SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: October 4, 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.
Just a quick heads up, I am offline for Yom Kippur tonight/tomorrow, no stories will be posted on Wednesday. Today, Google confirmed a data issue with the search performance report in Search Console. There was a weird spike in data in Google Business Profiles insights. Google gave advice on what to do if content scrapers outrank you for your content. Glenn Gabe shared charts showing super wild fluctuations for a site after each Google algorithm update. Google also said that you should ignore anything written about link juice.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google Search Console Performance Report Missing Data On September 21st
Google has confirmed that some data may be missing in the Google Search Console Search Performance report on September 21, 2022. If you log in and view that report, you should see an annotation on that day, that explained more. - Wild Google Ranking Swings With Google Algorithm Updates
With all these different Google search ranking algorithm updates over the past several weeks, it has been a very busy time for SEOs. While most sites probably don’t see huge swings. Glenn Gabe documented a site that didn’t just see one big ranking change but several! - Report: Unusual Spike In Google Business Profile Insights Traffic
There are some reports that in some industries, like the auto dealership industry, there is a bug with Google Business Profile insights reporting. There shows a large and unaccounted-for spike in traffic from Google Local and Google Maps for some of these businesses in these Google reports. - Google Advice On When Copy Sites Outrank Your Original Content
Danny Sullivan from Google provided some advice and took some feedback on a specific example of when an original piece of research from a website was being outranked by a site copying its information. - Google: Anything That Talks About Link Juice Should Be Ignored
Google’s John Mueller said it again, he said on Twitter “anything that talks about “link juice” should be ignored.” Instead, he said you should “go and make awesome websites with content that’s useful and inspirational to real people.” - Large Google Exercise Ball
Google really puts their logo on almost everything. Here is an exercise ball at one of the Google offices and the ball has a Google logo on it. - Programming Note: Offline Wednesday For Yom Kippur 5783
This is just a programming note that I will be 100% offline starting Tuesday night (October 4th) through Wednesday night (October 5th) for Yom Kippur. I am not scheduling any stories on Yom Kippur, nothing will be posted.
Other Great Search Threads:
- We do still block malware. I don’t know what that page is doing so it’s hard to say, but you can report malware at https, John Mueller on Twitter
- AdSense Earnings and Observations – October 2022, WebmasterWorld
- Issue with BrightLocal reports, Local Search Forum
- It looks like that’s the mobile alternate URL; alternate URLs are generally not indexed on their own, they’re just swaped out to be shown in search results., John Mueller on Twitter
- Outdated content – best practice?, WebmasterWorld
- Yes, we should do better here. Note the “sources from across the web” part of that. One thing that helps us do better is when the web making such lists is more inclusive. That’s not an excuse for us, though; as, Danny Sullivan on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
- 6 Tips to Drive Faster Page Load Times, Outbrain
- Dentist SEO: An SEO Guide For Dental Practices, Go Fish Digital
- I just outranked The White House for their own content., Dejan Marketing
- Optimize long tasks, Web Dev
- SEO Case Study: 1,400%+ Organic Increase, Online Brand Established, Leverable SEO
- 5 Image Optimization Tips for Image Search, Rank Ranger
- A One-Stop Guide to The World’s Best SEO Audit, Level343
- How to Leverage Visual Search for e-Commerce Growth, PPC Hero
- Off-Page SEO: Is It Right for You?, Siege Media
- Uncover Your Most Valuable Keywords with Aira’s New Keyword Opportunity Estimation Tool, Moz
PPC
- Acquire users who are more likely to engage with in-app ads using Target ROAS bidding, Google Ads Help
- Financial Services Advertising in Brazil, India, and Portugal (October 2022), Google Advertising Policies Help
- Financial Services Advertising in France, Germany, Indonesia, and Spain (October 2022, Google Advertising Policies Help
- How to Use Customer Match in Google Ads to Grow Your Business?, PPC Expo
- 10 Tricks to Get the Click: How to Write Exceptional PPC Ads, WordStream
Search Features
Other Search
Feedback:
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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.
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