SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: January 18, 2022
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 has released a new report to measure your page experience for desktop, and in a few weeks the desktop version of the page experience update will be live. Do you think Google will soon target “fluff” content in 2022? Google Maps is testing shows review snippets in the map interface, by the map pins. Google said you should still not use commas, brackets or other non standard encoding for URLs an faceted navigation. Google Business Profiles edits are being promoted with a new gigantic overlay in web search.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Desktop Page Experience Report Now In Google Search Console
As promised, Google has released the desktop version of the page experience report in Google Search Console. The desktop version is pretty similar to the mobile version, as you’d expect. With the page experience update algorithm coming to desktop next month, you now have a report you can use to see how well you are performing. - Will Google Target Fluff Content In Search?
The other day I wrote about how Google said fluff content is hard for search engines to understand and thus rank. I explained how Google does rank content that is surrounded by a lot of fluff. But then I heard John Mueller of Google once again talk about content fluff and how you should not add fluff to your content. - Google Maps Pins With Review Snippets
Google Maps, the map interface, is testing displaying review snippets, short selected reviews, directly under the name of the business or organization in the map interface under the pin. This was spotted by Allie Margeson who said on Twitter “seeing review snippets get some prominence directly on the map and I like it!” - Google Business Profile Edit Large Overlay In Search Results
With Google’s new effort to get business owners to manage their business listing in web search and not in the Google Business Profile manager, formerly Google My Business, Google is now using large overlays to tell businesses they can do so in search. - Google: Do Not Use Commas, Brackets Or Non-Standard URL Encoding For Faceted Navigation
Google’s John Mueller confirmed that the search company’s 2014 guidance with faceted navigation remains true today – do not use non-standard URL encoding. That means do not use commas, brackets or other non-standard URL encoding in your URL structure. - Empty Google Cafe
Two years into COVID the Google offices are still pretty empty, here is a recent photo from the main Google headquarters, the GooglePlex, from one of the cafes. It is pretty empty, you can see more ph
Other Great Search Threads:
- It’s always a good practice to balance your sources of traffic. For affiliate bloggers, I’d recommend checking out https://t.co/v0Hpt72oIe and thinking about ways to improve your site overall. More is not bett, John Mueller on Twitter
- “On sale” organic in Google mobile serp. CC – @rustybrick 1/1 #onsale https://t.co/TjfUpcrLi1, Khushal Bherwani on Twitter
- Bugs are always possible, but I don’t see a lot of complaints around this… At least not yet :). Maybe it’s from old crawl attempts? or perhaps the robots.txt was unreachable temporarily?, John Mueller on Twitter
- Let me just ask the obvious question; if you know this is unnecesary duplicate content, why are you publishing it? Understanding of quality is irrelevant, it just seems like a bad idea from the st, John Mueller on Twitter
- DMCA is a per-page process, so if you feel it applies, you’d need to do it on a per-page basis., John Mueller on Twitter
- I’m a fan of “less is more” when it comes to the number of sites. However, the overall effect of merging or splitting sites is always hard to estimate in advance., John Mueller on Twitter
- Please, please pleaseeee – only disavow links if you KNOW they’re spammy and have been built unnaturally otherwise you’ll do more harm than good. Conducting a traffic drop analysis and I checked their disavow file and found, Andy Chadwick on Twitter
- Report: Safari Bug Could Leak Some User Data, WebmasterWorld
- We’ll take a look. I know searching by headline is common for writers and yes, I’d expect this to show first for that. But it doesn’t reflect how most people might seek this content (and for how they might s, Danny Sullivan on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Other Search
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, you can follow us on Facebook and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Layoffs, DOJ Sues Google, Search Console Content Ideas & Google Optimize Going Away, Yahoo Search Comeback

