Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

Google is sending news publishers a lot less traffic from Google Web Search but also a lot more traffic from Google Discover. A new report conducted by Newzdash analyzing 8.1…

As a reminder, Google Ads has begun pausing low-activity keywords that were created over 13 months ago and have zero impressions over the past 13 months. But that does not…

As part of the Search Off The Record podcast from Google on crawling, which we briefly covered on Friday, Gary Illyes from Google said he is investigating ways for Google…

Have you heard of Effingo by Google? Google actually spoke about it on their Google Cloud blog in May 2023. Now Gary Illyes from Google said it is used by…

Over the past couple of weeks, there has been an increase in complaints around Google Search listing URLs with the srsltid URL parameter tagged along to the URL, as the…

Since Friday, August 9th, I have been seeing yet another intense spike in Google Search ranking volatility. This is based on the SEO chatter within the communities and of course,…

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…

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week, we covered the big ruling that Google is officially a monopoly, a federal judge ruled. Google search ranking volatility heated up…

Google posted a new “Search Off The Record” podcast yesterday on the topic of crawling where John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman, and Gary Illyes spoke about how Google crawls, some ideas…

There has been some confusion around how Google handles pages that might be more costly for Google Search to crawl, render, index and serve – i.e. JavaScript pages. Google does…

Google seems to be rolling out a new Google Lens feature that lets you record with your camera and also speak with your voice on top of that video. Then…

Microsoft is testing a weird change to the Bing Search results user experience. Bing is testing that when you do a search from the home page, that it opens 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. Google Ads issues…

Google will begin showing photos in your Local Service Ads that come from your Local Service Ads profile. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, wrote on X yesterday, “Starting today, we’ll…

Google is testing sending the searcher to the short videos tab after clicking on the more videos button, instead of dynamically loading videos underneath the videos you are currently looking…

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

Google Business Profiles performance report is no longer showing the “call” tab that shows you statistics and data on searchers who called you from Google Search and Google Maps. I…

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

It’s been about a week since the superheated and bursting Google Search ranking volatility, and since then, it did happen to calm down a bit, at least relatively speaking. But…

Google Search Console is rolling out a new recommendations feature where Google will show you site improvement recommendations. These recommendations are based on the data in Search Console and aim…

There is this SEO scam going around where scammers are saying you pay Google to fix your rankings in Google Search. All you need to do is prepay them and…

The big Google Ads reporting outage from the eve of August 1st was an intentional outage due to Google serving ads for products from other Google Merchant Center accounts. This…

Google Trends began rolling out a new design for the trending now page a day or so ago. The new design seems to give you more filter options and provide…

Google is testing the “see also” carousel on Google Business Profiles. This means, someone can be looking directly at your local listing on Google, maybe because they searched for your…

Judge Amit Mehta, a US federal judge ruled on Monday that Google is a monopoly. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge…

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

Microsoft looks to have pushed out a Bing Search ranking algorithm update around May 29th. I don’t track Bing Search ranking volatility that closely anymore but Glenn Gabe looked back…

Google seems to know handle or obey the RateLimit Header Fields for HTTP. Mike Blazer asked John Mueller from Google about this and John said he never heard of it,…

Google seems to be showing photos from reviews from actual users in the Google Shopping product image carousel. So when you click on a product listing and then swipe through…

Google seems to have launched the interactive knowledge panel layout for local knowledge panels in Google Search. This design is from a couple of years ago but now seems to…

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 is a…

This week we covered how Google said the core update isn’t extremely far away. We also reported on super intense Google Search ranking volatility change later this week and then…

Here is the big monthly Google webmaster report, where I catch you up on what changes with Google Search related to Google updates, ranking volatility, SEO, Search Console, UI changes,…

A few weeks ago, Google announced it is doing away with how it does credits and disputes for Local Service Ads and is switching to an automated system. It seems…

Google seems to be encouraging searchers to search more for more types of queries with a new “Explore more with Search” carousel. It shows the searcher other topics, with photos,…

Google will update its Google Ads policy on September 3, 2024, to allow public hair grooming services to be advertised on the Google Ads network, including Display, YouTube, and Search.

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

Google Search had an incredibly volatile month of July and it ended the month with a huge bang. The volatility in the Google Search results yesterday, July 31st, going into…

In May, we reported that Google Search algorithms lowered the rankings of deepfake sites. Now, Google has gone into more detail on how this algorithm works and how you can…

A few weeks ago, we saw Google testing pill formats, bubble formats, for sitelinks in the mobile search results. Now Google is testing that format on the desktop search results.

