Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Google is testing placing the top quality store badge and icon next to the site name area in the Google mobile search results. This brings up that icon from the…

Bing added a new guideline to its Bing Webmaster Guidelines named Prompt Injection. A prompt injection is a type of cyberattack against large language models (LLMs). Hackers disguise malicious inputs…

On the heels of the completion of the June 2024 spam update this Thursday, June 27th, I am now seeing signs of an unconfirmed Google Search ranking algorithm update 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. Google’s June 2024…

Google has completed the rollout of the June 2024 spam update after a seven-day and one-hour period. This update started on June 20, 2024, and was completed on June 27,…

Elizabeth Tucker, Director, Product Management at Google Search was a guest on Google’s Search Off the Record podcast where Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller of Google asked her about search…

Google Product Studio, which is part of Google Merchant Center Next, now works in the UK, India, and Japan. Google also added file upload support to Product Studio and additional…

Microsoft may now include AI generated content within the Bing Search people also ask sections. Bing is labeling some of the people also ask boxes with the disclaimer, “Includes Al…

There is a new report out that says menu items and how busy you are during Google Maps popular times are both ranking factors and signals for Google’s local ranking…

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 is testing placing the link cards at the top of the AI Overviews box within Google Search. Instead of having them deep at the bottom, they are being tested…

Google has announced a number of new search-related features to its mobile version of the Chrome browser. These updates include new local Chrome Actions, new search shortcuts, trending in search…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said it again, that “there’s clearly more we should be doing” with ranking websites that deserve to rank better in Google Search. He clarified…

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 has…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, responded to some new SEO advice floating around the SEOverse that suggests you should not add the brand name of the products you are reviewing…

Google Search is rolling back its continuous scroll user interface and bringing back the legacy Google Search pagination bar. Google told us that starting yesterday it will stop offering continuous…

Google has added new fields and options to the Google Business Profiles verification status tool. These options should help some businesses that are having issues getting verified on Google Maps.

We knew Google would stop accepting publications into Google News Publisher Center, but Google also stopped showing news “sources” in Google News, stopped showing a follower count for those sources,…

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

Ever since the Ray Google AI Overviews update, Google scaled back showing AI Overviews in Google Search for some YMYL categories, especially in the health space. But now we are…

Google Search now may show you a special search box for your searches related to finding a credit card. If you search for [credit cards], [best credit cards], [visa credit…

Google is testing a number of sitelink variations within its mobile search results interface. They come in these variations: boxed in, pill-like shaped, some with arrows, some in black, and…

Google has made a small note to the sitemap documentation to add that the lastmod date specified in the sitemap file “should reflect the date and time of the last…

Google announced it is rolling out Automated Local Services Ads lead credits next month, which should “credit the same or more leads on average,” than the old system. This will…

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

Google is now showing Instagram posts within its Perspectives feature in the Google Search results. This started a week ago or so, and I received a number of posts about…

Google has always said that having pages that serve a 404 status code is normal; most sites have them, and when a page does not exist on your site, 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. Google unleashed a…

Google has released a new algorithm update the search company is naming the Google June 2024 Spam Update. This update does not have anything new specific changes that we are…

For the past several months, generally around the helpful content update in September and the various core updates we had over the past several months, there have been complaints with…

Ashwarya, the Community Manager for Google Search, posted a bunch of resources around Google Safe Search. He wrote, “We are going to help you out in every way possible. Here…

Google is testing a floating search bar in the Google Discover results. So when you load up the Google home page on your mobile device and scroll through some Discover…

Google is notifying some advertisers that use Google’s Local Service Ads program that soon their ads will be shown on Google Maps. It will start with the iOS version of…

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…

Surprise, surpise… Wikipedia is the number one source of information that comes up when you click on the people also ask feature within the Google Search results. People also ask…

A few months ago I posted about a possible bug with Google Maps where map pins were being moved around into one location. I later updated the post to suggest…

Google is testing showing a “latest deals” section in the search results that says “Deals added in the past 24 hours.” So Google Search is pulling in fresh new deals…

Google is testing placing both the “Top-quality store” and “shop rating” labels or badges on the same page of the search results, for the same search result snippets. Generally, Google…

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 posted its…

Some in the SEO industry have been asking if Google has been showing fewer links in its search results to Reddit over the past several weeks. So Mordy Obserstein pulled…

Google has posted a new document in its forums named frequently asked questions about AI Overviews. In this document it has a section named “why can’t I disable AI Overviews?”…

Google’s Gary Illyes posted on LinkedIn with two common examples of when a spike in Googlebot activity, crawling, is a bad thing. The short answer is when Googlebot gets to…

Google is testing showing two more people also ask results, by default, which is a total of six people also ask, instead of the typical four people also ask that…

Google seems to be adding a “menu” button to the Google Business Profiles, the local panels, in the web search results. I think Google has tested this one and off…

