Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

This may be obvious to many of you and this is a purely technical note, but for a URL to be somewhat unique, generally you need to have at least…

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, I do a lot of bantering with Greg Finn and talk about his history in the space and the growth of his agency, Cypress North. In part…

Google is officially rolling out the new site name and favicon design, along with the new sponsored ad label, in the mobile search results. Yes, this is something Google has…

Google’s John Mueller said that there is no need to use English URLs when your pages are not in English. You can use the language of the page in your…

For months we have been watching Google test a new ads label in search named “Sponsored” in bold black text. Well, now it is officially live in the Google mobile…

Google’s John Mueller said in the latest Search Off the Record podcast that you should leave decorative alt text on your images empty and blank. Oh, and John later said,…

Google has announced that it is kicking off its in-person SEO, creator, publisher, site owner, etc event named Google Search Central Live. The first in-person event will be in Singapore…

I will be offline completely for the holiday of Simchas Torah on October 17th and October 18th, Monday and Tuesday. Any stories published here will be scheduled and written beforehand…

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

This week, Google pushed out a revamped Google Webmaster Guidelines and renamed it the Google Search Essentials. Google also seemed to release an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update. Google…

Google’s John Mueller said that pinging Google that your sitemap file has been updated can help Google index your new content quickly. He said it is simply Google practice to…

Google seems to have launched or is testing a feature to have Google Search read details about a local business listing. This might be in only some regions, as I…

Google announced at the Search On event that it would be adding a remove result feature in the about this result overlay in Google Search. Well, now it is there…

We all know that ranking well for competitive terms in Google Search is not as easy, or even a fraction as easy, as it was two decades ago. This is…

Google has replaced the Google Webmaster Guidelines with the Google Search Essentials. The name change is Google’s ongoing efforts to remove the term “webmaster” so that these tools and documentation…

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 may have…

Fabrice Canel updated us the other day that now half of all crawling Microsoft Bing does is over the new BingBot user agent. About a month ago, it was 20%,…

It has been a while since I reported on an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update but it seems over the past 24 hours or so, we are seeing one….

There are reports from some local SEOs that Google is pushing out previously held reviews in Google Maps. Some are seeing dozens, if not over a hundred reviews being posted…

Google has added support for image credits for image metadata. Previously, image credit information was only supported with IPTC photo metadata.

Google has added some new features around attraction and tour operators including the ability to edit your ticket prices directly in Google Business Profiles.

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

Google AdSense has announced support for personalization with first-party cookies and also new improvements to the blocking controls navigation.

A few months ago we reported seeing Microsoft Bing test polls in the knowledge panels within Bing Search. Well, Microsoft said on Twitter that this is now live and a…

Google has added an arrow button, within a circle design, in the Google Search knowledge panel section. When you click on the arrow, it takes you deeper into the entity’s…

Google has brought Data Studio into Looker and it is now named Looker Studio. Google says this will bring more features and analytics tools to the platform.

Google may be testing (or this might be old) a new user interface for the local pack map interface. In the example below, Google is showing the fuller local card…

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

In June we reported about a beta feature in Google Ads that gives Google the ability to automatically create assets for your ads. There is an opt-out feature but there…

Google’s John Mueller said if you see the Google search results being shuffled around after they are loaded, then it is not Google Search doing that. Google does not “shuffle…

Google’s John Mueller recently confirmed again that Google Search does not use the HTML lang attribute. He said many screen readers do and Microsoft Bing might use it as well,…

Google’s John Mueller said Google Search does not care one way or another if you use premium security plugins or not. The answer is, Google probably doesn’t care if you…

Google is testing a clock/timer type of icon on the sitelinks within Google Search. That icon apparently is designed to communicate that you previously visited that page from Google Search.

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

Google has added three examples of the type of product review pages and who can write them to the “how to write product reviews” help document.

Google has confirmed that structured data is one of the many signals the search company uses to help identify if a page has product reviews content or not. This was…

Google’s Danny Sullivan told us that the Google product reviews update primarily evaluates product review content on a page-level basis, but not always. Danny added “for sites that have a…

Over the weekend, there has been a number of reports from news publishers of an error in the Google News Publisher Center. The specific error says “there are no items…

A month ago we reported on Google’s announcement of the featured snippet callouts feature. Where Google uses MUM to bold sections of the featured snippet to give searchers a more…

Greg Finn and I have known each other for a pretty long time, so this video is pretty fun and we kind of go off topic a bunch but I…

This is just a quick note that I will be offline for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot on Monday, October 10th, and Tuesday, October 11th. All stories, social media posts,…

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

This week, I posted the monthly Google webmaster report, an excellent place to catch up on the past month in SEO. Glenn Gabe shared some wild charts showing how Google’s…

Google is still working on getting the timestamps accurate in the search results and news search results. Several publishers, including the Director of SEO at USA Today and the SEO…

Google Ads announced that you can now apply a recommendation as an experiment in the Experiments page. This allows you to more efficiently “in as few as two clicks, you…

Google has released its 2023 schedule for the Google Ads API. This includes the tentative dates for when various versions will be released and/or sunsetted for the Google Ads API.

