Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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 rolled out…

There are tons of complaints in the Google Business Profile Help Forums about a bug during the setup process of a Google Business Profile. When you get to the screen…

I don’t know if you might also like this, you probably won’t but Bing is dropped ads in their featured answers, featured snippets. They are calling these ads “You might…

Google seems to be testing removing the green checkmark from the Local Service Ads. I was able to replicate this for the same query, and the same set of advertisers….

Google will change how it counts clicks in Google Merchant Center starting April 21, 2025. This change will make clicks count the same way Google Ads counts clicks. This means…

For some Google searchers the ability to go to page two of the search results is simply not possible. The classic Google pagination bar is missing at the bottom of…

About 30 minutes ago, Google sent out a batch of invites to its new AI Mode. I was one who got that email but when I click on the “try…

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 spoke about…

Google would not give a specific date for when we will see independent sites to start surfacing better and higher in Google Search. As a reminder, Google wrote with the…

On Friday, Google published its findings from its experiment of removing some EU news publishers from its search results. The results said that Google had no visible loss of search…

Google Ads has confirmed that it has lost some conversion data for some advertisers who used Google Merchant Center in February. The data is not coming back, it is unrecoverable….

Google is testing a new feature in the AI Overviews (although, they look familiar to me for some reason). When you click or hover over on a word in the…

A month ago, we reported that Google Business Profiles support was backlogged and delayed. Well, the delay is not getting any better. Victoria Kroll from Google posted an update on…

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 confirmed that the volatility we saw prior to the core update was unrelated to this latest core update. I also posted status updates on the Google March 2025 core…

As a reminder, the Google March 2025 core update touched down on March 13th, and as Google said, not before. And while many sites were hit super hard in the…

Google Search Console’s API will soon add support for the 24-hour hourly data view, plus, this will give you access to not just the past 24 hours but the past…

About a week ago, if you searched for mortgage related math questions in Google Search, Google stopped giving you the answer. Google first introduced its mortgage calculator features a decade…

Google hosts events around the world for SEOs, content creators, webmasters, site owners and marketers named Google Search Central Live. They’ve been doing it for years and I’ve attended many…

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 admitted that…

There is a big debate in the SEO community on the topic of schema markup and LLMs. Do LLMs like Microsoft Bing’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity and others…

Google seems to have dropped showing the number of reviews are on a page, the review count, next to the review stars, for non-shopping/e-commerce pages. Google Search is now showing…

Google admitted in a video published on its own Search Central YouTube channel that if searchers do not use your page(s) in the search results, those pages may stop showing…

Microsoft Bing’s shopping carousel results have a “buy now” button that now links directly to the checkout page of the merchant. So when you click on buy now, it adds…

Last week, Google sent out a bulk load of reverification requests to Google Business Profiles. Well, according to Google’s Rick Saxe, it was a bug and the bug should be…

Bing Webmaster Tools has been down and/or loading incredibly slowly for the past couple of hours. SEOs began noticing this since around 11 am ET and as of the time…

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

Google has confirmed that the volatility we all saw prior to the official announcement of the Google March 2025 Core Update was not related to the March 2025 Core Update….

Google said it is expanding its AI Overviews and Knowledge Panels to offer more medical and health related answers. Plus, those are being expanded in more counties and languages. Also,…

Microsoft has opened access to the Copilot feature within Bing Webmaster Tools. I played a lot with it when I was in the limited beta in December and it is…

You can now compare date ranges of data directly in the Bing Webmaster Tools Search Performance reports without having to export it to a third-party tool.

Google Search seems to have accidentally leaked its various AI Search options and features, that go beyond just AI Mode, which it recently launched. 47 different AI Search options are…

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…

In December, Google Merchant Center introduced a new field for “first order” discount. Now, we are seeing “First order” labels in the Google Shopping Ads within the Google Search results.

To be honest, this seems more like a quirk than a test, but Sachin Patel spotted Google showing three rows of Google Shopping Ads in the Google Search results. We’ve…

Labeling your Google Business Profile as kid-friendly is not new, but I don’t believe I have ever seen an icon that represents that within the Google Business Profile listing within…

Google launched education Q&A carousel back in 2022 for English languages only. Now, Google has expanded support to include also Spanish and Vietnamese language. Spanish is supported in Mexico while…

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. Posted a status…

As you know, Thursday, March 13, 2025 at around 12:30 pm ET Google announced the March 2025 core update, the first core update of the 2025 year. I was expecting…

The time has come for the Google Assistant to be replaced by Gemini, Google’s younger and better assistant (despite it being wrong way too often). Google announced, “Over the coming…

Fabrice Canel from the Microsoft Bing team told SEOs that instead of focusing on traffic and rankings, they should focus on conversions and click value. He said on X, “SEOs…

Digiday reported that a Google spokesperson told them they made link updates to AI Overviews in May 2024 that added more links and made it easier for searchers to click…

Google added returnPolicyCountry to the return policy code examples within the Google Merchant Center structured data document. This is because Google requires returnPolicyCountry for MerchantReturnPolicy.

