Google: Any Site Can Use SpecialAnnouncement Markup
Danny Sullivan from Google said that any site is able to use the SpecialAnnouncement structured data on their web sites, assuming it is used for COVID-19 or related content. I assumed it was just for official medical and health organizations but I gue…
Google Maps Disables “What’s For Dinner?” Push Notifications
Yesterday I saw a push notification on my iPhone that read “What’s for dinner? Check out places to eat & drink nearby.” I tweeted about it, figured it was an oversight and then Danny Sullivan from Google said the Google Maps team has taken care of it.
Google Case Studies Series Aim To Show Importance Of Investing In SEO
This morning I woke up to a nice surprise, Google has started a new series on the Google Webmaster Blog for SEO case studies and success stories. The goal, “help with convincing a boss’ boss that investing in SEO or implementing structured data can be…
Programming Note: Offline Tomorrow Thursday & Friday For Passover 5780
This is a programming note that I will be 100% offline the next two days, Thursday April 9th and Friday April 10th, for the Passover holiday. This year I decided not to schedule any stories or videos. I won’t be back online until late Saturday night …
Asked Google: Does Searcher Behavior Changes Influence Overall Ranking
A week or so ago, I asked Google’s John Mueller in a video hangout if it is possible that the changes in searcher behavior we are seeing are influencing the overall Google search ranking algorithm. We have been seeing a lot of fluctuations in Google se…
Google Tests Moving Review Stars Lower & Changing Colors
Google seems to be testing moving the review stars from just under the title to below the description portion of the snippet. Google is also testing changing the color from orange to yellow. Here are screen shots I was able to replicate but I am not t…
Google Ads New Chart Types For Time Series & Summary
Google Ads seems to have launched new chart type options in the Google Ads interface. When you click on it, Google gives you options for either a time series or summary chart. Here are screen shots from Jessica Budde and Jeremy Krantz.
Google Tweets Its Search Changes For COVID-19
The Google Search Liaison account on Twitter posted several tweets summarizing many of the changes Google has made to search over the COVID-19 crisis. We covered many of them here, actually, all of them. But I thought it would be good to share these t…
Google Search COVID Announcements Will Be Live Soon
A week ago we we reported that Google has new structured data named SpecialAnnouncement that some sites can use to markup their Google search results. Well, Google didn’t write a blog post about it until Friday afternoon and it isn’t live yet. Danny …
Google Doodle: Thank You Coronavirus Helpers
Google has a new Doodle, special Google logo, up on its home page to thank the coronavirus helpers. The Doodle, when clicked on, takes you to a search results page that leads to [thank you coronavirus helpers]. This comes off Google’s reminder Doodle…
Not Going To Happen – Google Won’t Give Up Ranking Algorithm Secrets To SEO
The Register has a story that is headlined UK judge gives Google a choice: Either let SEO expert read your ranking algos or withdraw High Court evidence. This is around a case going on since 2006 with Foundem, where Foundem says Google favors those wh…
Google Maps Now Displays Takeout & Delivery Labels
This may have come last week when I covered the new attributes for restaurants on Google My Business. But now in Google Maps it is showing as part of the restaurants name if the business offers takeout and delivery. Here is a screen shot from around…
Google: Will Never Say That Accessibility Will Never Be A Search Ranking Factor
For as long as I can remember, Google has always said it has to crawl, index and rank and imperfect web. That means broken markup, grammar and typos, sites not built with accessibility in mind and so forth. John Mueller of Google was asked if he think…
Vlog #60: Eric Wu – The Reason Google Built The Panda Algorithm?
Eric Wu is an SEO who has been doing some pretty intense SEO since 2000. He fell into doing SEO for the City of San Diego when the San Diego Fire Department had a porn site outranking them on Google. It was not easy to outrank a porn site back then……
Search Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Volatility, Search Console Features & COVID, COVID & More COVID
This week in search it was mostly about COVID-19 changes made to Google Search and Google Local/Maps. But before that, I published the monthly Google webmaster report and covered a possible…
Google Logo Says Stay Home. Save Lives. With Coronavirus Tips Results
If you go to the Google.com home page and see the Doodle today, it will be an animated GIF recommending you stay home, save lives with things to do at home. Then if you click on the logo, you get a search result page that is widely different from a no…
Bing Testing New Curvy Logo
It looks like Bing is testing a new logo, one with curves. The current logo has sharp edges and corners but the new one gives the whole logo softer edges, more curves and maybe a friendly look.
Google: We Are Not Filtering Out Sites For Coronavirus Searches
Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google is filtering out web sites for searches related to the coronavirus. John said no, he isn’t “aware of anything where we’re manually filtering out sites specifically around health terms.” He did say that Google…
Google Search Console COVID-19 Announcement Beta Tool
As part of the structured data specific to COVID-19 announcements that we covered the other day, Google has launched a new beta tool for posting an announcement to your search results listing using Google Search Console.
Google Posts New Guide On How To Use Structured Data With JavaScript
Google has posted a new developer help document guiding SEOs and webmasters on how to use structured data with JavaScript. This goes through using Google Tag Manager to generate JSON-LD dynamically and using structured data with custom JavaScript.
…