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

Google, at around 3 am ET this morning, announced that the September 2023 Google helpful content update has finished rolling out. It took about 14 days, starting on September 14,…

A few months ago we reported how it was nearly impossible for a trained SEM to spot the ad label on these Microsoft Advertising search ads on Bing Search. Well,…

Google Ads seems to have added a new feature to the account alerts section that lets you set up alerts to go to email addresses but now lets you define…

Google’s John Mueller defends Google’s position of helping SEOs by providing documentation, video content, and responses to questions on multiple channels. This comes after some are upset that Google is…

Google will update the Google Ads Healthcare and Medicines policy from Prescription drug sale policy to Prescription drug services. “The Healthcare and medicines policy page will be updated to reflect…

OpenAI has relaunched the browse with Bing feature in ChatGPT which lets users use ChatGPT leveraging the index of Bing Search. This was after Open AI turned off the feature…

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

Google launched shared conversations in Google Bard about a week ago and forgot to ensure search engines can’t index the results. The robots.txt had(s) nothing in it to block bard.google.com/share…

A few years ago, Google’s Daniel Waisberg wrote two blog posts, one on analyzing Google Search traffic drops and the other on improving SEO with a Search Console bubble chart….

Today is Google’s official 25th birthday and to celebrate Google has a special Doodle that showcases some of Google’s early Google logos. Google wrote, “Let’s take a walk down memory…

Bing Chat’s precise mode has received a big upgrade that makes those answers a lot better. “Finished rolling out a pretty big update in our Precise mode of Bing Chat…

Google has added new content to its spam policies and ranking systems guide specific to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) content. Google now clearly says that they “always remove such…

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

Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen more chatter of ranking movement for those SEOs initially impacted by the September 2023 helpful content update. I wonder if this is…

At the Microsoft AI event last Thursday, Microsoft also announced new AI-based ad features in the upcoming months. This includes Copilot, which will help you create ads in Microsoft Advertising,…

Bing decided not to wait for the alternative approach to a robots.txt method for blocking AI tools from using your content and decided to go with what is out there…

Google Ads will update ads policies to suspend advertisers over non-fulfillment and non-delivery of products or services due to a lack of qualifications.

Google has confirmed it is working on fixing the delayed Google Search Console reports. Many are delayed a couple of weeks when normally those reports are updated daily or within…

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

This is just a programming note that I will be 100% offline starting Sunday night (September 24th) through Monday night (September 25th) for Yom Kippur. I am not scheduling any…

Google’s John Mueller said it is very unlikely that the search company will roll back the last Google update, the September 2023 Google helpful content update. The update is currently…

Google has been downplaying the importance of links in its ranking algorithm for the past couple of years now. But last Thursday, at PubCon, Gary Illyes from the Google Search…

At the Microsoft AI event on last Thursday, I had a sit down with Kya Sainsbury-Carter, the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Advertising, who told me that clicks on ads…

Gary Illyes from the Google Search team said at PubCon that comments sections on websites can be a good thing. This messaging is on target with what Google has said…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that removing content doesn’t make the rest of your content rank higher. He said, “keep in mind that removing content doesn’t make the rest…

Google posted on Twitter “we recommend not adding meaningful content or symbols using ::before or ::after CSS pseudo-elements.” Google said such content “might not be used for indexing your pages.”

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

Google’s helpful content update is still rolling out, and the SEO chatter is super heated this week, with tons of sites reporting huge drops. But the Google tracking tools are…

I am excited but also feel let down that the new Bing Webmaster Tools Performance report gained all these new sources of data, including Bing Chat, but the only one…

Fabrice Canel from Bing also announced that the disavow link tool will soon be removed from Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing said their algorithms and artificial intelligence capabilities are now so…

Bing Chat announced yesterday at the AI event a new Bing Chat feature that uses “memory” – something we covered a couple of times here before. This is called personalized…

Bing Webmaster Tools began testing its new Sitemap Index Coverage report in June after it was announced a few months prior. As of a few weeks ago, it went fully…

When the September 2023 Google helpful content update came out, Google added new information to its documentation around this update. One thing was specific to this documentation change was around…

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

If you’ve been following my Google helpful content update volatility story, you will notice that the Google tracking tools are showing very little volatility when the SEO chatter is super…

Google has made two updates to its prohibited and restricted content policy for Google Maps user-contributed content. The impacted sections are the fake engagement and personal information sections. Here is…

Google announced that it is expanding its AI-powered tools for Google Ads, its search ads platform. The AI powered conversational tools to create ads is going into a true expanded…

Bing Search now displays a section named “recent chat topics” for some searchers who have recently used Bing Chat. The area is added at the top of the search results…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if adding a language indicator to the meta title tag would have any impact on SEO and Google Search in any way. John Mueller replied…

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. It’s been about…

Google started to roll out the Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update last Thursday afternoon and I’ve been seeing mixed signals about how strong and widespread this update is. There…

