{"id":2288,"date":"2016-03-18T11:58:58","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T11:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/03\/18\/six-of-the-most-interesting-sem-news-stories-of-the-week\/"},"modified":"2019-04-04T12:04:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T12:04:28","slug":"six-of-the-most-interesting-sem-news-stories-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/03\/18\/six-of-the-most-interesting-sem-news-stories-of-the-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Six of the most interesting SEM news stories of the week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week we have SHOCK HORROR loads of updates both good and confusing from Google, plus one or two other stats and related social news. Oh and a running gag that loses its steam halfway through. What a week!<\/p>\n

Google strengthening its mobile friendly algorithm<\/h2>\n

As we reported yesterday, Google is strengthening its mobile friendly ranking signal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since April last year, if you\u2019ve not been offering a mobile optimised version of your website you may well have suffered a drop in rankings, although many experts believed the initial change in the signal led to fairly negligible results.<\/p>\n

However from May 2016, Google will step up the pressure on non-optimised sites by strengthening its algorithm. You have less than two months to comply!<\/p>\n

Or something that sounds less like a threat from Robocop. Actually maybe that is a good analogy.<\/p>\n

\"robocop\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Google issues guidelines on bloggers and links for freebies<\/h2>\n

As Graham Charlton reported late last Friday, Google has issued guidelines for bloggers<\/a> who receive free products from companies.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s advice is that bloggers should \u2018nofollow\u2019 any links to products that they may have received as a free gift, as these haven\u2019t been obtained organically through honest-to-goodness link-earning.<\/p>\n

It seems straightforward enough, Google doesn\u2019t like any link-building scheme that involves the exchange of money or a like-for-like link placement. Plus the word \u2018scheme\u2019 just sounds a bit sordid anyway.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately this raises all kinds of questions and only spreads the \u2018grey area\u2019 even further around the SEO landscape. Or something…<\/p>\n