosecutors in Philadelphia to urge them to reconsider the sentence. He also plans to ask President Donald Trump to commute Anderson’s sentence. Anderson’s next court date is April 4 before U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond in Philadelphia.
Anderson hopes his good record after prison will count in his favor. “It’s called corrections,” Anderson told the New Haven Independent. “I corrected myself.”
Posted March 29, 2019, 12:37 pm CDT
Why SEOs should get to know Karen Spärck Jones, originator of search engine algorithms
In honor of search engine algorithm pioneer Professor Karen Spärck Jones, let’s take a closer look at her crowning achievement: Inverse Document Frequency (idf). It still has significant impact today.
Idf and its variants underpin practically all modern sophisticated search engine algorithms, including those utilized by Google, Bing, and Duck Duck Go. She released her algorithm tf*idf in a 1972 paper entitled: “A statistical interpretation of term specificity and its application in retrieval” after working on the problem of term-based search throughout the 1960s.
Karen Spärck Jones is the “Einstein of Search”
Professor Spärck Jones invented nothing short of the most important relevance algorithm component that still comprises a key part of search engine algorithms today. Even when modifications adjust ranking strategies for particular collections, her innovation led to users being able to conduct searches with more natural language.
Prior to her work, search was fairly difficult. Term frequency (tf) alone sorts documents by a word density measure: Term count over word count. With tf you can’t easily use natural language for meaningful results because you get noise from commonplace words as “the” and so on.
The concept behind tf*idf is breath-taking both for its simplicity and elegance, not unlike Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. “The specificity of a term can be quantified as an inverse function of the number of documents in which it occurs,” Jones wrote.
Professor Karen Spark Jones, Computer Laboratory/University of Cambridge
The Algorithm has a Logarithm
Idf calculates the logarithm of the inverse of term-containing document frequency, which can be thought of as a fraction: all documents over the number of documents where the search term appears. The effect is that words which rarely appear in the collection increase in importance for relevance rankings.
Stop words are simultaneously demoted when they appear in many documents, sometimes demoted all the way down to zero when they appear in all of a collection’s documents. If the word “the” appears in all 100 of a collection of 100 documents, then the word “the” scores exactly zero.
log(100/100) equals zero.
Variants of the math can avoid such words scoring zero by adding 1 to the document total. The result is still going to be an infinitesimal score.
log(101/100) equals 0.004.
A word that is rare, say only appearing in 1 document out of one hundred, is going to score far higher.
log(100/1) equals 2.
To Stop or Not Stop Words
In order to avoid scoring zero, for example, we make adjustments for the desired outcome. That’s the type of work you do testing and editing your search algorithms with your document collection, and when your collection grows to a scale of the modern Web, then you’re going to constantly adjust to improve relevancy, and make up for spam anomalies that crop up.
Pagerank Has a Logarithm
Guess what other algorithm scores documents along a logarithmic scale? Google’s PageRank.
That’s right, Google’s PageRank is a direct descendant of Professor Spärck Jones’s tf*idf algorithm. That’s not to say Google hasn’t altered the math to accommodate its huge collection of the Web’s documents. It most certainly has, to such an extent that it’s become complicated and heavily engineered.
To paraphrase Gary Illyes: RankBrain is a machine learning ranking component that uses historical search data to predict what a user would most likely click for a previously unseen query. It frequently solves problems that Google used to run into with traditional algorithms. It saved us countless times whenever traditional algos were like, e.g. “oh look a ‘not’ in the query string! let’s ignore the hell out of it!” It’s relying on old data about what happened on the results page itself, not on the landing page.
It’s solid advice for webmasters to ignore what he calls “made up crap” about so-called dwell time, domain authority, click through rate (on search results), and so on because anything an enterprising SEO tries to prove with a limited study is bound to be missing several vital factors that aren’t translatable to others. The world is big enough that a cadre of like-minded folks will gather and reinforce made up crap. It’s natural. Instead, he says: “Search is much more simple than people think.”
Professor Spärck Jones’s tf*idf in Modern Search
Google is getting more sophisticated all the time. That doesn’t mean you should do SEO guess work. Concentrate on making search engine-friendly websites with valuable and unique content. Let tf*idf be your guide. Search marketers should worry less about making sure specific popular keywords are on their pages and think more about writing unique content. Google is getting smarter at figuring out the words you would naturally use.
Classification of knowledge domains in collections, document sets in collections, classification of websites, link analysis, website users, search users — these all originate with Karen Spärck Jones’s invention of tf*idf which, interestingly, has been modified in experiments to be applied in those areas.
She was keen to stay up to date, as you can read in correspondence about tf*idf in 2004: “AltaVista applied tf*idf from the start, and it seems that most engines, somewhere, use something of the sort as one component of their matching strategies. It thus took about twenty five years for a simple, obvious, useful idea to reach the real world, even the fast-moving information technology one.”
About The Author
Detlef Johnson is Editor at Large for Third Door Media. He writes a column for Search Engine Land entitled "Technical SEO for Developers.” Detlef is one of the original group of pioneering webmasters who established the professional SEO field more than 20 years ago. Since then he has worked for major search engine technology providers, managed programming and marketing teams for Chicago Tribune, and consulted for numerous entities including Fortune 500 companies. Detlef has a strong understanding of Technical SEO and a passion for Web programming. As a noted technology moderator at our SMX conference series, Detlef will continue to promote SEO excellence combined with marketing-programmer features and webmaster tips.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Barr plans to release redacted Mueller report by mid-April; will Trump get privilege review?
Attorney General
Attorney General William Barr and special counsel Robert Mueller.
Attorney General William Barr plans to release a redacted version of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller by mid-April, “if not sooner,” he told leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees in a letter released Friday.
“As we have discussed,” Barr wrote, “I share your desire to ensure that Congress and the public have the opportunity to read the special counsel’s report. We are preparing the report for release, making the redactions that are required.”
Politico, the New York Times, the National Law Journal and the Washington Post have coverage.
Barr said President Donald Trump would have the right to assert privilege over certain sections of the report, but “he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.”
Barr said the Department of Justice is redacting secret grand jury information, material that can compromise sensitive sources and methods, information that could affect ongoing matters, and material that could affect the privacy and reputations of peripheral third parties.
Barr also said he wanted to address some media reports that mischaracterized his four-page notice summarizing the report’s principal conclusions. That notice “was not, and did not purport to be, an exhaustive recounting of the special counsel’s investigation or report,” Barr said.