Google Merchant Center may have recently added to the product feed report the number of products found by Google, not by way of a feed you provided or manually submitted…

Google is testing a new section on knowledge panels named “videos from.” This section can contain videos from the brand’s social channels. This seems to be a larger extension of…

The folks at Vercel and MERJ put together a super deep dive on how Google Search handles indexing JavaScript. They analyzed over 100,000 Googlebot fetches across various sites to test…

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

Over the past few days, Google has come under fire over its autocomplete predictions in Google Search around former President, Donald Trump. In the wake of the issue, Google updated…

Google seems to be testing a new search feature named “Hidden gem stores.” This shows you shopping and merchant listings from various stores and brands. This does not seem to…

Microsoft reported its fourth quarter 2024 earnings and it showed that its search and advertising revenue was up 19%. The last time it was up over 19% in a quarter…

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 Search Console…

Google Search may be replacing the heading for “X (Twitter)” posts with “Latest Posts from.” This would be a step to removing more X branding from the Google Search results…

Google Search Console has a bug with the Search Performance report, where if you want to filter by Search Appearance, it won’t show you all the options. Google is aware…

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 the…

Google’s John Mueller responded to complaints about image thumbnails still not showing up for some publishers in the search results. He encouraged a bit more patience, saying “the next one…

Over the past almost two weeks, we have seen consistent and ongoing ranking volatility on a daily basis. The last Google search ranking update I covered was around July 23rd,…

Google Discover is now pushing users to see AI Overviews directly in the Google Search results. As you scroll through the Discover feed on Google.com, you may see a promotion…

Google Business Profiles has a new AI feature to let you upload a photo of your menu and Google will create your menu items for your restaurant based on that…

Google may be displaying the X (formerly Twitter) carousel in the search results less often for news related topics. A report from Newzdash shows the X carousel is showing up…

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

This week…

Google pushed out a large update to Gemini (formerly known as Bard) and this update includes more links to both related content and also links to verify the content that…

OpenAI has announced SearchGPT, its AI search tool that looks and feels a lot like ChatGPT but gives you more sources and answers through links. OpenAI wrote, “We’re testing SearchGPT,…

Google’s John Mueller said on LinkedIn he does not recommend you use LLMs (AI tools) for SEO advice. He wrote, “please don’t use LLMs for SEO advice.” “They learn from…

Google is testing showing a related images carousel right below an images box in the mobile search results. As you scroll through the search results, you are presented with an…

Google seems to be testing a new option for the Book Online call to action option that does not use an online booking service but rather lets you call the…

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

Google said it again, it will soon test ads within its AI Overviews. Philipp Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer for Google, said this in the earnings call…

Microsoft announced yesterday it has begun testing its new Bing generative search experience – so Bing GSE (versus Google SGE). “By combining the power of generative AI and large language…

On July 1, 2024, Reddit updated its robots.txt file to prohibit most search engine and AI crawlers from accessing its content – including blocking Microsoft Bing. Reddit did not block…

Apple has launched a public beta version of Apple Maps on the web after launching the mobile app back almost 12 years ago on September 19, 2012. “Apple Maps on…

Google Local Service Ads can now show the business’s phone number in the ad unit when you hover over your mouse cursor over the ad. It will then dynamically expand…

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

I probably should have covered this yesterday but I have been seeing more ranking volatility starting late on Monday, July 22nd, through yesterday, July 23rd and into today July 24th….

Aleyda Solis posted the results of a poll she ran, which showed 54% say their sites have seen mostly a positive effect from Google Updates in the last couple of…

Google has added new ad budget options and features to Local Service Ads. You can now set a maximum monthly ad spend limit for the month for some accounts.

Google / Alphabet reported its Q2 2024 earnings last night, where its ad revenue hit $64.62 billion, up 11% from last year’s quarter of $58.14 billion. Clearly, Google’s advertising business…

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 will not…

Google Search is testing using AI Overviews to provide video descriptions in the Google Search results. When you click to expand some videos, Google may overlay the video and its…

Google has decided not to deprecate, do away with, third-party cookies in Chrome. This is something Google has been planning and testing for a while, delaying the efforts numerous times,…

Google is testing larger sitenames and favicons again. You can see a considerably larger font used for the sitename (the link in the Google search result snippets) and a larger…