A Cheesy Video On Google’s URL Inspection Tool
John Mueller and Martin Splitt from Google released a cheesy video, literally cheesy in many ways, around questions around the URL inspection tool. These are FAQs that you probably know the answers to already but the video is so funny to watch that you…
Google: Not Cloaking When Content In NoScript Missing Due To A Blocked Endpoint
Mike King asked John Mueller of Google an interesting question around issues that come up with the web rendering engine and blocked endpoints with JavaScript rendering issues. Mike asked if it would be considered cloaking if Google does not end us seei…
Google: XML Sitemaps Are Mixed Up & Used As An Energy Drink
Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit that Google uses XML Sitemaps like an energy drink. John said “All sitemap files of a site are imported into a common, big mixing cup, lightly shaken, and then given to Googlebot by URL in the form of an energy drin…
Google New Year’s Eve 2019 Frog Doodle
New Years Eve is tomorrow (December 31, 2019) here in New York but if you are in New Zealand, it is already tomorrow and Google.co.nz already has the New Year’s Eve Doodle. It has a frog sitting and bringing in the new years with fireworks over the wa…
Google Again: Linking Out To High Authority Sites Does Not Help With Your Rankings
Google’s John Mueller said again that linking out to high authority web sites does not help you rank better in Google. He said “no” when asked if it is true based on what this graphic says, which is “multiple SEO experiments and studies show that link…
Google Images Tests Paginated Results
Google may be testing allowing mobile searches using image search to jump from page to page of the search results instead of the infinite scroll. Bhumika Kateliya posted this screen shot on Twitter of Google Images results on mobile having a page 2 b…
Google Search Console Coverage Report Now Delayed 10 Days
There is currently a ten-day delay with the Google Search Console coverage report. It is not uncommon for these reports to experience delays but often the delay is about three-days. We are now showing data as late as December 20, 2019, which is ten-day…
Google: You Always Need Textual Content On-Page
Let’s say you have a web site that just serves audio or video or images or other forms of multimedia – will Google be able to understand it all? John Mueller of Google said on Reddit “You always need textual content on-page, regardless of what other k…
Vlog #33: Rob Timmermann On Doing SEO Wrong & Google Core Updates
Rob Timmermann, founder and CEO of Timmermann Group, was the next SEO I went to chat with in St. Louis. He started the company in 2003 as a web design agency before doing online marketing consulting…
Google Local Pack Tests Tile-like Buttons
Google is testing a new style for the buttons in the local pack results. I am not sure if this is a bug but Valentin Pletzer spotted this and posted this screen shot, where the buttons look like tiles. There are buttons for details, website, call, dir…
Google My Business Photos Being Added To Google Posts Without Option To Delete
A new “feature” was released earlier this month where Google would automatically take photos that you add to your Google My Business profile and create Google Posts out of them. Not only that, it seems you cannot delete the Google Posts that were autom…
Google Removes Live Coverage Help Docs
Google has removed the Google search help documents for the live coverage carousel, which was something Google launched in 2016 as a pilot launch. John Mueller from Google said “It’s currently still in very limited availability, so it doesn’t make sen…
Google: E-A-T Less Important For E-Commerce Sites
Google’s John Mueller said in a video hangout this morning at the 53:52 mark into that video that E-A-T is less important for e-commerce sites. E-A-T is more focused on sites where “the type of information is critical for the user, where they really ne…
Search Buzz Video Recap: Google Christmas Update, EAT E-Commerce, Local Updates, John Mueller & Matt Cutts
Happy Holidays and New Years – this week we covered a possible Google update that happened on Christmas – but I am not sure if it is real. The Google Analytics bug from December 16th won’t be fixed for another few weeks. Google said e-commerce sites d…
December 16th Google Analytics Bug Not Fixed Yet
Remember the bug we helped uncover with Google Analytics that occurred on December 16, 2019? Well, it is still not fixed and probably won’t be fixed for weeks. Google posted an update saying “We have revised our estimated reprocessing timelines for De…
Google Search Console Uncommon Downloads;You Should Request Review & Ignore
Google Search Console is super useful and helpful and the messages can be critical for the performance and safety of your web site. But some messages are not as useful, such as the uncommon downloads notification. Over the past few weeks, webmasters …
Google: HTML Headings Numbers Do Not Matter (H1 vs H2 vs H3)
Martin Splitt from Google seemed almost upset by advice he saw someone was given around how to use HTML headings or Hx tags on a page. An SEO was told to use H3 tags for level-2 subheading. So what this person did was was make a style for h3 aria-leve…
Google On Salience Score Matter For SEO
John Mueller from Google was asked if a salience score matters for SEO. His response was “Where do you see that?” Reading into that, I suspect he means, no – but where is that myth coming from. If you dig a bit, you can see it mentioned in the Google…
Google Christmas Search Algorithm Update Chatter – I Don’t Think So
Over the past few days or so, I have been seeing chatter both at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World around ranking and traffic changes related to Google organic search. I got to say, I doubt Google pushed anything specific this week or even next week. …
Google’s John Mueller Doing Webmaster Support On Christmas Again
Every single Christmas since John Mueller joined Google, he has been helping webmasters with issues on Christmas eve and Christmas day. He sets aside time from his family on this super important holiday to see if anyone is in distress about their Goog…