Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

For the past 20 years, probably even longer, the debate about Google giving preferential treatment to large sites over small sites has been a huge topic in the SEO world…

Google is pushing some businesses to sign up for a free Google Ads consult with a Google representative through their Gmail accounts. This is in the form of a pop…

Google Ads has an issue with some sitelink assets where it shows the sitelinks are eligible but “limited” and the reason says “unknown.” Google’s Ads Liaison said, “the team is…

The other day, Gartner, a respected research firm, predicted that “traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.”…

The popular Google app, the Google Search app, now has a toggle at the top to quickly switch between Google Search and Gemini (formerly Google Bard). It shows up at…

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

John Mueller from Google once again addressed the topic of sites using the Google Indexing API when Google does not officially support those use cases. He said it is not…

Google will change how it estimates its delivery times through Google Merchant Center. Starting on April 9, Google will look at minimum [min_handling_time]and maximum [max_handling_time] attributes for processing time in…

Google has posted a new policy for Google Merchant Center around using AI-generated images. In short, you need to make sure those images have meta data that labels the image…

Google has always shown how expensive restaurants are by placing either one, two, or three dollar signs by the restaurant’s name in the local pack listings. Now Google is testing…

Google Search is experimenting with a Pixel phone feature that will let you call a customer service line at a company and wait on hold until a real person answers…

Google announced this morning support for Product variant structured data. This new structured data supports three new properties; hasVariant, variesBy and productGroupID in order to handle most of the way…

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

Google is investigating a possible issue with its search results where Google is not ranking adult-oriented sites for its brand name in some regions. Instead, Google ranks the adult site’s…

Google seems to have rolled out the Shop with Google AI feature to some users after announcing it back in November. I cannot see it unless I am logged into…

A week ago we wrote about the timing it takes to recover from a Google helpful content update. Then on Friday, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, added more clarity on…

Google Search seems to be testing a new search bar design on mobile search. The bar shows the images, videos, news, shopping, maps, etc buttons but with a light blue…

Google Ads will update its unacceptable business practices portion of the misrepresentation policy in March 2024. The update says you cannot entice “users to part with money or information by…

Google is testing a new menu item in its search bar. The new item is “Forums” and it filters the search results to forums, such as Reddit, Hacker News, and…

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 says again,…

This week, we covered another unconfirmed Google search ranking update that hit on February 14th and 15th. Google has some bugs or changes that really hurt recipe bloggers big time…

Google’s Danny Sullivan said it again, when it comes to what you do on your website, Google Search wants what your users want. Sullivan wrote, “Virtually everything someone asks about…

Google has updated its right to be forgotten EU takedown notices and details to not show the specific URLs and to stop notifying publishers of these requests. This is a…

In June, Google introduced virtual try-on models to some clothing<< product shopping results. When it first launched, Google said it used AI to generate models that can try on clothes for…

How do you use the link data within Google Search Console? That is what John Mueller of Google asked earlier this month, and he got a nice list of uses…

Google seems to be testing aligning the logo to the left in some knowledge panels within the search results. Typically the logo would show up on the right top corner,…

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. We have another…

It seems that Google has stopped serving featured snippets in its search results this morning. It started around 7 AM ET today, just about an hour ago. I cannot trigger…

I see signs of another unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update that kicked off yesterday and is rolling into today. The SEO chatter within the SEO industry started yesterday and…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said last week that the search company will issue additional clarifications around the acceptable or unacceptable use of AI to generate content for SEO purposes….

Google is testing two new layouts for the hotel search results – the hotel pack. Instead of just listing the results in a list view, Google is testing show the…

We’ve been seeing changes to the Google Search results in the European regions related to Digital Markets Act (DMA) comparison sites and hotels, etc. The Google Search team now posted…

Google is testing a new top stories feature and label that tells you that there are new top stories available since the last time you searched for that query. There…

Google has added a section to the use rel=canonical link annotations section of the canonical search documentation to clarify that rel=canonical annotations with certain attributes are not used for canonicalization.

Google Search Console has quietly launched some relatively small user interface changes. It seems like the filters and sorting boxes are now curved and more modern.

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

There seems to be a bug right now with Google Search not showing the local pack results right now. I suspect it will be fixed really soon. Searches that trigger…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, wrote on X, “Another thing to keep in mind is that some of the sites I’ve looked into, where someone thinks they have a…

Google Ads is beta testing a new feature, a new button, in the Google Ads console named “Spacing.” This is a feature that is available for individual advertiser accounts and…

Google has released its new Google Maps and local spam fighting numbers for the 2023 year, citing a big lift in reviews and other local fraud that was blocked. Google…

It seems Google has no plans to build a mobile app for Search Console in the near future. John Mueller of Google was asked about the possibility and he responded…

The Google Ads team is sending out a new email series that promises “customized” steps you can take to “optimize your clients’ Google Ads campaigns.” Google says these emails will…

Google has updated the Google Business Profiles requirements for ordering or delivery providers to require them to add instructions on how to remove that service from a Google local listing.