Google has begun rolling out a new privacy and messaging feature for AdSense ads in some US states. This is to comply with California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah privacy…

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…

There is a lot of talk in the wider SEO community around pound signs, #, in the Google Search Console reports, meaning something about canonicalization. John Mueller from Google, along…

Google has added an “edit” and “post” button more prominently as big buttons to Google Business Profiles within the Google Maps interface. Previously, these buttons were not as accessible in…

Did you ever sort the Bing Webmaster Tools clickthrough-rate column from highest to lowest and notice that you can see a CTR higher than 100%, I even see 300%. Well,…

Google is testing another variation of its sitelinks design, this one uses black font colors for the sitelinks. Of course, Google generally uses blue for those links, because links are…

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

Google launched AI overviews in the SERPs in the United States officially on May 14th at I/O. This follows the launch of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) in May of…

Apple has made some really big changes to the Applebot documentation after the Apple WWDC event, where Apple announced Apple Intelligence. Apple added more about Applebot, reverse DNS details, Applebot-Extended…

Google has updated its Google Maps contributor fake engagement policy to flesh out in more detail how the policy works. The new text is like 40% longer and seems to…

Google has tweaked its hreflang search developer documentation to clarify that link tags for denoting alternate versions of a page must not be combined in a single link tag. Google…

Google Ads will update its Healthcare and medicines policy this month to allow advertisers to discuss opioid painkillers without promoting or selling them. The example given is that you can…

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

Google Search had more weekend volatility, surprise, surprise. Google responded more to the search leak around Navboost, clicks and user interactions. I interviewed Google’s Elizabeth Tucker on the March core…

Google is testing a new look for the “from sources across the web” search results feature. This one looks like the multiple features snippets look, with the perspectives design, but…

In the last Search Off The Record podcast, Gary Illyes from the Google Search team said that sometimes issues can arise within the Google Search results due to two experiments…

Google Business Profiles websites, which stopped loading websites and began redirecting to the Google Business Profiles listing on Google Maps now completely 404 – as expected. It was supposed to…

Google may be testing a new call extension and location extension ad format. This format shows up as a carousel of links or buttons that you can scroll through below…

Did you know that SEO bloggers, like myself, are the reason you see fewer and less nuanced responses from Google Search reps? John Mueller from Google said so on Reddit,…

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

Google posted a notice that it fixed an issue where Google Analytics, GA4, would sometimes not credit the proper conversion attribution to the paid search campaign. Google said it will…

Google is testing a larger font size for the main search result title link, followed by smaller fonts for that same snippet’s sitelinks. This was spotted a few days ago…

Google posted a public service announcement saying you should disallow Googlebot from crawling your action URLs. Gary Illyes from Google posted on LinkedIn, “You should really disallow crawling of your…

Microsoft is testing using black-colored review stars in its Bing Search results. This is instead of the yellow or orange review stars. I am not sure why they are testing…

Google seems to be testing adding labels and descriptions on the photos within the local business profile listings. These are on both the carousel of images and on the detailed…

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…

Yesterday at SMX Advanced, I interviewed the Google executive who announced the March 2024 core update on the main Google blog. I asked Elizabeth Tucker a boatload of questions around…

Google has expanded its support for return policy structured data to allow you to add the return policy to the organization level, and not have to specify that policy on…

Google is testing QR codes on the Google Business Profile listings within Google Maps. The QR code shows on the right side of the action buttons (i.e. directions, save, share,…

Google Ads announced it will add a new optional verification to verify the affiliation of the advertiser/individual with the organization they are verifying. This starts sometime this month, June 2024,…

Google is testing shading the background color in gray behind the favicon and site name and URL for the mobile search results. It brings a little bit more of a…

Google Search no longer shows “home activities” after launching the feature just under three years ago. Google has pulled down the home activities structured data from its search developer documents…

This is a programming note that I will be completely offline for the holiday of Shavout/Shavous, from Tuesday night, June 11th, through late Thursday night, June 13th – I return…

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

Google once again said you can recover from the damage inflicted on your site by the September 2023 helpful content update with the next core update. Danny Sullivan, the Google…

Google added deeper insights for those who use merchant listings to see how well their merchant listings are performing within the Google Image Search tab. A new search appearance filter…

Now that Google is encouraging publishers to use proper lastmod dates in their sitemap files, what happens if your lastmod date is incorrect and shows the wrong date. Gary Illyes…

Google seems to be testing categorizing or organizing the search results on the search results page. This is something Google announced it would do at Google I/O and also something…

Apple held its WWDC event yesterday and while I found Craig Federighi’s helmet used for jumping out of the airplane in the Apple skydiving suit to be super entertaining, Apple…

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 Search Liaison…

The Google Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, gave a more specific comment to specific signals and elements mentioned in the search leak, well above and beyond what is mentioned in the…

Last week we reported that Googlebot will pretty much halt crawling and indexing websites using its desktop crawler and just crawl using its smartphone crawler (which caused a lot of…