Google Ads New Clickbait Ads Policy
Google announced yesterday that in July 2020, next month, Google will introduce a new clickbait ads policy under the Google Ads Misrepresentation policy. Google wrote “this policy covers advertisement which uses sensationalist or clickbait text or imag…
Google Merchant Center Rendering & Product Data Specification Updates
Did you know that the Google Merchant side of things crawls a bit differently than the rest of Google. Google’s Martin Splitt said on that podcast this morning that the Google Merchant team will first try the HTML only and if it cannot find what it nee…
Google Again: We Don’t Look At Analytics Bounce Rates For Ranking
Again, Google has said that it does not look at [Google] Analytics bounce rate data for ranking web sites. John Mueller of Google said in a webmaster hangout video at the 25 minute mark, “I think there’s a bit of misconception here that we’re looking a…
Bing Site Scan Feature Supports BASE HTML Tag
Earlier this month, Bing launched the Site Scan feature in Bing Webmaster tools. But there was an issue with it, where it thought pages with the Base HTML tag were pages that 404ed. Bing has resolved the issue and should now properly scan and audit th…
Google Doubles Down On Guest Blog Links: Nofollow Them
Last week we covered that Google said again, nofollow links in guest blog posts, even if they are not paid guest blog posts. This is not new, Google said this many times over the years. But whenever I cover these statements, some SEOs are a bit shocke…
Google: Sites Noticing Indexing Issues Is Not New; Better Search Console Reporting
Over the past several weeks and months it seems more and more site owners and SEOs are complaining about Google not indexing their web sites as it once did. I asked Google’s John Mueller if anything was new here and he said no, Google has not changed …
Google: We Don’t Use Links On YouTube For Search
Google’s John Mueller confirmed, despite the nofollow attribute slapped all over links on YouTube pages, that Google does not use links on YouTube for search.
Google Wants Examples Of .webp Logos With Logo Structured Data
Google is asking for examples of logos that are in .webp format that also uses logo structured data markup. Google recently updated the logo structured data markup developer documents to add .svg to the supported file format list. But Google wants to …
Vlog #71: Eli Schwartz – Getting Hit By Google Panda & Enterprise SEO
Eli Schwartz is a growth and SEO advisor and helps companies on SEO strategy. I had to ask about the title, and he said in the Bay Area people call marketing, growth and no one wants a consultant…
Facebook Search Adds Knowledge Panels From Wikipedia Data
It has been a while since I wrote about Facebook Search but news came out that it is now testing with some English on iOS, desktop, and mobile web users a new feature for its search results. This search feature is a lot like Google’s Knowledge Panels b…
Google: Old Spam Is Still Spam & Against Google’s Guidelines
Does search spam age where the longer you leave it, the less offensive the spam gets? The answer might be no. John Mueller from Google said on Twitter “if parts of your website don’t comply with our webmaster guidelines, and you want to comply with o…
Google Ads To Prevent Housing, Employment & Credit Advertisers From More Targeting Options
Google announced by the end of the year they will start prohibiting employment, housing, and credit advertisers from targeting or excluding ads based on gender, age, parental status, marital status, or ZIP Code. This is in addition to the Google Ads t…
Google: All Guests Posts Links Should Be Nofollowed; Paid Or Not
In 2017, Google’s John Mueller said all guest blog posts, no matter how often you contribute, should have all links nofollowed. This week he added, even if those links are not paid for – as long as those links can potential pass signals – they should …
Google Tests Product Image Thumbnails On Desktop
We’ve seen Google show product image thumbnails on the mobile results, it happens a lot. But desktop search results is less common, at least in the main search results snippets. Here is a screen shot from Andrew on Twitter showing Google testing this…
Search Buzz Video Recap: Google Algorithm Update, Indexing, Brands, BERT, Nofollow, Spam & Much More
My normal camera broke this week, so I recorded it using my iPhone, hopefully it came out okay. This week we covered an unconfirmed Google search ranking update that seemed to make a splash. Google said there are no ongoing…
The Google Nofollow Change A Ranking Change?
There has been some confusion, sorry to say it, around this nofollow link attribute change from last September. In short, Google made a change to the nofollow link policy, that starting on March 1, 2020, Google can look at a nofollow link attribute as…
Google Will Now Remove Counterfeit Goods From Search
Google has updated its legal troubleshooter form to allow users to submit requests to take down counterfeit goods from the organic search results. This is similar to the DMCA request, in fact, it is the same form, but it can now also be used for remov…
Google People Also Ask Now Shows 2-3X More Results
Mark Williams-Cook shared some data on Twitter that shows that Google’s people also ask box is now going two-to-three deeper with more results as you click deeper. He showed this tree of some of his data to show you how deep these can now go.
Google Tests Dividers Between Search Results Again
Google is once again testing placing dividers between search results. This new test was spotted by Vlad Rappoport and posted on Twitter. Google has tested dividers in the search results before but they really have not stuck.
Google Image Search Tests Previous & Next Buttons With Image Previews
Google is testing in image search an interface for the preview image screen that fills in image previews into the next and previous buttons. This interface is not live for most of you but Shameem Adhikarath shared a screen shot of it on Twitter.
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