The four-page notice had said Mueller did not find any collusion with Russia by Trump or his campaign. The notice also said Mueller did not draw a conclusion as to whether the president’s conduct amounted to obstruction of justice. But he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that it did not.
Mueller had stated that, “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” according to Barr’s summary.
The special counsel’s report is nearly 400 pages long, not including tables and appendices, Barr said in his March 29 letter. “Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own. I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report or to release it in serial or piecemeal fashion.”
Barr said he thinks it would be appropriate for him to testify publicly after release of the report.
The Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler of New York, said he stands by his demand to see the report by April 2, according to Politico. He said Democrats would like Barr to ask a judge for permission to release the grand jury information, so that Barr doesn’t have to redact it.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Mueller’s report is in; what happens now?”
ABAJournal.com: “AG pick William Barr criticized part of Mueller probe in unsolicited memo to Justice Department”
Posted March 29, 2019, 5:01 pm CDT
Attorney General William Barr and special counsel Robert Mueller.
Facebook ad algorithms made housing bias worse, HUD lawsuit says
Internet law
Photo by Seasontime/Shutterstock.com.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Thursday it is suing Facebook for violating the Fair Housing Act by allowing advertisers to limit housing ads based on race, gender and other characteristics.
The agency also said Facebook’s ad system discriminates against users even when advertisers did not choose to do so.
ProPublica first reported in 2016 that Facebook allowed housing advertisers to exclude users by race. Then in 2017, ProPublica found that—despite Facebook’s promised changes—the company was still letting advertisers exclude users by race, gender, ethnicity, family status, ability and other characteristics.
“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”
In a statement, Facebook said, “We’re surprised by HUD’s decision, as we’ve been working with them to address their concerns and have taken significant steps to prevent” ad discrimination.
HUD’s suit comes a week after Facebook announced sweeping changes to its advertising portal, preventing landlords, employers and lenders from discriminating in housing, employment or credit ads.
Facebook also disputed HUD’s conclusion that the system itself discriminates beyond advertisers’ choices: “HUD had no evidence and finding that our AI systems discriminate against people.”
A Facebook spokesperson told ProPublica that the company declined to give HUD data about who is actually seeing ads because of privacy concerns.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson.
Asked about that, HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan said, “We are bound, and Facebook itself is bound, not to disclose sensitive negotiations, and so there’s very little we can say to that point.”
Peter Romer-Friedman, an employment attorney involved in multiple lawsuits that Facebook settled last week, said HUD’s suit—and the contention that Facebook’s algorithm is amplifying discrimination—may have implications for other cases related to employment and Facebook ads. “The point that the HUD complaint makes about bias in the delivery algorithm is the same exact point that we’ve been making for nearly a year” in another case involving alleged age discrimination on Facebook, Romer-Friedman said.
Thursday’s charge comes after a year of litigation from housing groups. In March 2018, the National Fair Housing Alliance sued Facebook, alleging it allowed advertisers to discriminate against legally protected groups, including mothers, the disabled and Spanish speakers. A few months later, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case. Soon after, HUD filed a formal complaint, signaling that it had found enough evidence during its initial investigation to raise the possibility of further legal action.
Facebook’s previous response to HUD contended that advertisers—not the company—were responsible for targeting ads. In March 2018, Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said at the time: “There is absolutely no place for discrimination on Facebook. We believe this lawsuit is without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”
HUD’s suit against Facebook is an unusual decision for the Trump administration. It has frequently moved to curtail civil rights investigations. At the same time, Facebook and other social platforms have faced criticism by conservatives who allege their posts expressing political views are being suppressed.
Carson is scheduled to testify on the Hill in budget hearings on April 3.
This article was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for its Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Posted March 29, 2019, 1:19 pm CDT
Photo by Seasontime/Shutterstock.com.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson.https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/facebook-ad-algorithms-made-housing-bias-worse-hud-lawsuit-says/
Google brings search to podcasts through automatic transcription
Google’s Podcasts app is increasing discoverability by automatically transcribing shows, allowing users to search for particular episodes without having to remember the name of the podcast or the episode title.
“Right now Google is really good at giving you text and video related to your search query. With all the amazing work podcasters are publishing each day, there’s no good reason why audio isn’t a first-class citizen in the same way,” founder and head of product for Google Podcasts Zach Reneau-Wedeen told Pacific Content nearly a year ago.
Transcripts in metadata. It would seem that he’s stayed true to that belief as transcripts have begun popping up as metadata within some podcast episodes’ web page sources (not within the app itself). Android Police breaks down how the transcripts can be found, noting that, although the entire show was transcribed, it did contain errors, mistaking writer Corbin Davenport’s name as “Corbin dabbing port.”
As of right now, it’s not clear which podcasts or episodes have already been indexed and transcribed.
Why should you care? Discoverability has long been a challenge for podcast creators. For marketers looking to launch a branded podcast (or those already producing one), increased discoverability can help attract new audiences and make it easier for former listeners to find you again. That could make the format even more viable as part of a content marketing strategy.
For marketers that sponsor podcasts, this might mean that your ads get more listens, without having to buy airtime on more episodes.
About The Author
George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.
Friday, March 29, 2019
Do you know how to get the featured snippet & more voice search results?
When you’re searching online, the last thing you want to do is scroll through dozens of pages to find what you’re looking for, especially if it’s something basic like finding the phone number for your favorite restaurant. That’s exactly why the zero-click search is dominating these days. Google sees this trend and is adapting their algorithms and how they present their search results to the searcher.
According to Rand Fishkin, 61.5 out of every 100 mobile searches are zero-click. Businesses and brands that are not getting found in the top search results, specifically in the coveted featured snippet, are getting overlooked by consumers.
We decided to tackle zero-click searches head-on. Keep scrolling for a helpful how-to infographic about this change in search! If your interest is piqued.
According to Rand Fishkin, 61.5 out of every 100 mobile searches are zero-click. Businesses and brands that are not getting found in the top search results, specifically in the coveted featured snippet, are getting overlooked by consumers.
We decided to tackle zero-click searches head-on. Keep scrolling for a helpful how-to infographic about this change in search! If your interest is piqued.
