Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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 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…

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.”

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Gary Illyes from Google said in his Q&A session yesterday at PubCon that while recovering from a Google helpful content update is possible, you can’t always get back to where…

Gary Illyes from Google gave a keynote and a Q&A session yesterday at PubCon and while the keynote was pretty vanilla stuff, the Q&A did reconfirm a lot of what…

Google Bard and its chat-based search features that have yet to be seen in the wild may have their unique way of sending publishers traffic, unique from Bing’s AI Chat…

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

Google’s John Mueller went back and forth multiple times with some SEOs on the topic of using ChatGPT not to write content from scratch but to rewrite existing content. The…

Well, this last February 2023 product reviews update has been pretty volatile and we have seen some significant ranking changes and the chatter within the SEO community has been pretty…

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

Microsoft Bing is testing a feature to set the tone you get from Bing AI Chat. You can select precise, balanced and creative tones.

Gary Illyes from Google noted that the list of Googlebot IP addresses that Google started to publish in 2021 and has updated last month is actually maintained in real-time by…

Microsoft Bing now shows if the content is medically reviewed by a medical professional for health-related search queries. So if you search for [heart burn] or other health-related queries, Bing…

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…

So much to discuss this week in the SEO video recap – just so much. Let’s start with a new confirmed Google update, and the February 2023 Google product reviews…

The Google Maps app for Android has seem to add a new tab to manage your business profile(s). The tab shows a store icon with the word “Business” below it….

Google Ads announced four new features coming soon to Performance Max, including campaign-level brand exclusions, page feeds, video creation tools and more reporting. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liason, said…

Google has updated the site move related search documentation this week. It seems like most of the changes were mostly about simplifying things around site moves, removing some content, clarification…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if it would help with web rankings in Google to embed reviews from sites like Facebook, Bing, Google, etc on your web site. John said,…