Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

So I wrote this pretty deep dive into how Google uses AI in Google Search at Search Engine Land, and Google posted a shorter version on their blog. I noticed…

All the craze right now is Web3 or Web 3.0, the new iteration of the World Wide Web based on the blockchain, which incorporates concepts including decentralization and token-based economics….

Google is testing, at least I can’t replicate it right now, enhanced buying guides in the search results. Basically this “buying guide” in Google Search lets you really drill into…

As you may remember, in August 2021 Google changed the algorithm it uses to determine your title links (tags) in the search results and it caused a huge issue in…

I posted the monthly Google webmaster report for February 2022, so check it out. Google released a new API for the Google URL Inspection Tool – it is exciting. Google…

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 documented…

After a lot of saga, postponements and changes, Google has finally launched the new Google Partner program details. Google also launched a new Premier Partner status for the top 3%…

This month was packed with a handful of unconfirmed Google search algorithm updates, as you will see in the bulleted list below. In fact, there may be a more subtle…

Google announced on Twitter yesterday that the Search Console snapshot in the search results now also supports domain properties. This is a snapshot card of some of the higher level…

Last November, we spotted Google testing adding the Google Lens icon/button to the mobile search bar. Now, according to 9to5Google, Google is testing adding the Google Lens icon/button to the…

I believe for the first time, Google has provided more detail on how it handles review spam policy enforcement for Google Maps. The search company wrote a blog post, accompanied…

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 Ads revenues…

You know how you can like the Google Discover stories Google puts in your Google home page feed by clicking on the heart icon? Well, did you know that Google…

Last week, Microsoft reported earnings and yesterday Google (Alphabet) reported earnings and both companies showed a 32% increase with their advertiser revenues…

Google Ads will consolidate the current advertiser Identity verification and Business operations verification programs under a unified Advertiser verification program to provide a simplified and improved advertiser experience in March…

Google is testing making the black/gray magnifying glass in the search bar of he mobile search results page a bit more colorful. Well, the magnifying glass has the Google colors…

Google seems to be testing a feature to help searchers listen to how to pronounce a company name with a microphone icon. Google is also testing in that local pack…

Google Ads can now automatically apply recommendations at scale, also Google Discovery campaigns now support recommendations and Google added more tools for your video ad campaigns.

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 said it…

Google Merchant Center announced that auto-tagging is now available for free listings on Google Shopping. “Auto-tagging for free listings is now available in your Merchant Center account,” the search company…

Google’s John Mueller said that not all links are given full weight and does not pass the full signals it can potentially pass. Instead, Google might not pass any weight…

Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said that in the “very near future” the Google Ads team will be adding support to have Performance Max data to Google Data Studio….

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that Google Search does not count links on a domain level. John is basically saying that each link counts for itself and that each…

Google has put together a new help document on SafeSearch where it merged a bunch of content into a single page around this topic. It also added content around how…

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

As a reminder, Google Ads will be removing some query data from your search terms report on February 1, 2022. Google warned us of this change in September 2021 and…

Danny Sullivan of Google said that no one was infected by the search spam issue around untitled documents. He said this is a spam issue, not a malware issue and…

Google’s John Mueller said the location of internal links, links you place on your website to other parts of that same web site, does not necessarily matter if they are…

Google this morning launched a new API for Search Console – the URL Inspection API. This API lets you programmatically interact with the URL Inspection Tool that you would manually…

Earlier this month we reported that Google said there is a backlog with the manual actions in the queue, some as far back as over several months ago. Well, I…

Brian Wallace is the Founder and President of NowSourcing, an industry leading infographic design agency and he was in my neighborhood, which is actually his old neighborhood and stop by…

Google has said it changed the error and issues reporting in Google Search Console for Breadcrumbs and HowTo structured data. This may result in new errors, warnings and issues or…

About a year ago, Google first introduced guidelines around manual actions for Google Discover and Google News. In the past week, I have seen numerous news publishers, both large and…

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

Google is promoting the Pointy from Google solution in Google Business Profiles dashboard, Colan Nielsen explained on Twitter. Google is placing this box that says “Help customers find products they…

This week, we had another unconfirmed Google search ranking update on January 22nd. Google has admitted defeat with its FLoC cookieless proposal and is now going with Topics API. Google…

Google has confirmed it has been testing Google Search result listings without any descriptions, again. Google first tested this in 2015 and is now testing it again for the past…

Google has released a set of new tools and features to help advertisers when Google existing and future Smart Shopping campaigns and Local Campaigns get replaced by Performance Max campaigns….

The folks at 9to5Google spotted Google Image Search on mobile testing a related image design that takes on the color theme of the image result. So if the image is…

Google will be deprecating the Google My Business API on April 30, 2022 and replacing it with new APIs in the Google federated model. So you will have to update…

Google has confirmed an issue with the Google Search Console Performance reports specific to image search. The issue is a logging issue that may result in your clicks and impressions…

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

It is okay to have multiple properties verified for the same site in Google Search Console. It is not a bad thing, it won’t hurt you, in fact, it might…

Google has a new search refinement titled “people search next.” This is in addition to the related searches, the people also ask, the people also search for and the others….

