Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

For the original iTunes version, click here. Google has a bug with the Google News Publisher Center where some publishers’ feeds were days behind…

Google is testing showing two local service ads in a list view, a change from it showing three local service ads in a carousel format. Google actually switched to three…

We previously reported how Bing Chat lets you select text on the Bing search results to conduct another search. Now Bing is expanding that to also let you search directly…

Google’s John Mueller is at it again, saying that text-to-HTML ratios are not a thing for SEO. He said on Reddit, “It makes absolutely no sense at all for SEO,”…

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said it is important that there is human oversight when it comes to using AI-generated content. He said this on Twitter after speaking at the…

Google is testing using colors for the +topic search bar refinements, those bubble buttons you sometimes get under this search bar in Google Search. I am seeing normal white buttons,…

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

Google has added a new option in the Google Business Profile appeal for “Fix photo that doesn’t show.” This means you can submit a support request for when you know…

Google has released a minor release for its Google Ads API, version 14.1. This comes just about two months after version 14 was released. New in 14.1 includes new recommendation…

Google’s John Mueller said trying to provide a good user experience but not succeeding will not result in any ranking benefit in Google Search. John said during office hours at…

Google is now saying that its new Local Service Ads guidelines are faster for reviews and also more flexible by allowing more creative images. What that really means, well, time…

Google is testing a new phone ad extension that lets you scan a QR code on your phone to call the number. Also, you can see three images across the…

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 will show…

Google announced several new features for the upcoming holiday season; yea, it is coming… These features include Customer Acquisition with High Value optimization, local ad changes, new product reporting, and…

Google Search now has this section titled “From publishers you follow” in the search results. That is if the query returns content from a Google News publisher you actually follow.

Google said you will soon see fewer FAQ and HowTo rich results showing up in the Google Search results. Why? I assume because there is just too many of these…

Krista Seiden, a Google Analytics expert, posted a poll on Twitter asking if SEOs thoughts on Google Analytics 4 (GA4). 45% said they “hate it” and about 30% said they…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted a PSA on Twitter that you should not delete old content from your site because you think Google Search doesn’t like old content. He…

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

Google is testing replacing the “top quality store” badge with a “star store” badge in the search results. Previously it was a “Trusted Store” badge but that was replaced by…

Google has a new search feature titled “recent featured highlights” for Major League Baseball players. It showcases stats for recent games, short video clips and more.

With all these AI chatbots out there now, Google Search seems to be seeing more and more of them publishing AI-generated outputted content in the wild. And if you don’t…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, “You don’t need to have a niche site in order to rank in Google; in fact, sometimes that’s a good way not to rank.”…

Google Images are now showing the site name, favicon and below that, a second line, for the page title that image is sourced from. Previously, Google showed just the image,…

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

OpenAI, the folks behind ChatGPT, have published information on its web crawler named GPTBot. You can now see if OpenAI is crawling your site, how much so, and you can…

Over the past several days, some news publishers have complained that their new articles are not showing up on time in Google News and the Google News Publisher Center.

Google has added a new attribute to Google Business Profiles. This one is titled “Pets” and you can specify if dogs are allowed inside and/or if dogs are allowed outside…

I met up at one of Lance Bachmann’s businesses, 1SEO Digital Agency, where we chatted about marketing and running a business. Lance started doing digital marketing over 20 years, and…

Google Merchant Center can now issue warnings for “inappropriate titles.” This can happen for your Google Discover or Demand Gen ads within Google Merchant Center.

Google has released a new Google Ads PDF guide for RSAs, responsive search ads. The new guide is a 9-page PDF document that can be downloaded here.

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

This morning Bing Chat started to work across non-Edge browsers. That means, if you are logged into Bing, you can use Bing Chat on Chrome and Firefox and likely other…

It has been a full 9 days since I last reported about a Google Search ranking algorithm update and now I am seeing signs of another one starting yesterday, August…

It looks like Google recently added a “from Google” card to the Google Search Generative Experience AI-generated answer section. This is when Google sources from its own data, like Google…

A couple of weeks ago we reported that there was a bug with the Google Search Console link report. Google’s John Mueller eventually confirmed the issue and said a fix…

We know Google has demoed some of its ads for the new Search Generative Experience but now some are seeing a new ad format in the Search Generative Experience in…

This week we covered a possible Google algorithm updater yesterday and today. We also covered how the new Google Search Generative Experience now can show both links to sources and…

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

Google just confirmed an issue with Google Ads that has been impacting advertisers all day. Advertisers are getting notices that read “Google Ads can’t complete your request right now. Please…

Google is also adding videos to its Search Generative Experience AI-generated answer section. So now when Google thinks a video is helpful to answer the question, Google may embed a…

With the new Google Search Generative Experience, we are all hopeful that Google will give us reporting and filtering in Search Console. This way, we can track how well our…

