Daily Search Forum Recap: January 31, 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 released a new API for the URL Inspection tool. Google seems to be issuing manual actions to publishers over Google News and Google Discover violations. Google also seems to be going through the backlog of reconsideration requests after months and months of delays. Google said the untitled search spam did not infect anyone with malware. Google said the location of an internal link on a page does not matter. Google Search Console errors and issues for Breadcrumb and HowTo structured data was updated. Google Ads reminded us that the query data for some data in the search term report is going away tomorrow and more.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google Search Console Launches URL Inspection API
  
  Google this morning launched a new API for Search Console – the URL Inspection API. This API lets you programmatically interact with the URL Inspection Tool that you would manually interact with within Google Search Console, but with code. SEOs and developers are super excited about this new API – as you’d imagine.




• Google: No One Infected By Untitled Search Spam Issue
  
  Danny Sullivan of Google said that no one was infected by the search spam issue around untitled documents. He said this is a spam issue, not a malware issue and “no one is infected with anything.” Sullivan added that the spam team is already on the issue and things are already improving.




• How Does Location Of Internal Links On A Page Matter For SEO & Google Search
  
  Google’s John Mueller said the location of internal links, links you place on your website to other parts of that same web site, does not necessarily matter if they are in the body content, footer, header or other sections on the page. The content, the anchor text, of those links helps Google understand what the page is about but the links aren’t really used more than just for crawling your site.




• Google Penalizing News Publishers With Manual Actions For Discover & Google News
  
  About a year ago, Google first introduced guidelines around manual actions for Google Discover and Google News. In the past week, I have seen numerous news publishers, both large and small, receive such manual actions.
• Google Clearing Out The Manual Actions Backlog?
  
  Earlier this month we reported that Google said there is a backlog with the manual actions in the queue, some as far back as over several months ago. Well, I am seeing some reports from SEOs that some of those manual actions are now being processed.




• Breadcrumb & HowTo Google Search Console Errors Reporting Changed
  
  Google has said it changed the error and issues reporting in Google Search Console for Breadcrumbs and HowTo structured data. This may result in new errors, warnings and issues or changes to the severity of the issues already reported by Google in Search Console’s enhancement reports.





• Reminder: Some Google Ads Search Terms Report Query Data Being Removed Tomorrow
  
  As a reminder, Google Ads will be removing some query data from your search terms report on February 1, 2022. Google warned us of this change in September 2021 and tomorrow is the day where historical query data that was collected prior to September 1, 2020 and does not meet the current thresholds for the search terms report will be removed on February 1, 2022.
• Vlog #157: Brian Wallace On Infographics Helping An NBA Player Land A $64 Million Contact
  
  
  
  Brian Wallace is the Founder and President of NowSourcing, an industry leading infographic design agency and he was in my neighborhood, which is actually his old neighborhood and stop by to talk shop. He now kind of jumps between Louisville, Kentucky and Cincinnati…




• COVID Aged Scotch At Google Office
  
  Here is a photo from the Google New York City office of a bottle of Lagavulin whisky scotch that was purchased by a Googler a year before the COVID lock downs and now, two years after COVID, it was re

Other Great Search Threads:

• Are SEOs and Devs from different planets? @g33konaut and Github SEO manager @SEOGoddess tackle the important questions: → https://t.co/qTvOZuNK9i What happens when SEOs don’t know the answer?, Google Search Central on Twitter
• Gmail campaigns became read only July 1st, 2021. Gmail campaigns will stop running June 28th, 2022. #ppcchat https://t.co/sxjEm7h1NP, Greg on Twitter
• That doesn’t make any sense for SEO. I wouldn’t recommend it., John Mueller on Twitter
• News: Google Business Profile support is now showing the type of case in the contact support flow. https://t.co/FXdGlI6E0m https://t.co/hCR1hr7Gd9, Ben Fisher on Twitter
• We don’t make the result codes on our side – so I’d assume that’s coming somewhere from your server or network / CDN., John Mueller on Twitter
• When Google My Business rebranded, they changed the URL for their Facebook support page to match the new name. Take a look at who snatched the old one. Do you know how many links online point to this URL? 🤦‍♀️https://t.co, Joy Hawkins on Twitter
• Sure, but life is easier for SEO if you pick a URL and keep it for years., John Mueller on Twitter
• The impressions are the impressions your site received in search. It’s not necessarily all the impressions shown to all users. It’s not the search volu, John Mueller on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Search Features

Other Search

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