Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Google announced a new label for top stories named “highly cited” about two weeks ago. The highly cited label is now showing up for select news stories in the mobile…

Google has updated the webmaster guidelines document to add that automatically generated content is against the guidelines only when it is “intended to manipulate search rankings.” This was added to…

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…

A month ago, Microsoft Advertising announced that automated bidding seasonality adjustments would be rolling out globally this month. Well, now advertisers are starting to see it. Sophie Logan shared a…

The March 2022 Google Product Reviews update is now fully rolled out, Alan Kent from Google told me. The updated started on March 23, 2022 and ended 19 days later…

Google does not support WebSocket connections in Googlebot. This was first known, I think, back in May 2019, when Martin Splitt and Zoe Clifford presented at Google I/O. Zoe Clifford…

Similar to the lower price label we spotted a couple weeks ago, Google is also testing higher price label in the Google Shopping results. So if your product sells well…

Last year, Microsoft Bing launched Page Insights where snippets would have a lightbulb next to them that when clicked on would show you third-party information from other sources not in…

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

A couple of weeks ago, Google announced the new Google Shopping “trusted store” badge. Well, now it seems to be fully live, as of just a few days ago. Also,…

Everyone now is seeing the people also ask and people also search for in the search bar menu area. Now, Google is testing related to recent searches and trending searches…

Google local listings have been pushing products for the past several years, in fact, it just recently added in-store products in the help document around improving visibility in Google local…

Google has once again disavowed that negative SEO is an issue for SEOs, publishers, site owners or Google Search. Google has been telling the world not to worry about negative…

In part one with James Gibbons, the senior customer success manager at Quattr, we mostly spoke about how search tools can help you make decisions, and we also spoke about…

Google Maps is testing a new position for the local listings when you click on a specific listing from the search results on the left hand side. The local listing…

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

This week, I posted the monthly Google webmaster report – got to say, it was a super busy month – so catch up there. Google’s product reviews update, the tail-end,…

Lizzi Sassman and Martin Splitt brought on a special Google guest on their Google search off the record podcast to discuss structured data. The guest is named Ryan Levering who…

While Google supports the data-nosnippet HTML attribute, Microsoft Bing does not, clarified Fabrice Canel of Microsoft on Twitter. The data-nosnippet attribute lets you designate textual parts of an HTML page…

We covered Google polling searchers before asking if they are happy with the search results. But now Google is showing some pretty massive polls asking “how satisfied are you with…

Google has launched a new way of searching by image with Google Lens named “multisearch.” Multisearch lets searchers search by image and then refine that image search with a text…

Google announced that it will update the local business hours listed in Google Maps and Google Search of over 20 million businesses using AI. How? Google said it looks at…

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 the past…

Over the past day or so, there have been numerous complaints about Google Analytics real time analytics having serious latency issues. Some are saying the charts will show little to…

Google redid their removal tool in Google Search Console in 2020 but the tool has generally always been quick. John Mueller of Google said in the past that it takes…

Microsoft has been busy testing variations of explore features in Bing Search. Here is one showing a side bar menu that expands and when clicked on, takes you into Bing…

Google may have expanded the search capabilities of the automotive and car search features. We covered last year a bunch of search tools for finding cars on Google Search. Now…

Google AdSense made a small change to the user-based ads controls within Google AdSense. Now instead of it just being applied to Google Ads and Display & Video 360 ads,…

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

Google’s John Mueller was asked about thin content issues on the last webmaster hangout and John explained this generally applies to the site as a while and not a page…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if it matters if your publish content written by outsourced resources versus in-house resources. John said it does not matter, Google does not differentiate between…

Google Maps announced a bunch of updates for the iOS and Android app including the prices of tolls, displaying traffic lights and stop signs on the map and additional iOS…

Last Friday, about five days ago, Google confirmed there were some latency issues with the Google Ads console. It was specific to the Responsive search ads (RSAs) ad review process….

As of yesterday afternoon and certainly today, I am seeing signs of some really large Google search ranking volatility and ranking changes. The question is, are these fluctuations from the…

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

Google on April 1st announced the launch of a new business attribute for select business categories. The new attribute is for recycling that lets local storefronts and shops clearly demonstrate…

Google warned us that the Google My Business app will go away at some point when it relaunched as Google Business Profiles. Now Google is emailing users of the app…

Google has added a section to the how to improve your local ranking on Google that talks about adding in-store products. Google also added to the edit your business profile…

According to Ben Fisher, Google has opened up the Google Business Profiles maps reviews tool to those who manage over 10 accounts. Previously, the tool only worked for those who…

Google News has a new (I think new) section for some news queries that says “see similar headlines from.” This section is often at the bottom of the news results…

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 can pick up external links to brand new web sites (if there are links pointing to them) within 7 to 10 days, according to Google’s John Mueller….

Google Ads announced a new policy that will go into effect on June 1, 2022. This policy is an update to the Inappropriate content that has existed for some time….

