Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

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…

The new Google Business Profile interface in Google Search to update your local listing can show the previous location your business was listed at before you tried to move that…

Google may now show you the time it takes to review a requested edit in Google Business Profiles. So if you edit, let’s say, your business category, Google may show…

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…

Google is testing the Things to know search refinement expander feature in a carousel format. Normally, the Things to know is in this list format but here Google is testing…

Joy Hawkins team did another small local ranking study in Google and found that the longer reviews, the wordier reviews, tend to rank towards the top of the reviews and…

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

In part one, we learned about Jeremy Meindl, why he loves pushing the line in SEO and how he never was caught with any of his SEO spam efforts. In…

The other day, I covered a poll that showed about half of SEOs still use guest posting for SEO purposes. Then a few days later, an SEO asked John Mueller…

Google lets you dive into some of the reviews on a business listing, so if you say show me the reviews of the bar in a hotel, Google will let…

For the past several weekends, I’ve been reporting about a Google search ranking algorithm update that hit on a Friday and continued throughout the weekend. Well, last weekend was the…

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said there is no such thing as an SEO compliance score from Google. He said instead think about avoiding technical errors, don’t spam, and use…

Microsoft Bing is testing placing a favicon or icon of some sort in front of the people also ask results. The screenshot example below is from Frank Standtmann, a German-based…

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

And you think you have a duplicate content problem on your site? Google said, “60% of the internet is duplicate.” Gary Illyes posted this slide at the Google Search Central…

Google is testing a new design, layout, and user experience for the people also ask box in the Google Search results. This interface has results side by side and stacked…

When you create a Google Business Profile and now go into creating service areas, Google may now offer you a list of suggested service areas in your region. Just be…

Google probably did yet another weekend search ranking algorithm update, I see a pattern here. Google’s Hyung-Jin Kim said E-A-T is used for all queries, not just YMYL. Google documented…

Gary Illyes from Google announced at the Google Search Central Live in Singapore yesterday that Googlebot, Google, can now crawl from outside of the US. He said, according to reports,…

Some of you may know that in the early days of Google, Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page would say Google Search was immune to search spam. Matt Cutts,…

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. Can you believe…

In March, I wrote a post about “More recommendations” being surfaced in Google Discover. The call to action would show up after researching products in Google Search and would lead…

A poll by Marie Haynes shows that many SEOs are still doing guest posting for SEO purposes. The poll had over 400 responses and only 44% of those who responded…

Google key moments is a feature where Google Search highlights the sections in a video through a chapter-like interface. Google added support SeekToAction markup for videos on your site, so…

Google is testing a new thin sidebar navigation on the left side of the maps interface. The sidebar has the Google Maps pin icon, then the explore tab, then trips,…

Microsoft Bing seems to be promoting TikTok video results within the Bing search results. If you do a search for some videos, Bing might add a box on the left…

Just when you thought John Mueller of Google was done responding to sub-domain SEO questions – well – now we have a new social platform – so… John said on…

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

Google has published a new document named a guide to Google search ranking system. That document outlines the “notable” ranking updates that are currently live and running for Google Search…

Once again, Google’s John Mueller said the last batch of sites still being indexed using desktop indexing is going to be moved over to mobile-first indexing “soon.” John said this…

Google AdSense is testing a new ad type for publishers named Rewarded Ad Gate beta program. This program is something Google has in AdMob and basically lets you serve some…

Google has added a new spam policy for policy circumvention. The new section was added to the Google spam policies document and basically says if you try to go around…

Gary Illyes is back on social, not Twitter, but on Mastodon and he asked for examples of URLs that you think should be indexed but instead give you the status…

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

Google seems to have added a new carousel to the movie search results named “why to watch.” This carousel contains movie critique reviews, which is not new, but the user…

Bing Webmaster Tools will undergo scheduled maintenance between 10am and 1pm ET today. The Microsoft Bing Search toolset posted this notice at the top of the tool when you login…

Here we go again, I am reporting about yet another Google search ranking algorithm update over another weekend. That makes it several weekends in a row and I do plan…

Google has made a minor update to the meta tags and attributes that Google supports help documentation and added the two tags Google does not support. Those include the meta…

Jeremy Meindl is the co-founder of Target IQ and we spoke about the hotel we are in, its history of it, and the fire he risked his life showing how…

Out of the Hyung-Jin Kim interview from SMX Next last week, we not only got the scoop on the Coati algorithm but also Hyung-Jin Kim told us that E-A-T 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 launched a…

This week, we learned that Google’s Panda update at one point in time evolved into what was called the Google Coati update. Google also had another weekend update last week….

