Google Search Ranking Updates, Google News Updated, SEO, Ads, Local & More

This week, we had some interesting tremors and ranking shifts from an unconfirmed Juneteenth Google search ranking update that really spiked a day or so ago. Google News revamped its design, added more features and customizations and relaunched in Spain. Google updated its help documents around Googlebot crawling, job posting and moved HTTP status documentation around, Google also clarified how to use product rich results markup on product variants. Google said content not visible on a page is no longer treated as less important. Google also said that hyphens in URLs as keyword separators are still recommended over underscores. Google Local Service ads requires five or more reviews for some service types. Google Ads will fix the performance max product listing tab to allow you to compare reports. Google Shopping Ads seems to be testing inserting queries related to material into the ad title. Google added a new LGBTQ+ owned business attribute to Google Business Profiles. Google in store nearby search feature is being tested in an expandable menu. Google is testing rounded favicons in the search results. Bing is testing a secure and HTTPS label in its search results. Google tests two rows of brand box stories for snippets. Google is also testing bolding domain names in the snippet. Google posted an interactive infographic timeline of Google Search since it launched. Google is trying out YouTube shorts for help content while John Mueller cuts his office hours to only once per month. 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: This week’s video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own.

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