Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

Google’s John Mueller said that if you make your content creation decisions based off of keyword search volume lists, then those pieces of content will be mediocre, at best. John…

Google has published on the Search Off The Record podcast, which was a recording from brightonSEO session, where John Mueller of Google said that he believes that over time, links…

Microsoft Bing seems to be testing animated ads in the Bing image search interface. The ads look like an interactive banner ad of some sort, based on your query.

Google is now redirecting some (or all) of those trying to edit their business profiles in the Google Business Profile manager to the Google Search interface. You can still manage…

Google’s John Mueller said that the size of your header tags, i.e. H1s, H2s, etc, does not matter for SEO or ranking purposes. John said it might matter for users…

To start things off, I quickly covered the monthly Google webmaster report. Google also had some big unconfirmed update on or around October 28th. Google confirmed a search bug with…

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

Google Search, for some videos, allows you to click an expand icon on some videos it shows you in the search results. That expand button will then overlay a larger…

Google has announced some changes to the Google Ads policies for government documents and official services. Google said “in March 2023, the Google Ads Government documents and official services policy…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed on Twitter that having a Sitemap file that lists pages that are duplicative to others, won’t necessarily cause ranking issues for your site. It might confuse…

Google is already testing the new site name and favicon design change they launched just a couple of weeks ago on the desktop results. This brings the favicon and site…

Google has posted a short note in the Search Consoles data anomalies that says there was a bug in Google Search that affected some search features, including but not limited…

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

The past 30-days or so was pretty heavy between the October 2022 spam update and then several unconfirmed updates that were pretty strong, it was a bumpy road. Google also…

Google has finally added the Google Lens button to the Google.com homepage search bar. Rajan Patel from Google announced this quietly on Twitter saying the Google homepage, which rarely changes,…

Google announced that it is doing away with similar audiences segments. Starting May 2023 new similar audiences segments will no longer be generated in Google Ads and in August 2023…

Google announced a few new ways to find and use online deals while searching for products and holiday gifts this season. The updates include clippable coupons and promotion codes, a…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if sites that are verified with Google Search Console get crawled more often or at a higher priority. The answer is no, “crawling is independent…

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 may have…

Some SEOs are noticing a possible Google search ranking algorithm update on or around October 28th where sites hit by the unconfirmed October 13ish update and even the spam update…

Microsoft Advertising announced a few upgrades to the Google Ads Performance Max import tool before the holiday season. Most of it is around importing Performance Max campings that use a…

Google’s John Mueller said a website does not need to have 200,000 words to be considered authoritative. This comes after a Twitter thread said “You need around 200,000 words on…

Google is not going to be migrating the Google Business Profile photo analytics section, known as “Insights” from the Business Profile manager to the new performance dashboard in search. Joy…

Google has made some changes to its sitemap documentation and title links documentation but has yet to document those changes. Here are a list of the changes, some might be…

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

Rick Mariano is the Vice President of Digital at Hearst and he runs LocalEdge…

A new study from Sterling Sky shows that putting keywords in the local reviews on business listings does not help improve the local listings ranking in Google Search. The study…

Google seems to be testing displaying some fall season decorations in the search results. So Google is adding these colored leaves to the background of some search features.

On Friday, Michelle aka @Shelliweb, spotted that the Google Search Console geographic target setting feature was still visible under the legacy features. This is despite Google deprecating the feature months…

Mark Williams-Cook shared an example of a test site he was toying with that got hit super hard by the October 2022 Google spam update. He said the site was…

Google is showing the on-time delivery percentages and order accuracy percentages in some of the Google Ads search listings. This should not come as a surprise because Google Merchant Center…

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

This week, we covered how the day after Google announced the Google October 2022 spam update was done, only then did we see some really massive changes. Google fixed a…

Google Ads has added several updates to Performance Max campaigns. The updates include support in performance planner, scheduled asset groups with automated rules, first-party data segmentation, and up to 15…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed this morning that Google no longer uses the old Google page speed algorithms from 2010 or 2018. Instead, he said, Google only uses the page experience…

Google announced new features and reporting for Google Analytics 4 including behavioral modeling in real-time reporting, custom channel reporting for data-driven attribution, and integration with Campaign Manager 360. Plus, Google…

Google for years has recommended against SEOs changing URLs for the purpose of adding keywords to the URL. If you can keep the same URLs and change other things, that…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that just because a piece of content is written by a human, it does not make that content necessarily helpful and good content. Having…

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

Earlier this month, we reported that there was a bug where the Search Consoles queries report in Google Analytics, specifically Universal Analytics 3, was missing all of its data after…

A few months ago, we reported Google was testing an expanded menu to manage your Google Business Profile in Google Web Search. Well, now it seems to be fully rolled…

Google has released version 12.0 of the Google Ads API. Version 11 of the Google Ads API was released in June, and version 11.1 was in August. Version 12.0 is…

Since mid-September, there was a bug where some favicons were not showing up in Google Search at all, as we reported a week or so ago. Well, Google has now…

There are some signs that Google web search results are displaying the local pack, the local search results box, less often and for fewer queries. The most shocking state 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. A new zero…

Google is testing showing the overlay feature for its shopping ads, when you click the “view more” both at the top and the bottom. Here are GIFs showing how the…

Microsoft Bing is showing the search box in the bottom right corner, when you scroll down the search results page and your browser window is wide enough to fit it….

