Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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

There have been a lot of complaints about the quality of Google search results – the truth is, there are always complaints. Assuming you believe the results are indeed getting…

A couple of years ago, Gary Illyes of Google noted that using many more X-rated curse words can trigger Google to think your site is adult oriented and thus be…

Let’s say you are going on a road trip from one location to the next. One thing I expect some of those who do such entertainment would want to know…

Seems Google is once again testing removing the estimated number of search results under the search bar. You know, the line that says “About X results in Y seconds” Google…

Google added a new annotation to the Google Search Console performance reports on December 5th, saying that sites that use Subscribe with Google may see an increase in clicks 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 is rolling…

We have heard a lot from Google recently that links are just not as significant of a ranking factor in Google Search as they used to be. But 40% of…

Back in July we reported that Google was testing a new more dynamic search bar refinement option that adds keywords to the filters at the top under the search bar….

Google has added a disclaimer to the appointment provider links that you find in the Google Search local panel and in the Google Maps business listings. The disclaimer partially reads…

Google has officially confirmed the launch of the second release of the Google helpful content update/system. It started lightly on December 5th but became noticeable, according to Google, on December…

Google announced three new ways to search in Chrome – including search your tabs, your bookmarks and your history. You can search with three new site search shortcuts directly built…

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

Microsoft posted the monthly Microsoft Advertising news and new features and announced a bunch of new stuff. The new features include new flyer extensions, update (restate) the revenue value associated…

Google seems to be testing showing a super short product review in the image thumbnail in the search results. So Google will overlay at the top of the product image…

There is a confirmed bug with Google Business Profiles where you cannot upload your logo or other photos to their business profile. Google is aware of the issue and is…

Google has officially brought the continuous scroll feature from the mobile search results to the desktop search results. Google has been testing this for a while after bringing it to…

Back in August that Google added a new feature to the Keyword Planner tool to organize keywords into ad groups. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, said last Friday (yes, months…

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…

Welcome to the big Google Webmaster Report for December 2022, the last one for the 2022 year. It was a fun 30 days or so; we learned a lot. The…

Google has updated its Google Crawler / User Agent help document with a new section for “Retired Google crawlers.” With that, Google announced the retirement of the short-lived DuplexWeb-Google User…

Part one and part two with Jeremy Meindl was more on black hat SEO stuff and now in part three…

Every Monday, I end up covering an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update but this past week, going into the weekend, was even more volatile than the others. I am…

On Friday, Lizzi Sassman from Google updated the crawl budget management help document with two more topics. Specifically, Google added two new myths to the crawl budget documentation.

Gary Illyes from Google posted a PSA (public service announcement) of sorts on Mastodon and LinkedIn for sites that are heavy with JavaScript. He said that you should try to…

Google has posted its “Seasonal Holidays” Google Doodle for the month of December – the holiday month. Google did this last year as well, and while the past few days…

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 saying today…

A recent Twitter poll by Tim Soulo shows that SEOs are super mixed in their opinion of the importance of domain name age on SEO and Google rankings. The poll…

In the new Google Business Profile manager, in Google Search, when you go to the option to remove your Google Business Profile from Google, Google will show you that you…

Here is a bizarre question that was asked on the Google office hours video asking if Google rotates its index. The question kind of makes sense, because the SEO who…

It has now been 19 years that I’ve been writing on this site, covering what you – the search marketers are talking about from within the search community. Today marks…

Since Friday of Thanksgiving last week, we have been seeing a lot of chatter and volatility with Google Search. Google said they improved the accuracy of the Discover performance report…

Google Search is showing and maybe testing news and top stories related boxes with a headline that says “maps on this topic.” Also, Google can also know what publications you…

Google’s John Mueller said it is a big deal if your most important page or pages are terrible but not such a big deal if your less important pages are…

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

Google announced it has filed a lawsuit against “scammers who sought to defraud hundreds of small businesses by impersonating Google through telemarketing calls.” You know, the calls from “Google” asking…

Back in 2015, Google said the URL should be in the same language as the content of the page. But now, Alan Kent from Google said the URL doesn’t have…

Google is testing placing the map of the business you searched for in the search results area under the snippet(s) for that listing. Google is also testing a slightly updated…

Google has annotated the Discover performance report in Google Search Console, saying the report has been improved. Specifically, Google said it improved the system for counting clicks and impressions within…

Google has announced a new AdSense ad format named side rail ads. Side rail ads stick to the sides of your web pages when the user viewing the page is…

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 says again,…

In the last Google office hours, Gary Illyes said that Google is not more likely to crawl or index shorter or more niche content better or worse than other forms…

Here is a good one-liner from Google’s John Mueller on the technicalities of the Google index. John said on Twitter “A page’s content doesn’t need to be indexed for a…

Duy Nguyen from Google’s search quality team said in the Google office hours video that “backlinks as a signal has a lot less significant impact compared to when Google Search…

Google’s John Mueller said on the last Google office hours that using HTTP/3 for your server will likely not have any impact on your SEO or rankings in Google Search….

Duy Nguyen from Google’s search quality team said in the Google office hours video that Google has “algorithms to go after” those who post AI plagiarized content, he the algorithms…

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. Got a lot…

Google is testing various headlines for the Local Service Ads. Two of them show the “Ads” label and one does not, while they all test different headlines for the ad…