SEARCHENGINES
Google’s John Mueller Beautiful SEO Rant

I know some of you may not like it and may think I am some sort of suck-up for covering this but there is so much truth and beauty to John Mueller’s recent SEO rant. He said, “maybe you should stop reading SEO blogs and instead do something useful for your site & its users?”
Let me first share the thread of tweets from John, so you can all read it:
Catching up on email after vacation & co, one of the things I would have liked to reply with to sites asking for SEO tips …
Maybe you should stop reading SEO blogs and instead do something useful for your site & its users?
— 🫧 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🫧 (@JohnMu) August 2, 2022
… brought to you by another otherwise great site, with a passionate owner, that has devolved into the trap of “17 best WIDGETS for QWERTY in 2022” with a compilation of mediocre content. You want to rank better again? Then do better again.
— 🫧 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🫧 (@JohnMu) August 2, 2022
Dump the crap. Dump the filler. Get to the point. Don’t rehash. Make useful things that you’re proud of. Use affiliate links if you want, but don’t be an affiliate: be real, be yourself.
— 🫧 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🫧 (@JohnMu) August 2, 2022
In short, John is saying you should stop looking for step-by-step instructions on how to rank better. It just doesn’t work that way anymore and reading someone else’s blog to get those steps is not going to help you get there. Instead, focus your efforts on really doing something useful for your users on your site.
Sure, this site is an SEO blog and I want you to read it. But truth is, I do not give much tactical SEO advice here. I cover news, what is changing, what is trending and what the search community is talking about. I am not giving you the top 10 SEO tips to gain new links, or the top 14 ways to formulate your title tags. I tell you what is changing in search and you then come up with your own ideas on how to tactically leverage that.
I think the readers here are a special bread – they are mostly advanced SEOs, doing SEO for years, have had lots of successes and also have battle scares from Google penalties and algorithm adjustments. They come here to learn about what is new, where Google is headed and formulate their own useful and tactical strategies to succeed in SEO.
I do love John’s rant and I think reading it will make us all better at coming up with better SEO strategies that we can implement in a tactical way on our own sites.
Here is more after I wrote this piece:
But, if you use affiliate links, then you are being an affiliate. This is like saying you can make honey, but don’t be a bee 🐝
— Tyron Love (@tyron_love) August 2, 2022
Yeah, I did not consult a dictionary before this tweet, but I hope the nuance came across. If you’re reviewing 12 widgets, then I want to read someone’s opinion after reviewing them. Be a salesperson on a product landing page. Be real on a review, like when a friend asks you.
— 🫧 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🫧 (@JohnMu) August 2, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Kirkland Aerial View

Here is an aerial view of part of the Google Kirkland, Seattle office. You can see that they have a tennis court and the net said Kirkland in it. I am not sure how busy this office is nowadays but it use to be pretty busy.
This photo is from Instagram.
This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.
SEARCHENGINES
Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools API Missing A Week Of Data

The Bing Webmaster Tools API might have a week of data loss, a data gap, if you will. There was some sort of issue where the API was not returning data after March 3rd and then after Glenn Gabe reported it to Microsoft’s Fabrice Canel, Microsoft fixed the issue but there is two weeks or so of data loss between March 3rd and March 17th.
Glenn Gabe posted on Twitter about this issue, first on March 17th about the API no longer returning data after March 3rd and then again after Microsoft said it was resolved, showing that yes, new data is coming in but that there is a data gap of two weeks with no data.
Thanks for reporting Glenn, business travelling back from SMX Munich, I will have the team looking at this ASAP.
— Fabrice Canel (@facan) March 17, 2023
Just checked now and the week of 3/10 is missing. Any way to get that back? Thanks again Fabrice! pic.twitter.com/Q8v2CfsCCV
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 21, 2023
So as you can see, there is this two-week period where there is no data being reported by the API.
The Bing Webmaster Tools web interface seems to have the data, so technically, I guess you can export it and do some work to get it where you need it but you should be aware that the API may be missing this data.
Update: This was a week of data, not necessarily two weeks:
Just to clarify, that’s missing one week of data, not two. The week of 3/10 was missing when I last checked.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 23, 2023
Also, there may be an issue with the IndexNow WordPress plugin, but I am not sure and I don’t have a way to test this one:
Thanks @vahandev, we will have a look.
— Fabrice Canel (@facan) March 20, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Non-Supported Rel Link Attributes Do Nothing With Google Search

The other day, John Mueller of Google tweeted something true but sarcastic and it seems some took it the wrong way. He said In case you’re curious, the rel=dofollow works on links. The thing is, it could have been any rel attribute, such as rel=cheese and it would be treated the same as rel=dofollow, Google would ignore the attribute.
The only attributes Google would recognize and do anything with are the supported link attributes, such as rel=nofollow, rel=sponsored, and rel=ugc. But rel=dofollow means nothing to Google, Google will just crawl it like the rel link attribute is not even there. Occasionally I stick funny things in my link attributes just to see if anyone would pick up on it, no one does.
After John tweet this, he had to then come back and clarify, as to not set some SEOs off to add dofollow to their HTML links.
Here are those tweets:
Just in case it wasn’t clear from all the replies here, using an unknown rel-attribute on links doesn’t do anything, and since the default behavior is to use links normally, this just treats links like links. You don’t need to use rel=dofollow. You can, but you don’t need to.
— johnmu is not a bard yet 🖇️🖇️ (@JohnMu) March 22, 2023
If you wanted to, you could go even further and use made-up attributes, like <p cheese=”good”>. This will – unfortunately for the robot – also be ignored. Technically you could now create a page to do something with CSS or JS with that, but I will know.
— johnmu is not a bard yet 🖇️🖇️ (@JohnMu) March 22, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
-
AMAZON6 days ago
The Top 10 Benefits of Amazon AWS Lightsail: Why It’s a Great Choice for Businesses
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Google Search Status Dashboard Adds Google Ranking Updates
-
SEO2 days ago
Optimize Your SEO Strategy For Maximum ROI With These 5 Tips
-
WORDPRESS4 days ago
Internal Linking for SEO: The Ultimate Guide of Best Practices
-
SEARCHENGINES3 days ago
Google Search Console Shows If embedURL Page Uses indexifembedded
-
SEARCHENGINES3 days ago
Google Bard Won’t Link To Sources Too Often
-
SEARCHENGINES2 days ago
Google Mars Space Office Design At Belo Horizonte, Brazil
-
PPC6 days ago
PPC Campaign Testing: The Dos & Don’ts to Turn Risks into Rewards