Google Tests Sponsored Label On Desktop Search Ads
Google is testing displaying the new “sponsored” ad label on the desktop search results. Google launched the new sponsored ad label on mobile search two months ago and tested it also on Discover recently, and is now also testing it on the desktop inte…
Google Tests About Carousel For Websites
Google is testing a new search feature to tell you more about a website. This is an “about” carousel that shows more information about a site, including information from the site itself and third-party sites.
Google Testing Displaying Local Business Profiles In Google Discover
Google is testing including the local business profile listings in Google Discover. There is this new section named “mentioned in this article” where Google can show the local business listing of companies that were noted in the article.
Google: Ignore Spammy Links Even When A Whole Penalized Site Is Redirected To You
Google’s advice since Penguin 4.0 was that you don’t need to disavow links since the links are neutralized and don’t end up helping or hurting you. In short, Google ignores those links. This even applies to when someone redirects a site that was penali…
Daily Search Forum Recap: December 22, 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.
Just an update for you, the Google search results are still very turbulent…
Google Helpful Content Update & Link Spam Update Still Making SERP Turbulence
As you know, the December 2022 helpful content update and the link spam update are rolling out now. In fact, it seems like the helpful content update needs more time to do its thing. Taking a look at the past few weeks, the Google Search results, it h…
Google: Our Search Algorithm Doesn’t Look At Words Per Section
Google’s John Mueller said on Mastodon that the Google Search ranking algorithm does not look at words per section or the word count in different sections of your page.
Google: You Can Use A Single Robots.txt For All Your International Sites
Gary Illyes from Google said on LinkedIn that if you want to you can use a single robots.txt file for all your international sites. He added that he is not saying this is a good idea, but rather, technically, you can implement your robots.txt this way.
Bing Will Fully Switch To The New BingBot User Agent In Early January
Since April, Bing has been slowly testing a new BingBot user agent, slowly rolling it out to more percentages of crawls over the year. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said while the new BingBot is still only doing 50% of all crawls, it will move to 100% …
Google Comments On Making Mastodon More Search Engine Friendly
There is an interesting thread on Mastodon where Danny Sullivan and John Mueller, both of who work at Google, talk about making Mastodon more search-engine friendly. The thread was started by Gabe Rivera of Techmeme, when he wanted a way to search Mas…
December 2022 Google Helpful Content Update Taking Longer, Said Google
Google’s Search Liason, Danny Sullivan, said that the December 2022 helpful content update would take longer to roll out than originally expected. The update started to roll out on December 5th and was expected to finish earlier this week.
New Google Ads Policy Disallows Promoting Content That Risks Harming Users, Googlers Or Google Ads
Google will update its Google Advertising policies to disallow the promotion of content or engaging in behavior that risks harm to Google users, Google employees, or the Google Ads ecosystem. If you do this, Google can restrict or block your ads or sus…
Google PSA: Sitemaps Are Hints, Not Orders
Gary Illyes from Google said on LinkedIn the other day that sitemaps are hints, not orders. Meaning just because you submit an XML sitemap file to Google, it does not mean Google will index and rank that content.
Google Business Profile Web Search Interface Gains Add Map To Your Website
Google’s new Business Profile interface, aka NMX (I hate the name), in the web search results, for some business profile listings, is showing an option to “add a map to your website.” It says that adding a map to your website will “help customers find …
Google Looking At Upper Limit Of Word Count? Probably Not But Get To The Point.
Google’s John Mueller again said word count is not a thing with SEO or Google Search. He said on Mastodon, “In general, when Google thinks of “thin content” in terms of #SEO, it’s not about the number of words, it’s more about the value that it adds to…
Google Top Products Added To Business Profiles Performance Reports
Google seems to be rolling out a new “top products” report to the performance reports within Google Business Profiles. As you know, businesses can add products in numerous ways to their Google Business Profile local listing, and here is a new report to…
Google Search In Video
Google announced in India yesterday that they are testing a search feature to allow you to search text within video. This isn’t a huge stretch from key moments but it is neat to see you being able to search the words spoken in a video.
Google Stops Using Web Light To Serve Lighter/Faster Version Of Your Pages
Since 2015 Google has been serving lighter-weight and thus faster-loading web pages over Web Light to some devices that just don’t have the speed or capabilities to load the heavier version of the page. Well, that is now done; Google retired Web Light.
Study: Upvoting Reviews Keeps The Reviews On Google Local Longer
Here is another study from Joy Hawkins and friends. This study says that upvoting reviews tend to keep the reviews on the local listings up for a longer period of time.
Google’s New Local Pack Full Design Now Live?
A couple of months ago, I reported Google testing a new design for the local pack, which is a fuller design. Well, Shay Harel from RankRanger says this new design is fully live.