Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

A site owner posted on Reddit his concerns after noticing “hundreds of thousands” of backlinks from “AI-generated blog posts” directed to his or her site. John Mueller from Google said…

Google announced major changes to Google Assistant, removing close to 20 features and switching how the Google App works with the Google Assistant. This may be a win for Google…

Microsoft announced it is going to do away with Hotel Center subaccounts on February 6, 2024 and you should migrate to Lodging campaigns instead. “As we strive to improve and…

Google has updated its structured data documentation to now use hashtags for @id references. If you don’t use hashtags, it is fine, but Google said it is “schema best practice…

Google has posted a clarification of what it calls its sensitive event policy under the Inappropriate content policy within Google Ads. This applies to Google Ads, Google Merchant Center, Google…

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

Google has updated the auction insights box within the Google Ads console for Performance Max campaigns. The update now shows top advertiser data with comparison data and a new section…

Google Local Services Ads added a new setting named direct business search. This setting gives advertisers the option to show their ads when someone searches for your brand or business…

Google SGE, the Search Generative Experience, seems to have rolled out a search carousel named “Here are some products to consider.” This carousel shows you products from different vendors that…

Google has been battling with site name issues since it launched the site name feature in October 2022 for mobile and then site names for desktop results in March 2023….

Google seems to have rolled out the refine this search filter button that overlays a number of search filters. This seems to be the mobile version of what we saw…

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

For the past several unconfirmed Google Search ranking algorithm updates that we covered, those were almost all reported over the weekend. Now I am seeing search ranking volatility in the…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said that there is no such thing as a perfect formula for ranking a web page. Sullivan said this on X, saying, “There’s no perfect…

Google Search is now showing climate-friendly train alternatives under the flight search results box. So if you are looking for flights where you can take a train instead, Google will…

When Microsoft first launched its Bing Chat Personalized Answers, Microsoft said the history/memory would be based on 90 days of chat history. However, some chat users noticed it was going…

A couple of days ago, we reported that the FAQ rich results dropped out of the search results again, and now we are seeing the how-to rich results drop out…

Bing Search has placed the “Chat” button in its top search menu since Bing Chat launched. But now Bing is testing expanding it to read “Chat w/GPT-4” and “Copilot.” We…

Google has officially deprecated the Sitemaps ping endpoints. Now, when you try to access it, Google responds, “Sitemaps ping is deprecated,” with a link to the post about it going…

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

Google’s John Mueller posted a comment on Reddit describing what is often referred to as the “Japanese keyword hack,” he said. It is an automated process that looks for vulnerabilities…

John Shehata posted some data he gathered through his NewzDash service regarding the Google Perspectives search feature. He shared some interesting data, probably nothing that will shock you, but Twitter,…

Google has finally done away with the crawl rate setting within the legacy Google Search Console. It now redirects to the blog post about the feature going away.

Google announced it is shutting down Websites made with Google Business Profiles. They will stop working on March 1, 2024 and will only redirect to your Google Business Profile listing…

Google officially supports the suggestedAge property as an alternative to suggestedMaxAge and suggestedMinAge within its product structured data. Google says they added this support to make it more flexible for…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, in response to another SEO hit piece by The Verge said that author bylines and bios do not help a site or piece of…

If you search Google for some zip codes, Google may return some products from its shopping graph. One example, spotted by Adam Di Frisco, is to search for [orange county…

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

As I hinted in my last video recap, I was seeing some early signs of an update on Friday, January 5th and 6th. Well, now there are more signals in…

There may have been a local ranking algorithm update that Google quietly pushed out on Thursday, January 4th. The BrightLocal Local RankFlux tool showed a significant spike in volatility on…

Google has made a number of updates to its how-to control your snippets in search results to clarify that the snippets are primarily generated using the page content. Google removed…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said that Google Search does not use Google Analytics data for ranking purposes, even when that GA data is connected to Google Search Console.

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted this morning that the search company has changes coming to better deal with the recent flux of search spam we’ve all been seeing in…

It looks like Google has stopped showing FAQ-rich results again. Yes, again. Google told us that FAQ-rich results in the Google search results will be shown for only authoritative sites….

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

Right before the New Year, the Google search results volatility spiked big time. I posted the Google webmaster report for January 2024 this week. I published a big list of…

OpenAI is opening its GPT Store next week where you can publish apps and software that you built on top of OpenAI’s GPT to the public.

As many of you know, OpenAI’s ChatGPT service has a plugin for Browse With Bing, which basically opens up Bing Search to the popular AI chat feature. But Browse with…

It seems that YouTube is not showing up in Google News as often as it use to. Will Flannigan, the SEO Editor at the Wall Street Journal posted a chart…

Google Search can show a browse by category for a specific site when you search for that brand. For example, when you search for [eBay], Google may show you some…

As you know, Microsoft released the Copilot App for iOS and Android but it does not support plugins like the Bing App. But don’t worry, Copilot will soon support plugins.

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

Google is now showing a new section in some local panels named “Units available to rent.” This shows homes, condos and other apartments that the company has listed as available…

Microsoft seems to have rolled out a new shape for the favicons in its Bing search results. Instead of being circles, now they seem to be square.

Google seems to have added a new financial feature titled “Explore stocks.” This section adds a new carousel that shows you some popular stocks on the market.

