SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: May 13, 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 added a new search appearance filter for “translated results” in the performance report. Google will add a new indexing report in Search Console for video page indexing. Google posted its I/O presentation on Google Search for site owners. Google launched a new popular destinations search carousel for Google Travel. Microsoft Bing has a new top rated tutors carousel that leads to Microsoft’s TakeLessons. And I posted the weekly SEO video recap – have a good weekend.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- New Video Page Indexing Report Coming To Google Search Console
At Google I/O yesterday, Google announced a new report coming to Google Search Console named the video page indexing report. This report will be available under the index section in Search Console and will show you a summary of all the video pages Google found while crawling and indexing your web site. - New Translated Results Search Appearance Filter Added to Google Search Console Performance Report
Google has quietly added a new search appearance filter to the performance report in Google Search Console. The new search appearance filter is named “translated results” and it shows you how many searchers accessed your site’s content when Google translates it in the search results. - Google I/O Session: Google Search For Site Owners
One of the few sessions at Google I/O on Google Search was presented by John Mueller, who you all know, and also Dikla Cohen, a Technical Solutions Consultant at Google. This covers some of the more basics around Google Search Console, some of the newer features released – all of which you should all know about if you read this site daily. - Bing Top Rated Tutors Carousel Through Microsoft TakeLessons
Bing Search has a new carousel for “top rated tutors” for keyword searches such as [piano], [makeup], [guitar] and so on. This brings up a special search carousel that pulls data from TakeLessons, a Microsoft owned property. - Google Search Adds Popular Destinations Carousel
Google had added a “popular destinations” search related carousel to the search results for some queries. Valentin Pletzer spotted this the other day and I can see it as well on both mobile and desktop search. - Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Mother’s Day Algorithm Update, Google I/O News, Horrid SEO Advice In Google’s Courses, New Ad Format & More
Google had a big unconfirmed search ranking algorithm update around Mother’s Day. Also, this week was Google I/O and Google had a ton of announcements specific to search… - Official NBA Game Ball At Google Office
Google’s Satyajeet Salgar posted a photo of an official NBA game ball he found sitting in a meeting room at the Google / YouTube offices. It is in a glass mounted case, so I assume it is worth somethi
Other Great Search Threads:
- Google has added “other notable metrics” to PageSpeed Insights today, Aviel Anders Fahl on Twitter
- Appreciate concerns raised about quality of our results, don’t discount those & we’ll keep working to improve. But to state the results “objectively” suck without any stats? That doesn’t feel, well, objective. I, Danny Sullivan on Twitter
- How does Barry Schwartz write so much content? Where does he learn it from?, Reddit
- How many possible robots meta tag variations (excluding numbers) are understood by Google?, John Mueller on Twitter
- I wish other SEOs would stop using “crawl budget” as an excuse for websites not doing well for , Adam Gent on Twitter
- That’s objectively wrong. Seriously, I’ll pass along the concerns about UX. Me, I’m a web page person. All I tend to want is a list of web pages. But there are lots of people who want more than that., 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.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
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.
SPONSOR: Wix Studio lets digital marketing agencies get all of the benefits Wix has to offer from best-in-class SEO capabilities to 99% up-time with the added value of an extensive client and team management system baked right into the platform.
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:
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!
-
PPC5 days ago
19 Best SEO Tools in 2024 (For Every Use Case)
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Streamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024
-
SEO6 days ago
An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO
-
PPC6 days ago
97 Marvelous May Content Ideas for Blog Posts, Videos, & More
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 18, 2024
-
MARKETING5 days ago
Ecommerce evolution: Blurring the lines between B2B and B2C
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 19, 2024
You must be logged in to post a comment Login