Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

Google has confirmed there are latency and slowness issues with the Google Ads console. The issues started a couple of hours ago and are continuing throughout now.

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…

Google Analytics added Merchant Center recommendations directly to the recommendations section within Google Analytics. Google said these recommendations will “alert you to issues preventing your products from being approved in…

Google is always looking for ways to get their advertisers to spend more. Well, now a new notice to increase your budget says that other advertisers in your region 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 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 Search Console’s indexing reports, the page indexing, etc, are often not super up-to-date, but now we hit a 7-day delay, where the report has not been updated in a…

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…

Almost a year ago, we reported how Bing Search went from circle favicons in the search results to square favicons in the search results. Now, we are seeing Bing testing…

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…

Google Ads has this newish “in store” and “online” tab sponsored ads interface for its search ads, where you can tab between nearby stores and online stores that have what…

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…

Google may be testing removing the “more results” button from the people also ask results within Google Search. In some searches, on some browsers, I see the “more results” 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. We are finally…

Last week we covered how Google’s John Mueller cautioned about using Google Trends for content ideas. Google’s John Mueller also agreed that this can be an issue for Google Search’s…

Some are seeing Microsoft placing ads in the Bing Search results mixed in between the organic results. Google has been testing this for a while now, calling it dynamic ad…

Google Search has been placing trending labels in the search results for a while now. But there is a new variation of that, showing a “Trending this week” label in…

On Friday, Google began to show these massive pop up, overlay ads, on top of the Google Search results, for when you search for your business and are logged into…

Google has been telling us for many months that they will be rolling out ads for AI Overviews. Last month, Google said they will soon show in the US mobile…

Google Analytics may not have fully brought in your analytics data for Wednesday, November 13th, within the GA4 interface. Over the past few days, I’ve seen complaints from site owners…

The Google November 2024 core update started rolling out Monday, November 11, at 3:30 pm ET and we saw some movement begin around Wednesday/Thursday but it was not that widespread….

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

Google launched the November 2024 core update earlier this week, and we are now starting to see movement and ranking shifts because of it. Google AI Overviews is testing using…

Google Maps will now show you if you can find products nearby, like you’d see in directly in Google Search and Google Shopping. This “Products nearby” carousel now shows up…

Google has released a native app for Google Gemini for iPhone devices. This comes after Google added Gemini to the Google app on iOS, created a native Gemini app for…

Google sent emails to some Google Merchant Center advertisers and free users about a new feature in Chrome where the Google web browser will showcase your promotions directly in the…

Google seems to be testing a new AI chat feature for e-commerce searches and retailers that is titled “Get help from Google’s sales assistant.” This will launch an AI chat…

Bing Search has updated its autosuggest (auto complete) search bar to include rich entity cards and popular follow-on searches directly in the suggestion pane. Jordi Ribas, the Head of Search…

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…

As you know, the Google November 2024 core update started rolling out Monday, November 11, at 3:30 pm ET. So far, some sites are seeing really big movements, like massive…

Google’s John Mueller cautioned about relying on and overusing Google Trends for content ideas and generating content for your website. John said that it is “easy to go overboard with…

Google has announced an expansion of anchor ads named collapsible anchors. Collapsible anchors automatically enlarge the ad height on mobile devices for better viewability. Your users can collapse them to…

Google is testing using a larger but thinner font for the search results snippets. I am not sure which one I like better, one looks like a normal font, and…

Microsoft seems to be testing a new section in the Bing Search results titled “content from.” This shows more links to popular sections from that site, based on the user’s…

Google is testing more of those expandable sections in the mobile search results. We have seen them for ads/sponsored listings and other topics but now also for short videos, articles…

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

Google’s John Mueller said that some SEOs over focus on URL structure and that if your context from your pages aren’t clear, then no URL structure can fix that.

This week, Google sent an email to some Google Ads advertisers warning that they may lose access to use Customer Match with their ads cause harm to users or create…

Google will be changing how it handles the first-party cookie controls on AdSense sites. Google said, “We’re making some changes to how first-party cookies are managed in your AdSense account…

A couple of months ago, we reported how Google Search will label if an image was AI-generated, edited by photo editing software or taken with a camera by working with…

Google has added a new promotion type to Google Merchant Center named “Sale events.” Sale events are a type data that you can submit on Google and are shown 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 released the…

Google has begun rolling out the third core update for the year, the November 2024 core update. This update started to roll out on November 11, 2024 at around 3:30…

Google’s John Mueller posted some SEO advice on how to handle version history pages, for product releases, specifications, APIs and other version history. This advice is pretty similar to how…

The meanings of words and brands can change over time. The terms can drift to different meanings. Term drift happens, although it is rare amongst words and less rare with…

A couple of weeks ago, Google announced the new features for travel search ads through integration with travel feeds. These may now be out in the wild, as we are…

Google Search has been rolling out this new expandable section in the search results titled “current sales.” I guess Google is able to figure out what is a sale and…

Google is showing both seller ratings and product ratings on a single Google Shopping Ad unit. It is a bit weird to see both ratings, and it can potentially be…

Google is testing placing a second link directly under the main ad headline link, some call the title link, that pull from your Google Ads assets or extensions. It 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. I posted the…

While Google has yet to confirm a Google search ranking update, we have seen tremendous volatility in the Google Search results this month. Google did however confirm it can downgrade…

Google is testing showing real blue anchor text based hyperlinks in the AI Overviews, instead of showing that paperclip icon. This may encourage searchers to click on the links within…

Google has lifted its pause on US election and political ads today, Monday, November 11, 2024. The pause of US based election ads was temporarily instituted after the US election…

Google has released version 2.8 of the Google Ads Editor. This new update brings a number of new features including AI-generatged images, export to Google Sheets, brand guidelines, image cropping,…

Google is testing removing the favicons and site name from the mobile search results. As you may remember, Google first launched these in the mobile search results back in October…

Google may be testing displaying sponsored labels in different positions within the local map finder view. Some of the ads have sponsored labels on the left side, where it lists…

HARO, Help a Reporter Out, now known as the Connectively Platform is being discontinued, and shut down, on December 9th. For SEOs, it was a way to get attention 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 is testing…

This week in search we covered the election day Google Search ranking volatility. We also had a status update on where those helpful content update victims are currently sitting. There…

We have covered examples of Google selecting the wrong canonical URL from within your domain, but what about when Google shows you a domain name that is not yours? What…

Google will stop supporting the Google Local Service Ads app starting on January 6, 2024. An email sent to advertisers said, “On January 6, 2025, we will be turning down…

Google seems to be testing the ability to have a conversation with the Google Search app, where it Google Search continues to adapt and refine the search query, as you…

Google’s Gary Illyes and John Mueller, along with Bing’s Fabrice Canel and probably other representatives from these search engines spent time in Dublin this week to attend the IETF 121…

Microsoft Bing has these AI-powered buying guide that can show up at the top right section for some e-commerce related queries. Microsoft spoke about these buying guides back in June…

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

Google Ads is rolling out new brand guidelines for performance max campaigns, which was originally announced back at Google Marketing Live. Google said then, “advertisers can share their font and…

Google is testing showing AI Overviews and generative AI results directly in the people also ask section. People also ask generally are featured snippet powered but now Google is testing…

Google Search can show who wrote the review directly in the search results snippet. Google has this “reviewed by” rich result element next to some search results that names the…

Google’s John Mueller was asked about when it makes sense to host images or other content on separate subdomains or domains. John said it makes sense if Google is having…

Google has mixed its search ads between and throughout the organic (free) search results starting sometime mid-last year. Google calls it dynamic ad placement, and it is an ongoing tests….

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 is…