Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

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…

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…

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’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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 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’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 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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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%.

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…

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…

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.

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…

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,…

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…

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…

Google has updated the Learning video structured data documentation to add the full list of supported academic values for educationalLevel. It now lists out the values per country, since each…

Google has added a new section for products to the Google Business Profile guidelines. The section says “If you run a retail business, you can show nearby shoppers what you…

Google is testing a “browse places” search feature where it shows you place cards that you can swipe through and then click on. It is kind of like a new…

On August 17th, Google seems to have removed the “see results about” disambiguation search feature from the Google mobile search results. They still show on desktop but on mobile, it…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that he is not aware of any recent search algorithm update that focused on links, outside of webspam algorithms. He said this when someone…

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

Chris Silver Smith noticed how Google has updated its Google Maps contributed content policy and removed a line that prohibited review-gating. The line that was removed was “don’t discourage or…

Google is asking some Google Local Guides to leave sub-reviews about a single business listing. So Google might ask the local guide about the restrooms in the restaurant or the…

Molly Youngblood posted some screenshots on Twitter showing how Google is pushing her to check out Google Search Console Insights with a little banner that reads “New: Get insights about…

Google has clarified on its Local Business structured data help documentation that when you want to specify multiple types in Local Business structured data, specify them in an array and…

Microsoft Advertising has extended the deadline to move from Expanded Text Ads to Responsive Search Ads once again. Instead of it being August 29, 2022, Microsoft is now pushing the…

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. So far, at…

Google’s John Mueller said that adding video structured data to pages with videos on them will not make that video more prominent on that page. This comes from a video…

As you know, the Google helpful content update started to roll out on Thursday, August 25th. Google has opened up a feedback form for you to leave Google URLs of…

Google is testing a new label in the search results to tell searchers what is a quick read or a page that takes less than five minutes to read. I…

Google’s Gary Illyes said on the latest Search Off The Record podcast that soft 404s, pages Google thinks are 404s but return a 200 server status code, do waste crawl…

In part one, we learned about Jill Fecher, Chief Growth Officer at Cypress North. We learned about her past history in marketing, why she joined Cypress North, what she does…

Google announced the helpful content update on August 18th and it officially started to roll out on August 25th. I thought this update would hit hard and fast, but so…

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. It’s been a…

Google is testing allowing business owners add captions or descriptions to photos they upload to their business profiles. Mike Blumenthal spotted this in a Google Business Profile Help thread and…

Google’s John Mueller was asked about the pros and cons of cloaking affiliate links. John responded on Twitter saying, “I don’t think you gain anything by cloaking the affiliate links,…

Google Local Service Ads is testing and may eventually launch a new user interface to allow businesses and advertisers to exclude their ads from showing in certain areas.

Google has had these discussion carousels for the past couple of years. Now Google also spotted a “conversations” box and also a “discussions and forums” box in Google Search.

Microsoft Bing is testing a carousel format and user experience for the people also ask. Normally we will the people also ask in a list view, but the carousel test…

Inside View Of A Google NYC Outside View

Google has begun rolling out the helpful content update on Thursday…

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 is now…

We were all expecting Google to post that the helpful content update started to roll out earlier this week but it is Thursday and Google has not posted it yet….

Google has this “from sources across the web” box that shows sites that cover a specific topic in this grid list view. You can click on a specific site to…