Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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. Bing laid out…

A few weeks ago, Microsoft added three tones or modes of responses to the Bing Chat feature; balanced, creative and precise. Yesterday, Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO of Bing, explained the…

Google released the March 2023 broad core update, so far this has been a very fast and big update. Bing said they’ve been using the new GPT-4 technology for the…

Google may be testing a new search result snippet that blends a typical search result snippet with a local snippet result. This one has the favicon, sitename, URL, title and…

Google will be updating its Merchant Center policy to allow ads for electric bikes that go up to 28 mph. This is an increase from the max speed of 15.5…

Google Search is testing replacing the 3D label with a 360 label for products and images that you can rotate within the search results. I guess either 3D or 360…

Last September at the Search On event, Google announced a new personalized shopping results based on your previous shopping habits with the ability to specify which brands you want. That…

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 March 2023…

Google Search has started to roll out the first broad core update of the 2023 year, and this one is named the March 2023 broad core update. It started on…

Microsoft Advertising’s broad match modifier keywords are now being served as broad match keywords instead of phrase match on Bing Search. This is effective as of yesterday, March 15, 2023.

Google may have a bug, it is a confirmed bug according to some local SEOs, where a bunch of businesses are seeing a notice in Google Search that “your business…

Google’s John Mueller said when it comes to spammy referral traffic, you can ignore it and not worry about it regarding SEO. John said on Twitter, “I’d ignore it,” when…

Google has updated the interface and user experience for Auto ads within the AdSense console. Google said, “To make it easier to navigate and understand the differences between Auto ads…

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. Microsoft Bing has…

Google may show similar businesses or restaurants in the local business listing of a competing business or restaurant. This “similar to” section may show up based on your previous search…

I was doing some searches yesterday to test new Google Search featured and I stumbled upon Google showing a promotion in the mobile search results to use camera search. It…

Microsoft Bing confirmed minutes after OpenAI announced the new version of GPT, GPT-4, that Bing uses that upgraded model. Yusuf Mehdi from Microsoft said, “We are happy to confirm that…

Google now lets you report some reviews left on Local Service Ads. You can report the normal Google Business Profile reviews, but not the verified reviews but at least it…

John Mueller of Google posted a super detailed response to an hreflang implementation question on Reddit. The response is so detailed, I am afraid that if I try to dumb…

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

Google has updated the user agent for the AdsBot Mobile Web Android crawler. If you hard-coded this bot for any purposes on your site, you will want to update your…

When you search for [youtube] in Google Search, currently, the YouTube home page is not ranking. You get Wikipedia, the YouTube Android app on Google Play, the iOS app on…

Microsoft announced a few updates for the Bing Chat AI co-pilot including that they increased the Bing Chat limits to 15/150 and also is testing an optimized “balanced” mode response…

Microsoft Advertising announced yet another vertical ad option for medical professionals named Doctor and Clinic Ads. This is an open beta available in the United States, Australia, India, Germany, France,…

Google’s Gary Illyes said that the Googlebot JSON file IP address list is updated within a few days of a new IP being added to the list of IPs that…

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

In part one, we spoke about who Sam Michelson is and his business development techniques. In part two, we dove into CRM software and how they use it, including looking…

Google’s John Mueller said lesser-used or known languages published on the web are not considered low-quality content just because they are lesser known. He said on Mastodon “good content is…

Google, during some of the verification workflow with your Google Business Profile may ask for your BBB, Better Business Bureau, listing page. Google is asking to provide a link to…

Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO of Microsoft Bing, said on Twitter that Bing may replace the top answers, featured, and knowledge answers they use today on Bing Search with the Bing…

In the latest Google SEO office hours session, Gary Illyes answered how Google decides when to show links in Google Search to a company’s mobile app. The short answer is…

On Friday, Bill Elward noticed how a featured snippet had a header above it that read “Advertisement.” Bill asked if this was a new Google Ad format from Google for…

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

It’s time for the SEO video recap; in this episode, I talk about how the February 2023 Google product reviews update finished rolling out on March 7th. I spoke about…

Google seems to be testing showing a date picker and occupancy selector for searches related to hotel queries. I have not been able to replicate this, I have tried over…

In Google Search you can trigger the Google Translation widget. But now, Google is testing a G icon to let you “search for this on Google” from that translate widget…

In July and October of last year, we covered some interactive and visual knowledge panels in Google Search, both on mobile and desktop search. This might be a new variation…

Google now lets some reviewers leave reviews specifically recommending dishes from that restaurant. Customers can manually add the foods and dishes they recommend at that restaurant.

