Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Joy Hawkin and team posted about a new Google local ranking factor – the factor is is if a business is currently listed as open or closed based on its…

Google announced its latest AI advancements named Gemini yesterday, calling it the most capable AI models yet. It is already baked into Bard and it is being tested in SGE,…

Google SGE, the Search Generative Experience, is testing the ability to export the responses it provides to your queries to Gmail and Google Docs. There is an export button on…

I’ve been noticing that Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, has been removing posts from his X (formerly Twitter) account a lot. I also noticed on select posts, John Mueller from…

AdWeek posted that Google Ads is now allowing advertisers to temporarily opt out of the Search Partner Network in Search and Shopping ad campaigns, even if they are using Performance…

Google seems to have rolled out its full-width and larger image pack search results interface. It comes with not just the large full-width image pack we covered in 2021, but…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Bing launched Deep…

Microsoft has announced a new search feature to Bing Search named Deep Search. Deep Search is an “enhancement” to Bing Search that provides “deeper and richer exploration of the web,”…

Google is testing a lite version of a knowledge panel, maybe a knowledge panel “snippet” in the mobile search results. It is a snippet that looks like a sub-knowledge panel…

Google has been battling with site name issues since it launched the site name feature in October 2022 for mobile and then site names for desktop results in March 2023….

When Google announced its more personalized search experience last month, Google said it would show you results you visit more often at the top. Google said those results would be…

As a reminder, in August, Google stopped showing the How-to rich results on the mobile search results, and then in September, they did the same for desktop results. Well, they…

Google is going to remove the Product results search appearance filter from both the Performance report in Search Console and from the Search Console API. This will happen in about…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google expanded its…

Here is the December 2023 Google webmaster report for all of you. Here I recap what happened and changed with Google Search on the organic space over the past month…

Google is now requiring that the video be the main or primary content on the page for it to show your video in video mode, not just as video thumbnails…

Over the past few days or so there has been a spike in complaints around Google Search Console reporting an invalid sitemap error for sitemaps URLs that should be valid….

Years ago, Google use to separate the ads in its search results not just with clearer ad labels but also with a line separating the ads from the organic/free listings….

Google has removed its mobile usability report within Google Search Console and has dropped the mobile-friendly test and API. This was expected, Google told us this would happen back in…

Google SGE, the Search Generative Experience, is testing the ability to not only type your questions with text but also to upload images to your query. So yes, Google SGE…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

In part one with Dave DiGregorio we spoke about his journey from working in sports memorabilia to getting into SEO. Then, in part two we talked about some local pack…

Last week we reported on the early signs of big Google Search ranking volatility, fluctuations, chatter within the search results. We just don’t know if that was related to the…

There are some reports of the reviews left on some Google Local Service Ads that say those reviews are being hijacked. In a sense, the reviews are being taken from…

Google has confirmed that it will begin supporting rules & supplemental feeds in early next year for Google Merchant Center Next. Google added that all existing rules will continue to…

It seems like Google Search is now giving its old Google Groups forum area a massive ranking and visibility boost in the Google Search results. This started a couple of…

Google launched a special page on its Search Central portal with a countdown to 2023. This page has these hidden doors that contain resources that they found interesting or were…

Google has announced it now supports new structured data for vacation rentals, which adds rich results to the Google Search results for vacation rental listing pages. With that, Google also…

Hanukkah (aka Chanukah) starts this coming Thursday night, December 7th. Google has added its Hanukkah decorations to the Google Search results interface to celebrate. Google does this every year and…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. I am celebrating…

Google’s November 2023 core update finally finished rolling out this week, and it was the longest core update rollout. Then, a day later…

20 years ago tomorrow (December 2, 2003), I started this blog aimed at archiving some of the best discussions within the search marketing community…

Typically, Google Discover shows content that is less than a day old, but it can show content that is weeks, months, or even years old. However, typically, Google will show…

Google seems to be testing a Google Pay Accepted label or icon in the Google search results. This label has the super G logo followed by the words “Pay accepted”…