In November 2020, Google said we may see a label for the Google page experience update show up in the search result snippets. Then in December 2020 we saw actual…

Google has added to Google business profiles listings in the Google Maps interface a section named “updates from customers.” This seems to show some recent reviews from Google Local Guides…

There seems to be a bug that Google is working on where some searchers are getting left in the dark. Well, stuck in Google’s dark mode or dark theme setting…

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

Does it matter how deep your subfolder URL structure is for SEO purposes and Google rankings? No, not really. John Mueller of Google said even recently on Twitter “I don’t…

Lily Ray asked John Mueller of Google if the product reviews update work also for reviews of places or things. For example, think about comparing universities, online courses, vacation locations,…

How many times are you on client calls or meetings and then your Google Assistant device goes off. Then you scramble to say “hey Google — stop.” Well, now all…

Google has often said that if they shared the full details of how its search algorithms and ranking factors would work, it would lead to abuse and poorer quality results….

Surprise, surprise – Google has decided to drop FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), its cookie alternative, with something called Topics API. The Topics API will use browsing topics into 300…

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

Last week we broke the news that Google does some form of deduplication of the top stories and web results in some situations. John Shehata released some data from his…

Google has confirmed it is officially testing placing emojis in some search ads. Darcy Burk spotted a pizza emoji on a search ad for Uber Eats and posted the screenshot…

Chris Tweten posted a photo the other day on Twitter of a dental office sign with its company name – the company name is named “Dentist Near Me.” Of course,…

Brodie Clark posted a Twitter poll asking “is optimizing a website for search term variations that include “near me” good practice for SEO?” The results were pretty almost evenly split…

Google generally likes you to stick with one language per page, that isn’t to say you cannot use different pages throughout your site with different languages. But if you do…

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’s John Mueller was asked if there is a way to better control the images that Google shows in the web search results for product results. The answer is not…

In part one Riley Hope and I spoke about her SEO career, how she did her thesis on ethics in SEO and we spoke about the automotive SEO space. In…

Google has announced a brand new robots tag it will obey going forward, it is named indexifembedded. It lets you control if you want Google to index a page with…

I am not going to get into the 301 vs 302 redirect debate, covered that countless times here. But I found an interesting conversation on Twitter about the differences between…

Google sent emails to YouTube publishers that their YouTube AdSense payments will be separated from their other AdSense payments. So if you get paid through Google AdSense for AdSense ads…

Google on Friday sent out emails to those who have recorded videos for Cameos on Google that they are discontinuing the service. “Beginning February 17, 2022, you will no longer…

Again I am seeing signals, both a lot of chatter from the SEO community and tools lighting up around a possible but yet unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update. Yes,…

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

Everyone panic – Google might not just make larger updates to the Google Webmaster Guidelines but also rename the guidelines. Gary Illyes from Google said over time the Webmaster Guidelines…

In this show we got everything for you from creepy crawling to blood sucking vampires and and walking zombies. First, we had a few unconfirmed Google search algorithm updates this…

Google has updated its product structured data help documents to say that you need both product and car structured in order for Google to display ratings and review snippets in…

Google’s Gary Illyes said on the last Search Off The Record Podcast that Google in 2022 is looking to make crawling more efficient and environmentally friendly. And while Google is…

Google is rolling out a new Google Ads experiments page that promises to “help you create, manage, and optimize your experiments in one place.” There is a new summary page…

The Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency is no longer showing up in Google Search, is it some sort of conspiracy or technical bug? Well, it is a technical issue with…

Google Ads confirmed some sort of bug with Discovery and Performance Max campaigns that are a “significant subset of users.” It is unclear what this bug is, but it started…

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

As you all know, I have been with Search Engine Land and SMX since the company was founded and the company has been through many changes over the past dozen…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that “anecdotally, it feels like we’re already doing much better with getting languages & location right, even without hreflang or geotargeting settings.” This was…

Google’s John Mueller said in an SEO hangout last Friday that it is impossible for Google to understand that one piece of content is equivalent to another piece of content…

Ben Fisher spotted an update to the Google Local Service ads help documents around the screening and verification process for businesses. Google added a section that says businesses can request…

Google has been busy over the last couple of weeks after being taking a bit of a break with the new years. It seems we are seeing again signs of…

Google’s John Mueller said again that a spike in crawling activity on your site is unrelated to an upcoming search ranking algorithm update. John Mueller said on Twitter “it’s unrelated”…

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…

Glenn Gabe noted that he is seeing some weird Google Googlebot activity recently, saying he is seeing “crawling spike across a number of sites” that started on January 12th through…

John Mueller is out with another #AskGooglebot Google SEO video, this one is on site migrations and URL changes. It is a short two minute video on one of the…

Google’s Danny Sullivan and John Mueller both said that the search company does not generally launch or begin the rollout of a search algorithm update right before the weekend. Danny…

Google no longer supports time ranges for cook prep and total times times within recipe schema markup and structured data. Google said it removed the “guidance about specifying a range…