Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Google will make the “existing Local Services Ads photos guidelines on the same page as the Local Services platform policies,” the search company announced. This goes into effect on November…

Google Search is testing a gear setting icon on its local places results to let you set your food preferences. This setting would then show you restaurant results that better…

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

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week, we saw the impact of both the Google October 2023 spam update and the Google October 2023 core update with some…

Google has upgraded its Search Generative Experience to create images and text, not just give you answers and show you images or content from others. Google said SGE can now…

Google Search seems to be testing adding a people icon in the search bar, auto-complete search bar. I am told the people icons only show up when in the perspectives…

Google is testing having links overlay, like watermarks, on product result images. I can replicate this on some browsers, not all, so it looks like a test where Google can…

Google has stopped the indented results, something Google has been doing for well over a decade. Instead, Google will just list out the result it would have indented in the…

Google has a new “trending seller” icon for some product results in the search result snippet. This shows an arrow trending up icon next to the words “trending seller” below…

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

Microsoft Bing image creator through the image creator tool or Bing Chat can make images for you using AI. But recently, it has come under fire around its moderation system…

The Google News Showcase is new for those in the US and with that we are seeing content from within the Google News Showcase show up in more places. One…

Google is testing yet another new recipe search interface. This may be an ongoing test, as I cannot replicate it, but the recipe interface is way more interactive and useful…

Microsoft Bing is testing a new layout for the Bing video search results page. The layout has sections, and headings, for different types of videos, grouping those videos together. The…

Google shows a section in the search results for “people also buy from.” It seems Google will show you other stores where people can and will buy the item you…

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

Google Ads later this month will update its policies for ads that offer rewards to allow indirect or non-monetary items to be offered as rewards. This policy change will happen…

There are reports that Google is automatically editing the attributes of businesses within Google Business Profiles. I am told these edits are helpful and logical, since Google is using okay…

Google Discover now shows a new section named “Get the latest on” and shows an author/journalist that you can click on and see their knowledge panel with their recent articles.

Google is testing a new ad format, at least I think it is newish, where it shows local ad that has images that expand when you swipe over them to…

Google has confirmed an issue with Google Ads this morning “affecting a significant subset of users.” The issue is specific with serving Google Ads and the spending controls for campaigns…

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

We are now a few days into the two October Google Search updates, the October 2023 spam update and the October 2023 core update and the Google search results are…

A couple of weeks ago Google released a new robots.txt directive to tell Google not to use your content for Bard or other AI Google projects. The Google Search Generative…

Did you know that a search through Google Lens can trigger an AI-generated response in the Search Generative Experience? I guess it makes sense, Lens is generally just triggering a…

Google Search’s people also ask is now showing cards in carousels. This has been going on for several weeks, I believe, but I never covered it.

Google can show local pack results in the mobile interface with these expandable refinements section. So if Google is not sure if you want one type of business category, it…

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 October 2023…

In part one, we learned about Chris Long and also spoke about his co-worker, the profession of SEO, Bill Slawski. In part two we dig into helping people in SEO…

Google is testing a lightweight version of the Search Generative Experience. This version shows a more subtle AI-generated answer box, without all the color and with just a few lines,…

I am hearing reports that the Google October 2023 spam update that touched down on October 4, 2023, at around 12:50 p.m. ET is starting to do its job. This…

Google is showing some folks an e-commerce or products section in their Google Discover feed. Glenn Gabe was shown a “clothing” section in his Discover feed that led to Google…

Google has added a new way to retrieve leads from Google Local Service Ads – text message. Google use to send these “message leads” to your email account. Now Google…

Google is testing a line divider between the site name, URL and favicon and the snippet’s description. I am not sure I like this and I know Google has tested…

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 shocked us…

This week, we had Google officially release another core update, the October 2023 core update. Also, a day before Google started to roll out the October 2023 spam update. We…

Google is now also rolling out the October 2023 core update. This is happening while Google is rolling out the October 2023 spam update and only weeks after Google finished…

Google’s Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin, confirmed on X that Google Ads has stopped maintaining the Keyword Planner individual & ad group keyword forecasting data. She said that “few advertising were…

Bing Search is testing showing video chapters for video search results. This is similar to the Google Search key moments feature that has been out for a while.

Several weeks ago some businesses were seeing that they could edit their social profiles within Google Business Profiles. But most businesses did not have access to this feature. Now it…

Bing Search may sometimes show a “Trending in Bing” carousel at the top of the search results. That carousel shows alternative search refinements based on your previous query but it…

Google may be having issues with indexing and serving new content within Google Search. The issues started around 2pm ET and have been sporadically happening since then. I personally have…

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 released a new spam update, the October 2023 spam update. This update goes after cloaking, hacked, auto-generated, and scraped spam. But those sites written in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian,…

Google Assistant will live on with a little help from its friend – Bard. Assistant With Bard is coming in the next few months after Google tests it with a…

Wired had a piece named How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet. That piece wrote, “Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that…

For years and years now, spammers have been creating fake obituaries using automated methods. In fact, Danny Goodwin covered the issue Google Search has with obituary spam a couple of…

Google seems to be testing a new hotel search result snippet. The search result snippet shows a carousel of hotel cards under the main snippet. These cards can be swiped…

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. Apple Business Connect,…

Google’s Local Service Ads (LSA), Google Screened, previously would load the same advertisers as you scrolled down the search results page. Now, Google is loading unique, different advertisers when it…

Apple has announced new insights and analytics to Apple Business Connect, its local business dashboard. The new insights are called “Peer Group Benchmarks” and tell you how well your business…

Google is testing a section titled “popular stores” in the Google search results. It shows you stores like Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot and more.

