Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Microsoft Bing has been doing a lot of user experience features around search refinements and filters dynamically within various search feature boxes. Here is one more showing a filter option…

What if your site gets hacked and there is a ton of spammy content placed on it? Do you have to worry about negative consequences on your Google rankings and…

Google has added a new Google crawler, a new user agent, to the Google spider list. Its name is Google Site Verifier User Agent. This user agent ignores robots.txt rules,…

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

In part one, we learned more about Christine Zirnheld, aka Shep, the Digital Marketing Manager at Cypress North and a co-host on Marketing O’Clock. We also spoke about her being…

Google announced on Friday that it has begun rolling out the self-upgrade tool for Local campaigns to Performance Max. We knew this was coming, as we reported last August and…

A lot of folks were thinking that Google in order to bolster the helpful content update rolled out a core update right after the helpful content update was done. As…

Some folks in the SEO community have been asking if the last core update, the September 2022 core update, has been slower to roll out in some specific countries than…

Google is testing showing two people also ask featured snippets in a single question expansion. This acts similar to the multifaceted featured snippets and the new featured snippet design we…

Last week, Google rolled out a new Search Console report for HTTPS, and with that came a lot of confusion around a specific error. The error was “HTTPS is invalid…

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

Google is now testing or rolling out the Health & Safety and Sustainability information for hotels right in the knowledge panel. Previously, in 2020 it was added to the hotel…

What a week, we had the launch of the September 2022 core update that started off strong and fast. Google confirmed the helpful content update is done rolling out but…

There is an interesting response from John Mueller of Google on what to do with URLs that may appear duplicated because of URL parameters, like UTMs, at the end of…

Google announced it has renamed the Google Ads extensions to “assets” plus it has released new workflows, tools and reports to “make it easy for you to deliver more engaging…

Google Search Console may have improved the URL inspection tools view inspected page screenshot feature to show more of the page. Now it seems with the mobile view, Google is…

Google can show your favicon in the search results next to your search result snippet. Google’s John Mueller said Google finds your favicon based on the favicon presented on your…

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

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter this morning that word count is not a sign or factor for what Google considers to be thin content or unhelpful content. John wrote,…

Google is promoting the Google Lens feature in the mobile search results based on the type of query you enter. Google has a promotion box smack in the middle of…

Earlier this month, Google said it might remove the word count reference from the best practices for your article pages help document in the Search Console news errors page. Well,…

Google announced that Google Ads scripts now support Performance Max campaigns. Google said, “this treated as a brand new campaign type in scripts, similar to how video or shopping campaigns…

Google has made changes to how your feeds work for countries, removing the need to list a primary country and additional countries, and replacing them with target countries.

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

This may be obvious to most of you, but Google’s John Mueller was asked if profile links, links in forums or social profiles if those links are enough to get…

Google announced a lot of new features and availability around shopping and product experiences in Google Search yesterday. Google expanded eligibility for merchant listing experiences, added more structured data properties,…

Google Ads has added a new consolidated or bundled page that puts all your automatically applied recommendations on one page. Google said there is “a new version of the “Manage”…

Google has added a new HTTPS report within Google Search Console. This new report now shows you not just which pages are not served over HTTPS but also why they…

Google may have also pushed out a local search ranking update around September 7th. This is in addition to the helpful content update between August 26th and September 9th 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 announced a…

According to both RankRanger and Semrush, Google is showing fewer featured snippets in the search results since Thursday, September 8th. Personally, I am not seeing this when I search but…

Google Search has started to roll out the second broad core update of the year, the September 2022 broad core update. It started on September 12, 2022 at about 11:25…

Google’s John Mueller said something he normally does not say, the word “never.” He said Google will never penalize a site for not having an H1. John said this on…

Just like with Google’s consolidation of preventing spam on your site, Google did the same with its blog post on how to minimize A/B testing impact in Google Search. Google…

Google has updated its Google Maps contributor guidelines, specifically disallowing a business to incentivize those who leave negative reviews to remove those reviews. Previously, the guidelines only prohibited incentivizing leaving…

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 was a…

Someone is looking to move to a new CMS where the site has 20,000 products on the front-end of the website. When the site switches to a new CMS, it…

The Google helpful content update finished rolling out around 2 pm ET on September 9th. That morning we reported we started to notice more widespread volatility and fluctuations, possibly related…

Christine Zirnheld, aka Shep, is a Digital Marketing Manager at Cypress North, is a co-host on Marketing O’Clock, and has been with the company for over four years. Shep came…

There is an interesting conversation on Twitter about Google crawling spikes and (1) if these spikes are global or on a per-site basis and (2) if the URL parameter tool…

Google has removed the datePublished “recommended” property from the fact check structured data documentation. Google said, “Currently, date information isn’t used in the Fact Check rich result.”