Local Businesses Can Stand Out in a Zero-Click Search – Here’s How
When you’re searching online, the last thing you want to do is scroll through dozens of pages to find what you’re looking for. Impatient consumers want the right results right now. Enter: the zero-click search. Google has learned how the average consumer behaves and has adapted their search results to produce zero-click results in the form of featured snippets, Google My Business listings and answer boxes. With less consumers actually clicking through to a local business’ website, are zero-click searches killing SEO? Well, no! It’s a matter of optimizing your strategy to help more local businesses get found online. As marketers working in the fast-paced digital era, we know we have to adapt – as soon as possible – to the newest trends. That means zero-click searches.Keep Your Friends Close and Zero-Click Searches Closer
To help a local business stand out in a zero-click world, first we have to understand what zero-click searches are. Like the name indicates, a zero-click SERP is an answer that Google displays at the top of the page, giving you a quick answer to your query. Zero-click searches can have different forms, from straightforward answers like measurement conversions to featured snippets that answer a particular question. This almost completely eliminates the need for a searcher to click through a website to learn more information. Why read the entire article to find an answer to your question when Google is doing it for you? For example, if you’re doing a measurement search on mobile, chances are you don’t have the time (or interest) to read an entire novel on the metric system. You probably just want to know how many grams of sugar are in a cup before you start baking a cake. Statistics agree with that theory and indicate that 61.5 percent of every 100 mobile searches were zero-click. Meanwhile, desktop users have displayed different wants and needs. With zero-click searches accounting for only 34.3 percent of every 100 desktop searches, it’s clear that a searcher is likely to use their computer when they want to go more in depth in a particular topic.Taking Zero-Click Searches Head-On
Long Story Short… Here are some actions that could help local businesses stand out from the competition and earn the coveted zero-click SERPs:- Have an optimized Google My Business (GMB) listing. A GMB listing is the zero-click SERP par excellence. Any local business with an optimized listing on GMB is already one step ahead from the competition.
- Take numbers into consideration. Content strategy should always revolve around facts. Not what the business thinks mightconvert, but what actuallyconverts. Click metrics are essential to target the right keywords.
- Use on-SERP SEO tactics to dominate page one of search engines. If a local business earns a featured snippet, has an optimized GMB listing, runs pay-per-click ads and places in the first position for organic SERPs and Map, they have higher chances of getting found online.
- Tailor content to get featured snippets. Straightforward answers can be a way of snagging the featured snippet. FAQ pages can also work wonders.
- Write exclusive content on third-party websites. Whether it be an online magazine for people in the same industry or a thought leadership blog, a business can be featured in a zero-click search position if they’re mentioned in an authoritative blog in the field.
Now that you know how to succeed, it’s time to act.
What’s Next to Win Zero-Click Searches?
The online world is constantly changing and although not everyone is ready to follow suit, we are. From listing management to the zero-click SERPs, our team of experts at BusinessCreator knows what it takes to help local businesses get found online. Want more information? Click Here To Request A Voice Rank Report. Edward Lott, Ph.D., M.B.A. President and Managing Partner BusinessCreator, Inc. Ed can be reached at edl@businesscreatorplus.com 855-943-8736 610-437-8822 www.BusinessCreatorPlus.comHave we been pronouncing ‘gerrymandering’ wrong? This man’s descendants think so
Posted March 28, 2019, 2:01 pm CDT
As the U.S. Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering Tuesday, another question lurked beneath the surface. Is gerrymandering pronounced with a soft or hard letter “g”? Gerrymandering was coined from a political cartoon published in 1812. The cartoon bashed Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry for signing a bill that redrew state senate districts to disadvantage Federalists. Gerry, who later was vice president to President James Madison, pronounced his name with a hard “g,” so that it sounded like “Gary.” The cartoon that lampooned him pictured a winged and clawed salamander atop a redrawn district with the headline: “The Gerry-mander, a new species of Monster.” The term took hold, but not its pronunciation, according to stories last year by the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and the Marblehead Reporter. Most people use a soft “g,” a source of irritation for Gerry’s descendants and some residents of Gerry’s hometown of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Acting on the request of a former Marblehead schoolteacher, the town’s board of selectmen sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. last year asking the justices to use the hard “g” pronunciation. Jeffrey Minear, counselor to the chief justice, wrote a reply noting that Gerry’s grandson donated 30,000 books to the Supreme Court that became the foundation of its library. Minear assured the selectmen that “not only do we tend carefully to our Gerry collection, but we pronounce it with a hard ‘g.’ ” In a follow-up statement to the Boston Globe, a public information officer said there is “a solid consensus” on the pronunciation of Gerry, but the pronunciation of gerrymandering “remains ‘sub judice.’ ” So how did the justices pronounce “gerrymandering” during oral arguments Tuesday? Appellate litigator and SCOTUSblog contributor John Elwood asked in a tweet whether Roberts or anyone else used the hard “g” pronunciation. Reuters journalist Lawrence Hurley, who covers the Supreme Court, responded with one word: “Nope.” Another appellate litigator suggested the question was the best argument for same-day audio of oral arguments. (Although written transcripts are released the same day as argument, audio is typically released at the end of the week.) SCOTUSblog journalist Amy Howe told the ABA Journal in an email she doesn’t recall anyone saying “gary-mandering,” but she wasn’t aware of the controversy and might have missed it. She looped in Supreme Court journalist Mark Walsh, who contributes to the ABA Journal. Walsh recalled hearing one justice use the hard “g.” He didn’t have his notes in front of him, however, and couldn’t identify which justice it was.Under AG Barr, phone surveillance program began in ‘92 without legal review, IG finds
Privacy Law
There is no evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice ever fully addressed legal questions surrounding the bulk collection of phone records in 1992 by the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to a report from the Office of the Inspector General released Thursday.
The program was launched in 1992 with the approval of the attorney general at the time—William Barr, who is also the current attorney general. USA Today, Politico and Tech Crunch have stories on the report by the DOJ’s inspector general.
The program was carried out party by the DOJ’s criminal division, which was run by former special counsel Robert Mueller, USA Today points out.
The DEA obtained the phone records (which did not include the content of the calls) by using administrative subpoenas. A judge’s authorization wasn’t required for the subpoenas, which allow the collection of records “relevant or material” to investigations.
The inspector general said the DOJ did not consider whether the records could be gathered, even though they weren’t related to a specific investigation.
Over time, other incoming DOJ officials, including most attorneys general, were notified of the program. But the inspector general found no evidence that there was a discussion of legal issues.
The DEA used the records to look for connections between Americans and drug trafficking groups overseas. The agency also allowed other agencies to access the records for different types of investigations.
The program eventually collected records of nearly all phone calls from the United States to 116 countries, according to USA Today. The program was a precursor to the broader surveillance program instituted after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The data collection program was halted after revelations by Edward Snowden. Now, telecoms rather than the government hold phone data that can be searched by the government.