Buckle up – it was one insane month of changes that all SEOs who care about Google need to catch up on. We had very unstable and heated Google search…

Ever wonder at what point you need to worry that there are too many of the same keywords on the page? Well, John Mueller from Google said it is not…

Google Business Profiles is testing using generative AI to help business owners write descriptions about their businesses. When you edit your business profile in Google, and then edit your business…

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

Google, for some users, is showing up to five search ads on a page. Google generally won’t show more than four ads on a search results page. Google’s Ad Liaison,…

About a month ago, I spotted a new ad format in the Google Search results that had this local pack vibe. I shared it around, seeing if anyone else would…

Google is testing a “return to top” button at the bottom of the Explore section in the search results. Previously, you had to manually scroll to the top, but now…

Google has removed the @id mentions in the site name documentation calling the use of @id “unneeded.” If you compare the old version of the page to the new version,…

A couple of months ago we reported Google will be changing its Google Ads trademark policies to do away with the ability to have industry-wide blocks for trademarked terms. Instead,…

Looks like all the negative feedback around the lack of links within the AI-generated answers that are generated by Google’s Search Generative Experience has made a difference. Google is testing…

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

The other day Agile SEO posted on Twitter an example of Google’s Search Generative Experience not showing any answer boxes, aka snapshots, for an answer it generated. Danny Sullivan, Google’s…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google stores a permanent or semi-permanent copy of its own search result pages for future reference. John replied basically saying no, because it is…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, commented about a popular tactic content marketers use before writing content – using trending keyword tools to find topics that are trending or popular now….

Google has launched a new help document that gives business owners an overview of the Google Business Profile policies. I received an email about this update yesterday that read, “we’re…

Google is testing adding a “view as customer” link to your Google Business Profile web search dashboard. This, I assume, allows you to view your business listing in web search…

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

In part one, we learned more about Fabrice Canel of Microsoft Bing and spoke about indexing quality. In part two we dig more into the concern around content generation through…

With the updates to Site names last week, Google decided to post a revised set of questions, FAQs, resources, support and timelines on the whole Google Search site name bit…

Google seems to be testing bolding and underlining the title links in the search results snippets in the mobile search interface. Google is also testing a triangular format for the…

Google has removed a couple of the Google News sitemaps help documentation. I should note, it seems these were removed a very long time ago, but the links to those…

Microsoft is working hard to upgrade the Bing Chat infrastructure. This will not only make Bing Chat faster and more reliable but also enable features like third-party plugins and nosearch….

Here are two screenshots of search ads in the Bing Search results. Let me know how long it takes you to find the “ad” label on these ads. It took…

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 AI-generated…

As Google promised, it has updated its support for site names in its search results. Google said it has expanded support for subdomains and also has compiled more information on…

Ashwarya, Google Search Community Manager, posted that Google Search will soon roll out “a new experience to make access to key items easier on the Search Results Page on the…

Google has posted a new policy saying AI-generated reviews are against its policies, disallowed and considered spam. If you find such content, Google said you must mark it as spam…

Google wants you to add your customer support details to Google Merchant Center Next. Google said, “Shoppers are often dissatisfied when they can’t easily find customer support and returns related…

This week, we noticed that many, but not all, of the Google rank tracking tools were cooling, but then later this week, the SEO chatter heated up. Google Merchant Center…

Google has updated the Google Business Profile food ordering section with more options and settings. This feature was in the old Google My Business section but was updated recently in…

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 am now…

Google has made the links within the Things To Know box more prominent by placing some of those links outside of the accordions. So you no longer have to click…

Google seems to be testing categorizing the review by the type of review in the Google Maps and Local reviews section. So if you have a couple on vacation leaving…

As we expected, Bing Chat and Bing Search both now support dark mode. There is a new “dark” setting under the “appearance” section of the settings menu at the top…

I am seeing a significant increase in chatter from within the SEO community around a possible Google Search ranking algorithm update. While most of the tracking tools have calmed, except…

Google has updated its Local Service Ads reviews dispute form. The update clarifies that the form should be used for reviews on Local Service Ads and not to handle reviews…

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 and Microsoft…

Google’s John Mueller had another one-liner – this one was posted on Twitter and it reads, “programmatic SEO is often a fancy banner for spam.”

Over the past few days I’ve seen reports of Google Search testing more visual elements. These visual elements are across featured snippets, top stories, products and likely more.

Google has moved the way to add an appointment link in your Google Business Profile. It use to be within the edit profile section and is now available in the…

Google announced that the self-upgrade tool for “upgrading” your Google Ads to Performance Max campaigns is now available for Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaigns and Google Display campaigns.

Both Google (Alphabet) and Bing (Microsoft) reported earnings last night and both showed that their ad revenues grew. Google Ad revenue was up 3.3%, with overall revenue up 7%. Microsoft…

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 said site…