Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Microsoft seems to be rolling out a new Microsoft Advertising console design. The new interface is more modern and possibly more efficient to use.

Google seems to be testing new filter options for hotel listings within Google Business Profiles. When you click on a specific hotel, Google can show filters for reviews, dates, guests…

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

Everyone in the SEO community is talking about how John Mueller’s website is no longer listed in the Google Search results. It seems like it was deindexed and removed from…

Google has updated the Understanding page experience in Google Search results help document to clarify how page experience and core web vitals are used or not used as signals for…

Google is smart enough to showcase related reviews to a photo someone is looking at in a Google local business profile listing. In the case below, you can see a…

Last week, Bing Webmaster Tools introduced top SEO insights that give you some SEO tips for your site. It even tells you when you don’t have enough good links pointing…

In November, Microsoft said we would soon see Copilot powered by GPT-4 Turbo instead of GPT-4. Well, it took several months, and now Copilot uses GPT-4 Turbo.

Bingbot is now rolling out Brotli compression for its web crawler, Bingbot. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said on X that Bing “enabled it on a small percentage of URLs crawled…

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

We reported on Saturday that the Google March 2024 core update seemed to have touched down on land, and we saw a lot of sites start to report major ranking…

Google is testing adding the hotel’s website link directly to the Google Search hotel listings on the main search results screen. This is instead of making you go through the…

In September, Microsoft told us they would add Copilot to Microsoft Advertising to help advertisers create and optimize their ads. Now some advertisers are seeing the Copilot button within the…

Google Business Profiles now shows services with bookable buttons. I know Google had booking buttons on local panels since 2017 and we covered it numerous times since then but now…

Google has a section under some of its top stories in search results named “more context.” This will summarize the headlines for your keyword search based on the top stories…

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

Currently, Bing Webmaster Tools will give you up to six months of data, but Microsoft may extend that up to 24 months. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said on X, “We…

Imagine you pay for an advertisement, someone then clicks on that ad and is then able to see local competitors. Is that ad worth buying? Well, Google Local Service Ads…

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…

There is a thread on Reddit asking site owners how they are dealing with the new various Google updates and the associated traffic drops. One Redditor responded that he would…

This is just a friendly reminder that Google will replace First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a Core Web Vital metric tomorrow, Tuesday, March 12,…

Today is the first day I have seen solid evidence of serious ranking volatility and changes related to the big Google March 2024 Core Update. As a reminder, the Google…

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

It was a busy week between Google releasing the Google March 2024 core update, which is supposed to be one of the largest core updates Google has ever released. Google…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said again that the search company “generally try to avoid” overlapping algorithmic updates. This is after Google released both the March 2024 core update and…

Google is testing a button in the search results under the top stories news results to see “more news topics.” I personally cannot replicate this, which makes me think this…

Google Ads now limits the number of country-level exclusions you can add to your ads to 120 countries. This is a new limit but Google confirmed that location exclusions aren’t…

Remember People Cards? Probably not. It launched in Google Search in India in 2020 a way for “business professional, performer, or anyone looking to build up your own online presence,…

Google has updated its Google Business Profile help documentation to add a line saying that Google may show your social media posts in Search if you have associated your social…

Google Business Profiles has outages for some of its business management tools. The outages started yesterday, March 7th, at about 5 pm ET or earlier. It impacts the ability to…

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

Google has unleashed tons of manual actions, search ranking penalties you can see within Google Search Console, after it released its search spam policy updates on Tuesday. The manual actions…

I ran a poll asking my X/Twitter followers if they think the new Google March core and spam updates will reduce unhelpful content from showing up in the search results…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, was asked does Google currently validate/verify if information or data within content, is accurate, correct, true or even “commonly accepted”. In which Sullivan replied it…

Google is no longer showing the number of views a review gets on Google Maps. You will be able to see the older reviews view-counts for now but the new…

Google has updated the recipe rich results report within Google Search Console. Google also cleaned up some of its recipe structured data documentation. You may see an increase in warnings…

Google is getting serious with where their ads show since all the bad PR and now Google AdSense is requiring new site-level approval process for AdSense for Search (AFS) sites….

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 have a…

Google announced the March 2024 core update has now started to roll out and that this core update will take up to a month to fully roll out because it…

Google is rolling out its new March 2024 spam updates accompanying the very big March 2024 core update and three new spam policies. The new spam updates kick off this…

Microsoft updated Bing Webmaster Tools to build out the IndexNow reports, now named IndexNow Insights, add new Top SEO Insights to the main page and also cleaned up the side…

Google has updated the Google search quality raters guidelines untrustworthy pages section. The previous version was 168 pages and not it is 170 pages and that previous version was released…

Google posted a notice in the Google Search Console data anomalies section that “Google Search has changed the way event rich results appear in Search results.” This was dated March…

Microsoft has relaunched Bing Deep Search today after pulling it offline after a failed initial launch. Now the Deep Search link comes with a disclaimer “GPT-powered results takes ~30 secs.”…

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

Microsoft announced that Performance Max campaigns are available globally on Microsoft Advertising today, March 5th. So now any advertiser can start using PMax campaigns.

Microsoft is adding new copilot settings to Bing Search. These settings let you define if you want Copilot to show responses on the search results page and if you want…

A couple of months ago, we caught Google testing Google Ads solutions under the tools, bulk actions section. Well, now, Google officially announced it on its Google Ads developer blog.

