Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

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

We are now over a week past the estimated time the Google November 2024 core update was expected to be done and it seems to still be causing a lot…

Google announced that it has modernized and refreshed the emails that are sent out from Google Search Console. Google wrote, “Starting today your Search Console emails are looking more modern…

Bing Search can now place a button under a search result snippet that triggers a site command to restrict the search results to only show results from that domain. The…

We knew Google’s web rendering service (WRS) does its own thing with caching but now a new post from Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt of Google said the “WRS caches…

Google has a newish way to search for events in specific regions. If you do a search for events in a region, like Las Vegas, Google will then try 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. Just because you…

Google’s John Mueller responded to a question on why a company is not ranking for its new brand name, saying, “Just because you call your company something doesn’t mean it’ll…

Google is testing a new video format for some YouTube videos that provide “easy to digest” summaries of YouTube videos based on the users queries. This is a pilot that…

Google’s Gemini is testing a new format for showing sources and links, a format that gives publishers and content sources more visibility in its AI answer engine. Google Gemini’s AI…

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

Today marks the 21st year anniversary of when I started this site, the Search Engine Roundtable…

Here is the big Google Webmaster report for the past month, including the launch of the Google November 2024 core update that has ventured into December, passing Thanksgiving and Black…

Google is now showing animated tutorials for some math solver questions in Google Search. Math solver is not new but I think the animated tutorials are. And if they move…

We recently spotted Google testing a new e-commerce / shopping card format at the top of the results. Now it looks like Bing is testing its own version of this…

In April 2022, Google Business Profiles added performance metrics for direction requests, website clicks, bookings, products and food orders. Well, it seems like food orders are no longer being tracked…

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 November 2024…

Google told us that the Sitelinks search box would stop working within Google Search on November 21st. Well, it finally stopped working a week later on November 27th, in the…

Google has launched a new report form in Google Maps to “report business conduct.” Specifically, this form is to report businesses that offer incentives in exchange for reviews, or pressuring…

Google has updated its Google Business Profiles guidelines to say that businesses associated with products or services that require the customer to be a certain minimum age are not permitted…

Google’s John Mueller said he was generally in favor to the idea of giving prior notice to receiving a manual action, but he said “it’s challenging.” John then explains that…

Bing Webmaster Tools shows search data for Bing Search and Yahoo Search but not OpenAI’s ChatGPT search feature. I actually forgot that Bing Webmaster Tools has Yahoo Search data but…

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, so I was planning on not posting anything – since most of you just want to enjoy your time with your family. But…

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

A couple of weeks ago, we spotted Google testing large thin fonts for the search results. Now I am seeing Google testing large thick and chunk fonts for its search…

Two years ago, we saw Google playing videos, mostly YouTube videos, in an overlay that really gave almost zero incentive for the searcher to click over to the YouTube page….

Google has slightly updated its Google crawlers and fetchers documentation to say that it will pick the protocol, HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, that “provides the best crawling performance” for Googlebot. In…

Google is testing swapping out the blue buttons within the local pack with gold buttons. In this example, the blue call phone icon is now in a gold color, on…

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

The Google November 2024 Core Update launched two weeks and a day ago, and it should be confirmed as done rolling out any minute now but starting yesterday, we are…

Google announced it will be testing more changes for the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in Europe to try to help airlines, hotel operators, and small retailers and not just “large…

Two and a half years ago, Google added a portal-like feature to the Google Search results named “Explore.” It showed up after you scrolled through the Google Search results page…

A few months ago, Google Search Console added the ability to control your Google Merchant Center and product shipping and return policies. Well, it seems like Google will be removing…

Google is testing showing Local Service Ads directly in the Google local pack. They are labeled as sponsored, but they can now show at the top of bottom of the…

In August, Google introduced Google Search Console recommendations but it slowly rolled it out to more and more users over time. Now, Google has fully rolled it out and if…

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

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, has finally explained why it has made it harder to find the results count when doing a Google Search. He said it can be a…

There are a number of cases where sites hit by the expanded Google site reputation abuse policy, where Google issued a number of immediate manual actions, are moving the directories…

Google is updating its Google Ads Misrepresentation – Misleading Ad Design policy to have stronger and clearer enforcement over ads that use buttons that are deceptive and unclear. Google wrote,…

Google is testing yet another format for its AI Overviews. This one looks like Google is grouping answers for a more generic query into multiple categories of responses. Google 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 Search Console’s…

It took some time, but Google’s November 2024 core update started to really heat up over the last weekend, it should be done soon. Google expanded its site reputation abuse…

Google is testing a new format for the Things to know section where instead of showing the results in a list view, Google is showing them side-by-side.

Martin Splitt from Google replied to a question on LinkedIn about what we should be concerned about when it comes to rendered and indexed. One of the questions was about…

I don’t think this is super new but did you know Google Search can show people also searching images, not just people also ask, not just people also search. And…

Google is testing arrow buttons icons at the end of the title link in the search result snippets. Google is also testing them in Sitelinks. I guess<< this is a way…

Similar to the Amazon-style Google product search result carousel snippet, we are seeing other variations of it. This shows products from the retailer; within the search result snippet, you can…

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. DOJ asks the…

Google AI Overviews seems to be slower with removing citations/content from its index that it serves for answers, when compared to web search. This includes when a page or section…

Google launched a new feature in the Google App for iOS named Page Annotation. When you are browsing a web page in the Google App native browser, Google can “extract…

The Department of Justice has asked the judge in the Google monopoly ruling case to force Google to sell Chrome, restrict Android from serving Google Search, and ban its default…

Google Search is testing showing icons and labels in the sitelinks within the search results snippets. I am seeing icons for a phone, price tag, fork/knife, map pin and information…

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

Google has updated its site reputation abuse policy to expand what is included in abuse. It now includes third-party content that has first-party involvement or content oversight. Google also dropped…

Google announced new shopping features through Google Lens to help with in-store shopping and local shopping. Google said, “Google Lens can quickly show you product insights tailored to the store…

Google has updated its guide to Google Search ranking systems to mention at the top of the page that it uses both page-level and site-wide signals for search rankings. There…

Is OpenAI, its ChatGPT service, taking market share from Google? Well, maybe. Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro posted his assumptions based on a mix of data from SimilarWeb and Datos that…

Microsoft is testing categorizing the videos within its Bing video search results. Bing’s video search interface can show at the top a featured video for the query, then trending videos…

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

Over a year and a half ago, Google told us they would be dropping the page experience report from Google Search Console in the “coming months.” Well, it took many…

Google has begun testing removing EU-based news publishers in Google News, Google Search, and Google Discover for 1% of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and…

There are new reports that Google is showing more and more YouTube videos in Google Discover. There is also a new study that says YouTube is the most cited source…