Good morning, Marketers, there is something about the holidays and how things just slow down that make me uncomfortable. 

This week is a short one in the U.S. with Thanksgiving this Thursday, but it is also a super busy week for retailers. But, when it comes to news, especially search marketing news, things tend to slow down a lot. And for those that know me, I am addicted to writing about news, breaking news and writing about it in a fast and furious way.

That being said, online retailers have been waiting for this season all year and for them, this is not the slow season. We published our big analysis from the data providers around the recent Google November core update and from the looks of it, this hit hard and fast and at probably the worst time for these online retailers.

We hope this update only benefited you all but if not, we hope you find comfort in knowing that you are not alone. And, since it’s a holiday here in the U.S., you can expect our next newsletter on Monday morning.

Barry Schwartz,
Fast and furious typer

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  • Googlebot stalled last week. There are some reports that Googlebot slowed crawling for a six-day period last week. This first came from Olivier Papon on Twitter but many saw it. I don’t think it was 100% across the board, but we asked Google for more details a week ago and are still waiting to hear back.
  • Google local photo bug. There is this new bug with Google local business profiles in Google Search that if you click on the first photo in the desktop search results using a Chrome browser, the image comes up blank. This was also spotted by Nicolai Helling on Twitter.
  • Sort by date Google bug. Are you a news junky like me and always looking for the latest news? Well, good luck using the News tab in Google Search for that. There is a bug with the sort by date filter that Google is aware of and working to fix.

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