SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: February 11, 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.
Google is testing a more visible ad label with a green curved border – this is a bit shocking. Google AdSense has a cuter revenue calculator that might be a bit over promising. Google will upload its own videos to your Google Ads performance max campaigns if you do not upload your own. SEMs go super deep with their keyword research. Google updated its Google Search Ads 360 platform. Plus, don’t miss the weekly SEO video recap.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google Tests A Curved With Green Border & More Visible Ad Label
Google seems to be testing a new ad label on the search ads that is way more noticeable than the normal ad label. This one has the black ad text but it is outlined in a curved green border making the ad label stand out much more than previous ad labels. - Poll: SEMs Go Deep On Keyword Research
A Twitter poll by Liraz Postan showed that many SEOs and SEMs go pretty deep with their keyword research. 60% of those who took the poll said they go as low as 10 on the volume chart when digging into keywords. - PSA: Upload Your Own Videos To Your Google Ads Performance Max Campaign Or Google Will For You
There have been some recent complaints that Google Ads is creating and picking its own videos for your Performance Max campaigns. Alex van de Pol wrote on Twitter “Note if you do not add video assets yourself in the performance max campaigns Google will do this for you. These videos are 19 secs long and are very generic. You cannot delete these automatically created videos.” - Google AdSense Has A Revenue Calculator Widget
Google AdSense has a revenue calculator widget that estimates how much money you can make from Google AdSense on your website. It is not new, it has been around for around a year, but Sunny pointed it out to me on Twitter a few weeks ago. - New Updates To Google Search Ads 360
Google has made some big updates to its Search Ads 360 platform. Search Ads 360 is a search management platform that helps marketers manage search marketing campaigns across multiple engines and media channels. It currently supports Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo! Japan Sponsored Products, Baidu and Yahoo! Gemini. - Search News Buzz Video Recap: Weird Google Algorithm Patterns, New Google Ad Label, Unusual Googlebot Crawling Issue, Search Console Loss & More Messages
The Google algorithm ranking tracking tools seems to be having fun, or maybe they are off, I am seeing mixed signals of Google ranking updates. Google is testing a way more visible Google ad label with a green curved border, shocking… - Green Google Android Barista
Let me start off by saying that I don’t drink coffee or baristas – so if I call it the wrong thing, I am sorry. But here is a photo I found on Instagram from the GooglePlex of an android shape with gr
Other Great Search Threads:
- People usually come to me with weird issues they or their teams have trouble figuring out. While I try to help, a lot of the knowledge would probably be useful to others as well. I’ll try to be better at sharing, but for now, Patrick Stox on Twitter
- Thx for reaching out. When applicable, Insights are integrated w/ Recommendations to make taking action easy. Here, it’s showing top performing audiences the campaign is already optimizing for. While there isn’t, AdsLiaison on Twitter
- Welcome to the dark side. Introducing Dark theme, available on desktop, mobile and everywhere you search., Google on Twitter
- YouTube Search impressions will be included in the aggregated Search Partners reporting., AdsLiaison on Twitter
- Data Protection: Google Analytics in Breach of GDPR on Austria Website, WebmasterWorld
- We usually ignore everything after a # when it comes to links and discovering URLs., John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Search Features
Other Search
Feedback:
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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.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More
For the original iTunes version, click here.
The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings in the search results. Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy will be fought both algorithmically and through manual actions. Google responded to The Verge mocking its search rankings over best printer. Google Search Console has a new unused ownership tokens page. Some sites may see the Google Indexing API work for a limited time on unsupported content types. And having two sites won’t result in your sites search ranking decline. BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will test Zstd compression soon. Google Search is testing thumbs-up and down buttons for product carousels. Google is testing new sitelinks designs. Google Notes on Search may not go away in May. Google Maps no longer supports draft reviews. Google Maps released a bunch of new maps, directions, travel and EV features. Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns now support AI image generation. Google Ads is testing a similar product carousel. Google Ads reminds advertisers that ad customizers are going away. Google Ads is testing a new horizontal ad card format. Google AdSense has these new ad intent formats. Google AdSense publishers are reporting lower RPM earnings since mid-February. Google threatens to drop links to California news publishers amongst link tax bill. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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