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.

Google Business Profiles is testing using AI Overviews for local panel business descriptions. Google added carousel beta guidance on how to makeup multiple pages on category pages. Google spoke on when you should fix 404s and when you should not. Google Ads to bring Automatically Created Assets to the ad level. Google Perspectives is showing Instagram posts.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• 
  Google Using AI Overviews On Business Profiles Local Listings
  
  
  Google is now using AI Overviews to write descriptions for the local panels shown in Google Search on Google Business Profiles. This is weird because Google Business Profiles lets you use AI to write business descriptions if you want to (at least they tested this).





• 
  Google: When You Should Fix Pages 404 Status Codes
  
  
  Google has always said that having pages that serve a 404 status code is normal; most sites have them, and when a page does not exist on your site, and someone tries to access it, a 404 is the proper response. But Gary Illyes from Google is now sharing some cases when you should fix pages returning a 404 status code.




• 
  Google Ads To Bring Automatically Created Assets To Ad Level?
  
  
  There are reports that a change is coming to Google Ads ACA, Automatically Created Assets, that will bring this feature to the ad level. Anthony Higman said on X, “they are now adding them in at the ad level, to “fill the gaps in RSA’s” and they will be using generative AI to do it.”
• 
  Google Perspectives Can Show Instagram Posts
  
  
  Google is now showing Instagram posts within its Perspectives feature in the Google Search results. This started a week ago or so, and I received a number of posts about this since.





• 
  Google Structured Data Carousel Guidance On How To Markup Multiple Items On Category Pages
  
  
  Google has added a new bullet point in the structured data carousels (beta) help documentation around how to mark up categories with many items with that structured data. This is based on examples pages such as paginated content or infinite scroll.
• 
  Google Red Fiat Car & Street Sign At WordCamp Booth
  
  
  Google had a booth at the WordCamp conference a couple of weeks ago and Danny Sullivan sat at the booth answering Search questions. He snapped this photo of the red Beetle car and Google street sign at that booth and shared it on X.

Other Great Search Threads:

• Google clarified the product level return policy markup takes precedents over the organization level return policy (no surprise there) story updated at, Barry Schwartz on X
• Hi Anu, More details from the HC article linked above: Starting the week of July 1, 2024: You will not have access to any current or historical Universal Analytics data and most users will lose access t, (19) AdsLiaison on X
• Regarding the June spam update, this might be the first drop I’m seeing, but could be unrelated (and a manual action instead). Huge drop after increasing since the March core update started rolling out. Sistrix shows the drop as yes, Glenn Gabe on X
• Should I Validate my Fixes on Search Console?, Reddit
• Shopify rolled out AI tools for merchants in 2023, but that doesn’t mean merchants will use them correctly. 🙂 Here’s the snippet for this ecommerce site’s homepage. I wonder how many people are seeing that description and wondering, Glenn Gabe on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Search Features

Other Search

Feedback:

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Google has released a new algorithm update the search company is naming the Google June 2024 Spam Update yesterday, on June 20, 2024. This update does not have anything new specific changes that we are aware of, like some previous updates. Google just wrote, “Today we released the June 2024 spam update. It may take up to 1 week to complete, and we’ll post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is done.”

Google did link to its generic spam updates page on its help documentation but that page was no updated with any new details. Google did say on LinkedIn, “It’s a normal spam update, it’s not the algorithmic part of reputation abuse. We’ll inform when that happens.” Also, this is not link related, because Google has separate link spam updates and this was labeled just a “spam update.” Google also confirmed that for me on X.

I will say the early reaction to this update is not positive. I mean, a lot of content creators and SEOs are fed up with Google search quality and these updates. Of course, these Google updates aim at improving overall search quality, while spam updates aim to remove spam that is manipulating those search results.

June 2024 Google Spam Update Quick Facts

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:

• Name: Google June 2024 Spam Update
• Launched: June 20, 2024 at about 11:15 am ET
• Rollout: Will take about a week to fully rollout.
• Targets: Sites violating some of the Google search spam policies.
• Does Not Target: This update does not target link spam, it does not target the site reputation abuse policy and some other policies.
• Penalty: It penalizes some of spam techniques that are against Google’s spam policies.
• Global: This is a global update impacting all regions and languages.
• Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.
• Recover: If you were hit by this, Google said you should review its spam policies to ensure they are complying with those.
• Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to the spam update. It can take many months to recover, Google said.

Tracking Tools On June 2024 Spam Update

The tools are mostly calm, so it does not seem to be picking up big changes from this update yet. I don’t expect it to, since this is a spam update and not a core update. That being said, some tools have been heated for many days now.

Semrush:

SimilarWeb:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mozcast:

Accuranker:

Algoroo:

SERPmetrics:

Mangools:

Wincher:

SERPstat:

Cognitive SEO:

Previous Google Spam Updates

Here are the documented previous spam updates:

• June 2021 spam update on June 23, 2021 – one day rollout
• June 2021 spam update on June 28, 2021 – one day rollout
• July 2021 link spam update started on July 26, 2021 and completed 29 days later on August 24, 2021
• November 2021 spam update started on November 3, 2021 and completed 8 days later on November 11, 2021
• October 2022 spam update started on October 19, 2022 and completed 48 hours later on October 21, 2022
• December 2022 link spam update started on December 14, 2022 and completed 19 days later on January 12, 2023
• October 2023 spam update started on October 4, 2023 and completed 15 days later on October 20, 2023
• March 2024 spam update started on March 5, 2024 and completed 15 days later on March 20, 2024

Spam Update Details

Google’s very own spam update help documentation says:

While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.

For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam.

Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.

In the case of a link spam update (an update that specifically deals with link spam), making changes might not generate an improvement. This is because when our systems remove the effects spammy links may have, any ranking benefit the links may have previously generated for your site is lost. Any potential ranking benefits generated by those links cannot be regained.

Other Spam Update Information

I do wonder if this spam update caused those indexing issues last night?

Everyone is just a bit feisty right now but here is the confirmation about it not being related to the site reputation abuse and not a link spam update:

It’s not. As I’ve shared before, I have ever confidence that when it is, we’ll share about that. Also, apologies for my original response below, which I’ve deleted but will also screenshot for the context. I know the important work you do (especially because we used to work… pic.twitter.com/xMurvQadlq

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 21, 2024

Forum discussion at X, Black Hat World and WebmasterWorld.

For the original iTunes version, click here.

We had a new Google spam update, the June 2024 spam update and what would be an SEO video recap within Google Search ranking volatility, at least this time it was on Father’s Day weekend. Google Search seemed to have an indexing bug last night. If your image snippets disappeared from Google months ago, it is likely a quality issue and not a technical issue. Glenn Gabe posted his adventure on trying to track AI Overviews in Google Search Console. Google posted FAQs on AI Overviews, asking why you can’t disable it but not giving a real answer. Google may be showing fewer links to Reddit and Quora, maybe. Google’s Gary Illyes gave two reasons why a spike in crawling may be a bad thing. Google warned on using JavaScript for structured data in Google Merchant Center. Pound signs in the Search Console reports are about sitelinks, not canonicalization. Google updated its hreflang documentation last week. Bing Webmaster Tools can show a clickthrough rate of over 100%. Google is testing people also ask with 6 results by default. Google’s people also ask mostly show Wikipedia content. Google has this scary Google Maps exploit where you can ruin a business’s local ranking. Google added menu buttons to the Google local panels. Google Maps updated its fake engagement policy. Local Service Ads are coming to Google Maps. Google Ads is forcing some advertisers off credit card payments. Google AdSense has new privacy and messaging for users in some US states. Apple updated its Applebot documentation. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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