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…
Register for the Search Central Virtual Unconference en español 2023
¡Hola! The Search Central Virtual Unconference en español 2023 is now open for participant
registration. All sessions will be conducted in Spanish. If you speak Spanish and are
interested, be sure to register before February 1! Come meet the community, exchange ideas,
and have fun together.
Don’t use 403s or 404s for rate limiting
Over the last few months we noticed an uptick in website owners and some content delivery
networks (CDNs) attempting to use 404 and other 4xx client errors (but not 429) to attempt to
reduce Googlebot’s crawl rate.
Daily Search Forum Recap: February 28, 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.
Google said it might have its own way of sending traffic to publishers with its AI chat, Bard…
Bing Chat AI v96 Live: Less Hallucinations & More Responses
Microsoft fully launched the quality updates in version 96 of Bing AI Chat on February 28th. It is a tad late, but it is live and reduces cases where Bing refuses to reply and instances of hallucination in answers.
Google’s Gary Illyes: Authorship, Links & Disavows Less Important Than SEOs Think
Gary Illyes from Google gave a keynote and a Q&A session yesterday at PubCon and while the keynote was pretty vanilla stuff, the Q&A did reconfirm a lot of what has been said in the past around authorship, links and disavowing links.
Google Ads Adds Automatically Created Assets & Loses Some Location Targeting Settings
Google Ads now supports automatically created assets, and the new customer acquisition goal is fully live. But also, in March, the “Search Interest” targeting and “Presence or Interest” exclusion will no longer be available in Google Ads.
GoogleHas Its Own Way To Send Traffic To Publishers Through Bard/Chat
Google Bard and its chat-based search features that have yet to be seen in the wild may have their unique way of sending publishers traffic, unique from Bing’s AI Chat feature. According to some Twitter coverage of his talk, Gary Illyes from Google sa…
Google’s Gary Illyes On Recovering From The Helpful Content Update
Gary Illyes from Google said in his Q&A session yesterday at PubCon that while recovering from a Google helpful content update is possible, you can’t always get back to where you were.
Vlog #212: Sam Michelson On CRM, Partners, Drip Campaigns & Personal Conversations
In part one, we spoke about who Sam Michelson is and his business development techniques. In part two, we dive into CRM software and how they use it…
Google Product Reviews Update: Wild & Wide Volatility & Swings
Well, this last February 2023 product reviews update has been pretty volatile and we have seen some significant ranking changes and the chatter within the SEO community has been pretty wild. This product reviews update seems to be much more widespread…
Google’s John Mueller On Rewriting Your Content With ChatGPT
Google’s John Mueller went back and forth multiple times with some SEOs on the topic of using ChatGPT not to write content from scratch but to rewrite existing content. The responses from John are educational, useful and somewhat funny as well.
Google Pulls The Current List Of Googlebot IP Netblocks From Production Systems
Gary Illyes from Google noted that the list of Googlebot IP addresses that Google started to publish in 2021 and has updated last month is actually maintained in real-time by pulling directly from the “production systems’ configuration files,” he said.
Bing “Content Medically Reviewed By” Doctor For Health Queries
Microsoft Bing now shows if the content is medically reviewed by a medical professional for health-related search queries. So if you search for [heart burn] or other health-related queries, Bing will show you which doctor reviewed the content and even …
Bing AI Chat Now Tests Response Tones: Precise, Balanced & Creative
Microsoft Bing is testing a feature to set the tone you get from Bing AI Chat. You can select precise, balanced and creative tones.
Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Product Reviews System Update, Discover & Helpful Content System, Bing AI Chat Prometheus, Google Ads Suspension & More
So much to discuss this week in the SEO video recap – just so much. Let’s start with a new confirmed Google update, and the February 2023 Google product reviews system was updated to support more than just the English language…
Google Ads Performance Max Adds Brand Exclusions, Page Feeds, Video Creation & More Reporting
Google Ads announced four new features coming soon to Performance Max, including campaign-level brand exclusions, page feeds, video creation tools and more reporting. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liason, said on Twitter, “you likely saw account-level negative keywords started rolling out next month for brand suitability & other purposes.”
Google Maps App For Android Adds “Business” Profile Tab
The Google Maps app for Android has seem to add a new tab to manage your business profile(s). The tab shows a store icon with the word “Business” below it. Clicking it, lets you manage your Google Business Profile listing directly in the app.