New Bing Webmaster Tools Live With New URL Inspection Tool
In February Bing announced it was working on a new Bing Webmaster Tools, we saw some early screen shots of it then. Today is the day this new version goes completely live and within the next month the old tool will be gone.
Google Drops The Wear A Mask. Save Lives. Doodle
Today on Google’s home page was suppose to be a special Google Doodle, a special Google logo, to get people to wear masks. It showed the different letters in the Google logo, wearing different types of masks and then social distancing. Here is the GIF…
Google Sending Work From Home Telecommute Markup Notifications
Google is sending out some emails to those websites that have job listings and can support work from home job positions. As you know, back in February 2018, Google added markup support to its job schema for telecommute ad a job location. Now, with COV…
Google Tests New Interface For Local Q&A Box?
I think this is a new interface for the old Google Local Q&A box that launched sometime in 2017 or so. Here is the new look that Valentin Pletzer spotted and posted about on Twitter.
Bing URL Submission WordPress Plugin Outreach By Microsoft
Microsoft Bing is sending emails to some site owners after installing the new URL submission WordPress plugin. The email is to let these site owners know of a “large number of failures in submission of URLs” to the Bing index. This is leading to search…
Google Home Smart Displays How-To Tutorials, Like Recipes
Google has been showing recipes, like step by step on how to make certain dishes, on Google Home Hub or smart displays for years. But now it seems Google is showing tutorials on these smart displays if you have how-to markup.
Google Testing Tools Now Shows Web Story
Google announced this morning on Twitter that its testing tools can now recognize your Web Story and label it as such. Google said “starting today, our testing tools will recognize if your AMP document is a Web Story. In our testing tools and Performan…
Googlers Working From Home For Another Year – Through July 2021
Google announced it will allow its employees to work from home for another year, through July 2021. The company pushed its work from home policy out from March 2020 through July 2021. John Mueller from Google said on Twitter “It sucks. But also, the …
Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Robots.txt Tester
In the beta version of the new Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing recently added a robots.txt tester. This is like the Google version but this quickly shows you the difference between the HTTP and HTTPS version of the URL.
Google Top Stories Tests “For Context” Section
Google Top Stories is fun and we’ve seen Google test a lot of different features around it, including adding more descriptions. But now, Google is testing showing a news story with more context using a “For context” section that shows other news storie…
Hacked Government Web Pages With Adult Content In Google Search
Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison was on the defensive yesterday when there were a number of complaints that Google was showing adult content from governmental web sites. The issue is, it is not a Google bug, instead, it is the governmental web …
Google: We’re Planning On Expanding The Rich Results Test Tool
A couple of weeks ago, Google announced the Rich Results Test Tool is out of beta and the Structured Data Testing Tool will be eventually deprecated. SEOs did not like this news and it seems like Google has heard the feedback. Google’s John Mueller sa…
Google Local Pack Carousel With Products
We have seen Google local pack carousels with images and also Google showed what was “sold here” but I do not believe I’ve seen local pack carousels with products with inventory status. Jackson Lo noticed this and posted a video screen grab of this in…
Google’s John Mueller Says Don’t Use Loading Screens & Delay Users
Google’s John Mueller was asked about why Google is showing a blank screen for the Google Cache. Well, John said “to be blunt, perhaps don’t show a loading screen and instead just show your content. *ALL* time you spend showing a loading screen is a d…
Google Tests Thick Gray Borders Between Search Results
Google is testing another mobile user interface for its search results layout and design. Here is a screen shot from Mark Osborne of Google using thick gray borders between each search result snippet.
Vlog #77: Brian Ussery On GoogleBot & SEO For E-Commerce Sites
Brian Ussery (@beussery) is the Director of SEO at Razorfish in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also a Google Product Expert at the Google webmaster help forums. He has been doing SEO since 2000…
Google Search Displays Flight & Hotel COVID-19 Impact
Google seems to be testing a new feature that shows the travel trends in a specific city. Google is showing the percentage of flights operating in that area and the percentage of hotels with availability. I am not sure if this is a COVID-19 feature o…
Google Search Ranking Update On July 23rd & 24th
I am seeing some early chatter and signals that there may be another, currently unconfirmed, Google search ranking algorithm update happening. It seems to have started yesterday, July 23rd and continuing throughout today, July 24th.
Google: Split Things Up When Revamping Your Web Site
If you are tearing down your web site and rebuilding it completely from the ground up, you should expect a lot of search ranking fluctuations. If you want to control and track as much as you can on the SEO side, it is recommended you do it in stages a…
Buy on Google Now Commission Free & Adds PayPal and Shopify Options
Google announced that it is making Buy on Google commission free. This comes after Google has made Google Shopping free both in Google Shopping and Google Search. Also, Google said retailers can use either PayPal and Shopify for payments and will supp…