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’s December 2024…

The Google December 2024 spam update seems to have burned through the Christmas holiday, with high volatility on Christmas eve and day. I saw comments from site owners and creators…

Google has relaxed its inconsistent language policy within Google Merchant Center to allow some languages between your product feed and your website language not to match. Google wrote, “we are…

Apple has issued a motion of intervention in the DOJ vs Google antitrust case, specifically in the remedies side to help Google fight the default search agreement it has with…

Every year I like to cover how I spot Googlers, like John Mueller, but yes others, working and communicating with the SEO community on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. This…

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

Google has officially rolled out AI organized results for restaurants related queries. We’ve launched a new way to get dining recs on Search. If you’re looking for something like ‘restaurants…

Google has posted a new help section for Google Merchant Center, a Merchant Center Next Glossary. This glossary defines key Merchant Center terms and links you to related articles with…

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

On Thursday, December 19th at 12 pm ET, Google began its release of the Google December 2024 spam update. It seems like that update kicked into gear the day or…

Google has offered up its remedies over its antitrust case with the Department of Justice – it was forced to, it didn’t want to. Google said it will appeal the…

Google is now showing payment options on some retailer’s knowledge panels. This comes after Google started asking for the payment options a business accepts in Google Merchant Center, although, it…

Microsoft is testing a new section in Bing Search titled “How to pick.” It helps you figure out what product you should pick, by breaking down the options and configurations.

And now we have the Kwanzaa decorations live in the Google Search results. Just search for [Kwanzaa] to see them. Google also went live with the Christmas decorations today and…

Christmas is around the corner and Google finally posted its Christmas decorations in Google Search today. We already have the Hanukkah decorations live and now we have the Christmas decorations…

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

Google has finished rolling out the December 2024 core update, it finished super fast and was incredibly volatile. The volatility started over the weekend but lasted throughout the whole update….

Google is testing a new style of sitelinks again (I cover these way too often). This one turns the sitelinks into shades / gray buttons.

Google Search will roll out an ‘AI Mode’ within Google Search that will look “nearly identical to its Gemini AI chatbot” according to some reports. We also saw sources post…

Google seems to be testing adding buttons/links to nearby hotels and restaurants directly at the top of a Google Business Profile listing. This may be related to the Digital Markets…

Microsoft has this “studies of” carousel in the Bing Search results. It can help you find content that helps you prepare for a specialized exam or course, of sorts.

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

The Google December 2024 core update quickly and brutally finished rolling out yesterday at around 2:00 PM ET. It took just over 6 days to roll out, starting on December…

There are a number of reports of Google Business Profile listings in Google Maps coming up broken. Google seems to be showing half of the listing, with flickering maps portions,…

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…

Mark Williams-Cook gave an unbelievable presentation at SearchNorwich named Improving your SEO with conceptual models. Lucky for you and me, this presentation was posted on YouTube for us all to…

Forbes has reportedly fired some of its freelancers for some stories over its ongoing issue with Google’s site reputation abuse policy, aka parasite SEO. The Verge wrote, “Forbes will stop…

Google is testing a much richer experience for things to do style queries. Instead of showing a calendar box, text format with image boxes, Google is testing showing this rich…

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

Jonathan Jones attended the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich last week and posted excellent and detailed notes about the event, including a bit more on the more often…

Google’s John Mueller reiterated in a big way that SEOs and site owners should not spend time disavowing “toxic” links. He said it is a “billable waste of time” to…

Google has repurposed its 2014 blog post on faceted navigation best practices (which we covered a decade ago) and created a new help document page named Managing crawling of faceted…

Google Merchant Center added a new field in the “Promotion conditions” section for “first order” discount. This seems to be for shopping ads set up in Merchant Center.

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search several weeks ago, it was just available to paid users. Now, anyone who logs into ChatGPT should have access to the Search the Web button…

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 December…

Google’s Daniel Waisberg confirmed that the new 24-hour date filter that is in the Google Search Console web interface is not yet supported by the Google Search Console API. Of…

Google is testing yet another design for favicons in the search result snippets. This one has these backgrounds, grayish backgrounds added behind the favicons in the search results.

Google is testing a “Research more” section in its search results that shows articles on the topic you queried. This looks like the list articles section we covered in October,…

Google is sending out emails asking business owners to add their social profiles to their Google Business Profiles. The email says, “Link your social profiles so customers can see your…

Google Search is testing adding a paper clip icon to the search bar, next to the voice search icon, next to the lens icon and the search button. This seems…

As you know, the December 2024 core update was announced on December 12, 2024 at around 10:46 am ET and Google said it would take about two weeks to complete….