Google seems to be testing removing the cache link from the search result snippet about this result box. I am in a test where the cache link is no longer…

Google is testing showing a justification (or label) for local restaurant listings within Google Search and Google Maps that says “serves vegetarian dishes” with a green leaf icon.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web…

I am seeing some signs of some big Google Search ranking volatility and shuffling today. The core update just finished, so Google would say it is not the core update…

Google has a published patent named “Generative summaries for search results” which is believed to be the patent behind the Search Generative Experience launch we saw earlier this year. This…

Google has added a few new impression metrics for advertisers using the Google Local Service Ads platform. This was spotted by Ben Turner who wrote on X that he is…

Google has published its tentative schedule for the Google Ads API release dates and sunset dates for 2024. Google publishes this annually in order to “bring greater clarity to your…

Google has updated its dangerous product policy for both Shopping ads and free listings to list E-juice products as dangerous and thus not allowed to be advertised or listing in…

Jerry Dischler, who has been the head of Google Ads since 2020 and has been with Google for over 15 years is leaving the company. Replacing Dischler will be Vidhya…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google’s November 2023…

After just under 26 days, the Google November 2023 core update is finally done rolling out. It took almost two weeks longer to roll out than the average core update…

Google seems to be testing allowing searchers to “heart” a photo in the local search results. This can be a way for Google to learn if the images uploaded to…

Google posted a new policy update for Google Ads saying it won’t allow personalization of ads for consumer finance in the United States or Canada starting on February 28, 2023….

Microsoft will be bringing GPT-4 Turbo to Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat. It is unclear when Microsoft will update its AI models from GPT-4 to GPT-4 Turbo, but we…

Google has yet again launched new structured data named Organization structured data. This new Organization structured data merged the old logo and URL structured data for your business but also…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

The Google November 2023 core update and Google November 2023 reviews update are still both rolling out, and we have no estimated time of when they will finish rolling out….

Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft shared how often the different modes in Microsoft Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat, are used. There is Balanced mode, creative mode and precise mode. Balanced…

Google redid its Google Business Profiles reinstatement process and I think as part of that (I can be wrong), Google added this review service restrictions webpage. It will show you…

Is there an SEO benefit, a search ranking benefit, to putting numbers in your headlines? Such as the “10 best reasons to put 10 best in your headlines” or more…

Google has announced new structured data for discussion forum and profile page structured data on Google Search, with new markup and also new Search Console reports. Also, with this change,…

Google Search Console has been having reliability issues since yesterday, as we covered. It is currently down for many users across the world. The outage started again this morning at…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google Search Console seems to be down right now. If you try to access it, you will get a 500 server error. I suspect Search Console will be back up…

In part one with Dave DiGregorio we spoke about his journey from working in sports memorabilia to getting into SEO. Then, in part two we talked about some local pack…

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about finding broken links that 404 and if there is SEO value in working on bringing those links back to life. John ended his…

The legacy feature to control how fast Google crawls your website is going away on January 8, 2024. It is a feature that launched 15 years ago but Google never…

Over the past week or so, Google has been testing line separators between Sitelinks in the Google Search results for snippets. This feature test really gives a lot of screen…

Google is testing an “interview” label in the “For Context” news box within the Google Search results. We recently saw a similar styled label named “by the numbers” and now…

Google has released a new four-page PDF document named Testing value based bidding using Google Ads campaign experiments guide. This document can be useful for those who want to test…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

This week was much slower than the previous weeks, and yes, the core and reviews updates are not yet completed…

Many of you are wondering when the Google November 2023 core update and Google November 2023 reviews update will be completed. Normally these updates finish about two weeks after they…

Right before the Thanksgiving holiday season and right before the big holiday shopping season, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Google Ads sent emails to some advertisers telling them their…

Google Merchant Center has been automatically creating and applying promotions to some of your products over the Black Friday holiday season. The truth is, Google has been doing this for…

Google may be testing a new type of rich result for flight prices. This test shows a section under the flight search snippet that contains the dates, trip details and…

Google is testing shading and adding color and depth to favicons that they display in the search result snippets. This was spotted some time ago but it seems to be…

Earlier this week, Google removed its Robots.txt FAQ help document from its search developer documentation. When asked, John Mueller from Google replied to Alexis Rylko saying, “We update the documentation…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and to celebrate the holiday, I will not be posting news today. Don’t worry, a lot of news will be posted tomorrow, including the weekly SEO video…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google is testing…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, confirmed on X that follower count is not used as a search ranking factor by Google Search.