Imagine you own a restaurant and you get all your reservations online through your booking system; you even tell people to book online when they call, via an automated message….

Google has switched from updating its googlebot.json file, the file that contains the list of IP addresses Googlebot uses, from weekly to daily. Gary Illyes from Google said this was…

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 began rolling…

This week we covered Google’s March 2025 core update being released. Google responded to some complaints or concerns about Google’s new AI Mode. A study showed Google grew 22% over…

Google officially announced the rollout of the March 2025 core update yesterday at around 12:30 pm ET. This core update is expected to take up to two weeks to roll…

Google is now testing a new accommodations carousel in the search results for hotel-related queries. The new accommodations carousel shows up under the hotel pack.

Microsoft is testing a new Copilot answer interface and layout in the Bing Search results. Instead of the grid/block design, Microsoft is testing a more bullet point design, and when…

Google is once again showing a local pack in the AI Overviews, formerly known as SGE (Search Generative Experience). Google removed the local pack from those AI Overviews back in…

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 hotlinking…

Google’s John Mueller said that implementing hotlink protections with carve-outs for search engines are fine. He added that this is not really a thing sites do that much these days,…

Google Merchant Center has apparently added the ability to dispute and/or request a review in bulk. This does not work for all notices but it works for some and it…

Microsoft Advertising is reportedly testing a new reporting template design, which is refreshed and looks new to look at. The new design is under the reporting and then templates section…

Microsoft is testing placing a new tag on some sponsored ads within the Bing Search results. This tag is in blue and says “Local Business,” which I guess helps promote…

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 increased the…

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. A new study…

Google sent out an email to advertisers yesterday about changes coming to Google Tag Manager. Specifically, Google Tag Manager will send events before loading a Google tag and Google calls…

A new study from Columbia Journalism Review showed that AI search engines and chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Deepseek Search, Microsoft Copilot, Grok and Google’s Gemini, are just…

A new data report from Rand Fishkin at Sparktoro says that Google Search has seen 21.64% growth in searches year over year. This comes after his study that showed 1/3rd…

Google can now show the “price at checkout” within the Google Shopping listings, both paid and organic. I am not sure if this is new, being that Google has had…

Google is testing a new shopping ad format. This format expands product listings available within a store, shows the products with larger images and product details and then lets you…

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

No surprise here – Google will be testing and experimenting with ads in Google AI Mode. Google told Adweek that they will be “explore bringing ads into” Google AI Mode.

Google has updated its manual actions documentation around site reputation abuse, to expand on the next steps and actions you can take if you receive this manual action. Google now…

Google’s VP of Product at Google Search, Robby Stein, has responded to concerns from publishers around the new AI Mode. Specifically, the concerns around this new AI search interface not…

Google is testing a knowledge panel that includes a places card that can be expanded to show a map and local pack results. I cannot replicate this, which makes me…

Google is now using a much larger font for the knowledge panels shown in Google Search. The font size looks jumbo and it does not seem to be test, it…

Google Search is testing a feature to quiz you on the product you are looking for and then to give you more tailored recommendations for product suggestions. This box is…

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 dropped the…

Google released its much anticipated AI Mode, which is in beta now, but it super cool. Google AI Overviews are now powered by Gemini 2.0. Google had more search ranking…

Google sent out emails to Local Service Ads advertisers notifying them that their Google Business Profile accounts are not affiliated to your Local Service Ads account. That means your reviews…

Google has shut down, turned off, and disabled, its new page annotations feature. The feature where Google hijacked your content, placed links in your content, links you didn’t add yourself,…

Google has this new “Know before you go” section in the search results. I mean, it is new for search, not new for Google Maps and not new for local….

Microsoft is now showing why it selects or chooses to show a specific ad directly in the Bing search results. When you click on the arrow down by the URL…

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 launched its…

Google has officially announced Google AI Mode, after hearing rumors about it for months and then seeing leaked screenshots of it a few weeks ago. Google said AI mode gives…

In December, Google told us they are testing powering AI Overviews using Gemini 2.0. We think we even saw Google testing this in the wild with deeper AI Overviews with…

Google is testing more favicon designs within Google Search. I mean, we cover these way too often but hey, I like favicons, don’t you?

It looks like Microsoft is testing search ads that auto expand to reveal sitelinks under those ads within the Bing Search results. You don’t need to click or do anything…

Rajan Patel, a VP, Engineering for Search at Google and the Co-founder of Google Lens, is now also offering an assist to Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liason. For the…

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