Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

As you know, Google began to roll out the fifth Google product reviews update on September 20th during the roll-out of the September 2022 core update. I promised to return…

Google’s John Mueller often posts detailed and thoughtful responses on Reddit related to SEO and also general gadget tinkering. In one of his latest SEO posts, he posted a very…

About a year ago, Brodie Clark posted a poll asking SEOs which area of SEO do you find the most challenging. The response a year ago was by far link…

As we reported last month, Google has now officially deprecated the International Targeting report in Google Search Console. If you try to access the report, Google will show you a…

Google is testing a new my account section named “results about you.” This is part of the feature where Google Search allows you to remove information about yourself from Search…

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

Google’s John Mueller explained what he would consider being a search quality issue, causing ranking issues specific to Google considering the site not “quality.” John said “to me, quality issues…

A lot of SEOs focus on the pages Google has indexed versus the pages Google has not indexed on your website. So if there is a larger percentage of not…

Google is testing placing the thumbnail image on the top stories carousel in Google Search at the top and also at the bottom. I believe normally you would see the…

Last week we saw Google testing highlighting text in the featured snippets. Now I am seeing reports of Google testing highlighting text in the people also ask.

Google said when it comes to your cookie consent banners, make sure not to make those banners annoying. John Mueller of Google was asked, “does cookie consent banner disturb user…

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

Google, at about 4 am ET today, September 20, 2022, has unleashed the fifth product reviews update. This was released prior to the September 2022 core update being completed, which…

Microsoft Bing has been doing a lot of user experience features around search refinements and filters dynamically within various search feature boxes. Here is one more showing a filter option…

Next week the High Holy Days begin for the Jewish people and some of us will be offline (I will be offline) and some more righteous folks actually disable functionally,…

Google has added a new Google crawler, a new user agent, to the Google spider list. Its name is Google Site Verifier User Agent. This user agent ignores robots.txt rules,…

What if your site gets hacked and there is a ton of spammy content placed on it? Do you have to worry about negative consequences on your Google rankings and…

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

In part one, we learned more about Christine Zirnheld, aka Shep, the Digital Marketing Manager at Cypress North and a co-host on Marketing O’Clock. We also spoke about her being…

Google is testing showing two people also ask featured snippets in a single question expansion. This acts similar to the multifaceted featured snippets and the new featured snippet design we…

Google announced on Friday that it has begun rolling out the self-upgrade tool for Local campaigns to Performance Max. We knew this was coming, as we reported last August and…

Last week, Google rolled out a new Search Console report for HTTPS, and with that came a lot of confusion around a specific error. The error was “HTTPS is invalid…

Some folks in the SEO community have been asking if the last core update, the September 2022 core update, has been slower to roll out in some specific countries than…

A lot of folks were thinking that Google in order to bolster the helpful content update rolled out a core update right after the helpful content update was done. As…

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

There is an interesting response from John Mueller of Google on what to do with URLs that may appear duplicated because of URL parameters, like UTMs, at the end of…

Google announced it has renamed the Google Ads extensions to “assets” plus it has released new workflows, tools and reports to “make it easy for you to deliver more engaging…

What a week, we had the launch of the September 2022 core update that started off strong and fast. Google confirmed the helpful content update is done rolling out but…

Google is now testing or rolling out the Health & Safety and Sustainability information for hotels right in the knowledge panel. Previously, in 2020 it was added to the hotel…

Google Search Console may have improved the URL inspection tools view inspected page screenshot feature to show more of the page. Now it seems with the mobile view, Google is…

Google can show your favicon in the search results next to your search result snippet. Google’s John Mueller said Google finds your favicon based on the favicon presented on your…

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

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter this morning that word count is not a sign or factor for what Google considers to be thin content or unhelpful content. John wrote,…

Earlier this month, Google said it might remove the word count reference from the best practices for your article pages help document in the Search Console news errors page. Well,…

Google announced that Google Ads scripts now support Performance Max campaigns. Google said, “this treated as a brand new campaign type in scripts, similar to how video or shopping campaigns…

Google is promoting the Google Lens feature in the mobile search results based on the type of query you enter. Google has a promotion box smack in the middle of…

Google has made changes to how your feeds work for countries, removing the need to list a primary country and additional countries, and replacing them with target countries.

