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Daily Search Forum Recap: January 17, 2023

Published

2 years ago

January 18, 2023

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

How frequently you publish is not a spam signal for Google. Google is testing a new location override for search. Google is testing perspectives and opinions in Google Search. Google will ignore your robots.txt directives if it serves a 4xx status code. Did you know that Google can show a local wait time button for some local places?

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Local Check Wait Time Button

Google is testing a “check wait time” button for some local results in the Google search results. I guess this tells you how long you have to wait to receive service from the local business, like a restaurant.

Google Will Ignore Robots.txt Rules If It Serves A 4xx Status Code

Here is another PSA from Gary Illyes of Google. In short, if you serve a 4xx status code with your robots.txt file, then Google will ignore the rules you have specified in that file.

Google Search Perspectives & Opinions

Google seems to be testing a new box in the search results named perspectives and opinions. The naming convention reminds me of Google perspectives, but this acts differently, as the old perspectives were featured snippet based, and these new perspectives and opinions are more product review based.

Google: Publishing Frequency Does Not Make Something Spam

John Mueller of Google said on Twitter that “publishing frequency alone does not make something spam.” Google’s algorithms don’t look at the content volume as a spam signal alone.

Google Search Tests New Location Override Feature

For a long, long time, Google has given searchers a way to override the location Google Search thinks you are searching for. Often, that location was in the footer, but for the past several months Google has been showing it at the top of the search results page for some more location-aware queries.

Google New York City Inside Green Beach Chairs

Google’s New York City office is massive and has a lot to offer, for the Googlers that do end up going into the office. Here is a small little corner somewhere in the massive office where you can sit

Other Great Search Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

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