There is a fun new Google Search Off the Record podcast to listen to with John Mueller and Gary Illyes from the Google Search team. The short is that quality…

Jerry Dischler, Vice President and General Manager at Google, said under oath in 2020 that Google tuned its ad prices to meet its revenue targets. Ad prices went up 5%…

Last week we reported that the Google site names issues, according to Google, has massively dropped off, after the last big upgrade to site names in Google Search. Well, that…

Google’s John Mueller said on X that a compilation of ChatGPT output does not make your content unique or worthy of outranking other content on the internet. He posted on…

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 Search can…

Google is testing a new design and layout for the Google Search Generative Experience AI-generated snapshot answer. The new design bakes the AI answer into the more traditional user interface…

Google Ads has a new indicator that may show up in your Google Ads advertiser console or dashboard named “limited by bid strategy.” This may show when Google thinks your…

Google Bard now has deeper integration with Google Search, where you can use Google Search to double-check the responses Google Bard provides. Google will then tell you if Google Search…

Some local SEOs are reporting that they are not receiving emails from Google Business Profiles. They are not getting notified via email when they are being added to a Google…

Google Ads has begun converting some of its conversion metrics from Universal Analytics 3 to Google Analytics 4 (UA3 to GA4) and it caught some advertisers off guard, despite numerous…

Microsoft’s chief product officer Panos Panay is leaving the company and with that there were some internal leadership changes. Including Yusuf Mehdi and Mikhail Parakhin who are both super involved…

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

In part one, we got to learn about David Iwanow and why it is important to reinvent yourself in this space, over and over again. In part two…

It seems like the Google Search feature for “things to know” has significantly dropped and is rarely showing now both on desktop and mobile. I am personally not seeing things…

Google AdSense has improved its site verification methods with a real-time site check, meta tag verification method, and Ads.txt improvements.

Google seems to be testing highlighting portions of text in the search result snippets. This seems different from the highlighting of featured snippets, people also ask, things to know or…

Bing is testing showing a lock icon in the Bing Search results for snippets from secure websites. Previously, Bing tested secure site labels and HTTPS labels in those positions but…

Google is testing displaying the European Union energy labels or icons on some product search results. The energy efficiency of the appliance is rated in terms of a set of…

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

We got another official Google ranking update, the September 2023 helpful content update. This week, we had our first post-Google core update tremors and fluctuations. After saying they would a…

Last night, Google began to roll out an update to the Helpful content system – the Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update. What is new is not the part about…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said on X that the number of issues and complaints posted in the forums about site names being wrong in Google search has “massively…

In August, Google announced it would do away with How-to rich results on the mobile search results. Now, Google has decided to completely do away with How-to rich results both…

Google Merchant Center has added a new attribute named checkout_link_template. Including this new attribute lets you include a checkout URL in your product data which gives online shoppers the option…

Google has added a couple of new attributes to Google Business Profiles. One is for does the location has a nursing room for mothers to feed their babies and the…

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

Google Search now zooms in on product images when you are previewing a specific from on the right-hand panel. All you need to do is hover your mouse cursor over…

A month ago, Google told us that FAQ rich results in the Google search results will be shown for only authoritative sites but we waited over a month and nothing…

Google is testing adding trending labels to the Explore Brands section in the Google Search results. The Explore Brands section is not new, it was added a year or so…

Google is now showing banners and overlays to promote its new Search Generative Experience directly in its traditional search results interface. The overlay says “Search with an AI-powered boost, try…

Google Maps and Google Local are testing showing third-party reviews for Google Business Profile listings. It has been over a decade since Google Maps showed third-party reviews, reviews not left…

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 seeing some early signs of maybe the first set of tremors post the Google August 2023 core update, which completed rolling out on September 7th. The new tremors…

Google’s John Mueller said the length of your meta descriptions do not matter to the Google search ranking algorithm. He said on X, “I’m sorry to tell you, those numbers…

A respected advertiser in the PPC community said that a Google Ads experiment that the customer did not opt in to or have the option to opt out of cost…

The CEO of Bing from Microsoft, Mikhail Parakhin, said that Bing Chat is working on custom instructions for Bing Chat in the form of “a less geeky, more useful way…

The other day we covered how Google’s John Mueller said that there is no way to prevent traffic loss after a website revamp. John this morning added that there is…

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

Google’s John Mueller was asked if there is a way to prevent search traffic loss while launching a new website revamp. This specific case has URL changes with folders and…

Gary Illyes shared a nice little tidbit on LinkedIn about robots.txt files. He said that only a tiny number of robots.txt files are over 500 kilobytes. I mean, most robots.txt…

Google’s John Mueller said if you see that your sitelinks in Google Search are going to the wrong country version URL on your site, then try using hreflang. John said…

We covered the topic of SEO for e-commerce category pages a number of times here. But Gary Illyes from Google addressed the topic last week in an SEO office hours….

Google in October will start to require some advertisers who have their accounts suspended to complete the advertiser verification in order to have the account re-issued. Google said this does…

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