Google Tests Featured Snippets With “See What Others Say”
Emily Perry shared a screen shot with me on Twitter of a new Google featured snippet test. In this interface, Google shows the main featured snippet but below it has a section with “see what others say” and then lets you click on an accordion interfac…
Google News Stopped Supporting Stock Tickers & Genre?
Joost de Valk noticed that the Google help document for Google News sitemaps has removed any mention of support for stock tickers and genre. We know Google dropped support for the Google News specific meta keywords tag and in the XML sitemap in Februa…
BingBot Gets New Evergreen User Agents
As you know, BingBot is going evergreen and with that, it has announced it is updating its user agents to be dynamic based on the version of the browser it is using to crawl your web site.
Google News Site Command Feature Temporarily Out Of Order
If you try a site command on Google News right now, you will be out of luck. Zero, no, results will be found or returned. This is a bug that Google has acknowledged and Google will fix it “in 2020.” When in 2020, I do not know, but it will be fixed i…
Google Super Easy Explanation How It Uses Machine Learning In Search
John Mueller from Google gave one of the clearest and easiest to understand explanations on how Google uses machine learning in web search. He basically said Google uses it for “specific problems” where automation and machine learning can help improve…
Google Allows You To Request Multiple Quotes From Local Service Ads
Tom Waddington posted a GIF on Twitter of Google Local Service Ads allowing you to request multiple quotes at the same time from multiple local service providers. He said “‘Request Quotes’ button above 3-pack. Lets users request quotes from multiple b…
Blocking Googlebot-News Does Not Prevent Content From Being In Search? Oops.
Glenn Gabe noticed that if you try to block Google from showing your news stories in just Google News by blocking Googlebot-News, it no longer works. So if you want to follow the old advice (I do not see new advice) to block Google News, you can no lon…
Google Invites Many To Cameos In Search
Yesterday, I got my invite to Cameos on Google. Cameos on Google “help you make your Knowledge Panel even more engaging for your fans. You can record video answers to the questions your fans are asking on Google, and those answers will appear in your K…
Vlog #31: Will Hanke On Lead Generation & SEO
Will Hanke is someone I’ve known in the industry since the beginning, he has been doing web design and SEO for over 20 years now and is a true veteran in the industry. He has his company named Red Canoe Media. We met at a grocery store…
Google Search Algorithm Update This Week; Mixed Signals & Confusion
There is so much confusion and mixed signals right now, mostly because of a Google Analytics bug happening while there may be another Google search ranking algorithm update taking place. Some in the SEO community are adamant that there is a ranking up…
Google Discover Performance Reports Now Show Data Faster
Google announced on Twitter that the Discover performance reports are now also showing fresher data. In September, Google brought fresher, more up-to-date data in the performance report for your search reporting. Now that has arrived as well for your…
Google Discover Performance Report Data Bug; December 8-13
Google has documented a bug with Google Search Console reporting, specifically the performance report when filtered to Discover data. Google said you may see a dip in your Google Discover reported traffic because a reporting bug, but in reality, there…
Google’s New GoogleBot User Agent Names Rolling Out
As you know, Google told us the user agent names are changing in December, this month, with the new evergreen GoogleBot. Martin Splitt from Google said you may see this new user agent in your log files now, because Google is rolling it out as an exper…
Google: We Can Debug Our Search Ranking Algorithm At Many Levels
Google’s John Mueller said in a webmaster hangout that Googlers, at many levels, not just the elite set at the top, can debug the search algorithm. He said “Also the meta question here does anyone really know how the algorithm works. And that is somet…
Google: It’s Not Just About Improving Your Content But Rather Your Whole Web Site
Google’s John Mueller dug into a question about a site that spent time improving its “mediocre quality” content but still did not see significant ranking improvements. John said that is not just about improving the content, but rather also working on f…
Google Local Pack Tests Site Cards Element
I do not know what to call it but it seems Google is testing showing a card or box within the local pack snippets of a specific listing that links you to the business’s web site. Jason Parks shared a screen shot of this with me on Twitter, here, look …
Google 2019 Holiday Decorations Are Live For Christmas, Chanukah & Kwanzaa
Google has put up its decorations for the holidays, at least in the desktop and mobile search results. If you search for [christmas],[chanukah], and [kwanzaa] you will see animated decorations and themes in the search results interface.
Search Buzz Video Recap: Google 12/11 Algorithm Update, BERT Expanded, Google News Changes & Bing
This week, we may have had a larger Google update roll out around December 11th, before that a possible Google Analytics bug. Google expanded BERT to 70+ languages but still impacted 1 in 10 of queries for where it is implemented…
Google Search Console Showing Errors For Incorrectly Tagging URL With RDFa or Microdata
Google has started to show errors specifically with the rich results when implemented using RDFa or microdata that incorrectly tag a URL where a text value is expected are now shown as an error in the rich result report. This started on December 3, 20…
Google: Speakable Markup Works Outside Of News Content
Danny Sullivan from Google confirmed that speakable markup now can work for content outside of Google News. Danny said on Twitter “Speakable is no longer restricted to news content; we’ll be updating our documentation on this. However, using Speakable …