Google Helpful Content Update, New Product Reviews Update, Search Console Bug & Fix, Plus More

This week we covered the new big Google update that is coming next week named the helpful content update, I dig deep into it. Google has been talking about content issues for a while, so it is not surprising. Google will then launch its fifth product reviews update, the timing is weird. If you are not happy with the last product reviews update, you can let Google know. Google had a bug with the coverage report in Google Search Console that labeled pages as indexed when they were not indexed. Google fixed the validate fix button and rolled out the new labels for the coverage report and also added a new source column and unsubmitted pages filter. Google said sometimes the model for your website is no longer feasible in Search. Some affiliates are trying to swap out their tracking URLs, thinking it will help with rankings. Google’s John Mueller said again, that URLs do drop out of the Google index over time. Bing’s Fabrice Canel said Bing discovers tens of billions of URLs each day that are new but most are junk. IndexNow is growing a lot, a lot. Google is testing a Google Ads summary box in search. Google Ads released version 11.1 of the Ads API. Google Merchant Center updated how it enforces some of its policies. Google Discover is now showing the author name, over some site names. Google is testing expandable maps and tabs in the map results. Google is also testing popular destination overlays. And Google finally fixed its timer and stopwatch search feature after 30-days. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: Wix has been doing a lot of cool things for SEO. Definitely check out what they’ve been doing.

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:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

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!