Google may be testing a new “Simple Search” feature that may dumb-down the search results when you want something more simple. Google shows the “Simple Search” +Topics refinement button at…

Google has now added the business logo and business name details to the account-level automated assets within Google Ads. We knew this was being tested back in April and now…

Google is testing a new section to show which products they have in their index that are available for fast pickup or fast delivery. Google already knows how long it…

Google Bard can now respond with answers based on the spoken words in a YouTube video. Google said, it is “expanding the YouTube Extension to understand some video content so…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google seems to have fully rolled out the follower count in the search result snippets for social media sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, X and others. This was being tested…

I am seeing some new reports, some publicly, and some not, of Google Search getting the dates they display in the Google Search results wrong. This is a common issue…

Google Search has what looks like the people also ask (PPA) section but titled “Ask a doctor.” I am not sure if this is new, because I suspect since I…

Google’s Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin, posted seven FAQs around automatically-created assets (ACA) for responsive search ads. She posted these on X yesterday, and I figured I’d archive them here.

Google may be testing showing longer-form justifications in the Google local results. In the example below, provided by Miriam Ellis on X, it showed a more extended description/justification provided by…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. You can send…

In part one with Dave DiGregorio we spoke about his journey from working in sports memorabilia to getting into SEO. Then in part two, we talk about some local pack…

Google has added to the Performance Max product campaigns within Google Ads brand and custom labels. This allows advertisers the quick ability to segment your products also by brand and…

This is just a reminder that the new Google Search and Discover Notes feature that launched as a Search Labs experiment are crawlable, indexable and visible in Google Search. You…

On Friday, Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said you can reply to a thread on X or post a help thread in Google’s forums to let him know about sites…

Microsoft is working on a feature or setting to allow searchers and users to have Bing Chat always read aloud the responses without having to request it manually each time….

Remember when Google announced its new small business attribute, where businesses can self-claim they are small, which would add a “small business” icon to their products in Google Search? Well,…

Google is currently investigating a likely issue or bug with the Google Search Console experience reports. The issue is that they seem to be showing a decline in the number…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

For the original iTunes version, click here. It was a very busy week, so I apologize for the length of this video, so buckle up and get ready. Not that…

Google is actively working on fixing the problem it was with showing too much spam for obituary-related queries. Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said “it’s something we’re actively looking at…

Bing announced this week that it may use AI to create your snippets. Bing is calling this “Generative AI Captions” and if Bing uses AI for your snippet, it will…

The new Yahoo Search experience may launch as soon as a few months from now. Brian Provost, the Senior VP and General Manager of Yahoo Search, said the new Yahoo…

Google has updated the Google search quality raters guidelines and it is now only 168 pages, down from 176 pages – so it takes less time to read. I scanned…

Google Business Profiles is adding a verification method for some categories of businesses to make it easier for them to verify their business with Google. This one, you can upload…

Last night, Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, shared the presentation he gave at brightonSEO online on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The presentation covers Google Search results…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. This newsletter is…

Google announced the hidden gems ranking system has been rolling out. This hidden gems update helps promote content deep within forum posts, social media, and blog posts that Google Search…

Google also announced that later this year, in the US, Google will make it easier for you to find your favorite sites by showing you sites you view more often,…

Google is rolling out a new search feature to let you follow topics. You can click on a follow button and Google will not only show you more of those…

Google Search is testing a new notes feature where you can add your own notes to the search results and also see the notes others have left on that search…

