Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

This week we had some fun bugs with both Google Search having some massive indexing issues and Google Ads going offline for a couple of hours. Google has confirmed that…

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’s John Mueller said on Twitter that the number of links, for SEO purposes, is not a useful metric. He also said by the time you calculate all your links,…

Ben Fisher notified me that now when you add a new business to Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business), Google now by default asks you as part of the…

As we reported a week ago, we saw a possible Google local search ranking update starting around a week prior to that – well, Google has now confirmed it. Google…

Google Maps seems to be rolling out or testing a new feature to dock locations and businesses to the bottom of the map page. You may see a “dock to…

Starting at about 1:30pm ET, five hours ago, Google Search Console is still down for many SEOs. It might work for you but for many, Google Search Console is not…

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. It was a…

Not only did we have a two hour Google Search indexing outage this morning, but between around 3am ET and 5am ET the Google Ads interface and advertising console was…

John Mueller from Google shared something both funny and mostly true about SEO tasks. He basically said that it is often hard or even sometimes impossible to know which SEO…

The Google AdSense support team will be offline from December 17, 2021 to January 4, 2022 – a full 18-days. Google said the team is going offline for the holidays…

I previous wrote about how Google Ads is not impacted by the Log4j security vulnerability but many sites and servers are. So if you have a website that needs to…

Google started to roll out the December 2021 product reviews update on Wednesday, December 1, 2021. Google said then it would take about three weeks to fully roll out, which…

Google announced that now Google Analytics 4 supports data from Google Search Console. This was something Google has supported with the original Google Analytics since 2011 and now has brought…

It seems like Google is having a major indexing or crawling issue this morning – again. Google seems to have not picked up on new content in the past hour…

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

Google’s John Mueller said again that having links to your site is not a requirement and not mandatory for ranking in Google Search. He said this back in 2015 as…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed again that Google won’t likely penalize or give your site a manual action if you do not add a nofollow or rel sponsored attribute to your…

There has been a lot of local SEOs talking about the big shake up in the local results over the past week. It might be related to a local search…

Google’s John Mueller said that special characters on your page “doesn’t affect Google” Search rankings. This is in regards to like checkmarks such as ‘” or other special characters.

This is somewhat both sad and funny and I thought I should share it here. Via Joe Youngblood, an SEO who has said he “learned a few tricks” was able…

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…

Over the past few days you may have heard about Log4j and a major vulnerability that allowed hackers to attack unpatched Apache servers – if not, click here to learn…

Microsoft Bing seems to be testing a feature to translate your query. Frank Sandtmann sent me a screenshot of Bing in Germany where it offers the option to translate his…

It looks like Google is testing a more empty style for its search bar. The search bar has no apparent box to enter your query after your query is in…

Google said that as of December 14th and onwards that the reviews snippet rich results report in Google Search Console may show fewer review objects. This is because Google is…

A few weeks ago, Google announced a new feature named busy area – well, that feature now seems to be rolling out. Several folks started to notice this roll out…

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…

In part one, we spoke about Joseph Goldsmith and video production topics. In part two, we spoke about his views of SEO as a video guy. In part three, I…

Pretty much all the tools that automatically track the volatility and changes in the Google search results are still showing major volatility. It is unusual because the November core update…

It seems like Google also has made the full width image pack results live over the past few days. Brodie Clark said this went live when Google went live with…

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…

Google has been testing showing more in the autocomplete search suggestions drop down bar as you type since September 2020 and then more so again in August 2021. Now it…

As you know, Google has dropped its deadline to switch all sites to mobile-first indexing after missing its self-directed deadlines multiple times in the past. But John Mueller of Google…

Over the past 24 hours or so, Google has sent me dozens of notices from sites I have verified Google Search Console properties with. The notices say “New Coverage issue…

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

Back in the early 2000s we use to cover Alexa, an Amazon related website ranking service here a lot. SEOs use it like they used PageRank, and how they now…