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. Some recipe sites…

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?…

Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit that you won’t get your Google search rankings back by simply disavowing toxic links from a Semrush report. He wrote, “You’re not going to…

Google is testing a new feature for featured snippets that will animate the highlighting of the text of part of the featured snippet. It looks like Google is manually highlighting…

Google announced that the use of generative AI for automatically created assets (ACA) is now fully live for the English language in the US and UK. Google initially announced AI…

Earlier this month, we reported on issues Google had with recipe search results. Some changes were made that seemed to resolve some of those issues, but then it seemed to…

Nate Louis noticed that clickable stars were placed next to the keyword list in his Google Ads advertiser console. He can click them to highlight them and unclick them to…

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 spoke again…

Google seems to be testing removing the side carousel in the SGE, Search Generative Experience, interface. The side carousel generally shows the card answers on the right side of the…

Google has updated, in a big way, its how to “Remove images hosted on your site from search results” help documentation page. Google said, “Part of our ongoing efforts to…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted again about the timing around recovering from the helpful content update. He essentially repeated what Google said back when it first was announced, that…

When Google first launched SGE, the Search Generative Experience, it would only work in Chrome or the Google Search App on Gmail accounts opted into the search labs experiment. But…

Late last week, Google began to roll out those branded Local Service Ads, but it surprised many businesses without a way to opt out of the feature. I am told…

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

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week we covered a new possible Google search ranking update that started brewing on Wednesday, February 7. Google’s Danny Sullivan said again…

Google has updated its Web Stories documentation to explain where Web Stories can show in search. Google said Web Stories no longer will show up within Google Image Search, the…

Google has made an update to its Google crawler (user agent) search documentation to change the references of “Bard” to “Gemini” because of the product name change. Google also clarified…

Google has added the ability to add activities and events to the Google Business Profiles dashboard. This is a quick form to add upcoming events or activities to your business…

Google Search is testing various shades of blue for its search header, including a sticky version that, um, sticks as you scroll down the search results. Here are various screenshots…

Did you know that both Danny Sullivan and John Mueller send emails to Google employees on a routine basis? I heard from multiple sources that John sends one weekly, I…

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

I am seeing signs of a new Google search ranking algorithm update brewing. It started yesterday, Wednesday, February 7th, and is going into today, Thursday, February 8th. There is an…

Google has this new product or shopping-related box in the search results named “Up-and-coming stores.” This box seems to show trendy stores in the Google Search results as a carousel…

Over the past few days the SEO industry has been chattering it up about how a site received a Google Search manual action for unnatural links for a “legit guest…

Microsoft has stopped fully testing Bing Deep Search in the wild, saying they stopped “flighting” it for searchers. Now Bing Deep Search is in some sort of “shadow flight” to…

Google has updated its managing crawl budget guide documentation to say that the crawl frequency of the Dynamic Search Ad targets. It use to be every 2 weeks, 14 days,…

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

For the past few months now, Google has been saying there are big improvements coming to address some of the search quality issues we’ve all been seeing in the Google…

The Google Search team has made a number of relatively minor changes to its JavaScript documentation and also removed much of the dynamic rendering documentation, as it has been deprecated…

Google seems to have this loophole where you can essentially hijack or destroy a Google Business Profile that is also using Local Service Ads. What happens is if someone else…

Google seems to be having a bit of an issue with spam getting into its popular products section. This may be fed in through Google Merchant Center or normal rich…

Microsoft Advertising published its monthly what’s new feature announcing changes and new features to its advertising platform. Microsoft announced enhanced conversions is rolling out to more markets, new targeting options,…

Google Ads will stop supporting Commissions (per Stay) and Commissions (per Conversions) bid strategies for Hotel Ads in October 2024. Google says this is because third-party cookies are being phased…

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 explains the…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, gave a good analogy of the differences between ranking systems, ranking signals and ranking factors. He said signals and factors are the same, the…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said we should expect to see more clarification from Google on its creating helpful content page, specific to the section “Get to know E-E-A-T and…

Google is sending some domain holders who were with Google Domains and who are automatically being migrated to Squarespace notices that their Search Console verification may go away. This is…

Google is testing adding the ability to search for just web results, like you would filter by just video results, just image results, just news results, just shopping results and…

Last November, Google told its AdSense publishers that it would be switching how it pays them for the Google Ads they embed on their websites. Now, it seems like many…

Google Ads has some new bugs today, one that Google confirmed over advertisers received a notice for “confusing text” for their ads and the other not yet confirmed around advertisers…

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 doesn’t say…

Google’s Danny Sullivan said on Friday, “We don’t confirm any of the things [page experience or core web vitals] as a direct ranking factor.” He added, “But to reiterate we…

Google might be having some weird bug with XML sitemap files that have hyphens within the final name. So if your sitemap file name is /sitemap-10.xml it will trigger a…

On Friday afternoon, I was able to play a bit with Bing Deep Search, Microsoft’s “enhancement” to Bing Search that provides a “deeper and richer exploration of the web.” And…

As expected, Google has finally released its updated SEO starter guide and it was cut down in a big way. Google said this update was aimed at making it work…

Microsoft is officially testing a new version of the base model of Copilot (formerly known as Bing Chat), which they code-named Deucalion. Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft confirmed this over the…

A couple of months ago, I documented how some Googlers have been removing some of their old posts (tweets) from X (Twitter). John Mueller from Google didn’t really comment on…

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

This week, we covered another Google Search indexing issue, plus this ongoing issue with recipes in the Google Search results. I suspect we will soon have a very big Google…

Are you ready for the big Google Webmaster report – well, here is the February 2024 edition. This month, Google confirmed an issue with teetering in and out results over…

Google seems to be testing two lines of text for sitelinks within the mobile search ads interface. So yea, double-line sitelinks in the search ads in the Google mobile search…

Google has released three new changes to its Google Ads Responsive Search Ads. First, Google may now show a single-line headline instead of two. Second, Google now lets you associate…

Google Search on the mobile interface can show a store button with an arrow on it, that if you click on it, it overlays a filter to filter results by…

Google announced it is testing generative AI technology to answer local specific questions within Google Maps. “Starting in the U.S., this early access experiment launches this week to select Local…

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

Google has announced that March 12, 2024 will be the official date for when Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital…

Not only is Google having indexing issues this morning, but Google has been having issues with showing recipes in the carousel and images of recipes in search over the past…