Marcus Tober at Semrush, a respected search marketing platform, published a new zero-click study that puts zero clicks across Google on average at 25% of all searches or 26% on…

Both Google (Alphabet) and Microsoft (Bing) have announced earnings last night and both companies are down over 5% in pre-marketing trading after the news. Google’s ad revenue was up only…

Google’s John Mueller said that link wheels are against Google’s webmaster guidelines, I mean search essentials, because Google would consider them link schemes and thus spam.

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

Google has no documented limit on the number of characters for the site name as listed in Google Search. In fact, the documentation says “there’s no limit to how long…

Google may be showing fewer rich results, specifically, FAQ rich results and possibly people also ask (although I think that is a bug with the tracking tools). RankRanger is showing…

Google has confirmed that it has relabeled many of the rich results issues in Google Search Console from “errors” to “warnings.” So you may see a bunch of errors being…

Google has clarified its help documentation for the new site name markup and old favicon requirements about if they can be specified on the domain versus sub-domain versus sub-directory levels.

Last week, Google began sending new notices via Google Search Console about ways to enhance your images on Google. The notice talks about using the max-image-preview robots meta tag on…

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

A few months ago, we spotted Google testing a dynamic search bar refinement interface in the core search results. Well, now it seems Google is testing a similar variation for…

There is something super funny about listening to Lizzi and John from Google talk about the Google team doing SEO on the actual SEO help documentation. It is a fun…

In part one, I do a lot of bantering with Greg Finn and talk about his history in the space and the growth of his agency, Cypress North. In part…

For the past several months Google has been testing a more visual product experience, a product grid that basically turns the search results into an e-commerce category page-like interface. Google…

So we had Google confirm that the October 2022 spam update finished Friday morning, the morning of October 21st. The tracking tools and chatter were somewhat mild but that makes…

Google has confirmed an issue affecting call ads within Google Ads. Google said, “the issue is specific to call ads and is affecting a subset of users.”

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. That was fast…

In less than about 42 hours, Google has fully rolled out the last spam update – the Google October 2022 spam update. The update began on October 19, 2022, at…

Google Maps and local panels have shown booking, appointment, reservation, and other ordering solutions from third parties for many years. And while we have a way to opt-out, it is…

There are numerous reports of Google doing some mass pruning and removals of reviews from the local maps results, from Google Business Profile listings. This is done every now and…

Google My Ad Center is now rolling out globally to all users, giving users the ability to control the ads they see or do not see, across Google Search and…

The Google October 2022 spam update, the first spam update since last November, started and was completed within 42 hours, I have more on that in the video. Google also…

We have seen Google place a lot of goodies in the search box auto-complete and search suggestions, including people also ask and other forms of answers. But remember the new…

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

It has been 11 months since the last time Google released a spam update and now Google announced the October 2022 spam update. Google said this update will take several…

There have been some complaints about using Performance Max with Google Ads with lead generation sites. The concern is that many or some of the leads end up being invalid….

Google seems to be testing a new local finder for local queries that trigger the local pack. Andy Simpson spotted this and posted some screencasts and screenshots on Twitter.

Google seems to be grouping photos together by category for some business profile local panels. So if there are several photos of the location’s bathroom, Google will group those together…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google Search is working on an issue with some favicons not showing up properly in Google Search. The issue has been ongoing for weeks, well…

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

Google Ads announced three new reporting columns including results, results value and conversion goals columns. Google said these columns are available on the Campaigns page for tables and charts, as…

Google seems to be testing a new local feature that has a section named “preview this place.” This shows an image carousel from the local business profile of that business…

I spotted this interesting statement from Google’s John Mueller on Twitter the other day. He said “In my 15 years at Google, I haven’t run across a site whose ranking…

Michael Kerr spotted a new Google Ads test that lets you click a button to turn on broad match keywords across your whole domain. That set fear into the ads…

Google is now showing a “trending now” box in the search results for shopping and product-related queries. This was announced back at Search On and now seems to be slowly…

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. Some SEO tips…

An individual chat support representative at GoDaddy told a knowledgeable SEO that adding Google AdSense and/or Google Analytics help with getting your content indexed by Google. John Mueller of Google…

Microsoft Bing is testing a new feature in Bing Search in the news section of the search results. The feature is titled “more on this topic from” and it shows…