DEA spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff told USA Today in a statement that the agency is taking steps to improve its use of administrative subpoenas to gather data, and agency policies “continue to be vetted through a rigorous legal review.”
Posted March 28, 2019, 5:04 pm CDT
Google testing new search menu with icons for maps, news, shopping and more
Google is testing a new search bar menu with icons next to the names of the search categories. So instead of just showing the search vertical filters for displaying news results or image results, Google is showing icons next to those categories.
Screenshot of the test. Here is a screen shot of this new user interface test provided by @YoungbloodJoe:
Screenshot of current design. Here is what most searchers currently see when going to Google:
Can you see it? We cannot replicate this test here but Google is constantly testing new user interfaces.
If you can see this, please let us know on Twitter @sengineland.
Going back in time. Google had icons next to these search filters back in 2010 on desktop and 2011 on mobile. But in 2011 Google removed the icons from the desktop version. Google has made many changes to their top bar over the years, much of which you can find in our user interfaces archives.
Why it matters. Any change to the user interface of one of the most used web sites in the world will be noticed. Will it impact search marketers or SEOs? Probably not but it does give a new fresh look to the Google search results page.
Screenshot of current design. Here is what most searchers currently see when going to Google:
Can you see it? We cannot replicate this test here but Google is constantly testing new user interfaces.
If you can see this, please let us know on Twitter @sengineland.
Going back in time. Google had icons next to these search filters back in 2010 on desktop and 2011 on mobile. But in 2011 Google removed the icons from the desktop version. Google has made many changes to their top bar over the years, much of which you can find in our user interfaces archives.
Why it matters. Any change to the user interface of one of the most used web sites in the world will be noticed. Will it impact search marketers or SEOs? Probably not but it does give a new fresh look to the Google search results page.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Trump acts as private citizen when blocking Twitter followers, DOJ lawyer argues in appeal
Posted March 27, 2019, 1:24 pm CDT
A U.S. Justice Department lawyer argued Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s Twitter account is more like a private residence than a public forum where his followers are protected by the First Amendment. Government lawyer Jennifer Utrecht told a panel of the New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Trump is acting in an unofficial capacity when he blocks followers, though he sometimes makes official pronouncements in tweets, report the Washington Post, Courthouse News Service, Bloomberg News, Reuters, CNN, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Utrecht wants the 2nd Circuit to reverse a Manhattan judge’s ruling that held Trump can’t block people from his Twitter account because of their political views. The May decision by U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said the president’s account is a designated public forum, and blocking users based on their political views constitutes impermissible viewpoint discrimination. People who are blocked from a Twitter account can’t see or directly reply to that account’s tweets. Utrecht compared Trump’s Twitter account to the properties owned by presidents before they took office, such as Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort or the Kennedy family’s Hyannis Port property. “Things happen at Mar-a-Lago that might be official actions, but that doesn’t change the fundamental nature, the private nature,” Utrech said. Trump created his @realDonaldTrump account before he took office. Utrecht said blocking a person was akin to declining to have a conversation with a person passing by. “On the street, Trump could walk away from someone and not hear their views,” she said. One of the judges noted that Trump was represented by the Justice Department rather than a private lawyer in the appeal. “You are here because he’s not a private individual,” Judge Peter Hall told Utrecht. Utrecht replied that the Justice Department was involved because Trump was sued in his official capacity. The case was filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of seven blocked Twitter followers. The institute was also a plaintiff.15 years of inaction on inmate’s habeas petition is ‘shockingly dysfunctional malfeasance,’ judge says
Trials & Litigation
A South Dakota judge said Tuesday that 15 years of inaction on an inmate’s habeas petition was breaking his heart.
Judge Doug Hoffman of the Second Judicial Circuit spoke at a court hearing that discussed how David Allen Lee’s habeas corpus appeal fell through the cracks, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports.
“This is a massive, shockingly dysfunctional malfeasance in the justice system in South Dakota,” Hoffman said. “We have to clean up this disastrous mess.”
Lee was convicted of second-degree murder in 1998 for the killing of his cellmate. A circuit judge denied his first habeas appeal in 2004, but Lee’s first private lawyer didn’t discuss an appeal with him, Hoffman said in court. Lee asked to file a second petition.
Lee was represented by a public advocate on the second petition, but the lawyer sought to withdraw in 2008 because of a conflict. Lee says he wasn’t told about the withdrawal, and he was surprised when he called the public advocate about two years later and was told a different lawyer has been appointed to represent him.
Lee told a circuit judge in 2016 that he hadn’t heard from the new lawyer for five years. In court, Lee said the lawyer is “a nice guy,” but he would like someone new to represent him.
Hoffman said he wants the case resolved within six months.
Posted March 27, 2019, 2:13 pm CDT
Have you adapted your law practice for an aging population? If so, how?
Posted March 27, 2019, 3:20 pm CDT
It stands to reason that elder law will provide new opportunities for lawyers. Yet elder law covers a wide range of practice specialties, which makes this emerging discipline hard to pin down. In a recent ABA Journal story, Marc Davis notes how the legal practice has followed the demographic shift toward an aging population. The National Elder Law Foundation identifies 12 elder law subject areas that encompass pension and insurance matters, financial and consumer fraud, fiduciary representation, health care planning, and trusts and estates. Five hundred lawyers hold the foundation’s Certified Elder Law Attorney credential, which involves meeting experience, CLE and peer review requirements, then passing a daylong exam. This week, we’d like to ask: Have you adapted your law practice for an aging population? If so, how? What expertise has emerged, and how did your expertise develop? Was it acquired early on or as your practice matured? Answer in the comments and on social media. You can answer via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Read the answers to last week’s question: Is there an optimum age to go to law school? Featured answer: Posted on Facebook by Quincy Perales: “There is not a specific age that works best, but law school, and practicing law, requires a level of maturity that can best be obtained by having some life experience, some financial resources, and some experience in the workforce. While I would have loved to have gone back to school in my 20s, my family life and raising young children prevented me from doing so. I waited and saved a little money and went to law school in my 40s after spending a full career as a registered nurse. I loved it; I was, and still am, not as stressed about law school and practicing law as my fellow lawyers. I always think to myself when something gets stressful in my litigation practice, that nobody will die if I need an extension or if I’m not as prepared as I might like. This was not true of my former career—I literally had people’s lives in my hands—and it really helps me to have these life experiences to put the stress and demands of this career in perspective.” Do you have an idea for a future question of the week? If so, contact us.Daily News: Snapchat’s Ad Business, Google Ads Keyword Planner, Cross-Channel Measurement
March 27, 2019 | Contributed by: Courtney Dobson
Here is today’s roundup of news related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.
