Does google know too much about wordpress?

3 replies
  • SEO
  • |
First off, I'll say I love wordpress and I really push my new clients to utilize it in some way since it's so user friendly.

I'm concerned about how big WP is getting and how smart google is when it comes to checking out these sites. WP says it powers almost 15% of the top million websites, so it's a big deal.

On my google webmaster tools panel I'm constantly getting information about how I should update my WP installations and specialized messages for wordpress.

Googlebot obviously knows its way around a WP installation and it might increasingly know what's up in terms of your marketing activities. The good thing about this is I don't think google penalizes as hard for 'appropriate' dupe content on a WP install, such as archives, category pages, tag pages, etc.

On the other hand, I wonder if there are any downsides to google knowing so much about someone's website. It's obviously not as much of a risk as using google analytics (which I use for most of my sites anyway), but WP is constantly developing new features that googlebot could eventually use to gain 'unwanted' insights into your site.

At this time I don't think it's a big deal at all, but I'm definitely keeping watch.
#google #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Matt Cutt's blog is run on Wordpress, so I'm pretty sure Google doesn't have any issues with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Remove the Wordpress Version number from your header.

    1) Backup your site

    2) Read this http://www.proxyutza.com/remove-wordpress-version-tag-from-header/

    3) The code in the link above goes in the functions.php file, at the very bottom of the page.

    When you remove the WP-Version from your source code you should stop getting those messages to update in GWT (Google Webmaster Tools), worked for me.

    Doing this has no effect on any pages in the SERPs. I've been running without the version number on multiple WP sites for a few months, no problems in the SERPs.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jared581
      The web is so ginormous that Google can only check out sites through their algorithms.

      To me, that means we are all on a level playing field. Google just wants original, relevant, easily crawlable, fast, and secure content. They say it all the time!

      Jared
      Signature

      Take consistent action and analyze. Never give up!

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