Google is now testing highlighting portions of the featured snippets they show in the Google search results page. I am seeing the highlights both in yellow and blue format, as…

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…

Today marks the two-week and one-day mark since the Google helpful content update started to roll out and by the time I am writing this (at 5:30 am ET on…

This week, I posted the large Google webmaster report a bit late but then dug into the Google helpful content in a lot more detail…

Google’s Aurora Morales posted on Twitter that her team has updated the Google Ads Traffic Quality site to provide more examples of what is invalid traffic. The previous site had…

Google seems to be testing showing when a photo was taken or uploaded to a Google Business Profile listing. Google has done this for image search and other areas but…

Google has added a new section to its quality guidelines category named “Prevent abuse on your site and platform” yesterday. The content is mostly not new, it is mostly from…

Have you ever noticed that some Google one boxes, like the Twitter carousel, in Google Search, have special tracking parameters added to the URLs when you click on them. Carolyn…

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. Are we seeing…

There seems to be a lot of confusion around the Google helpful content update and if it is “big” or not big. That all depends on if you were hit…

Google is testing, again, placing the site name above the URL and description in the mobile search result snippets. Also, we are seeing more rounded favicons in those snippets as…

Google has posted that it began upgrading some review-type results to product-type results in Search, and has been able to generate some new product type results. This started on August…

I am a week late with the monthly Google webmaster report because I was on vacation and these are a pain to put together. But it is important and I…

Google is adding a new set of data metrics to the Google Ads ad groups column reports. The new options are under a section called “Setup” and include eight new…

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

Google Ads has stopped supporting the top content bid adjustments and in October 2022 will migrate campaigns using content bid adjustments to automatically default to 0%.

I am wondering if the screenshots below are the new featured snippet callouts Google spoke about almost a month ago. You can see bolded callouts, multiple answers for a featured…

Historically, I mean for over a decade, John Mueller was the single person answering questions from SEOs on the Google SEO office hours segment. Recently John announced changes to the…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if a spike in crawler activity would be a sign that the helpful content update is rolling out. John said no, as expected because he…

So many of you, including myself, are wondering why Google would make such a big deal of an upcoming update when the update itself is not that huge of a…

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

I am not 100% if this “learn something new” feature in Google Search is actually new but I have never reported on it before. Google Search shows a box named…

Microsoft Advertising announced a lot of new features today including the ability to import from Pinterest, Google Import to for Performance Max campaigns, Microsoft Advertising Editor support for multimedia ads,…

The Google Home Hub display can show users an “about reviews” disclaimer or notice that talks about how the review may not be verified by a confirmed visit or experience.

Google has quietly announced that on September 30th, Book on Google for flights will be discontinued in most countries or regions outside the United States.

Google’s Gary Illyes was on Reddit offering advice to one SEO who simply does not want traffic from Google from users in specific regions. The reason is, that they don’t…

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 Labor Day…

Google Ads sent out emails on Friday to advertisers of a change coming to its policies starting in October 2022. The change says that if your destinations contain ad experiences…

As we have reported, so far, the Google helpful content update seems pretty minor in terms of what SEOs and tools are picking up, despite what we all thought would…

Today is Labor day in the United States and in Canada and to celebrate the laborers’ work and contributions to their states, Google has a Doodle. The Doodle showcases plumbers,…

Google announced that it is making changes, for privacy reasons, to the Google Ads Search Queries report in Universal Analytics and the Google Ads query, First user Google Ads query,…

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

Google’s Gary Illyes said on the last Search Off the Record podcast that Google can crawl certain sections of your site more frequently and also infer the quality of certain…

This week, again from Jerusalem, I spoke about this weird rollout for the Google helpful content update…

Google has updated its meta descriptions help documentation to provide five examples of how to improve your meta descriptions. This was added yesterday, plus Google did some formatting updates to…

Google is testing a search feature for more product and e-commerce features, this one is titled “explore products.” The explore products feature comes with product images and without product images.

As many of you know Bill Slawski passed away in May. But earlier this week, Bill’s treasure trove of content covering search patents and more at SEOByTheSea.com went offline. The…

Google seems to be testing or launching, showing dual people also ask boxes in the Google Search results. One people also ask box is in English and, in this case,…

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

Ryan Levering who has been with Google for over 11 years working on structured data said on Twitter that the “growth of microdata is fairly stagnant.”

Google announced new functionality within Google Ads to apply rules to specific store visits or store sales conversion categories. It is called conversion value rules, and it lets you adjust…

We keep watching to see if this Google helpful content update is making some sort of dent in the rankings but so far, we are not seeing massive, Panda-like, ranking…

Google’s AdsLiaison, Ginny Marvin, has confirmed a bug with Share and Auction Insights reporting for Google Ads Search campaigns starting on August 29th. Ginny said this is just a reporting…

Google Search Console has a Google News specific article content error named “Article too short.” In that section it offers a recommendation to “make sure your articles have more than…

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