Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

John Mueller from Google responded to a question on Reddit about the likelihood of fixing just 10 pages out of 20,000 pages on a site, how that might help that…

Google paused Google Business Profiles restatements for the locksmith industry but has now resumed those requests and is working through the backlog now. Google paused them early last week and…

Google is currently working on fixing a bug that prevents the product variant structured data from showing rating stars in the search. This bug was spotted by Jarno van Driel…

Google is once again testing showing five local results, a five-pack, instead of the typical 3 local results, a three-pack, in the search results local results section. Google tested this…

Hope you are all having a nice relaxing weekend because it seems like the Google Search rankings were super volatile again this past Saturday. I am seeing a spike in…

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

Google had some more intense search ranking volatility this week, both on June 1st and also around June 5th. Google said white-labeled coupon sites would be penalized by its site…

Google has placed a notice at the top of the Google Search Console removal tool that says, “Cache updates are no longer available.” It added that you “can still request…

Google has removed the How-to enhancement report from Google Search Console. When Google stopped showing how-to rich results in the search results, it said it would keep the reports “for…

In addition to the shop deals top bar we spotted earlier, now we are seeing reports of Google Search testing a shopping search filter bar at the top. This makes…

Google Image search is testing the ability to pinch to zoom, to expand the details on a specific image within the mobile interface. So instead or in addition to clicking…

In March 2023 Google began testing a new design for the Google Ads advertiser console. Google announced that it will start to roll out this new design to all advertisers…

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

For the past few days there has been a number of complaints about not being able to see Questions and Answers on Google Business Profile listings. While some can see…

There has been a tremendous amount of confusion around the news that Google will stop indexing sites that are completely inaccessible via a mobile phone after July 5th. Google will…

Google has updated its coupons FAQs in the original Google March core update blog post to clarify which sites would be hit by the site reputation abuse policy. Google wrote…

Google Merchant Center seems to be testing a whole slew of new analytics for the Merchant Center console. The data itself is not new but the UX is, and I…

Microsoft sent emails to some Microsoft Advertising advertisers to let them know that if they have run an import from Google Ads to their Microsoft Advertising account, going forward, Microsoft…

Google Ads has released a major version release for the Google Ads API, version 17. Version 17 includes preparation for resource usage policy changes, page size changes, batch reporting changes,…

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

I am seeing signs of yet another intense Google search ranking update and intense ranking volatility yesterday and into today, June 4th and 5th. Many of the tools are showing…

New data from BrightEdge shows that Google is showing far fewer AI Overviews than it did when it first launched them as a beta under the Search Generative Experience. Google…

Microsoft, in its monthly update, announced that it will be moving (or “upgrading” as they call it) smart shopping campaigns to Performance Max within the next couple of months. Microsoft…

Google has fixed an issue with site names not appearing for some internal pages, this has been an issue since December 2023. I checked some examples, and they are indeed…

Google News seems to be testing placing a header above news sources in the Google News follow interface, that says “how these stories are ranked.” I personally cannot replicate it,…

Google has updated its discussion forum structured data help documentation to clarify that SocialMediaPosting markup is also supported. Google did say that SocialMediaPosting should be used for sites that 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 fixed the…

Google said it will not index sites that are not accessible on mobile devices after July 5, 2024. “If your site’s content is not accessible at all with a mobile…

Google seems to be adding a people also ask like search refinement/expander for the popular products on Google Search. Below the popular products section there is this section that shows…

Last week, Google emailed its Google Ads and Google Analytics users with a heads-up about new privacy laws coming to some states in the United States. This involves topics around…

Just last week we reported that chat is going away from Google Business Profiles. Well, Google may be adding native SMS and WhatsApp messaging support for your Google Maps business…

The Google Search Console link report now seems to be fixed. As we reported last week, we saw a decline in links being reported by the tool, followed by a…

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 was a…

What an absolutely wild month in Google Land – between the Google Search API leak, the intense ranking volatility in May, and AI Overviews launching and all the hoopla around…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said on X, “you or anyone who shares constructive feedback about our results should not feel like we’d be upset with them.” He went on…

A bunch of SEOs are now experimenting with how they can show up in the Google AI Overviews, not just remove themselves from AI Overviews. Cyrus Shepard posted a “mini…

Google seems to be testing renaming Google Discover to maybe Google Home or maybe Google Browse. I mean, it is not shocking Google would renamed Discover to something else. Discover…

As a reminder, Google has reiterated that when Google receives a search spam report, it does not take direct action against the violation or violating site. Instead, Google uses that…

Google has been super volatile over the past several weeks and now I am seeing even more volatility touch down on the first day of June, this past Saturday. It…

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

This was one heck of a week with Google’s search ranking data features being leaked…

Google’s Head of Search, Liz Reid, wrote a blog post last night named “AI Overviews: About last week.” She basically said that overall the vast majority of the AI Overviews…

This morning, I was doing some news queries and noticed that, sporadically, the Google News tab was not returning results for some queries. I thought it was just me and…

Google is now showing a newish “shopping ideas” carousel within its search results. It can show up for a variety of queries and gives you a less promotional version of…

Google has added a “see also” section to some knowledge panels over the past few weeks. I think it is similar to the “people also search for” and related features…

Even after the Google search API data leak, even after it was confirmed by Google, still 10% of SEOs will continue to trust Google statements going forward. The wild thing…

Google is testing showing the first people also ask link, as opened by default. So you don’t need to click on it to reveal the snippet within the first people…

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

After over 32 hours of silence after the Google Search ranking data leak, Google has finally confirmed the leak, but urged caution around making assumptions on how Google Search ranking…

Google added a couple of new options to the spam reporting tool, including the new site reputation abuse and expired domain abuse, to the form. Again, Google announced these new…

Earlier this week, we reported on some declines in the number of links reported in the Google Search Console links report. Well, it got a lot worse this morning, and…

Google is testing shading and boxing in the people also ask details within the mobile Google Search results. So instead of just a plain snippet interface, Google is testing adding…