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

Google has added a new HTTPS report within Google Search Console. This new report now shows you not just which pages are not served over HTTPS but also why they…

This may be obvious to most of you, but Google’s John Mueller was asked if profile links, links in forums or social profiles if those links are enough to get…

Google announced a lot of new features and availability around shopping and product experiences in Google Search yesterday. Google expanded eligibility for merchant listing experiences, added more structured data properties,…

Google Ads has added a new consolidated or bundled page that puts all your automatically applied recommendations on one page. Google said there is “a new version of the “Manage”…

Google may have also pushed out a local search ranking update around September 7th. This is in addition to the helpful content update between August 26th and September 9th and…

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 announced a…

According to both RankRanger and Semrush, Google is showing fewer featured snippets in the search results since Thursday, September 8th. Personally, I am not seeing this when I search but…

Google Search has started to roll out the second broad core update of the year, the September 2022 broad core update. It started on September 12, 2022 at about 11:25…

Google has updated its Google Maps contributor guidelines, specifically disallowing a business to incentivize those who leave negative reviews to remove those reviews. Previously, the guidelines only prohibited incentivizing leaving…

Google’s John Mueller said something he normally does not say, the word “never.” He said Google will never penalize a site for not having an H1. John said this on…

Just like with Google’s consolidation of preventing spam on your site, Google did the same with its blog post on how to minimize A/B testing impact in Google Search. 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. There was a…

Christine Zirnheld, aka Shep, is a Digital Marketing Manager at Cypress North, is a co-host on Marketing O’Clock, and has been with the company for over four years. Shep came…

The Google helpful content update finished rolling out around 2 pm ET on September 9th. That morning we reported we started to notice more widespread volatility and fluctuations, possibly related…

Someone is looking to move to a new CMS where the site has 20,000 products on the front-end of the website. When the site switches to a new CMS, it…

Google is now testing highlighting portions of the featured snippets they show in the Google search results page. I am seeing the highlights both in yellow and blue format, as…

Google has removed the datePublished “recommended” property from the fact check structured data documentation. Google said, “Currently, date information isn’t used in the Fact Check rich result.”

There is an interesting conversation on Twitter about Google crawling spikes and (1) if these spikes are global or on a per-site basis and (2) if the URL parameter tool…

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. We are finally…

Google’s Aurora Morales posted on Twitter that her team has updated the Google Ads Traffic Quality site to provide more examples of what is invalid traffic. The previous site had…

Have you ever noticed that some Google one boxes, like the Twitter carousel, in Google Search, have special tracking parameters added to the URLs when you click on them. Carolyn…

Today marks the two-week and one-day mark since the Google helpful content update started to roll out and by the time I am writing this (at 5:30 am ET on…

Google has added a new section to its quality guidelines category named “Prevent abuse on your site and platform” yesterday. The content is mostly not new, it is mostly from…

Google seems to be testing showing when a photo was taken or uploaded to a Google Business Profile listing. Google has done this for image search and other areas but…

This week, I posted the large Google webmaster report a bit late but then dug into the Google helpful content in a lot more detail…

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. Are we seeing…

I am a week late with the monthly Google webmaster report because I was on vacation and these are a pain to put together. But it is important and I…

Google has posted that it began upgrading some review-type results to product-type results in Search, and has been able to generate some new product type results. This started on August…

Google is testing, again, placing the site name above the URL and description in the mobile search result snippets. Also, we are seeing more rounded favicons in those snippets as…

There seems to be a lot of confusion around the Google helpful content update and if it is “big” or not big. That all depends on if you were hit…

Google is adding a new set of data metrics to the Google Ads ad groups column reports. The new options are under a section called “Setup” and include eight new…

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

I am wondering if the screenshots below are the new featured snippet callouts Google spoke about almost a month ago. You can see bolded callouts, multiple answers for a featured…

Historically, I mean for over a decade, John Mueller was the single person answering questions from SEOs on the Google SEO office hours segment. Recently John announced changes to the…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if a spike in crawler activity would be a sign that the helpful content update is rolling out. John said no, as expected because he…

Google Ads has stopped supporting the top content bid adjustments and in October 2022 will migrate campaigns using content bid adjustments to automatically default to 0%.

So many of you, including myself, are wondering why Google would make such a big deal of an upcoming update when the update itself is not that huge of a…

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

Microsoft Advertising announced a lot of new features today including the ability to import from Pinterest, Google Import to for Performance Max campaigns, Microsoft Advertising Editor support for multimedia ads,…

I am not 100% if this “learn something new” feature in Google Search is actually new but I have never reported on it before. Google Search shows a box named…

The Google Home Hub display can show users an “about reviews” disclaimer or notice that talks about how the review may not be verified by a confirmed visit or experience.

Google’s Gary Illyes was on Reddit offering advice to one SEO who simply does not want traffic from Google from users in specific regions. The reason is, that they don’t…

Google has quietly announced that on September 30th, Book on Google for flights will be discontinued in most countries or regions outside the United States.

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. For Labor Day…

Google Ads sent out emails on Friday to advertisers of a change coming to its policies starting in October 2022. The change says that if your destinations contain ad experiences…

As we have reported, so far, the Google helpful content update seems pretty minor in terms of what SEOs and tools are picking up, despite what we all thought would…

Today is Labor day in the United States and in Canada and to celebrate the laborers’ work and contributions to their states, Google has a Doodle. The Doodle showcases plumbers,…

Google announced that it is making changes, for privacy reasons, to the Google Ads Search Queries report in Universal Analytics and the Google Ads query, First user Google Ads query,…