Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

This week was much slower than the previous weeks, and yes, the core and reviews updates are not yet completed…

Many of you are wondering when the Google November 2023 core update and Google November 2023 reviews update will be completed. Normally these updates finish about two weeks after they…

Right before the Thanksgiving holiday season and right before the big holiday shopping season, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Google Ads sent emails to some advertisers telling them their…

Google Merchant Center has been automatically creating and applying promotions to some of your products over the Black Friday holiday season. The truth is, Google has been doing this for…

Google may be testing a new type of rich result for flight prices. This test shows a section under the flight search snippet that contains the dates, trip details and…

Google is testing shading and adding color and depth to favicons that they display in the search result snippets. This was spotted some time ago but it seems to be…

Earlier this week, Google removed its Robots.txt FAQ help document from its search developer documentation. When asked, John Mueller from Google replied to Alexis Rylko saying, “We update the documentation…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and to celebrate the holiday, I will not be posting news today. Don’t worry, a lot of news will be posted tomorrow, including the weekly SEO video…

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 testing…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, confirmed on X that follower count is not used as a search ranking factor by Google Search.

Google may be testing a new “Simple Search” feature that may dumb-down the search results when you want something more simple. Google shows the “Simple Search” +Topics refinement button at…

Google has now added the business logo and business name details to the account-level automated assets within Google Ads. We knew this was being tested back in April and now…

Google is testing a new section to show which products they have in their index that are available for fast pickup or fast delivery. Google already knows how long it…

Google Bard can now respond with answers based on the spoken words in a YouTube video. Google said, it is “expanding the YouTube Extension to understand some video content so…

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

Google seems to have fully rolled out the follower count in the search result snippets for social media sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, X and others. This was being tested…

I am seeing some new reports, some publicly, and some not, of Google Search getting the dates they display in the Google Search results wrong. This is a common issue…

Google Search has what looks like the people also ask (PPA) section but titled “Ask a doctor.” I am not sure if this is new, because I suspect since I…

Google’s Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin, posted seven FAQs around automatically-created assets (ACA) for responsive search ads. She posted these on X yesterday, and I figured I’d archive them here.

Google may be testing showing longer-form justifications in the Google local results. In the example below, provided by Miriam Ellis on X, it showed a more extended description/justification provided by…

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. You can send…

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 talk about some local pack…

Google has added to the Performance Max product campaigns within Google Ads brand and custom labels. This allows advertisers the quick ability to segment your products also by brand and…

This is just a reminder that the new Google Search and Discover Notes feature that launched as a Search Labs experiment are crawlable, indexable and visible in Google Search. You…

On Friday, Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said you can reply to a thread on X or post a help thread in Google’s forums to let him know about sites…

Microsoft is working on a feature or setting to allow searchers and users to have Bing Chat always read aloud the responses without having to request it manually each time….

Remember when Google announced its new small business attribute, where businesses can self-claim they are small, which would add a “small business” icon to their products in Google Search? Well,…

Google is currently investigating a likely issue or bug with the Google Search Console experience reports. The issue is that they seem to be showing a decline in the number…

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

For the original iTunes version, click here. It was a very busy week, so I apologize for the length of this video, so buckle up and get ready. Not that…

Google is actively working on fixing the problem it was with showing too much spam for obituary-related queries. Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said “it’s something we’re actively looking at…

Bing announced this week that it may use AI to create your snippets. Bing is calling this “Generative AI Captions” and if Bing uses AI for your snippet, it will…

The new Yahoo Search experience may launch as soon as a few months from now. Brian Provost, the Senior VP and General Manager of Yahoo Search, said the new Yahoo…

Google has updated the Google search quality raters guidelines and it is now only 168 pages, down from 176 pages – so it takes less time to read. I scanned…

Google Business Profiles is adding a verification method for some categories of businesses to make it easier for them to verify their business with Google. This one, you can upload…

Last night, Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, shared the presentation he gave at brightonSEO online on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The presentation covers Google Search results…

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. This newsletter is…

Google announced the hidden gems ranking system has been rolling out. This hidden gems update helps promote content deep within forum posts, social media, and blog posts that Google Search…

Google also announced that later this year, in the US, Google will make it easier for you to find your favorite sites by showing you sites you view more often,…

Google is rolling out a new search feature to let you follow topics. You can click on a follow button and Google will not only show you more of those…

Google Search is testing a new notes feature where you can add your own notes to the search results and also see the notes others have left on that search…

Google announced a new robots.txt report within Google Search Console and at the same time said it will sunset the old robots.txt tester tool. The new tool shows which robots.txt…

Microsoft has rebranded Bing Chat to Copilot. “Beginning today, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise are becoming Copilot, with commercial data protection enforced when any eligible user is signed in…

Google announced it has expanded its courses rich results so you can now provide new data such as pricing, educational level, ratings, and length with structured data. Google said this…

Google announced some new Search Generative Experience (SGE) features for shopping, including gift ideas, generating images for apparel purposes, and more virtual try-on features.

