WordPress 6.5 gains lastmod date for sitemaps files
Google and Bing both encourage sites to include accurate lastmod dates within sitemap files.
Staff
Barry Schwartz's latest articles
Google Lens and Circle to Search gains more links, facts and AI Overviews
Not only are the search results more graphical, they have richer information for these more interactive ways of searching.
Google adds two new Googlebot crawlers: GoogleOther-Image and GoogleOther-Video
Google said these new crawlers are to "better support crawling of binary data that may be used for research and development."
Google adds “web” filter to only show text-based links in Google Search results
Google said the filter appears on the top of the results page alongside other filters.
New Google Search AI features to help you plan, research and learn
New features include AI Overviews, multistep reasoning capabilities, planning capabilities, AI-organized search results, and a new Google Lens ask with video feature.
Google rolls out AI Overviews in US with more countries coming soon
AI Overview link cards get a higher click through rate than normal web search results but Google won't break out click data in Search Consoles for content creators.
Google hides search results count under tools section
Is the results count one step closer to fully going away?
Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being delisted
Sites like CNN, USA Today, LA Times and others are seeing their rented subdomains and subfolders dropping in rankings after they were hit by manual actions.
Google disavow link tool will go away at some point
John Mueller said, "At some point, I'm sure we'll remove it," referring to the disavow link tool in Google Search Console.
Google March 2024 core update rollout is now complete
The first core update of 2024 finished rolling out on April 19 - this was a pretty big one but it overlapped with other big changes leading to a 45% reduction in unhelpful content.
Google Publisher Center to stop allowing you to add publications
Instead, Google will automatically add eligible publishers and will eventually remove those publishers not eligible.
Google Search Console security update improves management of ownership tokens
You can now more easily see and remove which have access to your Search Console profiles.
Google structured data carousels (beta) clarified for summary pages
Google also added the feature availability for this carousel beta.
Bing Search tests removing cache link
This comes after Google Search officially dropped its cache link a couple of months go.
Google did not drop Web Stories from image results
Google issued a correction plus explained Search Console had a reporting bug with Web Stories in Image Search.
Google still has not announced a launch date for SGE
It can go live at Google I/O in May but likely not on queries with ads.
Google Analytics real-time reporting bug confirmed
Many sites are seeing zero or little real-time traffic reported in GA4.
Google adds 3D model markup for product structured data
Now when you have multiple images, this markup can help Google known which image the 3D image references.
Mikhail Parakhin, head of Microsoft Bing Search and Microsoft Advertising steps down
This comes days after the company announced the new CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman.
Bing Deep Search is officially live for all users
Microsoft announced Deep Search back in December, it went live for some users last month and is now officially live for all users.
Google starts testing AI overviews from SGE in main Google search interface
Some users who do not opt in to the Google Search labs SGE feature may see AI overview answers in the search results.
Google March 2024 spam update done rolling out
The spam update took nearly 15 days to complete. Google's core update is still rolling out, so we're not done yet. Remain seated and buckled.
Google promotes Liz Reid to head of Search
Cheenu Venkatachary is also replacing Pandu Nayak as lead of search quality and ranking. Cathy Edwards is moving to the Long-term Bets team.
Google Ads Report Editor exporting zeros; Google is investigating
Google is investigating the exporting issues with Google Ads Report Editor.
Google Search Ads 360 gains retail media capabilities
Google said this will increase efficiency and scale for retail media with self-service.
Google to replace perspectives filter with forums filter
The perspectives carousels, clusters and traditional web page listings will remain.
Google updates its page experience docs to clarify ranking signals
Core Web Vitals are a ranking signal but not other page experience signals.
What we’re seeing a week into the Google March 2024 core and spam updates
Ranking volatility hit on Friday and Saturday, with limited reversals on Monday after a storm of manual actions last Thursday.
Google Interaction to Next Paint coming to Core Web Vitals this Tuesday
Don't confuse this with the Google Core Update - they are two very different things.
Google issues search ranking penalties through manual actions
Check your properties within Google Search Console for manual actions to see if your were impacted.
Google Business Profiles tools are temporarily unavailable
Verification status, managing appeals and managing reviews currently may not be working.
Google Search Console recipe rich result report adds two new properties
Google added recipeInstructions and recipeIngredient and thus you may see an increase in warnings for recipe items.
Google Search turned off some event rich results
Google says you may see a drop in clicks and impressions for your event search appearance reported metrics in your performance report.
Bing Webmaster Tools gains new IndexNow Insights & top SEO insights report
IndexNow now reached 2.5 billion submitted URLs and accounts for 17% of its clicked on web search results.
Google releasing massive search quality enhancements in March 2024 core update and multiple spam updates
The Google helpful content update is now part of the core update; all of this leading to a 40% reduction in unhelpful content within search.
Google Business Profile websites are now redirected to Google Maps
Eventually these redirects will go away and the website URLs will lead users to a dead end.
New Google structured data carousels (beta)
Google has new documentation on what it also called host carousels within Google Search.
Google Chrome updates search suggestions
Google Chrome will now show you what others are searching for in the search box and search suggestions will show more image thumbnails.
Google removes option to see more local results in the search results
It is unclear if this was intentionally removed or if this is a bug that Google will fix soon.
Article complaining about being outranked on Google being outranked by Reddit
Google responds that it wants to do better with ranking smaller sites amongst larger sites, only to see that article being outranked by a larger site.