Are Google Search Console DMCA Takedown Notifications Broken?
Last week, Max Prin from Merkle, notified me that one of his awesome free tools on technicalseo.com was removed over a false DMCA takedown request. There are a couple of issues here (1) the DMCA takedown was false and successfully removed his free tool…
Google Tests Bell Icon To Follow Updates On Medical Knowledge Panels
Since 2014 Google had a method to follow news and updates related to social profiles and other knowledge panels by clicking “get notified” or more recently “follow” button. Now Google is testing showing a bell icon and testing this on medical knowledg…
Ginny Marvin Joins Google As New Ads Product Liaison
Ginny Marvin has announced on Twitter she has joined Google as the new Google Ads Product Liaison. She left Search Engine Land in December after being with the company since 2013 and now is going into a similar role that Danny Sullivan took after he l…
Google Sites Stopped Generating XML Sitemap Files
Google Sites over a decade, almost 15 years, has automatically generated XML sitemap files to be used for Google Search Console. Well, that is no longer the case. Google has removed the Google Sites sitemaps details from the documentation yesterday.
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Semrush (SEMR) To Go Public With $144M Revenue & 67K Customers
The beloved SEO toolset provider announced it will be going public. The stock will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SEMR. It shared its performance numbers including revenues of $144 million, gross profit of $95 million with …
Google On The Importance Of GTINs For Products In Search
Google posted a Friday blog post named “providing better product information for shoppers.” The blog post mentioned GTINs over 20 times, how is that for keyword density? GTINs, if you are not aware, is one of the more popular product identification n…
Google: Internal Linking Gives Google A Sense Of Page Level Importance
Google’s John Mueller was asked how someone can help Google understand which pages of a site it really wants Google to index. A webmaster said that Google was only indexing 10% or so of the site’s pages in the sitemap file. He asked how can they nota…
Google See Results That Mention Filter On Left Side Panel
We saw Google testing a search refinement feature named “see results that mention” on the right side bar. But now, as captured by Brian Freiesleben, Google is testing it on the left side. This seems to go with the side bar design Google has been slowly…
Google Search February 26 & 27th Search Algorithm Volatility
This weekend there was another unconfirmed Google search ranking update, maybe starting around February 26th through the 27th and maybe the 28th. There was significant chatter in the SEO forums and some of the tools showed a spike around the 27th of F…
Steve Marin On Content & SEO With Measuring Digital Marketing Success With Data
Steve Marin runs Spark PPC, a marketing consulting firm based in New York City, he focuses on small to medium sized businesses. He has been doing SEM and SEO for over 8 years now. He said he loves both PPC and SEO, they are both children to him – he c…
Possible Google Local Ranking Update February 24th & 25th?
Generally when it comes to a Google local ranking algorithm update, you need to wait a week or so to see the chatter from the local SEO community. I am not seeing that chatter yet but BrightLocal’s tracking tool is lighting up over the past two days, …
Search Buzz Video Recap: Google Ranking Update, Page Experience Update Won’t Be Massive, Mobile-First Indexing Deadline & Partner Program Changes
Google may have pushed another algorithm update starting this past weekend, I almost did not cover it. There was also a possible local search ranking update by Google over the past two days. Google’s Danny Sullivan said…
Google Tests Playing Videos As Overlays In Search
Google Search for many queries and search result pages shows a video box that takes searchers to videos mostly on YouTube but other platforms as well. Now, Google is testing playing those videos directly in the search results page and not taking you t…
Pass Google PageRank To Mailto Or Telephone Links – Nah
Here is a fun SEO question I found the other day where Google’s John Mueller if Google passes PageRank to mailto or telephone hyperlinks. The answer is no, Google only follows links between canonical URLs and in mailto and tel links, there is no real …
Google: URL Structure Matters For International Sites & Adult Content
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that the place where your URL structure matters most is likely with international websites and sites that have sections of adult oriented content. It will help Google figure out the site better and know how to seg…
Watch The Google Search Central Live Recording
If you missed the live Google Search Central Live conference from the other day, you are in luck, the recording is now officially available on YouTube. It is relatively short for a conference and won’t take you too long to watch.
Google Showing Fewer Featured Snippets Since February 19th
Google seems to be showing fewer featured snippets in the search results since February 19, 2021. All three tools that I am aware that track featured snippets all showed a significant decline in the percentage of search results with featured snippets….
Google To Discontinue Showcase Shopping Ads On April 1st
Google will sunset and stop supporting the Showcase Shopping Ads it initially announced about two years ago. Google said “starting April 1, 2021, Showcase Shopping ad groups will be removed and will stop serving your ads. Performance data for removed a…
Google Adjusted Its Search Algorithm Due To SEO Gaming Four Or Five Times In 10 Years
One other little tidbit or nugget from the Search Central Live event was that Gary answered how many times Google changed its search algorithm due to SEOs gaming the system. Gary said in the past ten years, he thinks it was about four or five times, th…
Google: We Don’t Announce Deprecating Ranking Signals
Has there been a time where Google has said they no longer use a specific ranking signal? I mean, they said this like 20 years ago with maybe the meta keywords tag? Google said this with rel next/prev, Google News stock tickers and keywords, and some o…