Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

Google search ranking volatility is heated this week, but some of the tools are having issues tracking them. Google is sending out penalties, manual actions…

On Thursday, January 23rd, Google updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF document. The last time Google updated this document was for the March 2024 spam update changes, over ten…

Google’s John Mueller said that when it comes to disavowing links “it’s in a spammer’s best interest to encourage others to spend time on it.” Why? Because Google has said…

Microsoft is testing a new local pack design and layout for Bing Search local pack results. Bing is placing these blue boxes, either below the map, to the right side,…

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

Google looks to have expanded its enforcement of its site reputation abuse policy to European regions this week. Google began enforcement in the US back in May but Google seems…

Yahoo seems to be testing AI Chat within its search results. The chat feature loads on the right side for your query. You click on it and it loads an…

Google is still testing its offensive page annotation feature in the Google iOS app still, but the good news is that the opt out feature does indeed work. Yes, it…

Microsoft is testing a new search filter menu option that lets you filter by real estate results. This shows up in the normal search menu below the search box.

Now when you use Circle To Search in Google, Google can now return AI Overviews to those results. Google said they are “expanding AI Overviews to more kinds of visual…

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

We may be seeing more Google search ranking volatility start to get heated starting this weekend, through January 20th and 21st (and maybe today). Some of the Google tracking tools…

Google has updated not just its site reputation abuse policy for clarification purposes, Google also updated the manual actions section for site reputation abuse. Again, these are just clarification changes,…

For the past month or so, Google has been showing map pins on Service Area Businesses within Google. Previously, Google did not show pins on businesses without a public address…

John Mueller of Google said that sometimes doing SEO can cause sites more problems with search and search rankings. Sometimes not doing SEO, might be better, John implies.

Google is testing an expandable brand store knowledge panel. So if you search for a brand like New Balance, Google will show a knowledge panel on the right with products,…

Google Business Profiles started to allow chat through texting and WhatsApp for businesses in international regions. Now, this feature seems to be rolling out to businesses based in the United…

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

Google is testing AI Overviews that offer a toggle to turn on and off translations and/or just show the translations by default.

Google’s John Mueller replied to a bunch of screenshots of SEO tools showing word counts for the same page that tailed the word counts differently. John said, “This is also…

Microsoft is testing a new search setting named Adaptive Zoom. I am not exactly sure what it does, I tried to toggle it on and off and see how clicking…

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

Google is testing placing a new products carousel, a trending products carousel, on the right side where the brand’s knowledge panel would appear. So, instead of having details of that…

Chris Nelson, Senior Staff Analyst, Search Ranking at Google has updated his LinkedIn bio to specify that he manages a large team that builds ranking solutions for Google Search. One…

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

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week I covered how the third-party search rank checking tools seem to have cooled, but the chatter is still pretty heated. Maybe…

Google seems to be testing an AI-generated version of What People Are Saying in Google Search. This shows a similar video or social media type of search results but it…

Google is updating its hotel prohibited practices policy to specify that (1) you are required to display final room availability and rates before requesting user information and (2) you are…

For the past week, we’ve been discussing how most of the third-party tracking tools have been showing much calmer and cooler search ranking volatility. This is all while the chatter…

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

Google has partnered with The Associated Press to provide more real time data for Gemini. Google said “the AP will now deliver a feed of real-time information to help further…

Google updated its review snippet documentation to recommend that ratings should be accompanied by a review comment and author’s name. This is a recommendation and not a requirement, but it…

Google has said it has updated its child and teen ads policies to increase transparency and make it easier for advertisers to understand these policies. Google added there are no…

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

In some European regions, Google, likely because of the DMA laws, has to show review aggregated ratings from third-party sites. How does Google know which sites to take those reviews…

Google is testing using its generative AI, Gemini, for the “people also search for” section within Google Search. I mean, Google is testing AI all over search, so I guess…

Microsoft is testing a new ad format where you can click “see more links” to show even more sitelinks on the search ads shown in the Bing search results. These…

Google is testing the sitelinks carousel on the desktop search results interface. We saw this on the mobile results in December 2023 and all the way back in 2017 but…

In June 2024, Google dropped continuous scroll (infinite scroll) on desktop search and then mobile search. But if you click on the video tab within Google Search, continuous scroll is…

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

Did you know that sites and pages with manual actions can potentially show up in the Google AI Overviews. So while the page has a search penalty and won’t show…

