SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: June 29, 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 said they communicate more often about algorithmic updates, not less. Google is testing snippets that expand to show more local intent information. Google product grid results are organic, not ads. Google is testing shaded background colors for shopping ads. Would you hire an SEO who doesn’t know the difference between crawling, indexing, rendering or ranking?
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google: We Are Communicating About More Algorithm Updates
Another point from the Google NYC SEO Meetup the other night was that Danny Sullivan at Google said Google has been more active about communicating about algorithm updates now than ever before. Danny said Google communicates more often about algorithm updates, which is why it feels that there are so many more updates now than previously. - Google Tests Expandable Local Related Carousels Within Snippets
Google is testing a search result snippet that shows a expandable drop down menus under the snippet that contains weather, hotels, restaurants, visual stories, events and more. When you click on these expandable menus, you get carousels of search results for those types of search features. - Should All SEOs Know The Difference Between Crawling, Indexing, Rendering & Rankings?
At the Google NYC SEO Meetup Lily Ray mentioned that when it comes to interviewing new employees for the Amsive Digital SEO team, she asks a question you must get right or you are immediate dismissed. The question is, what is the difference between crawling, indexing, rendering and rankings. - Google Product Grid Results Are Organic & Are Huge
We’ve been seeing a lot of grid-like formats with products and shopping results. We know some are ads and some are organic. John Mueller of Google just added official Google representative confirmation that many of these are organic – if you don’t trust that there is no ad label on them as evidence enough. - Google Shopping Ads Carousel With Shaded Backgrounds
Google is using a gray shaded background color for some of the results within the Google Shopping Ads carousel. I was able to replicate this, where for some images, Google thinks a light gray background works better than a white background. This is not tiled, where every other result is shaded, it is based on some other algorithm, maybe the color of the photo of the product? - GooglePlex Outdoor Play & Games
Here is a photo from a spot at the GooglePlex where Google has set up a nice and comfortable outdoor play area with outdoor games. This was shared on Instagram who posted “fun times at work.”
Other Great Search Threads:
- Brave Search Goggles, WebmasterWorld
- GA4 is a massive change from the status quo we know as Universal Analytics. To help, here’s the Ultimate Thread to learn: • Guide to get GA4 up & running • 10 reasons to implement GA4 today • How to build a Landing, Krista Seiden on Twitter
- Google ignores the changefreq setting in sitemaps, so you don’t need to do this at all., John Mueller on Twitter
- If you need something removed from the search results quickly, I’d just use the URL removal tool. If you want something to drop out, using noindex is fine. It doesn’t m, John Mueller on Twitter
- IT’S FINE! I WAS WRONG! If the server response with *ANYTHING* except 429/5xx then it CRAWLS AWAY but if it hits a 429/5xx it’ll use last successful robots.txt so just GET IT RIGHT *hahaha*, Judith Lewis on Twitter
- Work in journalism? Have opinions about Google products? We want to hear them. Take this survey, and help improve the Google News Initiative’s trainings on Google products. https://t.co/hbnVPFn9wH https://t.co/TomK, Google News Initiative on Twitter
- Don’t neglect technical SEO: Ever noticed that some URLs have ‘/’ at the end while others don’t? But any given URL ending with or without ‘/’ is the same, right? Well, yes. But not for Google. It treats them as dup, Kristina Azarenko on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Search Features
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.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
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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SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 19, 2024
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 is testing more ad formats for its search ads. BingBot is testing new compression methods. Google said it is unlikely your rankings would drop just because you have two or more sites. Google says the indexing API might work for unsupported formats. Google said hyphenated domains are not bad by themselves. And I posted the weekly SEO video recap.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
-
Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More
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… -
Google Tests More Google Ad Card Formats
Google is testing another ad format, another card like format, for its search ads. We previously saw the vertical and tall ad cards, then the carousel horizontal card format and now here are just plain horizontal ad cards. -
Google: It’s Unlikely Your Rankings Dropped Because You Have Two Websites
Google was asked if having two websites and Google finding out about them would cause the websites to drop in rankings. John Mueller from Google said that is “not likely,” adding that many people have several websites and that is fine. -
Google: Indexing API May Work For Unsupported Content But…
Gary Illyes from Google said in the recent Google SEO office hours the Google Indexing API may work for unsupported content formats, but that you shouldn’t be “surprised if suddenly it stopped working for unsupported verticals overnight.” -
Google: Are Hyphenated Domains Are Bad For Google Ranking?
The topic of using hyphens in domain names is one of the oldest SEO topics we have in this space. Heck, in 2004, SEOs said there was a specific Google ranking algorithm that filtered out domains with hyphens in them (Google did not by the way). -
Bingbot To Test Zstd Compression After Fully Gaining Full Brotli Compression
Fabrice Canel from Microsoft announced that BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will soon be testing zstd Zstandard compression, a lossless data compression, for its crawler. -
Google Cloud Socks
Google loves to print socks for its various swag and here are two variations of socks from the Google Cloud team. I like the white socks because they look more retro but here are nicer versions as well.
Other Great Search Threads:
- From a practical POV, you can specify your prices using structured data on the page, with a merchant center feed (which many ecommerce systems can make for you) or manually in merchant center., John Mueller on X
- I passed this on. I don’t think there’s anything special going on here, but the feedback on this being confusing is good to pass on., John Mueller on X
- If you have older reports that are still helpful, you’ll just need to click the View “button” and access ones you want to remain active., AdsLiaison on X
- The way I see this is more that there are things which can be recognized & ignored, but a site might still be appropriate to show (I don’t know this site/query). Folks get bad SEO advice, and if that can be neutralized granularly without broader effects, , John Mueller 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.
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