Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

The Information reported the other day that Microsoft plans to add OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot feature within the next few months. Bing Search already has a chatbot but ChatGPT is way…

Google seems to be sending out surveys about Google Search Console and potential future development and features around that tool. The survey takes several minutes to complete.

Google has sent out email notifications to some Google Ads advertisers about changes happening to the remove redundant keywords recommendations. In short, Google is expanding this recommendation to work across…

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

Google’s John Mueller said it is possible that Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool can show a nofollowed link as the referring page but he also said it is rare….

Google has updated the article structured data help documentation by removing the 110-character limit from the headline properties. It now says, “Consider using a concise title, as long titles may…

As the Google December 2022 helpful content update and link spam update continue to roll out, I am now seeing more signs of volatility and chatter within the SEO industry…

If you’ve been following my coverage here on confirmed Google search algorithm updates over the years, you would see that the dates Google gives to the start of an update…

Google is testing or has launched a new search refinement or expansion feature named “popular next steps.” If Google thinks<< your original query will lead to a new query in 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…

Another small study says that reviews with photos with them last a lot longer in the Google local listing for a business than reviews without photos. This was another study…

For the past few months or so, I’ve been tracking reports that suggest that Google Search Console is not properly tracking clicks and impressions from the local pack. This first…

Google’s John Mueller said that when it comes to hidden text on a page, Google is “good at ignoring it.” It is one of those things that Google seems not…

Google since 2019 had this “full coverage” label for news stories that showed up in mobile search results. I am not sure if this ever was presented in the desktop…

Welcome back from the holidays, don’t worry; you didn’t miss much. The December 2022 helpful content update and December 2022 link spam update are not done yet. They should be…

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 hope you…

Welcome to 2023, and with that, here is our Google webmaster report for 2023 – where we summarize the bigger Google SEO-related changes in the past month. The big items…

Alan Kent from Google in the latest Google SEO office hours said that putting page numbers in your title tags for your paginated pages does not help much with SEO….

Google’s John Mueller was asked what SEO skills does one need in 2023. To which he replied, “curiosity and persistence” are needed.

Google Knowledge Panels are fun and when they are wrong, you can submit feedback to Google directly in the search interface. But that interface is pretty ugly, or at least…

John Mueller of Google was on the web, responding to SEO-related questions both on New Year’s Eve and New Year. This has become expected from John, which might be unfair…

Nicole Waddington is a digital marketing strategist at Cypress North. She started her career as an Intern at Cypress North and then was offered a full-time job at the agency….

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 said search…

This is the last video of the year, and we have more Google search ranking fluctuations and volatility to talk about. Google said the December 2022 helpful content and link…

Google Search can now tell you if your query is using proper grammar. Google will show you a green checkmark under the title “Grammar Check” when you get the grammar…

As you all know, I source a lot of forums and Twitter threads (now Mastodon as well) here for the stories that I write. Without the amazing individuals that make…

Google seems to be testing a “price history” chart or graph in the Google Shopping search product listings interface. I personally cannot replicate this yet, outside of seeing the “typical…

In November, yes, a month ago, there was a lot of criticism across the web that Google Search and the results were declining. We touched on the topic when I…

Google has confirmed it is testing a non-DSA option when creating new search campaigns within Google Ads. Ginny Marvin, the Ads Liaison, said on Twitter, “We’re running an experiment in…

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

For the past couple of weeks, Google has expanded the Things To Do overlay carousel to allow searchers to scroll through the carousel vertically instead of clicking to a new…

While it has been calm for the past several days, today is a new day and I am seeing some signs of more volatility and ranking fluctuations as of the…

Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit that when it comes to linking from your site to your social medial profiles you should not nofollow those links. He added that you…

Lizzi Sassman from Google said in this morning’s Google SEO office hours that using the anchor text “here,” the text for your hyperlink, is simply “bad link text.” Instead, you…

I conducted a very unscientific poll on Twitter asking marketers who do SEO and PPC if they are worried about their budgets being cut in 2023 due to the recession…

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

An SEO asked if links on YouTube videos will help with your Google SEO. Then someone said that it would help get your content indexed faster. Both are false and…

Google officially confirmed that the helpful content update needs more time to roll out, but now the link spam update is also past the two-week mark, and it is not…

Google’s John Mueller provided some advice on a site that seemed to have been hit due to bad links. He said on Mastodon, “If you’ve built the foundation of your…

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been collecting a number of Microsoft Bing search experiments and user interface tests. It has slowed down a bit this week, so I’ll share…

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…