When Microsoft Bing announced its new features a couple of weeks ago, including the updated performance reports, it also went ahead and updated the colors of the top bar from…

Bing seems to be testing added “learn more” cards under the knowledge panel within the search results. The learn more cards are in a carousel format that you can slide…

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 posted the…

Here is the big Google webmaster report for October, where I sum up all the most important topics SEOs need to know with Google organic search over the past thirty…

Bing seems to be testing showing the number of people who visited a website listed in a search ad. The ad in the Bing Search results says X “visitors in…

Microsoft launched DALL-E 3 in Bing Chat late on Friday night and went it went live, it just stalled. It took a really long time for Bing Chat to create…

A few months ago, Microsoft increased the Bing Chat conversation limit to 30 turns in a chat conversation. But according to Mikhail Parakhin of Microsoft, no one hits that number…

Google may be testing a bright red “back to top” button in the desktop search results. As you scroll down, this button overlays at the top portion of the screen.

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…

Chris Long, the VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital, stopped by my office to chat SEO and that is what we did. Chris does a lot of internal marketing…

I am seeing some early signs of an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update, maybe some small shifts, starting yesterday, Sunday, October 1st. Only a couple of the tools showed…

Google Search has started to test a box labeled “ask your own” under the People also ask and more questions section. This seems to take you into a chat-like experience,…

Google has added a new section to the Google Discover documentation to explain three reasons why Google Discover traffic may drop. Those three reasons include changes in interests, content type…

Google Business Profile is updating the data within the bulk Insight data to match the data you see for a single business profile listing. Google emailed those who have downloaded…

Generally, Google has said that when pages are not indexed and there are no technical issues, the reason it might not be indexed is that the page does not meet…

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 launched a…

This week in search, Google finished rolling out the September 2023 helpful content update, which seemed to target SEO-first, search engine-first content in a big way. Google won’t be rolling…

Google has announced a new Googlebot, a new Google crawler, named Google-Extended that you can use to control if your content can help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs…

In May we reported Google was testing a “chat with a live agent” button for some local panels within Google Search. Well, that feature might be rolling out more fully…

Google has rolled out some updates to the Search Generative Experience (SGE) the company announced on its blog. One update is that SGE should now respond with higher-quality, more accurate…

Last week, we reported about the new Bing Chat personalized answers feature that uses your chat history to give you a more tailored answer to your queries. But that might…

Wix now supports IndexNow, the Microsoft initiative to make indexing more efficient and faster. With that, Microsoft said, “more than 60 million websites are publishing over 1.4 billion URLs per…

A new email was leaked as part of the DOJ investigation, this was was from Jerry Dischler, the Vice President of Google Ads. The email was to Prabhakar Raghavan, who…

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

Google, at around 3 am ET this morning, announced that the September 2023 Google helpful content update has finished rolling out. It took about 14 days, starting on September 14,…

A few months ago we reported how it was nearly impossible for a trained SEM to spot the ad label on these Microsoft Advertising search ads on Bing Search. Well,…

Google Ads seems to have added a new feature to the account alerts section that lets you set up alerts to go to email addresses but now lets you define…

Google’s John Mueller defends Google’s position of helping SEOs by providing documentation, video content, and responses to questions on multiple channels. This comes after some are upset that Google is…

Google will update the Google Ads Healthcare and Medicines policy from Prescription drug sale policy to Prescription drug services. “The Healthcare and medicines policy page will be updated to reflect…

OpenAI has relaunched the browse with Bing feature in ChatGPT which lets users use ChatGPT leveraging the index of Bing Search. This was after Open AI turned off the feature…

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

Google launched shared conversations in Google Bard about a week ago and forgot to ensure search engines can’t index the results. The robots.txt had(s) nothing in it to block bard.google.com/share…

A few years ago, Google’s Daniel Waisberg wrote two blog posts, one on analyzing Google Search traffic drops and the other on improving SEO with a Search Console bubble chart….

Today is Google’s official 25th birthday and to celebrate Google has a special Doodle that showcases some of Google’s early Google logos. Google wrote, “Let’s take a walk down memory…

Bing Chat’s precise mode has received a big upgrade that makes those answers a lot better. “Finished rolling out a pretty big update in our Precise mode of Bing Chat…