Down The Google Escalator

Google’s John Mueller said again that Google Search does not use “engagement” as a factor for ranking or other purposes in Google Search. Google Search does not know if your web page has a high or low level of user engagement metrics and even if it did, it does not use it for ranking purposes, John said.

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that directory submissions, article submissions and bookmarking links are generally against Google’s webmaster guidelines. He said they are generally seen by Google as artificial links and thus you should likely avoid a link building strategy using those.

Google has confirmed an issue with Google Alerts where Google’s Danny Sullivan said “We’ve identified an issue that’s prevented Google Alerts from operating properly. We’re working to resolve the issue quickly.”