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 Search has dropped continuous scroll in its desktop search results, with mobile search to follow. Google says, despite what some SEOs say, you should not avoid including the brand name of what you are reviewing in your review content. Google Ads is testing a target ROAS insights box for PMAX and shopping campaigns. Google Business Profiles verification status gains new tools. Google fixed a scary bug with Google News and Publisher Center.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• 
  Google Drops Continuous Scroll On Desktop With Mobile To Come
  
  
  Google Search is rolling back its continuous scroll user interface and bringing back the legacy Google Search pagination bar. Google told us that starting yesterday it will stop offering continuous scroll on desktop, with the mobile search interface to follow in the coming months.
• 
  Google: Don’t Avoid Mentioning Brand Names In Your Review Content
  
  
  Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, responded to some new SEO advice floating around the SEOverse that suggests you should not add the brand name of the products you are reviewing in your review content. Sullivan disagreed with this advice and said, “you shouldn’t be afraid to mention the brand name of something you are reviewing.”
• 
  Google Ads Tests tROAS Insight Box for PMAX & Standard Shopping
  
  
  Google is testing a new ads insights box and report that shows target ROAS insights for Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns. The report shows if your actual ROAS is within the expected range. The Graph shows weekly ROAS averages, including projected conversions.




• 
  Google Verification Status Tool Gains New Options
  
  
  Google has added new fields and options to the Google Business Profiles verification status tool. These options should help some businesses that are having issues getting verified on Google Maps.
• 
  Google News Sources & Google Publisher Center Bug Fixed
  
  
  We knew Google would stop accepting publications into Google News Publisher Center, but Google also stopped showing news “sources” in Google News, stopped showing a follower count for those sources, and stopped providing access to Publisher Center features to news organizations. This bug was fixed by Google this morning.





• 
  Google Wall Of Influential Women
  
  
  Google’s Mountain View, California office has a wall up that showcases some of the more influential women. I am not sure which office this is in, I am thinking it is in the new campus.

Other Great Search Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

• “Unicorn” Clicks & the Magic of Etymology for SEO Research, Ethan Lazuk
• Duplicate, Google Chose Different Canonical Than User. What It Is, Causes, & How to Fix, Ahrefs
• How Brands Can Use STAT To Thrive Amidst SERP Chaos, Foundation Inc
• Minification and SEO: A short guide, Oncrawl
• The Statistics Behind Google’s Search Average Position, Lawyer Marketing
• The Hard Work of Maintaining Your Google Rankings, SERP’s Up SEO Podcast
• What is a Spam Score or Toxic Score in SEO, SEO Webster

PPC

Search Features

Other Search

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.

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:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.

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.