I am sure many of you have received one or two (or more) requests from Google Business Profiles saying the owner is requested access to maintain your business. I just…

Google announced a bunch of features around Google Search, Google Maps, Google Lens and more that are now rolling out in the US and some other regions. This goes across…

Google’s Danny Sullivan said that not only can a rich result manual action result in the removal of your rich results from displaying in Google Search but also it can…

Dawn Anderson asked Google’s John Mueller if redirecting a non-relevant page would cause the destination page (where the redirect it going towards) to be less relevant and cause any ranking…

Google’s John Mueller was asked about the impact of changing the author’s name on an article. John gave three pieces of advice in response to the question, (1) use author…

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

There is a fun Twitter thread where Google’s John Mueller and SEO Elmer Boutin talk about expensive pages for Google to crawl. John starts off by explaining that Google doesn’t…

Google has added a new shopping section to the Google Search Console platform. Google added a shopping tab that includes a quick way to create a Merchant Center account, access…

With the World Cup just around the corner, Google is asking certain businesses, like bars, restaurants and other venues if they will be showing the world cup at their location….

Google is testing a picture-in-picture mode for videos that are shown in the search results. You can click on the video preview image and play the video at the bottom…

Google is testing a new user interface and design for the photos and street view imagery in a local panel knowledge panel within Google Maps. This is being spotted by…

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. Have you ever…

Google has added to the Google Business Profiles Google Posts or Updates section the ability to use a cropping tool when you upload photos to your updates. So now you…

At SMX Next yesterday I have the privilege of interviewing Hyung-Jin Kim, the Vice President of Google Search. Hyung-Jin Kim has been working on search quality for the past 20…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that GoogleBot will crawl and pick up on URL patterns that simply do not work on your site. I mean, we have all seen this happen…

It looks like the Google AR products, at least for shoes, and the clippable coupons feature is now live. If you search for various shoes or sneakers, you will see…

Google’s John Mueller said that while it does make sense to cross-link between your content on your website, you should do it only when it is relevant and within the…

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

Another small study done by Joy Hawkins says that the recency of reviews does impact the rankings of those local business listings in Google Search and Google Maps. Like the…

In June of 2022, Mordy Oberstein first spotted a new SERP feature being tested called Google Explore. That’s where a feed of content shows up after a user scrolls through…

Here are some cute features spotted in both Microsoft Bing and Google Search around products. Bing is testing showing “trending for you” or “top picks for you.” Google is testing…

Google has updated its review snippet structured data help documentation to recommend using dot separators in numerical review values over comma separators in numerical review values. Both dots and commas…

There are reports that in some cases you can be missing some of your Google Ads data and campaign information when you use the Google Analytics 4 API in conjunction…

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. Yep…

The Information wrote a piece that says Apple is at least four years or more away from building its own search engine – Apple Search. We have been talking about…

Google Business Profiles and business listings reviews are going missing, dropping out completely, again, but this time it seems to be related to automated suggested edits occurring on some business…

It seems as if I see more volatility signals on the weekends with Google Search than I do during the weekdays. We may have had another Google search ranking algorithm…

Last week I reported on how Google Local reviews can display how many reviews a specific reviewer left in a specific city. Well, Google is also doing this by category,…

Google Ads is sending emails out to some advertisers offering to pay them $100 in Google Ads credits for enrolling in automatically applied recommendations. The response from the PPC community…

In part one with Rick Mariano we spoke about helping build LocalEdge to provide high volume digital marketing services at a low cost and then in part two we spoke…

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

Google has updated the client libraries and code examples for the new Google Ads API version 12, which was released a couple of weeks ago.

We had yet another biggish unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update on November 4th and 5th. Google also removed the annotation about the search features bug and added a Discover…

Google’s John Mueller said that some old links to old websites may be irrelevant links, at least from a Google Search and ranking perspective.

Google has released version 2.2 of the Google Ads Editor, this comes four months since version 2.1 was released in July. The new version gains quicker access to the Asset…

Microsoft is testing the AI chat bot feature at the top of the Bing Search results. We have seen the let’s chat feature from Bing for a while now but…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed I think again, that hreflang link tags do not have to be in hierarchical order. When asked about this, John said that “it doesn’t matter” on…

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

Google has confirmed a delay with the Google Search Console API being a bit more delayed than normal. Daniel Waisberg from Google said the “delay was caused by processing issues,…

Google has done something unusual, it has removed one of the confirmed data anomalies notes about a search features bug, and added a new note confirming a bug with Google…

Mastodon is surging with Twitter in chaos, but traffic from the social network will be hard to track. That’s because Mastodon is using rel noferrer on outbound links causing visits…

Yes, Google can pass PageRank and other link signals from an HTTP non-secure URL to HTTPS secure URL through redirects. John Mueller from Google said this is how Google does…

Yesterday, a number of advertisers were asking why there Google Ads were being disapproved. The disapproval was due to the ad using the word “get” in the ad text and…