Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Chris Silver Smith noticed how Google has updated its Google Maps contributed content policy and removed a line that prohibited review-gating. The line that was removed was “don’t discourage or…

Google’s Search Off The Record podcast had Danny Sullivan, John Mueller and Martin Splitt on the topic of Google ranking updates. While most of what was talked about is not…

The updated Google Search Quality Raters guidelines last week and added an example of that it considers the “lowest quality pages.” In section 4.7 it states the only mention of…

Google’s core update is still rolling out over 7 weeks later and yes we are seeing more fluctuations and chatter. Forbes blocked its coupon directory in preparation for the Google…

I often post about Google ranking volatility and search ranking algorithm updates but I rarely post about them on a weekend. But I just had to this Sunday morning; the…

To start things off, I quickly covered the monthly Google webmaster report. Google also had some big unconfirmed update on or around October 28th. Google confirmed a search bug with…

Microsoft is working to bring its new Deep Search feature to Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat. The issue is, (1) Deep Search is only available to a limited number…

Google is in the process of reworking its popular SEO starter guide, which it initially released in 2010. The starter guide is about 8,500 words right now, but it will…

Today marks the two-week and one-day mark since the Google helpful content update started to roll out and by the time I am writing this (at 5:30 am ET on…

So we had Google confirm that the October 2022 spam update finished Friday morning, the morning of October 21st. The tracking tools and chatter were somewhat mild but that makes…

I’ve been checking for the past week, multiple times per day, and just now, Google has launched the Chanukah/Hanukkah decorations for the 2021 season. Chanukah starts this Sunday night, so…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that the search company’s 2014 guidance with faceted navigation remains true today – do not use non-standard URL encoding. That means do not use commas, brackets…

We had yet another biggish unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update on November 4th and 5th. Google also removed the annotation about the search features bug and added a Discover…

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 confirmed it has fixed the search ranking bug that started over four days ago. The issue was first confirmed by Google on Friday morning, August 16th at around…

It has been just about a year now since Microsoft launched Bing Chat (now known as Copilot) and Bing’s market share has only grown less than 1% according to StatCounter….

Yelp has officially filed a lawsuit against Google for allegedly using its monopolistic powers to give Google an unfair advantage in local search and local search ads. “For years, Google…

Google has made changes to a few of its Google search help documentation over the past couple of days. The documents updated include HTTP status codes, the Googlebot and job…

For the original iTunes version, click here. Well over a week after the Google August 2024 core update finished, we still have a ton of volatility. Apple Visual Intelligence was…

We are all expecting to see Bing Chat support third-party plugins really soon, and for now, Bing is testing it. We now see some screenshots of plugin support in Bing…

Google’s John Mueller was asked on Twitter if 301 redirected links pass full credit or not. John responded that “I wouldn’t see it as “full credit or not”, but rather…

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 said its…

Google’s John Mueller was asked about thin content issues on the last webmaster hangout and John explained this generally applies to the site as a while and not a page…

Google’s John Mueller recommended the obvious (as I write this I am asking myself why write it but hey, sometimes the obvious needs to be reminded). If you have SEO…

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 Ads now…

I am seeing signs of a possible Google search ranking update that kicked off late Friday, May 6th and has really spiked this morning – May 8th – also Mother’s…

Are you dizzy yet? The Google search results are still super volatile and we are seeing high levels of chatter spike back up over the past 24 to 48 hours…

Google is testing a new option on some people also ask results, an option to click a button that says “read full answer.” Valentin Pletzer spotted this in the German…

Google’s John Mueller said it only makes sense to update the date on a piece of content or article when you either “write something new or significantly change something existing.”…

It has been some time since I covered the topic of E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) here. But John Mueller of Google was asked this on Friday at the 10:30…

In July we saw a number of hotels and hospitality business listings say they are seeing the ability to use Google Posts but Google we were told it might be…

It has actually been a couple of weeks since we last reported on a Google search ranking update, May 22/23rd, so it has been a while. But I am seeing…

Google is testing replacing the “Dive deeper in AI Mode” button with “Follow up in AI Mode.” This is the button you can sometimes see at the bottom of the…

The new Yahoo Search experience may launch as soon as a few months from now. Brian Provost, the Senior VP and General Manager of Yahoo Search, said the new Yahoo…

Google has reiterated that when it comes to being eligible to show course rich results in Google Search, you need to have marked up at least three courses on your…

Google is testing a new thin sidebar navigation on the left side of the maps interface. The sidebar has the Google Maps pin icon, then the explore tab, then trips,…

Google hosts events around the world for SEOs, content creators, webmasters, site owners and marketers named Google Search Central Live. They’ve been doing it for years and I’ve attended many…

Lex Fridman had a really great interview with Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai. In that interview, Sundar explained that the “current plan is AI mode” will remain in a separate tab…

This week, we covered that Google told creators that a new search ranking update is coming fairly soon, but you shouldn’t expect to recover with this update. Google is now…

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

The SEO community is buzzing about some recent U.S. Department of Justice documents released that hint at some ranking concepts at Google. One slide is named “The 3 Pillars of…

Google has rolled out a new interface to view your historical Google Posts within Google Business Profiles. Now the interface is a scrollable list view.