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

Google has filed a lawsuit against two men who allegedly used Google’s DMCA process “aimed at removing hundreds of thousands of their competitors’ website URLs from Google Search results,” the…

We covered a number of the tests Microsoft Bing Search has been trying around its ad labels, mostly around it making the ad label harder and harder to tell if…

Google has updated its help documentation specific to Google Crawlers and added the Google Safety crawler to the list of special case crawlers. This crawler is not new but Google…

Google is testing placing a north east arrow symbol by the sitelinks in the Google Search results. We have seen arrows before with sitelinks but not the north east error…

Google seems to be testing a new ad format for the Search Generative Experience named “you may also like.” These seem like content ads, where Google shows sponsored content, articles,…

Google has updated its title links help documentation to say it is best to avoid including flight price information in title elements. Google said this is because flight prices rapidly…

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

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said that while Google has updated its guidance around blocking third-party content, more is to come. Google said we should see things improve over time…

Google Discover added products or e-commerce sections about a month ago. But now it seems Google is adding both pricing details and discounts to those product/e-commerce Discover results.

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said during his brightonSEO keynote address on Friday that Google Search does use user interaction signals for Google Search but he added he won’t…

Google seems to be testing showing the Discussion and Forum feature within product listing search results. The Discussion and Forum is about a year or so old now but I’ve…

Microsoft announced that it has updated some of its existing advertising policies and with that also made the email notification process for disapproval faster and quicker.

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

Dave DiGregorio is the Vice President at Sterling Sky, Inc, and while we spoke a lot about SEO, we also spoke about lot about Michael Jordan trading cards. This is…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, spoke at BrightonSEO in San Diego on Friday and while most of what he said was “not new,” he did say big changes are…

Google launched its November 2023 Reviews update on Wednesday afternoon, November 8. But we didn’t see it have much of any impact until Saturday, November 11th. It currently seems this…

Over the weekend I saw two SEOs notice that Google is showing FAQ-rich results more often since it recently announced it would only show these FAQ-rich results for the most…

Google is rolling out new Google Business Profiles attributes for gyms. You can add these attributes by editing your Business Profile and then they should show up in the local…

Google has added the learning video rich results data to the Google Search Console performance reports. Google announced this news just minutes ago on X, saying, “Search Console will start…

Google announced that it will discontinue its Google News magazine service starting on December 1, 2023. Any magazines you purchased and that are available within the Google News apps or…

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 released the November 2023 reviews update on Wednesday afternoon, while the November 2023 core update rages on with a ton of heated volatility. I posted the Google webmaster report…

Google seems to be testing a “posts from” section in the search results. Very much like the popular on Twitter (now X) section but this includes not just posts from…

John Mueller, a Google Search developer advocate, said on X that Google Search does not use a virus scanner. Googlebot does not scan documents for viruses as it crawls the…

Google seems to be testing showing a promotion for Amazon Prime membership directly in the Google Shopping search results interface. It is this line that has a small Amazon logo…

Microsoft may be testing shopping search filters in the product overlay within the search results. When you hover your mouse over a product and the overlay window comes up, Bing…

Google is trying out another design for surveying or polling some of its searchers if they find the search results helpful or not. This one shows directly under a snippet…

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…

As expected, the Google November 2023 reviews update has started to roll out this week. It started on November 8, 2023 at about 1 pm ET. This will be the…

Google announced it has expanded the Search Generative Experience beta to 120 or so countries and four new languages. Google also added new follow-up questions, AI-powered translation help and more…

Everyone is now seeing the search shopping filters in the Google search results for e-commerce-related queries, which Google started testing well over a year ago. And as some have noted,…

Google has updated its various abuse policies for Merchant Center. Google said Google Shopping ads and Google free listings Malicious or unwanted software policy will be split into three separate…

Google seems to be testing showing multiple local packs in its search results as you scroll down the page. I cannot replicate this, which makes me believe this is a…

Google seems to be testing a new feature for top stories named “Open Access.” I am not sure what open access means, if you know, please comment below. It seems…

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

Google seems to have redesigned the page experience overview report within Google Search Console. The overview screen now looks more like a basic informational screen with a lot less data…

There has been a lot of talk about parasite SEO over the past several months in the SEO community. Heck, we even saw it mentioned in notes Danny Sullivan shared…

Google is testing a new reviews user experience from the local panel listing in the search results. Instead of popping up the reviews in a new window over the search…

Google is now rolling out the generative AI asset generation features for performance max Google Ads campaigns in the US. This allows you to let Google’s AI create headlines, descriptions,…

Microsoft’s Mikhail Parakhin posted a poll on X asking where Microsoft should prioritize its efforts in terms of speeding up different services. Do you want a faster Bing Chat or…

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 some…

The SEO community is buzzing about some recent U.S. Department of Justice documents released that hint at some ranking concepts at Google. One slide is named “The 3 Pillars of…