Google has told us that you want to avoid buying a domain name that was filtered by the Google SafeSearch adult filter. Well, servers.com had this issue and after asking…

After many months of testing, Google has confirmed it is moving the local pack results to the top and the map on the right of those local results on desktop…

Google’s John Mueller said putting the category name or topic name in your URL slug has zero impact on your rankings. I am not 100% sure if he really meant…

This week, I did a bit of a look at what we are seeing around this big December 2021 Google products reviews update. I also spoke about a possible, unconfirmed,…

In September, Microsoft Advertising added 32 new attributes for its Bing Search Ads, and now, Microsoft added four more new attributes. These new attributes include Asian-owned, Latin-owned, Women-owned and Diabetic-friendly…

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…

PPCGreg posted on Twitter that Google Ads has updated the design and look for the custom columns and also added some new metrics and the ability to use functions.

Google is now showing up to two ads in the local search results – the local pack. Joy Hawkins spotted it the other day for a search on [lawn care…

Now that some publishers, like Search Engine Land, are removing AMP because it is no longer a requirement for top stories inclusion, some are noticing weird changes to the publisher’s…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that when it comes to Google understanding and ranking documents, Google looks at more than just text on a page. He aimed this comment…

Google may have also pushed out a local search and map algorithm and ranking update over the past week or so. There has been some recent chatter and the Bright…

Google has made some changes to the Google Search Console performance report for Google News where your impressions may drop. Google said this is just a reporting change and the…

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 their…

Google announced that image extensions for Google Ads is rolling out to desktop ads now. Note, it launched for mobile ads in May 2021. Also, Google Ads image extensions now…

Google has published this years year in review for the top searches it saw in 2021. From COVID vaccine, to Dogecoin and AMC stock to Alec Baldwin to Simone Biles…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Googlebot is not yet crawling over HTTP/3 yet. He said if you do implement HTTP/3 for your site, it doesn’t mean it won’t benefit your…

Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt had two special guests on their podcast show this week to talk about how Google approaches inclusive language in search – a topic we…

Azeem posted a Twitter poll a while back asking the digital marketing community if they prefer to specialize in a specific niche of marketing or be more of a generalist…

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 another…

We have yet another Google Ads spending bug to report, this one was related to Google advertisers using Target ROAS or Maximize Conversion Value bid strategies on some campaigns on…

Google is testing a new layout for the key moments video featured snippets layout in Google Search results. Instead of placing a wider video at the top with the text…

Bing announced last week that you can now search Bing and Bing Local for store stock availability and choose to buy online and pick up in-store. I honestly wasn’t sure…

Sometimes people change their names, for legal reasons, maybe when they get married, maybe they go from a pseudonym to using their real name. What do you do if you…

As expected, Google is now letting health providers and facilities to go into their Google Business Profile and select the insurances they accept. This option should be under the info…

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 a number of new Google Ads policy changes that take place in January and February 2022 around political and election based content in ads. Google is ending the…

Google seems to be rolling out a new Google Ads experiments workflow that drops the need to use campaign drafts. George Nguyen reported this at Search Engine Land with the…

Google is once again testing new layouts for the top stories section of the Google Search results. This includes not just the box carousel at the top but also double…

Google Image Search seems to be testing a new feature to group images by type of search filter. Here is a screenshot from Mordy Oberstein showing a new section for…

Google is once again deactivating accounts for inactivity. Google AdSense sent out emails last week to AdSense publishers and YouTube publishers saying your AdSense account has been deactivated due to…

In part one, we spoke about Joseph Goldsmith and video production topics. In part two, we speak more about SEO topics, mostly about what his clients do around SEO…

As you all know, Google launched a new algorithm update on December 1st named the December 2021 product reviews update. Since then, the tracking tools have been off the charts…

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

Google has confirmed a bug with Google Ads Editor version 1.8 and the image ad uploads feature. The AdsLiaison said on Twitter “the team is aware of a recent issue…