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, was asked about if a business should always have a website and if so, should they also have a blog. Sullivan replied that he believes…

As expected, although it took a lot longer than we thought, Google announced it will be replacing the FID metric with the INP metric for its Core Web Vitals. This…

Google has confirmed that AI Mode reporting will be coming to Google Search Console. It is currently not yet in Search Console, but it will be coming as part of…

Google’s John Mueller said in the last Google SEO office-hours from December 2023 that there is no such thing as perfect SEO. He said, “in fact no SEO is perfect.”

Google announced it has renamed the Google Ads extensions to “assets” plus it has released new workflows, tools and reports to “make it easy for you to deliver more engaging…

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…

Google’s John Mueller said on Mastodon that using AI or ChatGPT blindly for title tag generation is not a great idea. But he did add that if you are running…

Now when you use Circle To Search in Google, Google can now return AI Overviews to those results. Google said they are “expanding AI Overviews to more kinds of visual…

Google announced a bunch of new travel search features the other day across flights, hotels, destinations of interest and more. These new features aim at helping you “get inspired and…

Google has finished rolling out both the September 2022 core update and product reviews update on Monday, September 26th – yes, there is a lot of confusion. Google fixed a…

The topic of using hyphens in domain names is one of the oldest SEO topics we have in this space. Heck, in 2004, SEOs said there was a specific Google…

Today being July 4th, I normally would avoid writing stories here but there are a lot of rumors out there that Reddit is blocking Google Search from crawling and indexing…

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

Google is testing angled or off-centered design elements within the search results. The search box seems angled, the favicons seem twisted, the box elements throughout seem tilted – it just…

Google is testing showing a carousel named mentioned products, that can be displayed under a search result snippet that shows the products mentioned in that search result. This came up…

In part one with Glenn Gabe, we talk about Bing chat and Google Bard and also the use of AI-generated content…

Google has now officially confirmed that Google Search Console is counting AI Mode data. Google said, “AI Mode is now counting towards totals in Search Console.” We saw this when…

Google’s John Mueller said publishing content in bulk does not make the content spammy in the eyes of Google Search. He said if you publish awesome content in bulk, Google…

Google is testing a new version of the “more” results button to make it look more basic and simple. Instead of the larger more results button, Google is testing a…

Google’s John Mueller talked about how Google may perceive the practice of using your own content you already wrote on one site, and then copying it over to another site…

The big news from the weekend is that Google has terminated its contract with Appen, one of the largest sources of its third-party human search quality raters sources. Appen announced…

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. For Labor Day…

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

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

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. FYI…

Like last year, Google’s John Mueller put together a year end meme report of SEO for 2021. John said on Twitter “It’s time for the dreaded end-of-year reports. Here’s a…

Google seems to have added a new section to music knowledge panels named “Behind the music.” It seems that this is generated using Google’s Gemini AI and gives you 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. Remember that digital…

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. Check out the…

As you know, Google Search Console’s performance reports were significantly delayed this week. But as of this morning, the reports are beginning to catch up. Google said last night it…

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

John Mueller of Google gave a nice one liner of SEO advice using the movie Jurassic Park. He said on Twitter “It’s a bit like Jurassic Park. Technically, 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. That was fast…

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

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…

While we’ve seen AI Overviews in the United States for a while now, and while Google has expanded them to 100+ countries – they are still not officially launched in…

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 had a…

Google is testing replacing the “Google Screened” label with a “Google Verified” label for the Local Service Ads. I am also seeing these results come up with no labels at…

Google’s John Mueller stated somewhat of an obvious statement, saying basically that building a good website is often good for SEO. He said on Twitter “A lot of good accessibility…

Microsoft Bing may be testing polls for the knowledge panels they display on the right panel. If you search for [joe biden], and scroll down the right side knowledge panel,…

This Google August 2024 core update has been shaking things up since it began to rollout. We saw some early signs of some sites hit by the September 2023 helpful…

It’s like Google cannot make up its mind – with all the volatility we reported post Google August 2024 core update, a lot of that volatility means ranking changes for…

Google’s John Mueller said when it comes to reindexing and resubmitting your web pages to Google Search – Google does it on its own. You do not need to resubmit…

Wishing you all a happy Happy Fourth of July, as you can see, this site is all dressed up for the day (on desktop) and Google has their special animated…

Google has officially and fully launched the Google Ads AI conversational experience to all advertisers globally in English. Plus, it is now using Gemini, Google’s latest multimodal generative AI model.

We’ve covered Google saying E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor too many times here but have we covered EEAT not being a thing that factors into other Google ranking factors?…

I am seeing some signs of some big Google Search ranking volatility and shuffling today. The core update just finished, so Google would say it is not the core update…

Google’s Gary Illyes said on the last Search Off the Record podcast that Google can crawl certain sections of your site more frequently and also infer the quality of certain…

Google is testing a new search box named “for reference” which is placed under a set of search results and contains more news articles related to the query. This seems…

Google has confirmed it has been testing Google Search result listings without any descriptions, again. Google first tested this in 2015 and is now testing it again for the past…

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…