SEARCHENGINES
Google Business Profiles To Drop Product Management For Merchant Center?
The folks at WhiteSpark showed screenshots of Google Business Profile limiting the control you have over your product listings within your local panel. They showed how “businesses can no longer edit existing Products on their Google Business Profiles and can only add new Products through Merchant Center.” Google Products is now automatically linked to Merchant Center in the GBP Manager. Google later on in the day reverted this change.
I spoke with someone at Google and they reassured me this was a bug that lasted a few hours or so and they have no intention to force people to manage their products in the Google Merchant Center.
Honestly I guess it would makes sense to move product management from Business Profiles to Merchant Center, as Google is gently pushing people away from the Google Business Profile Manager in general but again, Google said no – while you can manage your products in Merchant Center, Google has no intention to stop anyone from managing their products in Google Profile Manager.
Darren Shaw asked on Twitter “Is it the end of Google Products as we know it? Businesses can no longer edit existing Products on their Google Business Profiles (GBP) and can only add new Products through Merchant Center!”
When they try to edit products, they get this red notice that reads “Products can’t be edited. You can only delete products.”
Personally, I see the ability to add products on my business profile. But I have never done so, so I do not know if this will work and then I won’t be able to edit it after. I don’t sell product, so I rather not test this out – I believe the folks at WhiteSpark:
After a few hours of this bug, Google put things back, but it does make you wonder if this is the direction Google is headed. I mean, it makes sense Google would do this based on all other signals. Again, Google said no – this is not the direction Google is going with this.
We checked a bunch of profiles and we’re able to add and edit Products manually again.🐛 I wonder if this is just a sign of things to come though?
— Allie Margeson (@SeoAllie) May 31, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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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