Google announced a new robots.txt report within Google Search Console and at the same time said it will sunset the old robots.txt tester tool. The new tool shows which robots.txt…

Microsoft has rebranded Bing Chat to Copilot. “Beginning today, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise are becoming Copilot, with commercial data protection enforced when any eligible user is signed in…

Google announced it has expanded its courses rich results so you can now provide new data such as pricing, educational level, ratings, and length with structured data. Google said this…

Google announced some new Search Generative Experience (SGE) features for shopping, including gift ideas, generating images for apparel purposes, and more virtual try-on features.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google has filed a lawsuit against two men who allegedly used Google’s DMCA process “aimed at removing hundreds of thousands of their competitors’ website URLs from Google Search results,” the…

We covered a number of the tests Microsoft Bing Search has been trying around its ad labels, mostly around it making the ad label harder and harder to tell if…

Google has updated its help documentation specific to Google Crawlers and added the Google Safety crawler to the list of special case crawlers. This crawler is not new but Google…

Google is testing placing a north east arrow symbol by the sitelinks in the Google Search results. We have seen arrows before with sitelinks but not the north east error…

Google seems to be testing a new ad format for the Search Generative Experience named “you may also like.” These seem like content ads, where Google shows sponsored content, articles,…

Google has updated its title links help documentation to say it is best to avoid including flight price information in title elements. Google said this is because flight prices rapidly…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said that while Google has updated its guidance around blocking third-party content, more is to come. Google said we should see things improve over time…

Google Discover added products or e-commerce sections about a month ago. But now it seems Google is adding both pricing details and discounts to those product/e-commerce Discover results.

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said during his brightonSEO keynote address on Friday that Google Search does use user interaction signals for Google Search but he added he won’t…

Google seems to be testing showing the Discussion and Forum feature within product listing search results. The Discussion and Forum is about a year or so old now but I’ve…

Microsoft announced that it has updated some of its existing advertising policies and with that also made the email notification process for disapproval faster and quicker.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Dave DiGregorio is the Vice President at Sterling Sky, Inc, and while we spoke a lot about SEO, we also spoke about lot about Michael Jordan trading cards. This is…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, spoke at BrightonSEO in San Diego on Friday and while most of what he said was “not new,” he did say big changes are…

Google launched its November 2023 Reviews update on Wednesday afternoon, November 8. But we didn’t see it have much of any impact until Saturday, November 11th. It currently seems this…

Over the weekend I saw two SEOs notice that Google is showing FAQ-rich results more often since it recently announced it would only show these FAQ-rich results for the most…

Google is rolling out new Google Business Profiles attributes for gyms. You can add these attributes by editing your Business Profile and then they should show up in the local…

Google has added the learning video rich results data to the Google Search Console performance reports. Google announced this news just minutes ago on X, saying, “Search Console will start…

Google announced that it will discontinue its Google News magazine service starting on December 1, 2023. Any magazines you purchased and that are available within the Google News apps or…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Check out the…

Google released the November 2023 reviews update on Wednesday afternoon, while the November 2023 core update rages on with a ton of heated volatility. I posted the Google webmaster report…

Google seems to be testing a “posts from” section in the search results. Very much like the popular on Twitter (now X) section but this includes not just posts from…

John Mueller, a Google Search developer advocate, said on X that Google Search does not use a virus scanner. Googlebot does not scan documents for viruses as it crawls the…

Google seems to be testing showing a promotion for Amazon Prime membership directly in the Google Shopping search results interface. It is this line that has a small Amazon logo…

Microsoft may be testing shopping search filters in the product overlay within the search results. When you hover your mouse over a product and the overlay window comes up, Bing…

Google is trying out another design for surveying or polling some of its searchers if they find the search results helpful or not. This one shows directly under a snippet…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google is now…

As expected, the Google November 2023 reviews update has started to roll out this week. It started on November 8, 2023 at about 1 pm ET. This will be the…

Google announced it has expanded the Search Generative Experience beta to 120 or so countries and four new languages. Google also added new follow-up questions, AI-powered translation help and more…

