SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: January 6, 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.
Car dealerships can list their car inventory in the Google local results with cars for sale on Google Business profiles. Microsoft Bing released a new plugin for WordPress to easily allow you to add IndexNow to your site. Google is testing a new look for visual stories and also for trending searches in google Discover. Also, Google’s people also ask is testing a “read full answer” button.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- IndexNow WordPress Plugin Released By Microsoft Bing
Our friends at Microsoft Bing released a holiday gift over Christmas, the IndexNow WordPress plugin. If you run your site on WordPress, you can easily click a few buttons to add IndexNow support to your site and get instant indexing from Bing and Yandex. - Google Tests New Visual Stories Designs
It looks like Google is testing new layouts and formats for the visual stories, formerly AMP stories. Brodie Clark shared some screen shots of the new designs on Twitter. - Google People Also Ask With Read Full Answer Button
Google is testing a new option on some people also ask results, an option to click a button that says “read full answer.” Valentin Pletzer spotted this in the German Google results and I am not able to replicate it on my end, but here are his screenshots, you can click on them to enlarge. - Google Discover Tests New Look For Trending Searches
Google is testing a new look and design for the trending searches you see on the Google home page on mobile and in Google Discover. Here is a screenshot of the slick search phrase in a bubble with the trending icon next to it that Jason Mandragona shared on Twitter. - Cars For Sale On Google Business Profiles
Google is showing more and more cars for sales in the local search results. Saad AK spotted it the other day and shared a video of it in action and Riley Hope shared more details on how dealerships can get their cars in these spots. - Google Street View Skier With 360 Cameras
Here is a photo of a Google Maps street view skier with the 3560 Google Maps cameras strapped onto his back. Bill Hartzer shared this with me on Twitter, there are more photos below.
Other Great Search Threads:
- Sorry to hear this. We’re always looking to keep improving our results. If you’re comfortable sharing any of the queries you found disappointing, happy to pass those on so we can look into them…, Danny Sullivan on Twitter
- Google > Mobile Interesting: I saw Visual highlights section in SERPs. It had “Hotel tour” section (with the number of pages mentioned in the corner) & Things to do nearby section. Sending to: @rustybrick SIR. https://t.co/qXktMx, Saad AK on Twitter
- Some are not happy with Google’s search engine results, so they’re building their own blacklist. The blacklist will help them filter Google’s search results through an extension so that Google’s more usable, apparently. http, Bill Hartzer on Twitter
- We’ve talked about disavowing random links lots of times – is there a missing angle that I could help cover? If it’s a random link, just ignore it. Save your time for Ironman training 🙂 (do you h, John Mueller on Twitter
- Anyone else playing around with Merchant Center benchmark product price difference yet? Quite easy to match with performance data from the Ads UI. Q: “But very few products have a benchmark available?” A: check how man, Mike Ryan on Twitter
- Bid goodbye to #Alphabet after 3000+ days. Coming up: quality #sabbatical time off, to be spent with family, and in reading, learning and exploration. A thread, my first!, Ashwin Limaye on Twitter
- Google Indexing shows irrelevant page title, WebmasterWorld
- It’s time for the lightning round! ⚡ You asked us questions about domain names and @JohnMu is here with some answers. 🤔 Can I rank internationally with a ccTLD? 🤔 Are .com domains preferred? … and mor, Google Search Central on Twitter
- January 2022 AdSense Earnings and Observations, WebmasterWorld
- Search appearance / structured data doesn’t affect ranking though – unless you’re talking about non-search features like Google Jobs., John Mueller on Twitter
- So it turns out if we have a non-consecutive gap in data, we end reporting at the gap. The team involved with this already had a fix in production to resolve this. That should go live likel, Danny Sullivan on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
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 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.
SPONSOR: Wix Studio lets digital marketing agencies get all of the benefits Wix has to offer from best-in-class SEO capabilities to 99% up-time with the added value of an extensive client and team management system baked right into the platform.
Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:
Search Topics of Discussion:
Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
-
PPC5 days ago
19 Best SEO Tools in 2024 (For Every Use Case)
-
MARKETING7 days ago
Streamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024
-
PPC7 days ago
97 Marvelous May Content Ideas for Blog Posts, Videos, & More
-
SEO7 days ago
An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 18, 2024
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Ecommerce evolution: Blurring the lines between B2B and B2C
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 19, 2024
You must be logged in to post a comment Login