SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: October 10, 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.
I am offline Monday and Tuesday but here are some useful scheduled stories that I wrote over the weekend and scheduled to be posted today.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google Product Reviews Update Is Primarily On A Page-Level Basis But Not Always..
Google’s Danny Sullivan told us that the Google product reviews update primarily evaluates product review content on a page-level basis, but not always. Danny added “for sites that have a substantial amount of product review content, any content within a site might be evaluated by the update.” - Vlog #192: Banter With Greg Finn & The Growth Of Cypress North
Greg Finn and I have known each other for a pretty long time, so this video is pretty fun and we kind of go off topic a bunch but I promise, there is some knowledge throughout. We both miss the old days, the golden era, of search marketing – it was just a lot of fun. - Example Of Google Featured Snippet Callouts
A month ago we reported on Google’s announcement of the featured snippet callouts feature. Where Google uses MUM to bold sections of the featured snippet to give searchers a more in-your-face answer to their query. Well, now we are seeing more of that in the search results. - Google News Publisher Error “There Are No Items To Show”
Over the weekend, there has been a number of reports from news publishers of an error in the Google News Publisher Center. The specific error says “there are no items to show.” This is supposedly a Google bug that Google is working to address. - Google Adds Examples Of Types Of Product Review Pages To Help Doc
Google has added three examples of the type of product review pages and who can write them to the “how to write product reviews” help document. - Google: Structured Data May Help Us Identify Product Reviews Content
Google has confirmed that structured data is one of the many signals the search company uses to help identify if a page has product reviews content or not. This was first said by Alan Kent of Googe and then confirmed by Danny Sullivan of Google. - Google Dublin Bees
Here is a video and some photos of an organization letting loose a bunch of Irish honey bees at the Google Dublin office. Well, not inside the office but outside the office. - Programming Note: Offline For Sukkot On Monday & Tuesday
This is just a quick note that I will be offline for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot on Monday, October 10th, and Tuesday, October 11th. All stories, social media posts, etc were pre-written and scheduled to be posted. I’ll be back with live coverage Wednesday, October 12th.
Other Great Search Threads:
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.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Succos.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Says Keyword Stuffing Alone Does Not Make A Page Unhelpful

Google’s John Mueller said that keyword stuffing alone would not make a page be deemed unhelpful. John added that Google is good at ignoring tactics like keyword stuffing, so that alone likely won’t be the reason for ranking issues in Google Search.
This conversation came up on Mastodon when someone pointed to a specific page that as ranking well even though they think the page has keyword stuffing on it. John replied saying, “we tend not to evaluate the quality of other people’s pages — it’s not really that useful, if you can’t change something there.”
But the SEO responded, “they are not other people. That’s my client. We are trying to figure out if there is any chance Google bot identified unhelpful content on our website. Because we were hit by helpful content update. My theory is since we are adding too much content on one page, it may appear as unhelpful content. Any inputs from your end will be appreciated.”
So John replied again saying, “I don’t think keyword stuffing alone would necessarily make a page unhelpful. Usually keyword stuffing is easy for search engines to ignore, it was one of the first things that people did to manipulate the results back in the 90’s.”
“I’d recommend going through the questions in our blog post, and ideally with someone who’s not associated with your site,” John added.
In 2018, John Mueller said something similar, saying that keyword stuffing alone wouldn’t result in a penalty and then last year saying keyword stuffed URLs doesn’t lead to a penalty either.
Forum discussion at Mastodon.
SEARCHENGINES
Bing Chat Answers Now In Bing Search

If you do some queries in Bing Search, you may get the Bing Chat box and a brief answer from Bing Chat at the top. We knew this was coming, Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO of Microsoft Bing said it would a week or so ago and now it seems to be here.
This shows up in all browsers, but when you try to navigate to the Bing Chat interface, it tells you that you need to be in the beta and use Microsoft Edge. If you are in the beta and using Edge, then it lets you continue your voyage.
I spotted this via David Iwanow on Twitter, he shared some screenshots there but here is a screenshot of what I see for the query [standing desk vs sitting desk]:
Here is a video of it in action:
Previously we saw Bing testing summarized from sources and thought maybe that was a hint of Bing Chat in Bing Search but no, this is different.
Glenn Gabe noted there is a setting for this as well:
Here is the difference between Bing AI chat featured snippets (just released) versus the traditional answers (w/out Bing Chat). Again, clicking any of the prompts or entering a follow-up question takes you to Bing Chat proper.
Oh, and Go Princeton (it’s where I’m located!) 🙂 pic.twitter.com/v1olmgrlsc
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 20, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Can Bing Chat Access Content Behind Paywalls?

There is some concern and speculation on the internet that Microsoft Bing is feeding in content behind paywall and using such content to provide answers in Bing Chat. I asked Bing Chat if it can give answers based on content behind paywalls and it said no, it cannot.
But I am not sure if this answer is 100% true:
Here is one thread about Bing Chat referencing and citing content behind a paywall to provide an answer for Bing Chat:
It’s a tricky minefield. If proven that these generative AIs are trained on proprietary and/or paywalled content, it opens the door to, shall we say, interesting litigation.
— Barry Adams 📰 (@badams) March 19, 2023
Now, is this possible? Well, there can be answers on why Bing was able to access this content:
(1) Maybe the content was open for a period of time where it was not behind a paywall and Bing indexed it?
(2) Maybe the content provider is giving this paywalled content to Bingbot without a paywall. There are approved ways to give paywalled content to search engines, like the old first click free and flexible sampling solutions.
So technically, the content might now be behind a paywall for users but not for search engines.
So technically, Bingbot doesn’t see the paywall but users might.
That is a possible technical explanation.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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