Not too long ago, John Mueller from Google blasted an agency for using a disavow file and now he is doubling down on that, adding on Twitter in response 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 Trends launched…

Google has revamped the Google Trends interface adding real-time trends to the home page, updating those trends hourly and linking them to the news articles. This update comes years after…

Did you know that Bing Chat also can give you an answer card or box under the chat-based response with citations? We saw Bing provide news cards, local cards, shopping…

Microsoft’s Mikhail Parakhin said that the number one feature request is for Bing Chat to save historical chats for later for users to come back to them later or look…

Google has made the sitename, favicon and sponsored label live on all desktop searches, like it did with mobile searches last October. To be clear, we saw google testing this…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, “Page size is not a ranking factor.” Meaning Google does not have anything specific signal that says page sizes of X to Y get…

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

Google announced yesterday that Google Local Service Ads now supports 70 service types across five new categories. The categories include education, people care, pet care, wellness and health care.

A few weeks ago, I reported that Google has updated its help documentation to specify that Google Discover visibility can be impacted not just by the core updates but also…

Google Ads announced that Performance Max for travel goals will be available globally over the next few weeks. Performance Max for travel goals helps hotels create ads in multiple formats…

The Google February 2023 product reviews update finished rolling out yesterday afternoon on March 7, 2023. It took 14 days to rollout this expanded language version of the product reviews…

We all want to see how much traffic the new Bing Chat feature will send us and we know Bing Webmaster Tools will eventually add it. But how about analytics?…

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

Google may be testing replacing the “people also ask” with a “more to ask” box. I am unsure if this is just a headline change or if there is any…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if having hyphens in your domain name, like www.my-site-goes-here.com, can cause ranking issues in Google Search. John Mueller said no, domains with hyphens are not…

Google Explore is that weird feature you get when you keep scrolling and scrolling through the search results. Then Google hits you with this explore feature to expand your query…

Google announced last week that Google Search “now makes it easier to search for datasets” by showing “more datasets” and explore more features for datasets within Google Search.

Google is now showing products that businesses add through the Google Business Profile manager directly in Google Shopping search results. I was not sure if this is new, but it…

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

In part one, we spoke about who Sam Michelson is and his business development techniques. In part two, we dove into CRM software and how they use it, including looking…

Since the Google February 2023 product reviews update on February 21st, we’ve been seeing some pretty big swings in the search results – a lot of volatility, more than the…

Google has made a couple of updates to the Google Maps User Contributed Content Policy around prohibited and restricted content. Specifically, Google updated the definition of personal information under the…

After many months of testing, Google has launched the highlights in the featured snippets within the Google search results. Google seems to have gone with the blue highlights, not the…

Jack Krawczyk, the product lead for Bard at Google, told Googlers at an all-hands meeting, saying, “I just want to be very clear: Bard is not search.”

Google’s John Mueller was asked about a domain name purchased several months ago but still does not rank well in Google Search. John explained that the domain has a “long…

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

This week we saw a lot more volatility from the Google Product reviews update, one last weekend and the other around March 1st. I also posted the big Google webmaster…

Microsoft Bing is testing placing a site’s favicon on the right side of the search result title’s snippet. We are accustomed to seeing it on the left for Google search…

Google is testing a few interfaces for the Google Posts and updates in the local interfaces. One is to overlay the Google updates in the images for the business listing…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that it is an SEO myth to say you can use the nofollow attribute on links to hoard your links. He said, “You don’t…

An SEO is in a situation where a site needs to move from www.domain.com to new.domain.com and then a few months later back to www.domain.com. John Mueller of Google was…

Google announced it is testing a new design to help improve the workflow of advertisers in the Google Ads console. Google said it is “testing new designs to improve how…

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 March 2023, where I cover all the most important things that happened with Google search over the past month. The highlights include…

Google’s John Mueller spoke a bit more about when you should update the date in the lastmod tag in the XML sitemap file. He said on Twitter if you are…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, “when it comes to web pages in Google Search, hashtags are just words, they have no special meaning or effect.” So if you are…

Google Ads is updating its Malicious or unwanted software policy on May 9, 2023. The policy will be split into three policies, Malicious software, Compromised sites, and Unwanted software.

Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google Search would be impacted if you block other crawlers, like Bing or the ChatGPT crawler. John said no, “Google doesn’t care if 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…

Microsoft Bing seems to be incorporating more of its Chat AI features into answer boxes in the main search results. Bing is testing a “summarized” box that gives you summary…

Google has been testing blocking news in Google Search on about 4% of Canadian users. Google said, “We’re briefly testing potential product responses to Bill C-18 that impact a very…

Both Semrush and RankRanger are reporting several point drops in the percentage of time a people also ask box shows up in the Google search results. The drop started on…

Yesterday, Fabrice Canel from Microsoft Bing announced at PubCon that Bing Webmaster Tools would get two new features. First is the Bing Chat integration, and the second is the index…

I am seeing a much bigger spike in chatter within the SEO community this morning around another Google search ranking algorithm update. It might be related to the ongoing Google…

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 it…

Microsoft fully launched the quality updates in version 96 of Bing AI Chat on February 28th. It is a tad late, but it is live and reduces cases where Bing…

Google Ads now supports automatically created assets, and the new customer acquisition goal is fully live. But also, in March, the “Search Interest” targeting and “Presence or Interest” exclusion will…