SEARCHENGINES
Google Product Reviews Volatility, Local Search Ranking Update, New Search Features, MUM & BERT Expands and Search Console News

This was a busy week and I drove out to visit Greg Finn and friends in Buffalo, I helped co-host the Marketing O’Clock show and record some vlogs for the channel – so check out Marketing O’Clock on YouTube and your favorite podcast player. We are finally seeing ranking volatility in the search results related to the product reviews update after not seeing much early on. Google also released a local search ranking update that supposedly corrected the Vicinity update from December. Google launched a new highly cited top stories label and improved the about this result with a come back later warning in search. Google said it now uses MUM for detecting personal crisis searchers and expanded BERT to handle the detection of unexpected shocking content. Google Data Studio can now bring in Google News and Google Discover data from Search Console. Google Search Console’s structured data error report is more descriptive now. Google is killing off the URL parameter tool on April 26th. Google launched trusted store badges for merchants that score well in the Google experience scorecard. Google’s visual stories are now ranking well for competitive keyword phrases. Google’s John Mueller said nofollow is not a dampening factor, which many SEOs for some reason do not believe. John Mueller also said do not keep redirected URLs in your sitemap for over 3 months. John Mueller of Google was giving advice on how to improve your DA, no this was not an April Fools joke. Google rolled out a new visual design format for some queries. Google continues to test the expanded tab search snippet feature. Google is also testing displaying the image previews on the right side of the image pack. Google is testing an audio feature for some knowledge panels. Bing has round category icons to explore more images. Bing also has this massive Wikipedia box at the top of its search results. Google AdSense anchor ads for AMP sites are now working for auto ads. 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.
Sponsored by BruceClay who has been doing search marketing optimization since 1996 and also has an amazing SEO training platform.
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SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Console Video Indexing Report Adds Impressions & Sitemap Filters

Google has updated the video indexing report within Google Search Console to add impression data and a way to filter the report by your available sitemaps.
As a reminder, the video indexing report went fully live in August 2022 after Google started to slowly roll out the video index report within Google Search Console earlier in 2022.
Google added two new features to the report; impression data and a sitemap filter. Here is a GIF of these two features:
You can now overlay the impressions your indexed videos saw directly in this report. Google said, “the impressions are aggregated by page which means that if the same page appears multiple times in a single search result page (or a single Discover session), then we consider each appearance as an impression.”
Here is what it looks like:
Google added, “The Search performance report groups video search appearances by property, not by URL, which means that if multiple pages show in a search results, we’ll count only one impression. As a result, the Search performance report can show lower impression counts than the Video page indexing report.”
The sitemap filter is a nice addition also, so you can see what videos you submitted via your sitemaps compared to what Google really indexed. Google said, “To help you focus on the video pages that matter most to you, you can now filter the Video indexing report to show only video pages that are present in a selected sitemap. The filter applies to all the report features: the chart, chart totals, issue list, and exports.”
Here is a screenshot of that:
You also see a section in the sitemaps location for discovered videos:
Hi @JohnMu @rustybrick
“Discovered Video” Tab in Google search console is it something new? pic.twitter.com/hu0rcEGqKW— Jaydip Pancholi (@jaydip_ahir_333) February 2, 2023
Google Search Console Video indexing report has been also added to the Indexing>Sitemaps section.
now we can easily navigate & monitor page indexing & video indexing from the sitemap.
CC:- @glenngabe @rustybrick #SEO #GoogleSearch pic.twitter.com/NT18IE8O2f
— Vijay Chauhan 📈 (@VijayChauhanSEO) February 2, 2023
Again, if Google sees videos on your site, Google will display the new “Video indexing report” on the left navigation bar in the coverage section of Google Search Console. The report shows the status of video indexing on your site. It helps you answer the following questions:
- In how many pages has Google identified a video?
- Which videos were indexed successfully?
- What are the issues preventing videos from being indexed?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Helpful Content & Link Spam Update Done, SEO, Search Console & More
SEARCHENGINES
Google Blasts Agencies That Sell Links Building & Disavow Link Services

John Mueller of Google blasted SEO or marketing agencies that sell both link-building services and disavow link services. He said on Twitter, “These agencies (both those creating, and those disavowing) are just making stuff up, and cashing in from those who don’t know better.”
John added that its “all made up and irrelevant.”
Also, when asked if they should disavow links, John replied yesterday on Twitter, “Don’t waste your time on it; do things that build up your site instead.”
Here is the chain of tweets, so you see the context that John is replying to.
Ryan Jones does his rant:
I’m still shocked at how many seos regularly disavow links. Why? Unless you spammed them or have a manual action you’re probably doing more harm than good.
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) January 31, 2023
Here is the chain that follows:
There are no clear instructions from google’s side that what kind of links we should disavow even Google created confusion on this by saying no need to disavow blogspot, shaddy links, adult site links.
— Saurabh Rawat (Tech SEO) (@SEOGuruJaipur) January 31, 2023
I’ve personally never seen that type of negative seo actually work without some sort of hacking or the site itself having some sort of issue the links exploit.
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) January 31, 2023
That’s all made up & irrelevant. These agencies (both those creating, and those disavowing) are just making stuff up, and cashing in from those who don’t know better.
— John Mueller is watching out for Google+ 🐀 (@JohnMu) January 31, 2023
Pretty strong words from John, don’t you think?
Here is the second part:
Not unless it was placed with ‘intent to manipulate’ by someone. Its important to know you have those though as they could be impacting relevancy or the site owners opinion on how many valid links you actually have etc
— Paul Madden (@PaulDavidMadden) January 31, 2023
Don’t waste your time on it; do things that build up your site instead.
— John Mueller is watching out for Google+ 🐀 (@JohnMu) January 31, 2023
One note:
Thanks for posting on this issue. I think you should add my conclusion tweet as well that all this is claimed by an agency, not by me.
I am not a native English speaker, not sure how people are taking this. I just tried to put some serious points here to help our SEO community.— Saurabh Rawat (Tech SEO) (@SEOGuruJaipur) February 1, 2023
Just yesterday we covered the topic of disavowing spammy porn links and also added how Google has downplays disavowing links for a while. John said in that in that SEO office hours help video yesterday, “That said, this will not position your site as it was before, but it can help our algorithms to recognize that they can trust your site again, giving you a chance to work up from there.” I don’t think he meant that fully based on what he said yesterday and previously?
But this is pretty strong language for not bothering with the disavow file.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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