SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: January 24, 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.
2022 has started off with a lot of volatility in the Google search results, there was another unconfirmed Google search update noticed over the weekend. Google released a new robots tag named indexifembedded, it deals with embeddable content. Google spoke about product images in the web results and how there is no real documentation on that. Google also spoke about redirects pull backs and other signals around links consolidation. Google is discontinuing Cameos on Google. AdSense is now seperating out YouTube payments, which might be a bad thing. Finally, part three with Riley Hope’s vlog is out.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- January 22nd Unconfirmed Google Search Ranking Update
Again I am seeing signals, both a lot of chatter from the SEO community and tools lighting up around a possible but yet unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update. Yes, there has been a ton of unconfirmed updates in the past couple of weeks and let’s add this one to the list. - New Google Robots Tag indexifembedded: Control Indexing With Embedded Content
Google has announced a brand new robots tag it will obey going forward, it is named indexifembedded. It lets you control if you want Google to index a page with embedded content. - Google: There Is No Schema For Product Images In Web Search
Google’s John Mueller was asked if there is a way to better control the images that Google shows in the web search results for product results. The answer is not really, there is no schema or structured data that helps you control or define these for Google, John said. He said Google just decides on its own if it wants to show them for snippets or not. - Google On Redirect Pull Backs Plus Signal Consolidation
I am not going to get into the 301 vs 302 redirect debate, covered that countless times here. But I found an interesting conversation on Twitter about the differences between 301 and 302 redirects and how they consolidate signals forward or back, also known as pull backs. - Cameos on Google Is Going Away
Google on Friday sent out emails to those who have recorded videos for Cameos on Google that they are discontinuing the service. “Beginning February 17, 2022, you will no longer be able to record videos through Cameos on Google and any existing videos posted to Google Search and Discover won’t be shown,” Google wrote. - Google AdSense To Separate YouTube Earnings With Own Payment Threshold
Google sent emails to YouTube publishers that their YouTube AdSense payments will be separated from their other AdSense payments. So if you get paid through Google AdSense for AdSense ads on your sites and also in YouTube, you will now get payments individually for each. The issue is, that means each has to hit the $100 payment threshold individually and you might get paid out slower. - Vlog #156: Riley Hope On COVID & Searcher Behavior
In part one Riley Hope and I spoke about her SEO career, how she did her thesis on ethics in SEO and we spoke about the automotive SEO space. In part two we talk about women in SEO and more on the automotive space and search results… - Stunning Dublin View From Google
Look at this stunning and awesome view of Dublin from the Google office building. It is just wow. The person who posted this on Instagram wrote “Dublin bay putting on a show this morning.”
Other Great Search Threads:
- A thread about Wordle, letter frequencies, and how the choice of corpus matters for textual analysis. I’ve only been playing Wordle for about two weeks, so I can’t claim any expertise, but it tickled some old interests of m, Paul Haahr on Twitter
- Came into work to a small handful of ‘Discover policy violation’ notices from Search Console for two websites. None with merit so will be challenging them. Do we expect a flood of these soon? I’d rather not spend, Ant on Twitter
- Is this still true Google? Yes, it is true says Google. Well, if Google says it is true, therefore it must be wrong… via @JohnMu https://t.co/WGSemeG5db, Barry Schwartz on Twitter
- Nope – no session cookies. Each crawl is like a fresh request., John Mueller on Twitter
- Sometimes & maybe :-). If you don’t want us to guess, then make it so that we don’t have to guess — and just use normal HTML links., John Mueller on Twitter
- This seems a bit nit-picky. I don’t agree with everything either of these sites do, but they have done a ton to move the ecosystem forward overall. Nothing is permanent or perfect; good scientists refine t, John Mueller on Twitter
- Nothing has really changed there, I don’t think any search engine has or had a concept of LSI keywords. Some folks just like to “sell them”, since “it must be true if search engines say it’s false” 🙂, John Mueller on Twitter
- Wordle easter egg on Google 👀 How many notifications have you had about this so far @rustybrick? https://t.co/fVlT1MuIuW, Brian Freiesleben 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:
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.
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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