Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Should you put your site name in your title tag? Google’s John Mueller said it really shouldn’t be an SEO decision. John Mueller seems to be a fan of having…

Google Business Profiles messaging feature may be rolling out the ability to set your status to respond to messages and the ability to configure your away mode.

Microsoft might build an expert mode search interface for Bing Chat for those who may want to do more advanced prompting. Mikhail Parakhin, the Bing CEO, said on Twitter, “Yes,…

Google’s John Mueller said that when a link spammer (or I guess any time of spammer) find a vulnerability on a website, they might share that vulnerability with their network…

Yesterday I covered the hotel version of Google Search testing a comparison sites carousel and a new search filter. Well, it seems it is not specific to just hotels but…

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…

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

For the past few months, Google’s search results have been very volatile, but over the past couple of days, it seems, at least to some rank-checking tools, the volatility is…

Google posted a new Search Off The Record podcast all around picking a domain name and SEO. This was recorded by John Mueller, Gary Illyes, and Martin Splitt of Google….

Google seems to be testing a new hotel search feature that lets you compare sites using a carousel and a new search filter. The carousel shows you comparable hotels that…

Google Business Profiles seems to be rolling out a new FAQ feature where Google will automatically create FAQs based on your Google Business Profile details and your website.

Google Merchant Center is rolling out a new feature named “collections.” Collections let you group up to 100 products together in the same collection. Google said collections, “Collections allow you…

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 Ads Editor…

With Microsoft announcing the enterprise version of Bing Chat, some are worried that the free version might disappear. Well, it won’t. Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO of Bing at Microsoft, said…

Google has released a minor update to the Google Ads Editor. This is version 2.4.1 and I am not exactly sure what updates we have with this minor release.

Google has updated its URL structure guidelines to specify what characters Google Search supports in URLs.

For the original iTunes version, click here. Every week, the Google Search volatility keeps getting hotter, but Google did say we should have a confirmed update this summer. Google fixed…

On June 28th, three weeks ago, I removed the AMP pages from this site. Overall, I didn’t see overall traffic changes from the change. I did notice issues with this…

Google Search is testing a new carousel search feature that shows products from EnergyStar.gov and Energy.gov, governmental websites, on products that you can buy to save with tax credits from…

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

For the past couple of months now, Microsoft has been saying dark mode is coming to Bing Chat. But now they are putting a timeline on it – dark mode…

Several weeks ago, Bing’s CEO, Mikhail Parakhin said that Bing Chat will soon work on any browser – that you don’t have to use Microsoft Edge to run Bing Chat….

I think everyone in our industry is surprised we have not had a confirmed Google search ranking update since April 2023. But you should expect Google to confirm a search…

Google Search Console has a link report and that link report has become less and less useful over the years. This morning, it seems like Google pushed an update or…

As you may remember, Google has a news topic authority ranking system, which has been around for a while but Google recently disclosed to the public. Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search…

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

A month ago we saw Bing Chat testing visual search. Well now it is available for all who want to snap a photo or upload an image to Bing Chat.

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, responded to Vox Media’s claim that AI content is currently “well-received by search engines.” Sullivan said, “It’s still not correct that AI content will be…

Google has removed the related search operator from its “overview of Google search operators” help documentation. The related search operator would show you pages that are related to a specific…

Google’s John Mueller was asked again about page speed and how important of a ranking factor it is, if at all. John replied, saying page speed is a vague term…

Joe Hall posted a poll on Twitter asking SEOs how they typically handle category and/or tag archive pages for SEO. The results said that most noindex those pages so search…

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. Just when you…

Some of the Google Search rank-checking tools are so far off their scales that they look broken to me. Did Google’s insane volatility break the automated Google Search volatility tracking…

Google Search is testing boxed-in favicons for snippets. That is, instead of the favicon as is, Google is placing them in a square box.

Google’s John Mueller seemed to get annoyed the other day around people faking who they are with fake personas. He posted a PSA, public service announcement, on Twitter Monday saying,…

Google News seems to be testing a new section in the “for you” section named “Suggested for you.” This section shows you news sources that you can follow within Google…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if keyword research helps SEO. John immediately replied, “no,” but then explained why he said no. It is not the task keyword research that helps…

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 past weekend…

Here is a Google Search treatment that feels old but I can’t see any coverage of this feature on this site or on other sites. There is a carousel section…

In January, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liason, said that Google Search has issues showing the searcher’s preferred language on the search results page. He said this is a priority for…

Have you ever spotted a Google quality rater visiting your website? It is not as uncommon as you thought. I even saw it on this website. You can spot it…

Google confirmed an indexing bug with Google News publishers that went on for about three weeks. It started around June 21st and was officially fixed on Friday, July 14th.

