Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

It has been a while since I heard anyone talk about Google’s passage indexing, technically should be passage<< ranking. So when it came up on Mastodon again, I figured I’d remind…

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

ChatGPT is cool, very cool, in fact, I used it for fun for my video introduction earlier this month, but does this put SEOs out of a job? Will it…

Google’s John Mueller said that “writing unique text, adding infographics, and a video” does not by default make that content “good, accurate, and helpful.”

Google’s John Mueller said that removing internal duplicate content and other technical issue fixes won’t lead to your site recovering from a Google spam update. John said that these spam…

In 2018, John Mueller of Google said Google does not use cache-control headers when crawling. He said then that the has no impact on GoogleBot and how it crawls your…

Google Ads will soon allow some cannabidiol (CBD) and topical, hemp-derived CBD products to be advertised on its network. Google posted this policy update and said this begins on January…

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

It seemed a lot calmer this past weekend, Christmas weekend than we had it a while in the world of Google search volatility. This is a good thing since we…

In part one, we spoke about Jessica Budde’s professional history, and in part two, we spoke more about how she had to shift her role and job as her agency…

Every year John Mueller of Google makes a big effort to help respond to both SEO-related questions and just to wish individuals in the community a Merry Christmas on Christmas…

I spotted this thread on Mastodon where both John Mueller and Danny Sullivan of Google was helping internet legend Tim Bray with some SEO issues he was having with Google…

As some of you may know, LastPass had a pretty big security breach that is pretty concerning. But outside of password issues, what do SEOs need to consider with this…

Google confirmed last week that it is working on a fix with SXG, signed exchanges, and not working correctly in search. Specifically, Google serves them in Google Search as normal…

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

Google’s advice since Penguin 4.0 was that you don’t need to disavow links since the links are neutralized and don’t end up helping or hurting you. In short, Google ignores…

Google is testing a new search feature to tell you more about a website. This is an “about” carousel that shows more information about a site, including information from the…

Google told us that we should not expect another Core update in 2022, so you can relax about that. Google said the helpful content update would take longer to roll…

We’ve been covering a lot of Google user interface tests but here is a look at a revamped Google Search desktop interface including some of the tests we covered before….

Google is testing displaying the new “sponsored” ad label on the desktop search results. Google launched the new sponsored ad label on mobile search two months ago and tested it…

Google is testing including the local business profile listings in Google Discover. There is this new section named “mentioned in this article” where Google can show the local business listing…

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 an update…

Google’s John Mueller said on Mastodon that the Google Search ranking algorithm does not look at words per section or the word count in different sections of your page.

Since April, Bing has been slowly testing a new BingBot user agent, slowly rolling it out to more percentages of crawls over the year. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said while…

Gary Illyes from Google said on LinkedIn that if you want to you can use a single robots.txt file for all your international sites. He added that he is not…

As you know, the December 2022 helpful content update and the link spam update are rolling out now. In fact, it seems like the helpful content update needs more time…

There is an interesting thread on Mastodon where Danny Sullivan and John Mueller, both of who work at Google, talk about making Mastodon more search-engine friendly. The thread was started…

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

Gary Illyes from Google said on LinkedIn the other day that sitemaps are hints, not orders. Meaning just because you submit an XML sitemap file to Google, it does not…

Google’s Search Liason, Danny Sullivan, said that the December 2022 helpful content update would take longer to roll out than originally expected. The update started to roll out on December…

Google will update its Google Advertising policies to disallow the promotion of content or engaging in behavior that risks harm to Google users, Google employees, or the Google Ads ecosystem….

Google’s new Business Profile interface, aka NMX (I hate the name), in the web search results, for some business profile listings, is showing an option to “add a map to…

Google’s John Mueller again said word count is not a thing with SEO or Google Search. He said on Mastodon, “In general, when Google thinks of “thin content” in terms…

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

Since 2015 Google has been serving lighter-weight and thus faster-loading web pages over Web Light to some devices that just don’t have the speed or capabilities to load the heavier…

Here is another study from Joy Hawkins and friends. This study says that upvoting reviews tend to keep the reviews on the local listings up for a longer period of…

Google seems to be rolling out a new “top products” report to the performance reports within Google Business Profiles. As you know, businesses can add products in numerous ways to…

Google announced in India yesterday that they are testing a search feature to allow you to search text within video. This isn’t a huge stretch from key moments but it…

A couple of months ago, I reported Google testing a new design for the local pack, which is a fuller design. Well, Shay Harel from RankRanger says this new design…

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

Jessica Budde was next to be interviewed and she has an amazing personality. She co-hosts the Marketing O’Clock podcast…

Google is testing a light gray colored font for the links in the Google Search knowledge panel box. Google often tests various font sizes and colors and is constantly testing…

Google’s John Mueller said that Google has no plans to release another core update in 2022. This was in response to a number of SEOs worrying that Google might release…

Google has updated its learning video structured data documentation to no longer require the text field for Problem walkthrough videos and clips, now it is just recommended.