An insane week to end an insane month of Google changes is how to sum up this SEO video recap. Google finished rolling out the November 2021 core update on…

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…

Google now lets searchers filter the local search listings for healthcare providers; facilities, doctors, etc by the types of insurances accepted and if they speak your language. So make sure,…

Zac Stafford posted a screenshot on Twitter of his client’s ads showing negative prices in the Google Search shopping ad results. He said Google auto generated promotions using old codes…

Praveen Sharma shared a screenshot of a new carousel in the Google mobile search results that shows localized language content based on the location of the searcher, despite the language…

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 the past 18 years I’ve been writing on this site, covering what you – the search marketers are chattering about. Today marks the 18th anniversary of the Search Engine…

Google is rolling out yet another confirmed Google search ranking algorithm update – the second Google Product Reviews Update of the year. So if you were hit by the April…

What an insanely busy month we had with Google in November 2021! We had a big core update named the November 2021 core update, we had a spam update named…

Marie Haynes posted another poll asking SEOs what they saw from the Google November 2021 Core Update now that the update is finished rolling out. Most, like 60% of the…

Google’s John Mueller said for some sites, you can ignore the Google Webmaster Guidelines that says you should have “a page with a human-readable list of links to these pages…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that the Google Product Experts do not get access to any ranking or SEO secrets. Nor do these Product Exerts get any sort of…

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

Google’s John Mueller said again that Google does not index parts of a page – like the header versus the footer versus the main area of the content. Google indexes…

Google Merchant Center seems to be rolling out a new report named the competitive visibility report. The competitive visibility report helps you understand your competitive landscape on product category level…

Google’s John Mueller gave his blessing to the links on or from new and small sites. John said that getting links from small or new sites is fine and doesn’t…

If you search for Hanukkah, Chanukah, Menorah and other related searches, you will not only see the annual Google Chanukah decorations but you may also see the pagination tool at…

Google Ads has updated the performance planner to add some new features it says will help you better understand Performance Planner’s bid and budget recommendations. These updates include the ability…

Google’s John Mueller responded to an SEO asking if he should undo the URL site migration changes made a year ago to restore the traffic the blog had previously. In…

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

Google’s Danny Sullivan said that the Google November 2021 core update is mostly done rolling out but not done yet. He said this yesterday at 12pm ET yesterday, November 29th.

Google Merchant Center can now show you which products are automatically eligible for badges. Krik Williams shared a screenshoot showing off this new feature and Search Engine Land received confirmation…

Tons of people are seeing the expandable snippet carousel in Google’s desktop search results. We first reported on this test back in August 2021 but now it seems like Google…

Google’s John Mueller said when it comes to repurposing old domains that may have not been used but were being redirected elsewhere, it is fine for the most part. The…

Brett Bodofsky, a Google Ads specialist, shared a screenshot on Twitter of a new report tab that shows “Extensions “upgraded).” Then within each extension, you have the word upgraded next…

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 other day we shared a screenshot of an email of an email notification when a website is no longer in violation of Bing’s webmaster guidelines and thus is no…

Google has once again said that if you see significant changes in your Google search visibility it likely has nothing to do with how fast or slow your site is….

If you visit the Google Support pages, any of them, at support.google.com, you will see a banner at the top come up again. The banner says “as a precautionary health…

On Friday, Google’s John Mueller announced Google is doing away with the deadline for sites to switch over to mobile-first indexing. Some sites just can’t move over yet and Google…

Google’s John Mueller said in this past Friday’s hangout that in rare situations some sites can get stuck in some sort of algorithmic penalty limbo or black hole state and…

This is a very special vlog, I interviewed the very person who has been editing these videos for the past couple of years, Joseph Goldsmith. And we did it overlooking…

Google has this interesting Christmas looking Doodle on its home page today with the alt tag that says Seasonal Holidays 2021. When you click on it, it goes to 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…

I am sure you’ve all seen websites that have a section on their website for “As Featured On” or something like that, then a carousel or listing of logos from…

Happy Thanksgiving – we had a surprise from Google again, where the second wave of the Google November 2021 core update happened on Wednesday and Thursday – yes, the busiest…

Google’s John Mueller said that semantic HTML is not a quality signal used in Google Search for ranking purposes. An SEO said “Proper HTML semantics and tag hierarchy must be…

Do you want to use the same design theme on multiple websites? Well, Google’s John Mueller said it is fine to do that, in fact, he said many sites do…

A couple of months ago, Google upset the automotive industry by adding more data sets to its search results for automobiles. As a reminder, Google said it licensed that data….