Google has posted a new document in the Google Merchant Center area on how to build trust with your customers. The document goes through your business identity, your transparency, your…

I often post about Google ranking volatility and search ranking algorithm updates but I rarely post about them on a weekend. But I just had to this Sunday morning; the…

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

Google Search seems to be testing a new feature to help searchers learn to speak in English (and maybe other languages). It is called Practice Speaking and can be triggered…

Microsoft Bing has this feature where you can see “people also ask” like results under search result snippets, I am not sure what Microsoft calls them, but they provide additional…

With all these unconfirmed Google search ranking updates over the past couple of months and the Google results being super volatile, we are all asking when will Google confirm the…

For the original iTunes version, click here. Surprise, surprise, we had another unconfirmed Google search ranking update. Google confirmed it had a Google News indexing bug for weeks and just…

Google’s John Mueller responded to a question on Reddit about how to “undo” a 301 permanent redirect. In short, John said you can just change the redirect but he does…

Google is testing an icon or button overlayed on images in the image search results to “see more like this.” I personally do not see this myself, so it must…

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 search results…

Google is testing translating search results snippets with a “Translated by Google” drop-down feature under that specific search result snippet. It shows you that Google can translate the result from…

The new Google Search Generative Experience started to roll out to some users in late May but we are already seeing a decline in usage for these generative AI search…

Just when updates to Google Bard were getting stale, Google announced a boatload of new things for its generative AI tool, Bard. In short, Google added several new features to…

Google is going to release its second batch up improvements for Site names in the search results “in the near future,” Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison said.

Hey there – it is me again – reporting about another unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update. This one seemed to start yesterday, July 12th. I am seeing a lot…

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

Google’s explore section, which we first found a year ago and is now live for all, now seems to be showing Google Ads or sponsored listings. I have not seen…

John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, was asked when you should use the link disavow too. He said on Twitter, “Essentially — if you weren’t buying links, don’t disavow.”

Google is testing a feature to swipe over a specific search result snippet so you can save or share it. When you swipe over the snippet, you are presented with…

Google introduced the site name feature last October for mobile and last March for desktop search. Did you know that sometimes Google might not show a site’s site name in…

Google has not published a new update for Google Bard for five weeks now. The last update published was on June 7, 2023 and since then it has been quiet.

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 a…

Google AdSense now supports Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments in EUR currency for publishers in many new countries. The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a payment-integration initiative of…

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said he would take the feedback he heard from the publisher community yesterday back to the Google Search team. This feedback was around Google’s advice…

Google Search Console’s page indexing report should show more fine-grained page indexing issues starting on July 2nd. Google forgot to add an annotation to the report back then but promised…

After hearing reports that the Google News team is working on fixing an issue, Google has confirmed it last night. Many publishers were either not showing up in Google News…

Google Ads will be updating its generic Circumventing Systems policy this month. The change will “clarify that the policy prohibits repeated and simultaneous policy violations across any of your accounts,…

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

Google has removed the call tracking feature from Google Business Profiles. Supposedly this was a very buggy feature that would not work well and sometimes send calls to the wrong…

Google began to send out email notifications about the new INP, Interaction to Next, core web vitals report recently. I believe Google started to send them out shortly after the…

Google’s Universal Analytics 3 which was supposed to stop collecting data over a week ago, on July 1st, is still collecting data for most, if not all, UA3 profiles. Every…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted a Twitter thread, with slides from a presentation he prepared for an AOP event in London back in May around SEO and Google guidance…

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted that Google’s core advice around how to rank well in Google Search has not changed in two decades. Google showed a screenshot of its…

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 search results…

Bing is now testing showing branded side labels next to each search result listing. We saw earlier more basic side labels and before that branded side bars for some search…

Google announced last night that it is looking to develop a complementary protocol to the 30-year-old robots.txt protocol. This is because of all the new generative AI technologies Google and…

This morning, we are seeing significant movement with the Google search results ranking and algorithm. Twitter blocked unregistered users from seeing tweets, which blocked Googlebot and resulted in huge drops…

If you do some sports-related queries, sometimes, Google Search will let you rate the players and then see how those players line up against each other based on their ratings.

I am really trying to not cover the Google search ranking volatility and not report on another Google search ranking update but today things got super heated again. And don’t…

Google Search can show deals in both a product carousel format and a product grid-type of format. Some of these I think were somewhat showcased last November but over time,…

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

Google Merchant Center seems to be rolling out its old beta feature named automated discounts. Automated discounts helps retailers automatically discount their product prices based on multiple real-time signals, Google…

Next month, Google Ads will remove the examples it provides in its Google Ads Legal Requirements policy. Google posted that on August 7, 2023, it will no longer list examples…

Now when you update your business hours, and maybe other information, on your Google Local Service Ads, those updates will be synced up with your Google Business Profiles within 24…