Last Wednesday, December 14th, Google began to roll out the December 2022 link spam update, and it seems, at least based on the chatter and tracking tools I follow, this…

Google posted an updated policy update in the Google Merchant Center section for a new “linked account suspension.” In short, this impacts a suspended Google Ads account linked to your…

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 updated its…

The Google search quality raters guidelines were updated and updated in a big way, with a new E added on to E-A-T. Google is adding experience on top of expertise,…

A couple of months ago, Google switched the search ads label from “Ads” to “Sponsored.” Now, Greg Finn noticed that the ads in the Google Discover feed and Google Discovery…

This was a busy week, and I honestly thought it would start to slow down, but I was wrong; I am wrong a lot. Google launched another algorithm update, the…

Google is now testing showing the services listings, the different services a business offers, on the desktop local and maps interface in a business profile. Previously this only showed up…

Sometime in the past couple of months or so, Google added a notice after you upload photos to your Google Business profile that the photo is being processed. It may…

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

Google now allows users to upload videos to their local reviews on mobile. Videos uploads were added to the desktop interface in 20216, but now you can upload videos, in…

Google has recently added a new option to the Google Business Profile settings to remove that business profile. It is named “Removed Business Profile” and will allow you to mark…

Google began rolling out a revised link spam update on December 14, 2022 named the December 2022 link spam update. This update is new in that it uses SpamBrain AI…

Google is shutting down the Google Question Hub feature on January 15, 2023 – a month from today. Google officially launched Question Hub in the US two years prior, but…

Google Search has been super busy with tons of unique and different interfaces for shopping and product-related search results. Here is one, that I am honestly not sure is new…

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 posted…

Google has launched a new visual elements of Google Search gallery that documents some of the more popular search features in Google Search. Now we no longer have to guess…

John Mueller of Google said in a post on Reddit that disallowing Googlebot to crawl your site would not immediately lead to the site being deindexed. He added that “it…

I’ve been checking for the past week, multiple times per day, and just now, Google has launched the Chanukah/Hanukkah decorations for the 2022 season. Chanukah starts this Sunday night, so…

Gary Illyes from Google said on LinkedIn that if your server returns a 500/503 HTTP status code for an extended period of time for your robots.txt file, then Google may…

I always wondered why Google had status dashboards for hundreds of other products across Gmail, Drive, Google Ads, etc., but not for Google Search – its most important product/service. But…

Google’s John Mueller repeated it, the time spent on a page by your users is not a factor Google uses for ranking. Time spent on the page is not a…

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. No…

Microsoft announced that if you do financial service ads in its network, like on Bing Search, in the UK, you will need to be verified in early 2023. “Starting early…

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said on Masoton that your content does not need to be on one topic, one niche topic, for it to rank well. You can…

Joy Hawkins has published another local SEO case study, this one on whether reviews left by Local Guides do better than any ordinary reviewer on Google. The answer is yes;…

Google’s John Mueller said there is no score or threshold for the Google helpful content update. He said on Mastodon “There is no “HCS score” or threshold at which HCS…

Google is once again testing showing the featured snippet, aka position zero, not in the first or position zero slot but rather under position one or even further down the…

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

Google has spoken about being on the edge of indexing is similar to Google thinking those pages are on the edge of quality – they seem to go hand in…

Google Search Console is testing a new feature named “content ideas.” It is labeled as an “experimental” feature that brings Question Hub-like concepts directly into Google Search Console.

Google Maps can now display an “offer available” label under a business profile listing’s map pin in the maps interface. Businesses that add offers in their Google Business Profile may…

In August, we covered a new form of featured snippets in Google Search named Google perspectives. It seems like the perspectives feature is now live on the Google mobile search…

Part one and part two with Jeremy Meindl was more on black hat SEO stuff and now in part three, we get into more white hat topics talking about CRM…

Google’s John Mueller said that using expired domains, repurposed domains are “SEO-flotsam, index-cruft.” John went on to add that search engines have had a lot of practice with dealing with…

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

This week we had another confirmed update to the Google helpful content system; it is now global. Google also had a lot of volatility over the previous week, unrelated to…

John Mueller of Google has always downplayed the importance of HTML sitemaps over the years, he is a fan of XML sitemaps, but HTML sitemaps, not so much. On Mastodon…

Earlier this week, Google announced it has begun to roll out the new topics + sign refinement options in the English/US on mobile search results. But it seems Google is…

It is that time of the year again when Google publishes its top searches for the year. Not going to lie, it is getting tiring, but Google does put a…

It is that time of year when content creators take their content that has been performing well and updates it from the 2022 edition to the 2023 edition. But updating…

Gary Illyes from Google loves posting his PSAs on Mastodon. His next PSA is that if you are using a CDN or cloud hosting service, then make sure to test…