EMarketer: Snapchat’s ad business will climb 24% this year (March 27, 2019)
Mobile Marketer: “EMarketer’s latest forecast for Snapchat indicates that the image-messaging app could show double-digit sales growth for at least two more years amid a broader industry shift in ad spending to mobile platforms.”
Google Ads Keyword Planner gets new (and old) features (March 26, 2019)
Search Engine Land: “The next time you log into Keyword Planner in Google Ads, you’ll see an announcement of several new features. Some of these updates are older features (“Add to existing campaign” is one) just now getting added to the new Google Ads UI.”
Cross-Channel Measurement and Attribution to Keep Marketers Busy in 2019 (March 26, 2019)
Marketing Charts: “As marketers continue personalizing the customer experience, one of their biggest challenges is telling the right story with their data. But are they investing to overcome this hurdle? Possibly so, according to a new report from the IAB, as organizations invest more in audience data.”
79% of Digital Advertisers are Also Using SEO in Their Marketing Strategies (March 26, 2019)
Search Engine Journal: “New data reveals that 79% of digital advertisers are also using SEO as part of their marketing strategy in 2019. That’s one of many statistics included in WordStream’s report on the online advertising landscape in 2019.”
The Fundamental Ethical Stakes of Data Collection and Ad Targeting (March 25, 2019)
Street Fight: “Marketing veterans frequently remark, in relation to the privacy hullabaloo dominating the tech media space in 2019, that consumers are amenable to data collection and identity-based ad targeting provided that marketing campaigns produce information truly relevant to them.”
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Daily News: Mobile Video Struggles, California Privacy Act, Top Channel for Discovering New Brands
March 26, 2019 | Contributed by: Courtney Dobson
Here is today’s roundup of news related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.
Mobile Video Struggles Persist While Tolerance for Them Decreases (March 26, 2019)
Street Fight: “It looks like the quality mobile content experts say we can expect from 5G will be much appreciated by consumers. Mobile video is more popular than ever, among both consumers and digital advertisers, but the medium is plagued by slow load times and suboptimal ads.”
What marketers need to understand about fines under the new California Privacy Act (March 26, 2019)
Marketing Land: “It did not take long for the Golden State to borrow a page from the European Union’s consumer privacy rule book. And because of this, marketers need to take note about what’s happening with changes in data protection right now.”
Online ad spend will grow more quickly than expected in 2019, Zenith says (March 26, 2019)
Marketing Dive: “Global online ad spend is expected to grow 4.7% in 2019, up from the 4% previously forecast in December 2018, according to Zenith’s “Advertising Expenditure Forecasts.””
Consumers Point to Facebook As Their Top Digital Channel for Discovering New Brands (March 26, 2019)
Marketing Charts: “Five of the top nine digital channels shoppers are using to discover new brands are social media platforms, with Facebook being used more than websites by Americans for this purpose. Indeed, about half (49%) of the nearly 1,000 shoppers surveyed for a report from Criteo said they discover new brands through Facebook.”
Bing Ads Removed 900 Million Bad Advertisements In 2018 (March 25, 2019)
MediaPost: “The massive amount of search advertisements removed by Bing, as well as Google, in the past year demonstrates the need to clean up the web to provide increasingly accurate information — even when that information comes in the form of an ad.”
Google adds vacation rentals to Hotel Search
Google recently redesigned and added features to its hotel search interface to make it more intuitive and useful for both desktop and mobile users. On Tuesday, it launched vacation rentals in the mobile UI.
How does it work? In addition to standard hotel accommodations, users will be able to filter and browse through short-term rentals via Google Hotel Search. The feature is already available on mobile and will be coming to desktop over the next month.
Participating providers include TripAdvisor, Expedia, VRBO, and Hotels.com. It’s not clear if rental industry juggernaut Airbnb has signed on. In some cases, users can book hotels directly through Google and pay via Google Pay. The hotel or booking partner receives the reservation and payment details and the partner is responsible for sending confirmations to users.
Google actually first began testing vacation rental filters in hotel search in 2017.
Why you should care. Google’s travel search services now include flights, hotels, and vacation rentals. The ability to switch between comparing hotels and vacation rentals in the same interface means vacation rentals will compete head-on with hotels. For short-term rental providers, the inclusion in the updated Google Hotels interface should mean more visibility. It also widens Google’s prospective base of takers for Hotel Ads.
Participating providers include TripAdvisor, Expedia, VRBO, and Hotels.com. It’s not clear if rental industry juggernaut Airbnb has signed on. In some cases, users can book hotels directly through Google and pay via Google Pay. The hotel or booking partner receives the reservation and payment details and the partner is responsible for sending confirmations to users.
Google actually first began testing vacation rental filters in hotel search in 2017.
Why you should care. Google’s travel search services now include flights, hotels, and vacation rentals. The ability to switch between comparing hotels and vacation rentals in the same interface means vacation rentals will compete head-on with hotels. For short-term rental providers, the inclusion in the updated Google Hotels interface should mean more visibility. It also widens Google’s prospective base of takers for Hotel Ads.
About The Author
George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.
https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/google-adds-vacation-rentals-to-hotel-search/
Purdue Pharma reaches $270M settlement with Oklahoma in opioid epidemic suit
Posted March 26, 2019, 12:43 pm CDT
Purdue Pharma and its owners have agreed to a $270 million settlement with Oklahoma in the state’s lawsuit claiming OxyContin contributed to an opioid epidemic, according to multiple publications. The settlement was to be announced at a press conference on Tuesday, report Reuters, the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. Lawyers in the case did not comment ahead of the announcement. It is the first settlement in a host of civil suits accusing Purdue Pharma of deceptive marketing in its promotion of the drug. There are about 2,000 lawsuits against opioid makers nationwide, Reuters reports. More than 1,600 of them are consolidated before a federal judge in Cleveland. Oklahoma is among 37 states that sued. Most of the settlement money will fund a new center for research and treatment of addiction and pain at Oklahoma State University, according to the Washington Post. The settlement also will provide money for treatment medication, cities and lawyers. Oklahoma’s suit had contended that the opioid crisis had required it to spend more money on health care, law enforcement and treatment. Two other defendants remaining in the case are Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceuticals. Alexandra Lahav, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, told Reuters that Purdue Pharma was likely in settlement talks in other lawsuits. “This may be the start of the dominoes falling for Purdue,” Lahav said. Other companies also may feel pressure because of the settlement, said Elizabeth Burch, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “It’s got to set off a feeding frenzy,” Burch said. “There’s blood in the water now.” See also: ABA Journal: “Opioids, justice & mercy: Courts are on the front lines of a lethal crisis”Nofollow vs. Follow Links: Everything You Need to Know
The rel=”nofollow” tag is one of the simplest HTML tags around, and one that’s crucial to understand if you’re doing SEO. Learn everything you need to know about nofollowed links in this guide.