So now that we know that bolding works for SEO and rankings in 2021, we need to start bolding everything. Or maybe we need to be more random about our…

Google has another bug, this time with Google Search Console’s crawl stats report. The report has a gap in the data, missing data on November 19th and November 20th. Google’s…

Google has updated the Google Business Profiles Get Reviews help document to explicitly say that having a mix of positive and negative reviews are more trustworthy, than I guess just…

We are seeing big volatility again in the Google Search results as of yesterday and today, which might be the tail-end of the November 2021 Google core update. Yep, talk…

Remember the Google Ads bug where CPC, cost per click, prices soared out of control on a Friday night? Well, about two weeks later, Google started to issue credits to…

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…

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…

After several months of testing variations of what Microsoft Bing is calling “Page insights” – it is finally live. The lightbulb and page explorer snippet tool is now live for…

Google Image Search on mobile is testing a new related images carousel feature for image previews. This was spotted by Brian Freiesleben and posted on Twitter yesterday.

Google’s John Mueller confirmed Google had a crawling issue – specifically saying “crawling for the caches had slowed down for some sites.” Google said it was fixed “a while” ago…

Google announced that it is shutting down the AdSense Matched content ad unit types beginning on March 1, 2022. This is due to “decreasing usage of the content promotion service”…

Google Ads posted an update that you a no longer to promote sports betting services or ads in Florida using the Google Ads platform. Google said this is effective as…

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

Olivier Papon from Seolyzer, a log analysis toolset, reported the other week that Google seemed to slow or stop crawling most of the web between around November 11 and November…

Did you know that the Google Shopping results can show products with $0 prices? That is, I think, if there is a promotion for let’s say a monthly ongoing fee…

Marie Haynes posted a Twitter poll (which I reshared a couple times yesterday) asking what you (mostly SEOs) are seeing five days into the Google November 2021 core update. About…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that when it comes to sites that host their images (or likely other files) on an external CDN, like we do here, Google will have a…

If you go to Google Search on desktop and type in some local businesses, then click on the first photo in the local knowledge panel – Google will load a…

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

Google has added a few new features to the Google Ads mobile app. The new features work on both the iOS and Android app and include that you can see…

In part one, Bryan Cush, the co-founder of Tidal Health Group, and I spoke about how to use health data for content and search marketing and in part two we…

In 2013, Google launched its Structured Data Markup Helper tool to help site owners mark up their content with structured data without having to know how to code. Well, the…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that Google Search does not hold a grudge for SEO technical issues you have on your site. When you fix those issues and Google…

This morning at about 5:30am ET, the Google Search Console team rolled out a new facelift and design for Google Search Console. The new design, according to Google’s Daniel Waisberg…

Danny Sullivan, the Search Liaison at Google Search, confirmed there is a bug with the sort by date feature in the Google Search news tab. Danny said on Twitter “if…

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…

Google announced a bunch of additions coming to the Google Ads Insights reporting. These include demand forecasts, consumer interest insights, audience insights, and change history insights and auction insights. Google…

What a week – Google actually launched a broad core update days before the big online holiday shopping season – the Google November 2021 core update is live and rolling…

Google added to its help docs an explanation on how to opt out of Google Read Aloud with a meta tag, although the meta tag is not new. Google also…

Google has confirmed a bug with some users not seeing the users and permissions in Google Search Console. There are also complaints about the performance reports being a bit delayed,…