Everyone is now seeing the search shopping filters in the Google search results for e-commerce-related queries, which Google started testing well over a year ago. And as some have noted,…

Google has updated its various abuse policies for Merchant Center. Google said Google Shopping ads and Google free listings Malicious or unwanted software policy will be split into three separate…

Google seems to be testing showing multiple local packs in its search results as you scroll down the page. I cannot replicate this, which makes me believe this is a…

Google seems to be testing a new feature for top stories named “Open Access.” I am not sure what open access means, if you know, please comment below. It seems…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google seems to have redesigned the page experience overview report within Google Search Console. The overview screen now looks more like a basic informational screen with a lot less data…

There has been a lot of talk about parasite SEO over the past several months in the SEO community. Heck, we even saw it mentioned in notes Danny Sullivan shared…

Google is testing a new reviews user experience from the local panel listing in the search results. Instead of popping up the reviews in a new window over the search…

Google is now rolling out the generative AI asset generation features for performance max Google Ads campaigns in the US. This allows you to let Google’s AI create headlines, descriptions,…

Microsoft’s Mikhail Parakhin posted a poll on X asking where Microsoft should prioritize its efforts in terms of speeding up different services. Do you want a faster Bing Chat or…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google had some…

The SEO community is buzzing about some recent U.S. Department of Justice documents released that hint at some ranking concepts at Google. One slide is named “The 3 Pillars of…

Google has added a new “activities” section to some business types within Google Business Profiles. It seems to be for some sort of hotel like businesses but not all hotels…

Microsoft has published a new patent application named Web Content Reliability Classification. It seems this patent describes how to figure out a reliability score for a website or portion of…

Some may feel like all the buzz around Microsoft and Bing Chat is somewhat dwindling but according to Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO, Advertising and Web Services at Microsoft, that is…

Google has sent out an email to some advertisers using location asserts within Google Ads with “new policy requirements.” In short, it says that if your location is closed, not…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google’s November 2023…

The Google November 2023 core update that started to rollout on November 2nd, Thursday afternoon, has been incredibly volatile, heated and in a very short time. We saw the fluctuations…

Here is the big Google webmaster report for November 2023 and it is a big one. We had two confirmed updates; the October 2023 core update and the October 2023…

Google Search seems to be widely testing an e-commerce-like interface where it shows products and shopping deals by category. The page is filled with the product grid interface, with a…

For over a year, we have seen Google show us a left-sidebar filter generally for shopping-related queries. Well, now Google has added a toggle on and off option to turn…

On Friday, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, shared some internal documents showing how he complies some of the feedback from SEOs online and then prepares that feedback to share with…

Google announced late on Friday that AdSense for Search (AFS), AdSense for Shopping (AFSh), and Programmable Search Engine (ProSE) will stop serving ads over google.com and this will also mean…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. The Google November…

This was a fun week, being that you all ruined the internet. First up Google shocked us with a new core update…

Only two weeks after the October 2023 core update finished rolling out, we have a new core update rolling out – the November 2023 core update. This is a different…

Google has big AdSense news, which it says won’t result in a change to how much publishers get paid. Google said it is changing its AdSense revenue-share structure and will…

As a reminder, the Google helpful content system/update is a sitewide algorithm. It looks at your site as a whole when applying its ranking system to the Google Search results….

Google has released version 2.5 of the Google Ads Editor, this comes 17 weeks since version 2.4 was released in Jul 2023. The new version gains campaign level broad match,…

Google announced a new reviews update is going to roll out sometime next week and this new update will make the reviews update more real time. Thus Google will stop…

Google has announced it launched a new Ad review center for AdSense, Ad Manager, and AdMob. The new Ad review center should make it easier for you to approve ads,…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google mobile first…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said that you need to stop thinking, “What should I do for Google” when you are writing content. He said just think what you…

Google Bard now responds in real time, so you can watch it “type” the answer as it “thinks” up the response. So now Bard works like Bing Chat and other…