Nofollow links are nothing new. They’ve been around for 14 years.
If you care about your website’s performance in search engines, then knowing when and when not to use nofollowed links isn’t just important—it’s crucial.
In this guide, I’ll explain how nofollowed links came to be, how they help with SEO, and how using them correctly can protect your site from a dreaded Google penalty.
First, though, let’s cover the basics.
Nofollowed links are hyperlinks with a rel=“nofollow” tag.
These links do not influence the search engine rankings of the destination URL because Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across them. In fact, Google doesn’t even crawl nofollowed links.
Recommended reading: Google PageRank is NOT Dead: Why It Still Matters
If you see the rel=nofollow tag, it’s nofollowed. Otherwise, it’s followed.
Not comfortable digging into HTML code? Install the nofollow Chrome extension which visibly highlights all nofollowed links as you’re browsing the web.
Got it? Good. Back to our history lesson.
Unfortunately, some people started taking advantage of this technicality to manipulate rankings by sculpting the flow of PageRank around their sites.
In other words, they’d nofollow links to their unimportant pages to allow for the maximum transference of PageRank to their “money” pages.
Google announced changes to nip this practice in the bud in 2009:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SmlsfSqmOw
But to summarize: Google wants to reward earned links, not paid links.
The correlation for the number of “dofollow” backlinks is a little bit weaker than that of the total number of backlinks.
Here’s what Tim said about this:
It looks like 85% of the referring domains (linking websites) to the Ahrefs blog are followed.
Is this good or bad? Honestly, as long as there’s some diversity here, that’s a good sign.
What you don’t want to see is 100% “dofollow” or anything close because that’s a definite sign of manipulation. From experience, I’d say anywhere from 60–90% is normal—but that range isn’t definitive. If you suspect foul play, delve deeper.
Unfortunately, as all outbound links on Quora are nofollowed, that link has no direct SEO effect.
But here’s the interesting part:
If we check the Backlinks report in Ahrefs Site Explorer for ahrefs.com and filter for only “dofollow” links, here’s one of the many backlinks we see:
Now let’s take a closer look at the referring page (the page the followed link comes from):
The only reason we got this followed link is because the author of this article stumbled upon Rebekah’s Quora answer. In other words, the nofollowed link indirectly led to a followed link.
So remember this: for someone to link to you, three things have to happen in this order:
Translation: it may not be Google that you should fear—but rather your competitors.
Think about it: If a competitor sees you ranking well for their target keyword, and they use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to delve into your backlinks, only to discover followed links like this:
Then why wouldn’t they report you?
If doing so results in Google’s webspam team taking a look at your website, discovering the paid links, and issuing a manual penalty, then that’s one less competitor for them to compete with in the SERPs.
Which brings us neatly to:
Having followed backlinks that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is risky.
The same is true for outbound links on your website that should be nofollowed.
But this isn’t only about the wrath of Google (i.e., penalties). It may also be the case that certain internal nofollowed links are hindering your SEO performance.
What follows is a quick audit to help identify and eliminate any such issues.
Here, we see that most of this website’s anchors are branded or generic (blurred for privacy purposes), but there are nineteen websites (referring domains) that link using the phrase “payday loans” as the anchor.
If we hit the caret, then Referring domains, we can see what these websites are.
Then, if we hit the caret again, we can see the context of all the links from each domain.
Here are some rough guidelines for dealing with different types of links you find here:
Reach out and ask for any such links to be nofollowed.
Look for suspicious words and phrases that you wouldn’t expect to see on your site, and remove or nofollow any that appear manipulative (e.g., keyword‐rich anchors in guest post bios, etc.).
As for why this is important, Google explains this best:
Open up any results one by one and locate the sponsored link.
If you installed the nofollow Chrome extension, all nofollow links on the page will be highlighted—so the sponsored link should definitely be highlighted. If it isn’t, it’s a followed link.
Confirm this is the case by digging into the HTML.
Right‐click on the link, hit “Inspect,” and look for the rel=”nofollow” tag.
If it’s absent, then it’s a followed link and you should add a nofollow tag.
If you see any pages with nofollowed internal links, hit the number to see where those links come from and investigate further. It may be the case that these make total sense (e.g., nofollowed internal links to a login page).
However, if there’s no obvious reason for the links to be nofollowed, remove the nofollow tag.
That’s the case here. For some reason, we have a nofollowed link from one blog post to another.
That makes it easy to prioritize when you’re analyzing competitors’ backlink profiles for replicable links, or building a list of “skyscraper” prospects, or whatever the case may be.
Do you still have questions? Hit me up in the comments below or via Twitter.
Nofollow vs. follow links
Followed and nofollowed links look identical to the average web user. The blue text in this sentence is a followed link. The blue text in this sentence is a nofollowed link. The difference between the two is apparent only when you dig into the HTML code. Followed:<a href="https://ahrefs.com">blue text</a>Nofollowed:
<a href="https://ahrefs.com" rel="nofollow">blue text</a>The HTML is identical except for the addition of the rel=”nofollow” tag. It’s possible to nofollow all links on a webpage by placing a robots meta tag with the value “nofollow” in the header. However, the nofollow tag is more commonly used as it allows one to nofollow some links on the page while leaving others followed. Not sure why you’d want to do that? It’s time for a quick history lesson. Google originally introduced the nofollow tag in 2005 to combat comment spam.
If you’re a blogger (or a blog reader), you’re painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” This is called comment spam, we don’t like it either, and we’ve been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=“nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.Shortly after, Yahoo, Bing and a few other search engines also announced their commitment to the nofollow tag.
IMPORTANT NOTE
Nowadays, WordPress adds the nofollow tag to comment links by default, as do many other CMS’. So even if you’ve never heard of a nofollow link before now, rest assured that any spammy commenters on your blog likely aren’t receiving any SEO benefits from their efforts.
However, if you’re concerned that your comments may not be nofollowed, here’s how to double‐check:
The interpretation of nofollow varies somewhat between search engines. Here’s a table showing the differences.
- Find a comment
- Right‐click the link
- Hit “Inspect”
- Look at the highlighted HTML code.