Google is testing new specialty search buttons to access search by image, translate, homework, and song. The Google App currently has this slider to access these search features but now…

Yesterday we reported that despite Google saying they would shutdown and redirect the Google Business Profile websites on March 1st – they were still working. Well, as of this morning,…

Google has updated the Google StoreBot user agent to use a placeholder version of Chrome. So instead of it using a specific Chrome version, it now can use a dynamic…

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 Business Profile…

Here is the big Google Webmaster report for March 2024 and this past month was pretty calm relative to previous months. We had three unconfirmed Google ranking updates in February…

Google Ads announced it will automatically pause inactive ad groups. Google will pause ad groups created at least 13 months ago and have not had impressions in the past 13…

In January, Google told us that the Google Business Profiles websites will stop working on March 1, 2024. Google said the URLs will redirect from the website to the Google…

Google may roll out a new verification process for its Local Service Ads program. Supposedly this verification process will reduce spam within the LSA program and lead to legit businesses…

On Friday Google quietly released version 2.6 of the Google Ads Editor. This new version comes about four months after the previous version, version 2.5 of Google Ads Editor, was…

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

We had two periods of Google Search ranking volatility this week, one last weekend and one on Thursday or so. Google court documents say search quality has improved and not…

Google has posted its post-trial debrief document for the DOJ trial that talks about many different things, including stating that its search quality continues to improve. We covered its statement…

Google has added new structured data carousel beta documentation, also known as host carousel. Google wrote that this is “a new carousel rich result that’s in beta, which is a…

Google has added a form where you can now request to opt out of displaying in the place entity feature in Page Insights to users in the European Economic Area…

When you search for you Google Business Profile in Google, Google may show you the number of “customer interactions.” The question is, how often is that number updated? Matt McGee…

For the past year or more, Google AdSense (and Ad Manager) has this feature named Offerwall messages (Beta). Google AdSense has recently pushed it more via the AdSense console interface…

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

I am seeing early signs of a possible Google Search ranking algorithm update starting yesterday, February 28th, and into today, February 29th. The chatter started to spike yesterday amongst the…

There is no doubt that Google is going through a rough patch right now on many fronts. Between all the complaints about search quality, all the search bugs, the revelations…

Google Search is testing a section, a carousel, named “Popular opinions.” The section shows articles with opinions on products or other topics. The example below shows, what looks like, review…

Did you know that some Google Ads support representatives you are chatting with may be using Google Translate? They may be automatically translating your questions from English or whatever language…

Microsoft may start to test Bing’s Deep Search features again in the wild after pulling back its testing earlier this month. As a reminder, Deep Search is an enhancement to…

Google is testing a new design and feature for its local justifications section. There is this “people likes” section that is shaded in blue and really stands out under the…

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

Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit that disallowing URLs with UTM parameters in them won’t help you to improve crawling or rating with Google Search. He added that a site…

Google Ads will soon support showing the Search Partner Network in the Performance Max Placement report. This means Google will show you which sites your PMax ads are running on…

Google seems to be now rolling out expandable menus and information sections for the local panels on the right side of the desktop interface. These were live for normal knowledge…

There are reports that the filetype operator within Google Search has stopped working, it has not. It doesn’t work when you add additional search operators to it, like a site…

A week ago, I had several people notify me that the news tab in Google Search was missing. I checked using multiple browsers and devices and I saw the news…

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 local pack…

Google Search may have a bug in the European regions with hotel listings being hijacked by spammy sites. Google will show TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, Booking.com and other legit sites in its…

Google Analytics seems to have added a new default Google Ads report to the performance reporting section. This is if you have linked your Google Analytics 4 profile with your…

Google Ads now will use colors, like yellow and red background highlights, for the “limited by budget” status column. I assume a yellow indicator color is not as limited as…

Google has dropped the “more places,” “view all” and links to see more local results from the local pack, the places box, in the Google Search results. This happened last…

According to a court filing by Google, Microsoft tried to sell Bing, its search engine, to Apple but Apple did not want it because of search quality issues and lack…

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

Last week, Google revealed it signed a deal with Reddit to access its content using an API so it can get the content faster and in a structured format. This…

Now when leaving a review on a business within the Google local and maps results, the disclaimer has a notice about “beta questions.” It reads, “For beta questions, your answers…

Google Search is testing a new carousel named “Most-read articles.” I guess Google is using click data to see which articles are being read the most. Or maybe Chrome or…

Google Ads is testing a new change history page that shows more details on the changes made to your ads and campaigns. It now documents the change overview by user…

There is a large thread in the Google Analytics help forum with complaints from site owners of being flooded with fake referral traffic originating from Poland. This seems to be…

I am seeing some massive volatility being reported today after seeing a spike in chatter within the SEO community on Friday. I have not seen the third-party Google tracking 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. Google is now…

Google spoke more about the time it takes to recover from a helpful content update and then said it is up to you to decide ice what old content is…

Google Ads announced that within Performance Max the search ad company is rolling out asset generation globally in English with more languages to come. Plus, image editing will finish rolling…

The topic of removing or updating or blocking old content from Google is not new, and we covered it countless times. I saw John Mueller of Google comment about it…

Google has announced a deal with Reddit to gain access to its content using the Reddit Data API reportedly worth $60 million annually. Yes, Google is paying Reddit to get…

Google released version 16 of the Google Ads API yesterday. The update includes additional recommendation types, support for time-related segments, support for advertiser verification, plus much more.

Bing Search now has these yellow “opinion” labels on news stories within its search results. The label is overlayed on the news story’s image and really makes the story stand…

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

Google has these latest styles and shop the look carousels for some clothing queries. Now when you swipe through the carousel, Google will dynamically change the products listed below them.

Google has a confirmed bug with using negative search operators, a way to exclude words from your search results, within Google Shopping. Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, confirmed the…