Google Discover seems to be adding a label that reads “in case you missed it” to some older stories. We know Google Discover can show old stories but now they…

Google seems to be once again testing a blue-colored header on its mobile search results page again. We saw a blue header a year ago in January 2022. We saw…

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

It’s time for the big Google Webmaster Report, the January 2024 edition. This month we saw the November 2023 Google reviews update completed after 29 days. But that wasn’t the…

Google’s John Mueller explained why some links that you think are important might not be that important for search ranking purposes. He responded to a question on Reddit asking why…

I asked the search community to let me know what features they would like to see within Google Search Console that they do not have yet. I received well over…

Google added this “get style recommendations” feature to the search results months back but did you know you can swipe left and right on those style recommendations while on mobile…

Remember when we reported that Google Groups seems to have seen a visibility boost in Google Search, which resulted in a lot of spammy and sometimes dangerous information showing up…

After a few years of testing, it seems Google has launched the new more graphical and animated weather results in the mobile search results. Google now shows an animated graphic…

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

Ethan Mollick, an Associate Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, posted on X about his disappointment with overall internet search. He wrote, “There is no greater…

It looks like Bing may be testing a new design for its search knowledge / answer panels in the search results. And that new design looks very much like the…

Google launched its data highlighter tool in 2012, and it still works today despite not being migrated to the new Search Console interface, and almost no one I know uses…

Before creating your Google Business Profile listing, make sure you are using the right language. If not, it may cause serious issues for you in the long run where the…

Last week, Microsoft quietly released the Copilot App for Android and iOS. Don’t tell anyone but the Bing App and Copilot App use the same chat feature, the only difference…

John Mueller, Senior Search Analyst, and Search Relations team lead at Google, was again out there on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, providing SEO support for site owners,…

Today we have released version 5 of the Search Engine Roundtable. We have redesigned the site from the ground up while also revamping many of the site’s backend and technical…

Google’s Google’s New Year’s Eve doodle for 2023 is live in some regions and will be live in New York in the next five hours or so. If you want…

There has been a ton of chatter within the SEO community over the past couple of days related to extreme ranking volatility within the Google Search results. The Google tracking…

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

This is the last SEO video recap of the year, and I covered a summary of all the confirmed Google algorithm updates in 2023. I also discussed the Christmas Google…

2024 is just around the corner and a lot of you are worried that SEO will die again. Well, no need to worry because John Mueller of Google said you…

Microsoft Bing is testing showing a “trending” label in the visually explore box within its search results. This may show up on some visually explore search boxes if Bing thinks…

Google Search can show a “shop by price” and shop by brand” carousel and accordion box in the search results for shopping-related queries. The search bar filter for shopping has…

Here are the most popular articles on the Search Engine Roundtable by number of comments. In other words, these are the articles with the highest number of comments posted in…

The Search Engine Roundtable is made up of what you, the search community, is talking about. What you, the search community, is noticing in the search results, be it ranking…

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

Did you know that sometimes those bot protection services will serve Google and other search engines noindex directives? Google’s John Mueller said this on X, saying, “Sometimes there’s bot-protection (or…

In 2022, Google brought back the Shabbat times to the one box or answer boxes in search. Recently, in the past month or so, Google also enabled Google Assistant to…

Bing has updated its page insights light bulb feature to now let you collapse and expand the sections within the overlay page previews. For me, it defaults to being opened,…

Google is testing another format for its sitelinks within the Google search results. Here Google is testing showing the sitelinks in bubble or pill designs and layouts. We have seen…

Google seems to be testing longer search result snippets again. We saw this recently with Google Ads, some really long Google Ads descriptions and now we are seeing it with…

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. Bing Chat added…

Microsoft has added favicons to the links within Bing Chat / Copilot. Favicons should make the links beneath the AI-generated answer more clickable and noticeable to users.

Did you know that Google Search checks about four billion host names each and every day for robots.txt purposes? Gary Illyes said in the December Search Off The Record podcast…

Google added a new search feature to its Search Labs named Notes a few weeks ago and Google is already pushing its use by emailing those who created notes some…

Google is testing local ads in its search results titled “Choose a place in the area.” This comes in a format with image carousels and list views.

Google is testing a navigation slider feature in the recipe images within the recipe search results. This illustrates to searchers that they can swipe over the image to see additional…

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

In part one with Dave DiGregorio we spoke about his journey from working in sports memorabilia to getting into SEO. Then, in part two we talked about some local pack…

Google released only nine confirmed search ranking algorithm updates this year. Don’t worry, there were a lot more unconfirmed updates this year that we covered and it was a very…

Generally, above the Google Explore is a “more results” button, but Google is now testing adding “Follow This Search” next to the More Results button. The follow feature probably is…

Google is now showing author name icons via profile page and a site’s favicon and sitename on articles in the article carousel. So it is showing two favicon-like icons in…

Google seems to be testing a new box underneath the local pack that is titled “websites for places.” It shows websites that represent the place listings showing in the local…

Google may be showing fewer image boxes in its search results. SimilarWeb’s RankRanger tool and Semrush tool shows a large drop in the number of image boxes Google is showing…

Every year, John Mueller, Senior Search Analyst / Search Relations team lead at Google makes a significant effort to help respond to SEO-related questions on Christmas. He has done this…

No one should be surprised to hear that I am reporting on some intense Google search ranking volatility starting this Friday, December 22nd, through the weekend, with things seeming to…

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

As we approach the end of the year, it just seems Google is getting more and more volatile with its search results. Google also confirmed that ‘openness’ as a local…

When Google first launched its Search Generative Experience, it labeled the “end” date of the program as December 2023 for US users and February 2024 for India and other countries….

Gary Illyes said some search engines can be confused by seeing double slashes in a URL. Previously, Google suggested not to use double slashes in your URLs but here Gary…