If you see the rel=nofollow tag, it’s nofollowed. Otherwise, it’s followed.
Not comfortable digging into HTML code? Install the nofollow Chrome extension which visibly highlights all nofollowed links as you’re browsing the web.
Got it? Good. Back to our history lesson.
2009: Google combats PageRank sculpting
PageRank flows around a website via internal links (links from one page on the site to another). For example, some of this article’s PageRank flows to the other pages on our site via hyperlinks like this one. In general, higher PageRank equates to higher rankings. Gary Illyses confirmed this last year.However, PageRank only gets transferred via followed links, not nofollowed links. That’s always been the case, but the way PageRank gets shared between the followed links on a page has changed over the years. Before 2009, it worked like this: If you had three links on a page and one of them was nofollowed, then the total PageRank was split between the two followed links.DYK that after 18 years we’re still using PageRank (and 100s of other signals) in ranking?
Wanna know how it works?https://t.co/CfOlxGauGF pic.twitter.com/3YJeNbXLml — Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) 9 February 2017
Unfortunately, some people started taking advantage of this technicality to manipulate rankings by sculpting the flow of PageRank around their sites.
In other words, they’d nofollow links to their unimportant pages to allow for the maximum transference of PageRank to their “money” pages.
Google announced changes to nip this practice in the bud in 2009:
So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.Here’s an illustration of the before and after:
IMPORTANT NOTE
PageRank is a complex beast. It’s been ten years since Google made this change. While they haven’t publicly announced any further changes to how PageRank works in recent years, it’s likely that at least some changes have taken place behind the scenes.
While PageRank sculpting is no longer a thing, “nofollowing” some internal links can help with crawl prioritization because Google doesn’t crawl nofollow links.
Search engine robots can’t sign in or register as a member on your forum, so there’s no reason to invite Googlebot to follow “register here” or “sign in” links. Using nofollow on these links enables Googlebot to crawl other pages you’d prefer to see in Google’s index.However, this is a somewhat advanced topic, so I won’t go any deeper into that here. Recommended reading: Crawl budget for SEO: the ultimate reference guide
2013 onwards: Google combats paid links
Google classes the buying or selling links that pass PageRank as a violation of their Webmaster Guidelines. As such, all paid links should be nofollowed. That’s been the case for many years, even long before 2013. However, from what I can see, Google became increasingly concerned about the effect of undisclosed paid links on their algorithm around this time… and has been ever since. Matt Cutts delves deeper into their reasoning for the disclosure of paid links in this 2013 video:People treat links as editorial votes. They link to something because it inspires passion in them. It’s something that’s interesting. They want to share it with friends. There’s some reason why they want to highlight that particular link.The problem is that some paid links look no different from earned links. Think about the difference between a link in a paid review vs. a link in an unpaid review. On the face of it, both links will look identical. That’s why there needs to be a way to disclose the paid one to Google. Think of it like this: There are two ways to get an Oscar: Option #1: Live to act, continuously hone your craft, and work hard for years. Option #2: Buy 6 of them for $8.97 on Amazon… The nofollow tag (on paid links) is to Google what the $8.97 sticker on the bottom of your fake Oscar is to your friends: a tell‐tale sign that you didn’t earn this legitimately and thus, don’t deserve credit for your tomfoolery manipulative efforts. Let’s briefly recap what Google says about the way they handle nofollowed links:
Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links.That all seems clear enough until you read the sentence that precedes it:
In general, we don’t follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links.In general, I think this statement is vaguer than it needs to be and implies that they follow nofollowed links in some instances. What those cases may be, nobody knows. Some believe that all nofollowed links still transfer some PageRank. Some think that Google transfers PageRank to some, but not all nofollowed links. Others believe that people are reading too much into wording that hasn’t changed for the best part of seven years. Earlier this year, we studied 44,589 SERPs to see if there was any correlation between Google rankings and various backlink attributes—one of which was the number of followed backlinks. Here’s what we found:
The correlation for the number of “dofollow” backlinks is a little bit weaker than that of the total number of backlinks.
Here’s what Tim said about this:
This could be an indication that Google values some nofollowed links from strong pages more than followed links from weak pages. #whoknowsTake this finding with a large pinch of salt. The primary aim of this study was not to analyze the impact of nofollowed vs. followed links and as such, we didn’t make any effort to isolate this factor. But even if we assume that nofollowed links have no direct impact on SEO, they can still have an indirect impact because:
1. They help diversify your link profile
Natural backlink profiles are diverse. Some links are followed, and others are nofollowed. That fact is unavoidable because some people will inevitably link to you via nofollowed links… no matter how much you might wish this wasn’t the case. Furthermore, most of the backlinks you get from following places are nofollowed:- Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.)
- Forums (Reddit, Quora, etc.)
- Press releases
- Guestbooks (hello, 1998!)
- Wikipedia (hint: anyone can edit a Wikipedia page)
- Pingbacks
- Directories
It looks like 85% of the referring domains (linking websites) to the Ahrefs blog are followed.
Is this good or bad? Honestly, as long as there’s some diversity here, that’s a good sign.
What you don’t want to see is 100% “dofollow” or anything close because that’s a definite sign of manipulation. From experience, I’d say anywhere from 60–90% is normal—but that range isn’t definitive. If you suspect foul play, delve deeper.
2. They drive traffic, and traffic drives followed links
Links aren’t only useful for SEO purposes. They drive referral traffic too. That’s why we’re so active on Quora. If you haven’t heard of Quora before, it’s a Q&A website where anyone can answer the questions people post. Within those answers, Quora allows links to relevant resources. Here’s a recent answer posted by our Marketing Manager, Rebekah Bek, where she links to the Ahrefs blog:
Unfortunately, as all outbound links on Quora are nofollowed, that link has no direct SEO effect.
But here’s the interesting part:
If we check the Backlinks report in Ahrefs Site Explorer for ahrefs.com and filter for only “dofollow” links, here’s one of the many backlinks we see:
Now let’s take a closer look at the referring page (the page the followed link comes from):
The only reason we got this followed link is because the author of this article stumbled upon Rebekah’s Quora answer. In other words, the nofollowed link indirectly led to a followed link.
So remember this: for someone to link to you, three things have to happen in this order:
- They see your content
- They enjoy your content
- They recommend it to others (via links on their site)
3. They can protect against Google penalties
Sometimes there are legitimate reasons to pay for links. If a website gets tons of traffic, buying a sponsored post on that site may make total sense. And if you’re paying good money for a feature, then you’ll probably want to include a backlink so that the readers can easily find your website. The problem? Google states that followed paid links are against their Webmaster Guidelines. That said, the SEO community is generally divided into two camps:- Those who believe Google can accurately identify paid links algorithmically.