So we know Google has manual actions where a site can be impacted in terms of how it ranks in Google Search. Well, Microsoft Bing doesn’t necessarily have manual actions…

How cute is this, Microsoft Bing Search is testing placing this animated snowman next to the Shopping tab under the search bar. I personally cannot replicate this but Frank Sandtmann,…

Google is testing adding the Google Lens button in the mobile search results bar. This camera icon, Google Lens logo, would trigger your camera to come up and 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…

Google has produced a new interactive SEO checklist with “specific things you can do to improve the SEO of your website.” It is interactive in that you can select if…

Google has published two new help documents around translation. The first is on how Google can automatically translate your search result snippets to a different language. The second is after…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if it is helps after doing a big URL migration to keep the old XML Sitemap file up for a bit. John said “the effect…

As you know, Google started to rollout the November 2021 Core Update yesterday, November 17th at around 11am ET. Below is a recap of the early chatter and data we…

Google has updated its logo structured data markup requirements again, this time to say your logo has to look good on a “purely white background.” So you need to test…

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 now…

Right before the big Thanksgiving Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday season Google decided to flip the switch and roll out a core update. Google just announced that it will…

Edward Snowden, former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency, has said it is a fact that Google Search is “totally unusable” in a…

Yesterday, Google began to rollout the revamped and new PageSpeed Insights at its new home at pagespeed.web.dev. It has a bunch of user interface changes to make the reporting easier…

Last week, I included in my recap a link to a Reddit thread that seems to have got some attention. It has John Mueller of Google saying a site with…

Google said it is now promoting more local news in its search results and news results, including top stories. Google said they would be doing this earlier this year and…

As you know, we are all awaiting the next big Google core algorithm update and while we know it will be coming, we are all wondering if it will come…

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

Google is testing a new a new video carousel titled “found in video.” If Google can detect that your answer is found in a video it has indexed, Google may…

Google has been placing images and product images in the search results for a while and been testing on and off showing them in the desktop results. But over the…

Google announced that Customer Match is now “widely available” and also a new preview tool to help you figure out errors or issues with using the tool. Google is opening…

Not to be outdone by Google, Microsoft’s Fabrice Canel announced that it has published BingBot’s IP addresses in this JSON file. This is in addition to the methods to verify…

Google had added a bunch of Google Maps features today including more Pickup with Google specifically at Krogers, restaurant price ranges, indoor map navigation and how busy venues are in…

Google is testing another variation of the Feeling Curious feature in Google Search. This one is labeled “Feeling Curious?” This section lets you “look through more topics” to explore and…

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

In part one, Bryan Cush, the co-founder of Tidal Health Group, and I spoke about how to use health data for content and search marketing and in part two we…

Sites hosted on SiteGround last week found themselves not being crawled by Googlebot, Google’s crawler. The issue seemed to have been an DNS issue between the provider’s partners (AWS) and…

Ever see a chart in your page experience report or core web vitals reports that shows core web vitals data and then doesn’t and then does again? If you do,…

Friday evening, Google Ads had a bug of some sorts that caused the cost per click (CPC) prices to skyrocket on many Shopping Ad campaigns. Google confirmed the issue on…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed again that bolding words and “important points on a paragraph” does help with SEO and rankings. But it is all relative, if you bold everything on…

Google has updated its Google Merchant Center policies to allow the sale and listing of medical tests kits in both the paid and free Google Shopping search results. This includes…

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

Here is a fun podcast from Googlers John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt on the future of SEO. The group spoke about HTML, JavaScript, web app, structured data, crawling…

It took about eight days for Google to rollout the November spam update. This update targeted content spam efforts that went against Google’s webmaster guidelines. It seemed to have a…

I start off announcing the winner(s) of the Squid Game contest I had last week. Google finished the rollout for the November spam update after 8 days. That Google November…

Google now has the scroll-to-text feature for sitelinks in the Google Search results. Google launched these with featured snippets in 2020 but has been testing it since 2018, and it…