Google has updated the Google tag to include a new tap coverage summary and offering deeper Google Ads, Google Analytics, and various CMS integrations.

John Mueller of Google said on Twitter the other day that “in many areas, searching visually is rare.” Meaning, that most of your traffic likely does not come from 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 Search Console’s…

Microsoft Advertising has announced a boatload of new features in its October 2022 release schedule. These include the ability to import your Google’s performance max data, new data exclusion features,…

There may be a bug with the Google Analytics and Google Search Console integration. The queries report within Google Analytics when you connect your Search Console profile, now shows “not…

Google has updated its Google Maps contributor guidelines to disallow “discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews, or selectively soliciting positive reviews from customers.”

Google Search Console is not currently tracking clicks or impressions for traffic sent through the new Google multisearch feature. Glenn Gabe confirmed this the other day by running some tests…

Google announced it is cracking down on more financial fraud in the UK by making updates to its UK Financial Services policy that will go into effect in December. Google…

This is just a programming note that I will be 100% offline starting Tuesday night (October 4th) through Wednesday night (October 5th) for Yom Kippur. I am not scheduling any…

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 a quick…

Google has confirmed that some data may be missing in the Google Search Console Search Performance report on September 21, 2022. If you log in and view that report, you…

There are some reports that in some industries, like the auto dealership industry, there is a bug with Google Business Profile insights reporting. There shows a large and unaccounted-for spike…

Danny Sullivan from Google provided some advice and took some feedback on a specific example of when an original piece of research from a website was being outranked by a…

With all these different Google search ranking algorithm updates over the past several weeks, it has been a very busy time for SEOs. While most sites probably don’t see huge…

Google’s John Mueller said it again, he said on Twitter “anything that talks about “link juice” should be ignored.” Instead, he said you should “go and make awesome websites with…

Talk about a busy month, we didn’t just have one or two confirmed updates this past month – we had three! We had the helpful content update finish rolling out…

Google Shopping seems to be testing or maybe has launched a new chat feature in the product search results. I personally cannot replicate this at the time I am writing…

Google Search now has a grid layout option labeled “more hotels.” This is even when Google shows the hotel listings sections, other hotel listings, explore more hotels, and now also…

In September 2020, Google added a new section for “health and safety” attributes to Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business). Those remained as an option until last week, Google…

There seems to be a much higher level of Google Business Profiles suspended in the past couple of weeks than one would typically see. So a higher number of businesses…

We learned about Maggie Humphrey in part one and what she did while working at DAC and in part two, we dig a bit more into content development strategies for…

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

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 is testing…

Google has finished rolling out both the September 2022 core update and product reviews update on Monday, September 26th – yes, there is a lot of confusion. Google fixed a…

Google’s John Mueller said that your site or page would not be removed from the Google Search results over page speed issues. He was asked about this on Twitter and…

Google is testing the placement of the Things To Know section on the right-side panel. Typically, you find these within the main search results in the middle portion of the…

There are some brands that have generic names that have become more popular than the actual meaning of the word. In those cases, Google Search may rank or show information…

Google is testing a new feature that places a large and smaller star next to the search result snippet. When you click on the star icons, you are presented with…

Google is testing another design for the product panels in Google Search. This new design shades the boxes for some of the products and reviews, etc. It also moves some…

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

Google Ads continues to suffer from ongoing latency issues – mostly from the Google Ads console. This is the place advertisers go in and manage their ads. It has become…

We had another Google Search On event yesterday and in case you missed it or you simply do not want to read through a lot of fluff, here is the…

Google’s John Mueller has put down some strong language against changing your URLs for SEO reasons alone. He basically said in most cases, changing URLs will have a negative impact…

Over the past 24 hours or so, there has been a ton of complaints that the Google Posts submit button is not working. I personally tested it and it seems…

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

We have seen plenty of neat features from Google Search around recipes. But now it seems Google is testing a Google Search Cookbook feature. It is a place to consolidate…

Google’s John Mueller asked if there was some sort of percentage people can use to determine if their content may be considered duplicative or not. John said there is none…

As I called, Google has completed rolling out both the September 2022 core update and the September 2022 product reviews update while I was offline. Both officially finished rolling out…