- Those who believe Google can’t accurately identify paid links algorithmically.
Google’s tool for reporting paid links.
Example of a paid link.
1. Look for followed backlinks with keyword‐rich anchors
For the most part, people won’t use exact‐match anchors when linking to your site. That’s why followed links with exact‐match anchors can be a sign of backlink manipulation. To find them, use the Anchors report in Ahrefs Site Explorer. Site Explorer > enter your domain > Anchors > dofollow filter
Here, we see that most of this website’s anchors are branded or generic (blurred for privacy purposes), but there are nineteen websites (referring domains) that link using the phrase “payday loans” as the anchor.
If we hit the caret, then Referring domains, we can see what these websites are.
Then, if we hit the caret again, we can see the context of all the links from each domain.
Here are some rough guidelines for dealing with different types of links you find here:
- Bought links on low‐quality sites. Ask for the link to be removed (preferably) or nofollowed. Disavow at the page or domain‐level if they fail to do so.
- Guest posts bio links. Have you previously used keyword‐rich anchors in your guest post author bios? Ask the person in charge of that site to swap out the keyword‐rich link for a branded one. Or, if you prefer to keep the anchored link, ask for it to be nofollowed.
- Widget links. Change the HTML of your widget so that the link is nofollowed. Ask those who’ve already embedded your widget to nofollow the link.
- Sitewide links. Ask for the link to be nofollowed or changed to a branded anchor.
PRO TIP
For large websites, there can be hundreds or thousands of different anchors in the Anchors report. Sifting through all of them can be time‐consuming.
So here’s a quick trick you can use:
First, export the full list of followed anchors.
Site Explorer > enter your domain > Anchors > add “dofollow” filter > Export > CSV
Then copy and paste them into Ahrefs Keywords Explorer in batches of up to 10,000 at a time.
Hit search to generate a report, then sort by the CPC column from high to low.
Because high CPC anchors are often more likely to be the spammy ones, this should result in spammy anchors rising to the top of the list.
Finally, search for any spammy‐looking anchors in the Anchors report in Site Explorer and investigate further.
Because high CPC anchors are often more likely to be the spammy ones, this should result in spammy anchors rising to the top of the list.
Finally, search for any spammy‐looking anchors in the Anchors report in Site Explorer and investigate further.
2. Look for followed sponsored backlinks
Backlinks from sponsored posts should always be nofollowed. That’s because you’re effectively paying for the link, so it shouldn’t pass PageRank. To find such links, search for the word “sponsored” in the Backlinks report for your website in Ahrefs Site Explorer. Site Explorer > Backlinks > search for “sponsored” > filter for “dofollow”
Reach out and ask for any such links to be nofollowed.
3. Look for keyword‐rich followed outgoing links on your website
Did you know that Forbes nofollowed all of their outbound links in 2017? This move came after they noticed that some of their contributors were selling followed links from their articles. Because they have so many contributors, they decided it was impossible to vet all links on the site, and so took the lazy option to nofollow everything. Why is this relevant? Because if you’ve ever accepted guest posts on your site, or have any user‐generated content, you could have the same issue. To find out if that’s the case, take a look at your outgoing anchors in Ahrefs Site Explorer. Site Explorer > enter your domain > Outgoing links > Anchors > add “dofollow” filter
Look for suspicious words and phrases that you wouldn’t expect to see on your site, and remove or nofollow any that appear manipulative (e.g., keyword‐rich anchors in guest post bios, etc.).
As for why this is important, Google explains this best:
If you can’t or don’t want to vouch for the content of pages you link to from your site — for example, untrusted user comments or guestbook entries — you should nofollow those links. This can discourage spammers from targeting your site, and will help keep your site from inadvertently passing PageRank to bad neighborhoods on the web.
Do you see lots of anchors?
Use the pro tip from step #1.
4. Look for followed sponsored links on your site
Have you ever accepted a sponsored post on your website? Did you make sure to nofollow the link? If you’re unsure, it might be worth checking. To do that, search in Google forsite:yourwebsite.com "sponsored post"
Open up any results one by one and locate the sponsored link.
If you installed the nofollow Chrome extension, all nofollow links on the page will be highlighted—so the sponsored link should definitely be highlighted. If it isn’t, it’s a followed link.
Confirm this is the case by digging into the HTML.
Right‐click on the link, hit “Inspect,” and look for the rel=”nofollow” tag.
If it’s absent, then it’s a followed link and you should add a nofollow tag.
5. Look for nofollowed internal links
No internal links should be nofollowed unless they point to unimportant pages or pages that you want to exclude from search engines’ indexes. To find nofollowed internal links, use the Best by Links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer. Site Explorer > enter your domain > Best by Links > switch to Internal > sort by the “nofollow” column
If you see any pages with nofollowed internal links, hit the number to see where those links come from and investigate further. It may be the case that these make total sense (e.g., nofollowed internal links to a login page).
However, if there’s no obvious reason for the links to be nofollowed, remove the nofollow tag.
That’s the case here. For some reason, we have a nofollowed link from one blog post to another.
PRO TIP
For a more granular breakdown of internal nofollowed link issues on your website, run a fresh crawl in Ahrefs Site Audit.
Not only does this give you 100% fresh data, but it also alerts you to a bunch of specific issues relating to internal and external nofollow links.
Example of issues related to nofollow internal links in Ahrefs Site Audit
Learn how to set up your first crawl in Site Audit in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjinWqfGyVE
Example of issues related to nofollow internal links in Ahrefs Site Audit
Learn how to set up your first crawl in Site Audit in this video:
Final thoughts
Nofollow links play a vital role when it comes to SEO. Hopefully, this guide successfully armed you with the knowledge you need to make nofollow links work for you… not against you. Before I wrap this up, I have one final—probably quite obvious—point: If you’re actively building links to your website, then it makes sense to prioritize the building of followed links. These are the ones that pass PageRank and have a direct impact on SEO. In Site Explorer, all our backlink‐related reports have “dofollow” and “nofollow” filters.
That makes it easy to prioritize when you’re analyzing competitors’ backlink profiles for replicable links, or building a list of “skyscraper” prospects, or whatever the case may be.
Do you still have questions? Hit me up in the comments below or via Twitter.
https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/nofollow-vs-follow-links-everything-you-need-to-know/
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