As I mentioned briefly last week, Google announced mass layoffs last week, and I discuss what I know so far about it. There are also reports that Google is pushing advertisers to use third-party resellers and not their internal staff. The DOJ sued Google again to break up its ad business. Microsoft announced its earnings, showing how Bing’s search ad growth continues to slow. Bing also may have had a search ranking algorithm update. Google Search Console content ideas beta feature may go away in March. Google Search Console Insights has an achievements section. Google confirmed a bug with some preferred languages in Google Search, and they blame mobile-first indexing. Google Ads had an outage on Monday morning that caused huge headaches. Google has no preferences between connected structured data and not connected structured data. Google will parse the image elements even when those elements are enclosed within other elements. Google published a new case study after 18 months, this one from Vimeo on video SEO. Google said generating tons of fake URLs on a site won’t cause SEO issues. Google Business Profiles now supports cars for sale inventory for US dealerships. Bing is testing infinite scroll. Google is testing two justifications in the local results. Google is also testing a new trusted store badge. Bing has a new menu for image search that uses a drop-down and adds explore and collect. Account-level negative keywords are now available on Google Ads. Google will sunset Google Optimize on September 30th. And it seems like Yahoo Search may be making a comeback to Search – that would be exciting. 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.
SPONSOR: This week’s video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own.
Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:
For the original iTunes version, click here.
Search Topics of Discussion:
Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
SEARCHENGINES
New Google Trusted Store Badge Test

Google is testing a new design for the trusted store badge in the paid shopping results. The Google Trusted Stores program to all U.S. merchants back in 2012, along with that came a badge in the search results to make those listings stand out.
FYI – here is how to qualify for this trusted store badge.
Brian Freiesleben spotted this new badge the other day and posted a screenshot on Twitter – here is that screenshot:
Curently, the badge looks more like this version from last year:
And the original one looked like this:
Brian said on Twitter, “Would love to see Google add this to organic products from trusted merchants as well, but not sure if that’s likely.”
Looks like Google is testing out a new badge for advertisers that are trusted merchants.
Would love to see Google add this to organic products from trusted merchants as well, but not sure if that’s likely 😉
Second screenshot is what appears after clicking the badge. pic.twitter.com/3lXIU9m04d
— Brian Freiesleben (@type_SEO) January 25, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Console Content Ideas Going Away March 28th

Last December, we caught Google testing an experimental feature named content ideas in Google Search Console. Well, yesterday, Google sent more invites to this feature but noted the feature is only available until March 28, 2023 and then it goes away.
Both Robin Dirksen on Twitter and Deepak Ness on Twitter shared screenshots of this feature but the new part is the March 28th date.
The email they received about this feature reads, “Note: This feature be available only until March 28, 2023, and only to select properties.” Then when you access the feature, there is a notice in the interface that says, “New! Get inspiration for new content (available until March 28).”
Here are those screenshots (click to enlarge):
We know this seems like the Question Hub feature and that Google Question Hub shut down this month. So maybe this content ideas feature is also shutting down but not until the end of March?
Here are more tweets with this:
Just received an email from Google Search Console about “Content ideas”
For me, it will be available till March 28 (2023) – what will happen after that is unknown (for now) pic.twitter.com/hjVtrStJXP
— Robin Dirksen (@robindirksen1) January 25, 2023
Here’s it: pic.twitter.com/thAvEgI95t
— DeepakNess (@DeepakNesss) January 25, 2023
Hmmm… This is interesting Introducing “Content ideas”: Get inspiration for new content from Google – has this been reported on yet @rustybrick ? pic.twitter.com/aUOt3sYoTJ
— @[email protected] (@ChuckPrice518) January 25, 2023
“content ideas” GSC feature (US based) company/website.@rustybrick reported it in December but looked to be exclusive to India/Pakistan.https://t.co/Pg0sQIEXAT pic.twitter.com/iGoQhfAzYe
— Nick LeRoy (@NickLeRoy) January 25, 2023
I do wonder if Google is only testing it until then and maybe will bring it to more users later or if Google is completely killing it off on March 28th?
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Search Testing Order Online Button At Top Of Snippet
-
PPC7 days ago
The Top 14 Digital Marketing Trends of 2023, According to Experts
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
Cardano [ADA] on the verge of more utility with this latest development: Decoding…
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Google Search Console Video Indexing Report Updates Missing Thumbnail Issues
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
How to Set Up Google Ads Conversion Tracking in WordPress
-
SEO7 days ago
10 Tools You Can Use For SEO Competitive Analysis
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
Mailchimp suffers third breach in 12 months
-
SEO6 days ago
10 Types To Engage Your Audience