Welcome to April, the real April, not April 1st, and with that, I have the monthly Google webmaster report for you all. This is a big one, so get comfy…

You have all seen them, these country/language switcher menus at the top of the page that let you flip the language and region of the page to be more localized…

For decades now, many SEOs have disagreed with Googlers about how to do SEO and how to rank sites well in Google Search. Some of those who disagree feel Google…

James Gibbons, the senior customer success manager at Quattr, stopped by my office to do some vlogging with me. We spoke about Jame’s history in the space, working at 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…

We are finally seeing ranking volatility in the search results related to the product reviews update after not seeing much early on. Google also released a local search ranking update…

Google seems to be testing a web search feature for the image pack that keeps you within web search when you click on a specific image. Punit shared a screenshot…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed an unusual SEO myth that said that the date filter in the Google Search tools will show you how pages ranked in the search results during…

Google Search has these “more” links in the Google search ad listings that expand to show more ad extensions. I am not 100% sure if it is new or not…

Google’s John Mueller responded to a complaint that Google’s search algorithms around crawling and indexing are being lazy. John said on Twitter “algorithms like those used for crawling & indexing…

Google’s John Mueller posted a response on Reddit with his advice on how to improve your site’s DA, domain authority. He said he was “torn” with his response since DA…

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

Google is rolling out to features to give searchers more ammunition when looking at the search results on news related topics or evolving topics. One is a highly cited label…

Google announced that now the Search Console connector for Google Data Studio can now bring in traffic data for Google Discover and Google News. This means you can do more…

Last month we spotted Google testing an audio based listen and translate feature for the local panel. It seems Google is now trying this out for standard knowledge panels. These…

Earlier this week I reported that we were not seeing huge changes yet for the March 2022 Google Products Reviews update. Well, it seems like some of the tools and…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that the “nofollow is not a dampening factor.” Meaning, when you put a nofollow attribute on a link, it does not dampen the value…

Google promised to let us know when they expand when they use MUM in search and Google did just that yesterday with this new announcement. Google announced how they are…

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. This newsletter showcases…

Microsoft Bing is testing (or maybe rolling out) new explore icons for images that show up in the web results. There are these round circle category icons that let you…

Microsoft Bing seems to be testing a new search feature that embeds snippets of content from Wikipedia in this large Wikipedia box in the search results. It basically brings in…

Google seems to be testing a specialized local pack that looks more like the local service ads. Maybe this is a bug because the ads are not labeled or maybe…

Google’s John Mueller said again on Twitter that you should only keep old URLs that have been redirected elsewhere in your XML sitemap file temporarily and not long term. John…

Back in August 2021, Google began testing this expandable tab search result snippet. Then the test seemed to have expanded in November 2021. Last week, I had countless folks ask…

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. Almost a week…

Google today has rolled out more specific, descriptive and contextually helpful names for the structured data error reporting it shows in Google Search Console rich result status reports, the Google…

So far, I will say that the Google Products Reviews update version 3, the March 2022 version, is not that huge. That is, not that huge compared to the previous…

Google’s John Mueller said there is nothing wrong with using the Google Search Console URL inspection tool to request indexing but the better route is to have Google discover those…

Google has launched a new Trusted Store badge for merchants who have an excellent Google Shopping experience scorecard score. Google also launched a new set of Google Merchant Center insights…

Google AdSense announced that those with AMP sites that have Auto ads with AdSense will now support anchor ads. From April 11, 2022, if you’re using Auto ads for AMP,…

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 had a…

In part one of my interview with David Melamed, we spoke about his background and the beauty of the search marketing industry. David Melamed and I in part two then…

Brodie Clark reported that Google is now showing web stories / visual stories on the first page of the mobile results even for competitive keyword phrases. I can confirm that…

On Friday afternoon, Google confirmed with me that the search company has rolled out more visual results for some queries in the mobile search results. I’ve been experimenting with a…

Google is always testing, always, and here is another test where Google is testing snippets in the Google News search results without borders.

On March 22nd and 23rd I noticed the BrightLocal tracking tool spike up a bit, so I kept tabs on that we may have had a Google local search update….

Google has announced this morning that on April 26, 2022 it will be killing off the URL parameter tool under the legacy Google Search Console. This is a bit of…

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 Maps released…

Google announced its 2021 Google Maps and Google Business Profile spam fighting efforts, like it did for the 2020 year. Google said it blocked more than 100 million Business Profile…

Google is testing displaying a badge or icon or label that demonstrates if a product you are looking at is a low price or not. So if your product sells…

Google’s Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman sat together on the latest Search Off the Record to talk about de-SEOing – what we would probably call over-optimization strategies. It…

Google may be testing new Google Ads extension icons in the search results. Khushal Bherwani spotted these and notified me of these on Twitter, and I think they are new….

This week was pretty busy, we had the third Google product reviews update and I go deep into this algorithm update. We saw what I called a Spring 2022 Google…

Google announced that in addition to helping searchers find healthcare providers that take their insurance, they are now helping searchers book appointments at these healthcare providers. This is a limited…