SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: December 5, 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.
It has been a pretty volatile past week or so, not just over the weekend but also mid-week of last week – did you see a lot of Google Search ranking fluctuations? Google has retired the Duplex On Web crawler and feature. Google clarified the use of noindex and 4xx codes for crawl budget. Google gave advice for JavaScript-heavy pages and Search Console errors. And I posted the weekly Google webmaster report.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Large Google Search Ranking Algorithm Updates & Volatility Continues
Every Monday, I end up covering an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update but this past week, going into the weekend, was even more volatile than the others. I am seeing way more chatter, and even the tools are showing heavier volatility than the normal high volatility. - December 2022 Google Webmaster Report
Welcome to the big Google Webmaster Report for December 2022, the last one for the 2022 year. It was a fun 30 days or so; we learned a lot. The VP of Google Search, Hyung-Jin Kim, told us E-A-T is used everywhere and that there was a Coati algorithm that replaced Panda. - Google Clarifies Using Noindex & 404 Status Codes For Crawl Budget Optimization
On Friday, Lizzi Sassman from Google updated the crawl budget management help document with two more topics. Specifically, Google added two new myths to the crawl budget documentation. - New Retired Google Crawlers Document With DuplexWeb-Google Being Retired
Google has updated its Google Crawler / User Agent help document with a new section for “Retired Google crawlers.” With that, Google announced the retirement of the short-lived DuplexWeb-Google User Agent. - Have Content Load First For JavaScript Heavy Sites Says Google
Gary Illyes from Google posted a PSA (public service announcement) of sorts on Mastodon and LinkedIn for sites that are heavy with JavaScript. He said that you should try to load the content, including the “marginal boilerplate” content, first when you have a JavaScript-heavy site. - Google Doogler Fire Station Hydrant
Did you know that Google has a play fire station area, of course, a fire hydrant, for dogs, Dooglers, that are at the office? Here is a photo of one I found on Instagram, this is from the Google Kirkl - Google Doodle For Seasonal Holidays 2022
Google has posted its “Seasonal Holidays” Google Doodle for the month of December – the holiday month. Google did this last year as well, and while the past few days we had some other special Doodles on Google’s home page, when those Doodles came off, Google put up this Season Holidays Doodle up. - Vlog #200: Jeremy Meindl On CRM Targeting To Get A Girl (He Married Her) & For Marketing
Part one and part two with Jeremy Meindl was more on black hat SEO stuff and now in part three…
Other Great Search Threads:
- There’s no “weight” from a sitemap, it’s essentially just a collection of URLs, and the only difference is that the list comes from the site owner., John Mueller on Mastodon
- A mention in an article is prominent when it first comes out (maybe even linked from the homepage), and over time the article is less & less visible, perhaps even shifting into an archive section., John Mueller on Mastodon
- Heads-up: Google looks to have now rolled out infinite scroll on desktop (often including a ‘more results’ button) for some queries in the US. I guess some users like to browse a lot of results quickly. Thoughts on this? More inf, Brodie Clark on Twitter
- New Google Partner badges incoming…, Menachem Ani on Twitter
- Googlebot crawls from US based IP addresses. Keep that in mind when you’re doing geo redirects/blocking., Gary Illyes on Mastodon
- That sounds a lot like cloaking / spam. Make important things visible on the page to everyone., John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
- Prerender pages in Chrome for instant page navigations, Chrome Developers
- Semantic HTML: What It Is and How to Use It Correctly, Semrush
- SEO Gap Analysis — Whiteboard Friday, Moz
- 16 More Best Free SEO Chrome Extensions, I Love SEO
- Behind the Bing It On Challenge, Bing Search Quality Insights
- SEO Split Test Result: Adding the Category Name to Product Page Titles, Semrush
- A Quick Tech SEO Audit Template, Chris Green
- Generative AI For SEO: An Overview, WordLift Blog
- Anchor Text: The Complete Guide for Better SEO, Erik Emanuelli
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider Update – Version 18.0, Screaming Frog
PPC
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, you can follow us on Facebook and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Won’t Change The 301 Signals For Ranking & SEO
Gary Illyes from Google said on stage at the SERP conference last week that there is no way that Google would change how the 301 redirect signal works for SEO or search rankings. Gary added that it’s a very reliable signal.
Nikola Minkov quoted Gary Illyes as saying, “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal,” when asked if a 301 redirect not working is a myth. Honestly, I am not sure the context of this question, as it is not clear from the post on X, but here it is:
More from @methode:
– 301 redirect not working is a myth. “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal”.#SERPConf2024#SERPConf2024International— Nikola Minkov (@n_minkov) April 19, 2024
We’ve covered 301 redirects here countless times – but I never saw a myth that Google does not use 301 redirects as a signal for canonicalization or for passing signals from an old URL to the redirected URL.
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
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.
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