Over the weekend I reported that the Google Search ranking volatility tools finally began to calm. But the truth is, I have seen a big spike in chatter around Google…

Statcounter’s search market share data for the 2024 year is up and there are a lot of ways to look at this data. At Search Engine Land, Danny Goodwin wrote…

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 search…

Google has reportedly fixed the Google Maps pin attack exploit that has been lingering on with Google for several months. The exploit allowed one to move business locations to another…

Google Search has these search results snippets that show a related reviews carousel under the snippet. You can swipe through the related reviews and then click on them to reveal…

Microsoft is testing using bold sponsored labels in the Bing Search results. So instead of the very hard to see sponsored labels in Bing Search, Microsoft is testing bolding those…

Microsoft is testing an updated Bing Search AI answer box powered by Copilot is testing an updated interface, that seems to promote links to publishers more. The links are more…

A few months ago, Google quietly updated the manual action policy violations list for News and Discover policy violations. Google removed the adult-theme and artificial freshening sections and then added…

For the first time in forever (see what I did there?) the third-party Google Search volatility tools have cooled down to normal volatility levels. The chatter has been somewhat more…

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

Google’s John Mueller clarified once again that your URLs do not need to be lowercase, they can be uppercase, it really doesn’t matter. But he did say, pick either lowercase…

Google has turned down some features for the tax specialist vertical in Google Local Service Ads. The big one is that there is no auto-crediting for this vertical. Also, Google…

Google is testing adding a share icon to the product detail view within the search results. This comes up at the top of the panel, after you click on a…

Google is testing writing out a 57 words, 364 characters, notice on its home page, about its cookie usage and data usage. It is super weird to see three lines…

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. Reddit seems like…

It seems like Reddit, the site that ranks well for every single query in Google Search, is starting to see a small but visible ranking drop in Google Search. It…

Google’s John Mueller said that using generative AI to create blog posts and content for the purpose of getting backlinks is “almost certainly against Google’s spam policies.” He said this…

Google Search is testing a darker dark mode. Instead of the grayish dark mode, Google is testing a dark black version of the dark mode. The darker version is #111217…

Google now lets you add to your restaurant’s menu within Google Business Profiles. Previously, I believe you were only able to replace your previous menus, but now you can add…

Did you ever want to listen to a summary of your Google Discover feed? Well, now you can. Google has a new Search Labs experiment called “Daily Listen” that puts…

If you go to the Google home page today, you will see a gray Google logo. Google does this on somber days and since today is the national day of…

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

What happens when you lose a lot of links really quickly, how might that impact your Google search rankings and SEO performance? Well, John Mueller of Google was asked that…

Google is testing showing local ads in the local pack without review stars. Normally you’d see review stars for the sponsored results in the local pack, but in some cases,…

Using the “validate fix” button within Google Search Console to communicate to Google that you fixed an issue, does not signal to Google to expedite anything on its end. It…

Google has updated one of its help documents to specifically say that ad scheduling isn’t compatible campaigns that use Smart Bidding. The previous version of that page said, “Ad scheduling…

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. Microsoft is trying…

Google now added the new 24-hour hourly data from the performance report in Google Search Console to the export functionally. So now you can export hourly data, the most recent…

Google Ads SPN, search partner network, has a 37% lower ROAS, return on ad spend, for shopping campaigns on Google Ads when compared to Google Search ads, directly. Mike Ryan…

Google has added a new attribute to its vehicle ads product attributes. The new attribute is [date_first_registered], the date of when the vehicle had its first registration date with the…

Google is testing new search refinement options to let users expand their queries for the people also ask and people also search sections of the search results. We’ve seen numerous…

About a month ago, a reader sent me a screenshot of Bing showing this weird search box on its page after you search for Google. I thought it was some…

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. There may be…

There are reports of a major local search ranking change with Google Maps and Local Search results. The reports of this local search algorithm update started to funnel in over…

Google is showing now sometimes showing more than one source for a story in the Google home page, Google Discover, feed. This can show up in a carousel format or…

The topic of URLs for SEO and ranking is one that has been around since search engines first existed and 25+ years later, it is still a popular topic. Google…

Google said that core updates should have no impact on a site name in the Google Search results being updated or changed. When asked, John Mueller of Google wrote, “That…

Did you ever run the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, and click on the view crawled page link, and then see a blank screenshot under the screenshot tab? It…

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 says you…