Google Displays “Get More Reviews” For Local Knowledge Panels You Manage
Google has changed the button for your local knowledge panel from “write a review” to “get more reviews” for the businesses you manage. When you click that new button, Google gives you a way to share with people the ability to leave reviews for your b…
Google Local Pack “Choose Area” Feature Now Live
About six months ago Google was testing an option to select or “choose” your area or location when a local pack comes up in the search results. Well, now I even see the “choose area” link for local pack results after six-months of testing.
Google Video Spam Through Text-To-Speech Technology
Roger Montti posted on Twitter that he is seeing more and more spammers using a technique to spam Google through videos. In short, the spammers would find the top ranking content, use text-to-speech software to create automated videos of the content, w…
Google: Persistent 5xx Result In Slower Crawling But Won’t Say How Many URLs Required
Google’s John Mueller said that persistent 5xx error responses to Google’s requests by your server would result in Google slowing its crawl of your web site. John wouldn’t say if there is a specific percentage of your site’s URLs that are required or …
Google New Years Search Algorithm Update? Mixed Signals.
There is some significant chatter in the SEO industry around a possible new years update that started late December 31, 2019 and throughout January 1, 2020. The chatter is high but similar to the Christmas update chatter, the tracking tools are not s…
John Mueller Of Google Helping Webmasters On New Years 2020
Just like on every Christmas, John Mueller from Google dials up to the internet and logs on to the support channels on New Years and helps out folks in the Google Webmaster support and social media channels. He has done it year after year on New Year…
Google’s New Year’s Day Doodle For 2020
It is a new year, 2020, in some places now and if you visit the Google home page in those locations you can see Google’s frog-themed New Year’s Day Doodle. The frog is also looking out at a city landscape, over the water, as the sunrises. It looks li…
Lists On Google Maps Search Carousel For Restaurants?
Google is testing a new search user interface treatment for map results called “Lists on Google Maps.” This shows you a carousel of results from Google Maps, Google My Business listings, that you can scroll through and learn more about.
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…