Hanukkah (aka Chanukah) starts pretty late this year, compared to other years. The holiday starts Wednesday, December 25th. And Google has already added its Hanukkah decorations for his year, 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. Google surprised us…

Google surprised most of us with a new core update being announced yesterday, only a week after the November 2024 core update finished rolling out. This new December 2024 core…

Google held its Google Search Central Live event at its large Zurich office (where the Search Central team is based) and one of the things presented was that Google will…

Google Lens stopped working for all users for a short period of time yesterday morning (NY time). Google confirmed the issue at 9:46am ET on Thursday, December 12th and then…

Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, confirmed that campaign-level negative keywords are now in beta for Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads. She added that this will expand in 2025 to…

Several weeks ago, Google announced it would test changes to the search results for hotels in order to see how the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in Europe would impact hotels….

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…

Google announced its “new AI model” named Gemini 2.0 and with that confirmed Google has begun testing using Gemini 2.0 to power AI Overviews in Google Search. Sundar Pichai, Google’s…

Apple released a ton of new Apple Intelligence features yesterday, including what I’ve been waiting to play with – Apple Visual Intelligence. It seems, at least for now, that Apple…

After months of testing, and after Google was the first to make this move, Bing has dropped support for its cache operator and the cache link in Bing Search. Bing…

We’ve seen our share of Sitelinks tests in Google Search. Including a number of variations around expandable sitelinks. But here is a version where you can click an arrow down…

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

This morning we reported about weirdness with the Search Console performance report date picker. Well, maybe it is related to Google just rolling out a new date picker and 24-hour…

Google is testing adding the ability to track prices, share and save products you are looking at in Google Search and Google Shopping. Google added these buttons for track price,…

Google Search Console has a bug with its date picker, when you want to compare two date ranges. It seems to default to the last month of data in most…

Google’s video search results seem to be testing removing the YouTube channel name and video upload date from the search results snippet. I am not sure why Google would remove…

Google has posted a new help document in the Google Merchant Center help center documenting the annotations and badges available both in free and paid Google Shopping results. Google wrote,…

Google now supports even more categories for more types of hours for your business listing. Google added a number of new hour types for religious institutions and restaurants.

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

Google has updated its crawler help documentation to add a new section for HTTP caching, which explains how Google’s crawlers handle cache control headers. Google also posted a blog post…

In October, Microsoft announced it was testing adding Copilot features to Bing Webmaster Tools. This is not showing Copilot data in the performance reports, but rather using Copilot to ask…

Google Search is testing a new design and user interface for the search tools menu. Instead of it showing below the search bar, it now shows right under the tools…

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. Post November 2024…

The Google November 2024 core update finished on December 5th, but we have continued to see search ranking volatility after the update was finished. That ranking volatility seemed to spike…

Late Friday afternoon, Google quietly updated its expanded site reputation abuse policy notice with a section of 9 FAQs. This includes what happens if you try to move the content,…

Google Search Console may have made a big update to its link counts. I am not sure how widespread this is, and I really don’t not track the link count…

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai was interviewed by New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. In this interview they spoke about Google’s approach to AI, Sundar’s outlook for the technology, and what…

Google Search Console has dropped a whole section on its side bar navigation. The Legacy tools and reports section has been removed from the side bar. It is unclear exactly…

Google may have dialed back how often they show AI Overviews in Google Search, especially in some verticals like health and finance (YMYL). Ziptie, a toolset that tracks Google AI…

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…

The Google November 2024 core update finally finished rolling out yesterday at around 1:30 PM ET. It took over 23.5 days to roll out, starting on November 11, 2024 at…

With all this talk about clustering and canonicalization today, what about if you get it wrong, or your CMS breaks and serves the wrong thing to Google? We know how…

As part of the topic of clustering and canonicalization with Google Search today, Allan Scott from Google explained how Google Search’s clustering technology works with its localization technology. The answer…

As part of the topic of clustering and canonicalization with Google Search today, Allan Scott from Google explained what he called “marauding black holes” in Google Search. Where Google’s clustering…

Did you know that Google uses around 40 different signals to perform canonicalization in Google Search? This not only includes numerous type of redirects, the rel canonical attribute but also…

Google’s John Mueller explained the difference between clustering and canonicalization within Google Search. He said, “Clustering is basically taking the pages that we think are the same. And then canonicalization…

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

Google Search has a new button at the bottom of the search results that shows you if the results are personalized or not and a way to turn off personalization….

As Google continues to test its shopping / e-commerce card format, Google is now testing replacing the “popular stores” section with a “Where to buy” section. I mean, it seems…

Google is testing “view all” buttons in the Google Search results, maybe shopping oriented results, next to search result listings that lead to shopping category landing pages. The view all…