Another Google Algorithm Update, A Confirmed Search Bug, Spam Targets, Links Less Valuable, Keywords In Reviews For Local & More

To start things off, I quickly covered the monthly Google webmaster report. Google also had some big unconfirmed update on or around October 28th. Google confirmed a search bug with top stories and search features starting on October 18th through October 28th. I provided one example of one site that got slammed by the Google spam update in October. Links might not be as important of a ranking factor in the future, Google’s John Mueller said. Google finally added Google Lens to the desktop search box. Google search added new ways to find deals in Google Search. Google is now testing the site name and favicons in the desktop search results. Google Search docs had some minor updates that may interest you. Google said duplicate content URLs in a sitemap file is not going to cause ranking issues. Google Search Console verified sites don’t get crawled faster or more. Google said sites do not need 200,000 words to be considered authoritative. Google said do not write content based off of keyword search volume lists. The Google Business Profile manager is now redirecting to Google Search. A brief study said that keywords in your local reviews do not impact your Google local rankings. Google Business Profile photo insights will be going away. Google Ads is killing off similar audience segments next year. Google Ads has a new policy update for government documents and official services. Google is showing on-time delivery, order accuracy estimates, and more in search ad snippets. Bing Image search is testing animated ads. Microsoft Advertising has updated its Google performance max import tool. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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