Google Blue Highlights In Featured Snippets Live
After many months of testing, Google has launched the highlights in the featured snippets within the Google search results. Google seems to have gone with the blue highlights, not the yellow, as we previously reported on both styles.
Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Product Reviews Volatility, Bing AI Chat Updates, Google Bard & AI, Google Ads and More
This week we saw a lot more volatility from the Google Product reviews update, one last weekend and the other around March 1st. I also posted the big Google webmaster report for March 2023. Bing AI chat now lets you set the tone of the responses…
Google On Moving Domain To Temporary Domain & Then Back To Original Domain
An SEO is in a situation where a site needs to move from www.domain.com to new.domain.com and then a few months later back to www.domain.com. John Mueller of Google was asked if they should use 302 redirects but John said, no, use 301 redirects.
Google Ads Testing New Design To Improve Advertiser Workflow
Google announced it is testing a new design to help improve the workflow of advertisers in the Google Ads console. Google said it is “testing new designs to improve how the product is organized and make things easier to find'”while continuing to provid…
Google: You Don’t Hoard Anything By Nofollowing Links (It’s An SEO Myth)
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that it is an SEO myth to say you can use the nofollow attribute on links to hoard your links. He said, “You don’t hoard anything when you make links nofollow.” “It’s a common SEO myth,” he added.
Bing Tests Site Favicon On Right Of Search Result Snippet
Microsoft Bing is testing placing a site’s favicon on the right side of the search result title’s snippet. We are accustomed to seeing it on the left for Google search results, we even saw Bing testing it on the left on mouse cursor hover over, but he…
Google Local Posts Updates & Test Interfaces
Google is testing a few interfaces for the Google Posts and updates in the local interfaces. One is to overlay the Google updates in the images for the business listing and the other is to show a “more posts” button in the Google Posts overlay in Goog…
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 2, 2023
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.
I posted the big Google webmaster report…
March 2023 Google Webmaster Report
Here is the big Google webmaster report for March 2023, where I cover all the most important things that happened with Google search over the past month. The highlights include the Google product reviews update and a few unconfirmed updates. Of course…
Google: We Treat Hashtags As Words In Content
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, “when it comes to web pages in Google Search, hashtags are just words, they have no special meaning or effect.” So if you are big into hashtagging everything, Google will consume it as just content on the page.
Google On lastmod Tag In XML Sitemap: Update The Date If Your Providing Something New
Google’s John Mueller spoke a bit more about when you should update the date in the lastmod tag in the XML sitemap file. He said on Twitter if you are “providing something new for search engines that you’d like reflected in search,” then update the dat…
Google Ads Policy Changes For Malicious Software, Compromised Sites & Unwanted Software
Google Ads is updating its Malicious or unwanted software policy on May 9, 2023. The policy will be split into three policies, Malicious software, Compromised sites, and Unwanted software.
Google: Blocking Other Crawlers Does Not Impact Google Search
Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google Search would be impacted if you block other crawlers, like Bing or the ChatGPT crawler. John said no, “Google doesn’t care if you block other crawlers.”
Google Search Ranking Volatility On March 1st, Is It The Product Reviews Update?
I am seeing a much bigger spike in chatter within the SEO community this morning around another Google search ranking algorithm update. It might be related to the ongoing Google February 2023 product reviews update or it might be something new. Right …
Bing Webmaster Tools Adding Bing Chat & Index Coverage Reporting
Yesterday, Fabrice Canel from Microsoft Bing announced at PubCon that Bing Webmaster Tools would get two new features. First is the Bing Chat integration, and the second is the index coverage report.
Google Tests Blocking News Content For Canadian Users
Google has been testing blocking news in Google Search on about 4% of Canadian users. Google said, “We’re briefly testing potential product responses to Bill C-18 that impact a very small percentage of Canadian users.”
Bing Summarized From Sources & The Web Answer Box
Microsoft Bing seems to be incorporating more of its Chat AI features into answer boxes in the main search results. Bing is testing a “summarized” box that gives you summary answers from X sources and the web.
Google Search “People Also Ask” Showing Less Often
Both Semrush and RankRanger are reporting several point drops in the percentage of time a people also ask box shows up in the Google search results. The drop started on Friday, February 24th, a few days after the rollout of the February 2023 product r…
Timeline for bringing page experience ranking to desktop
We’ll begin using page experience as part of our desktop ranking systems beginning in February
2022. The rollout will be complete by the end of March 2022. This ranking launch will be based on
the same page experience signals that we rolled out for mobile earlier this year.
Refreshed guidelines for site owners
In 2002 we launched a page with a set of guidelines for site owners that gave an overview of
best practices when it came to building a site. We called this page “Webmaster Guidelines” and
it’s been with us ever since. Since then we a…