SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: January 28, 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 Search Console has a bug with the performance report for image search clicks and impressions. Google is deprecating the Google My Business API in April. Google Ads is shutting off smart shopping and local campaigns and replacing them with performance max campaigns. Google is promoting Pointy from Google in Google Business Profiles. Google image search is tested a related colorized image theme. Google is testing search results without descriptions. And don’t forget to catch the weekly video recap.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Algorithm Fluctuations, FLoC FLoPs, New Google Robots Tag & More
This week, we had another unconfirmed Google search ranking update on January 22nd. Google has admitted defeat with its FLoC cookieless proposal and is now going with Topics API. Google launched a new robots tag named… - Google Search Console Logging Bug May Result In Drop In Image Search Performance Data
Google has confirmed an issue with the Google Search Console Performance reports specific to image search. The issue is a logging issue that may result in your clicks and impressions data in those reports being lower than normal. Google said the issue began on Monday, January 24, 2022 and is still ongoing. - New Tools For Smart Shopping & Local Campaigns Being Replaced By Performance Max
Google has released a set of new tools and features to help advertisers when Google existing and future Smart Shopping campaigns and Local Campaigns get replaced by Performance Max campaigns. This includes a new migration tool and API migrations. - Google Tests Search Results Without Descriptions Again
Google has confirmed it has been testing Google Search result listings without any descriptions, again. Google first tested this in 2015 and is now testing it again for the past couple of weeks. Aishwarya Tapadar from Google confirmed this in a Google Web Search Help thread saying “this is a small experiment that will be ending in the next day or so.” - Google Images Tests Color Themed Related Images Design
The folks at 9to5Google spotted Google Image Search on mobile testing a related image design that takes on the color theme of the image result. So if the image is red, the related images below are in these red hue effect in the background. - Google Promotes Pointy From Google In Business Profiles
Google is promoting the Pointy from Google solution in Google Business Profiles dashboard, Colan Nielsen explained on Twitter. Google is placing this box that says “Help customers find products they need” by connecting your in-store product inventory with Google Search and Maps. - Google Deprecating The Google My Business API On April 20, 2022
Google will be deprecating the Google My Business API on April 30, 2022 and replacing it with new APIs in the Google federated model. So you will have to update any of the old APIs you may be using with the new ones within the next few months. - Messy Drinks From Googlers At Google
A while back, Satyajeet Salgar from Google posted a photo of his drink and snack while at the Google office when he was first returning to the office. I asked for more photos and that led to numerous
Other Great Search Threads:
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
- 15 Podcasts to Boost Your SEO Game, Ahrefs
- 3 Steps to Define Your Target Audience for Your SEO Program, BruceClay
- Best Google Sheets Formulas for SEO, Shell Shockuk
- Getting Started In International SEO: A Quick Reference Guide, Search Engine Journal
- Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines: Worth Reading?, Internet Marketing Ninjas
- How to Use Google Autocomplete for SEO, Practical Ecommerce
- IndexWatch 2021: The SEO Losers In Google’s US Search Results, SISTRIX
- Local SEO Language Considerations for European Countries, SEO Clarity
- People Also Asked vs. Featured Snippets – 3 years of data, Kevin Indig
- SEO Office Hours: Late January Session Recaps & Key Takeaways, DeepCrawl
- Sistrix IndexWatch 2021: The SEO Losers In Google’s US Search Results, Amsive Digital
- The Top Tech SEO Strategies for 2022 and Beyond, Moz
- We Studied 81,000 Page Titles – Google Rewrote 61% Of Them, Zyppy
- What your C-suite team needs to know about SEO tests, SearchPilot
PPC
Other Search
Feedback:
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SEARCHENGINES
Google Again Says Ignore Link Spam Especially To 404 Pages
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing to pages that 404/410 are links that do not count – but John Mueller from Google said it again.
In a thread on X, John Mueller from Google wrote, “if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped.” “They do nothing,” he added, “If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link.”
John then added, “I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.”
Asking if it would hurt to disavow, after responding with the messages above, John wrote:
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
Earlier this year we had tons of SEOs notice spammy links to 404 error pages, John said ignore them. In 2021, Google said links to 404 pages do not count, Google also said that in 2012 and many other times.
Plus, outside of links to 404 pages, Google has said to ignore spammy links, time and time again – even the toxic links – ignore them. The messaging around this changed in 2016 when Penguin 4.0 was released and Google began devaluing links over demoting them.
Here are those new posts in context:
I’d say add both. Lol
— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) April 11, 2024
Sure. But also, save yourself the work completely :-).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
Re-reading your initial post – if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped. They do nothing. If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link. I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
… but still… is this a dumb idea?
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 11, 2024
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
And in general, Google says it ignores spammy links, so you should too (not new) but this post from John Mueller is:
I would just ignore them, Google ignores them too. Sometimes they’re just more visible in tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re a problem.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 18, 2024
And then also on Mastodon wrote about a similar situation, “Google has 2 decades of practice of ignoring spammy links. There’s no need to do anything for those links.”
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Needs Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important
Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”
Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”
I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.
Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.
Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More
For the original iTunes version, click here.
The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings in the search results. Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy will be fought both algorithmically and through manual actions. Google responded to The Verge mocking its search rankings over best printer. Google Search Console has a new unused ownership tokens page. Some sites may see the Google Indexing API work for a limited time on unsupported content types. And having two sites won’t result in your sites search ranking decline. BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will test Zstd compression soon. Google Search is testing thumbs-up and down buttons for product carousels. Google is testing new sitelinks designs. Google Notes on Search may not go away in May. Google Maps no longer supports draft reviews. Google Maps released a bunch of new maps, directions, travel and EV features. Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns now support AI image generation. Google Ads is testing a similar product carousel. Google Ads reminds advertisers that ad customizers are going away. Google Ads is testing a new horizontal ad card format. Google AdSense has these new ad intent formats. Google AdSense publishers are reporting lower RPM earnings since mid-February. Google threatens to drop links to California news publishers amongst link tax bill. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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