Archive of February, 2021

February, 28 2021

Google On Expected Impact of Core Web Vitals Update Google explains what to expect when Core Web Vitals become a ranking signal - Search Engine Journal
Google’s John Mueller on Troubleshooting Rich Results Google’s John Mueller goes over three possible reasons why a website’s structured data [...] - Search Engine Journal

February, 27 2021

Google Says Word Count Not a Quality Factor John Mueller affirmed that the number of words in an article is not a quality factor that Google [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google: Fine if 30-40% of URLs in Search Console Are 404s Google’s John Mueller says it’s normal if 30-40% of URLs in a site’s Search [...] - Search Engine Journal

February, 26 2021

Providing better product information for shoppers To best help users find your content and products in Search, we recommend that you clearly identify [...] - Google Webmaster Central
How to identify your products for Google Manufacturers, retailers and publishers should use structured data and provide an accurate GTIN [...] - Search Engine Land

February, 25 2021

Lyra: A New Very Low-Bitrate Codec for Speech Compression Posted by Alejandro Luebs, Software Engineer and Jamieson Brettle, Product Manager, Chrome [...] - Google Research
Google Audio Search – Will it Ever Be Possible? Will it ever be possible for Google to create an index of audio content that users can search [...] - Search Engine Journal
SEO in 2021: What your organization’s executives and senior leaders must know Merkle Inc.'s VP Head of SEO, Eryck Dzotsi discusses six key focus areas that senior leaders across [...] - Search Engine Watch

February, 24 2021

Core Web Vitals Challenge: WordPress vs Everyone Real-world data is used to select which CMS is the Core Web Vitals Champion. WordPress versus [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google Search may be showing featured snippets less often The tool providers are noticing a decline in the number of featured snippets showing up in the [...] - Search Engine Land
Google set to deprecate Showcase Shopping ads on April 1 Previous Showcase Shopping ad layouts will be included in Product Shopping ad groups. - Search Engine Land
The Panda anniversary and what we desperately must remember about search Celebrating 10 years of Google's web quality algorithm Panda and its legacy which still casts a [...] - Search Engine Watch

February, 23 2021

Core Web Vitals Not Really Your Problem? Google is burdening the USERS of software like WordPress and not the developers to fix it for Core [...] - Search Engine Journal
Facebook Wins Standoff With Australian Government Australian government backs down, abandons attempt to force Facebook into negotiations. Facebook [...] - Search Engine Journal
Advertisers have until February 2022 to adjust to Google’s new Partner Program requirements The changes are based on Partner feedback around badge criteria and more clarity regarding Program [...] - Search Engine Land
The Technology Behind Cinematic Photos Posted by Per Karlsson and Lucy Yu, Software Engineers, Google Research Looking at photos from [...] - Google Research

February, 22 2021

New Association functionality added to Search Console We're happy to announce that Search Console has a new and enhanced Association page. Any [...] - Google Webmaster Central
Google Search Console adds ‘associations’ so you can link with other Google accounts These can give you a better and wider view of your data across your various Google services. - Search Engine Land

February, 21 2021

Google’s John Mueller: Total Number of Backlinks Doesn’t Matter Google’s John Mueller says the total number of backlinks a website has doesn’t matter [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google on SEO Best Practices for News Sites & Short Articles Google’s John Mueller answers questions about SEO best practices for news websites, [...] - Search Engine Journal

February, 19 2021

Introducing Model Search: An Open Source Platform for Finding Optimal ML Models Posted by Hanna Mazzawi, Research Engineer and Xavi Gonzalvo, Research Scientist, Google Research [...] - Google Research

February, 18 2021

Google brings Display ads to attribution reports as an open beta Now, advertisers can see Display ads alongside search and YouTube. - Search Engine Land
Mastering Atari with Discrete World Models Posted by Danijar Hafner, Student Researcher, Google Research Deep reinforcement learning (RL) [...] - Google Research
Join us at Search Central Live On February 24, we will host our first installment of our new event series called Search Central [...] - Google Webmaster Central
eCommerce in 2021: Google‘s Winners and their Strategies eCommerce is one of the big winners of the corona pandemic, with US eCommerce sales up 44% in 2020. [...] - Searchmetrics

February, 17 2021

Eight platforms helping small businesses in digital transformation A list of online tools that are easy enough to master, affordable for modest monthly budgets, and [...] - Search Engine Watch
How is a Knowledge Panel for an Entity Triggered? This patent is about presenting data with search results and deciding when to show that data in a [...] - SEO by the Sea
Core Web Vitals Week Pt. 3 – Kathy Brown and Karl Kleinschmidt // Searchmetrics GUESTS & RESOURCES Kathy Brown: Website // LinkedIn [...] - Searchmetrics
Core Web Vitals Week Pt. 2 – Kathy Brown and Karl Kleinschmidt // Searchmetrics GUESTS & RESOURCES Kathy Brown: Website // LinkedIn [...] - Searchmetrics
Core Web Vitals Week Pt. 1 – Kathy Brown and Karl Kleinschmidt // Searchmetrics GUESTS & RESOURCES Kathy Brown: Website // LinkedIn [...] - Searchmetrics
Core Web Vitals Week Pt. 5 – Kathy Brown and Karl Kleinschmidt // Searchmetrics GUESTS & RESOURCES Kathy Brown: Website // LinkedIn [...] - Searchmetrics
Core Web Vitals Week Pt. 4 – Kathy Brown and Karl Kleinschmidt // Searchmetrics GUESTS & RESOURCES Kathy Brown: Website // LinkedIn [...] - Searchmetrics

February, 16 2021

Google Discusses Impact of Tags on Rankings Google's John Mueller answers whether there's a ranking benefit in the use of "tag" links [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google On The Worst it Can Do Against Black Hat SEO Google’s John Mueller explains the strongest penalties that can be issued against sites [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google to transition to parallel tracking for Video ads by April 30 Marketers should check with click tracking providers to ensure data continuity. - Search Engine Land
Rearranging the Visual World Posted by Andy Zeng and Pete Florence, Research Scientists, Robotics at Google Rearranging [...] - Google Research
The content renaissance: More than the demise of cookies Upper-funnel branding and mid-funnel awareness will define brand success in the coming years, [...] - Search Engine Watch
Google: Stop Worrying About Stop Words Just Write Naturally A couple of weeks ago, the SEO industry couldn't stop talking about stop words. SEMrush posted a [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google's John Mueller On Google Search Spam Penalties & Quality Issues Google's John Mueller posted one of the more detailed responses I've seen from him on the topic of [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Bing Local Replaces Yelp Reviews With Facebook & Foursquare Reviews Jason Brown reported that Microsoft dropped using Yelp reviews within Bing Local. Now instead, it [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Poll On Impact Of Google Page Experience Update & Core Web Vitals On Rankings Lily Ray posted a Twitter poll asking the SEO industry if they think the core web vitals, or I [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google: John Mueller Cat Filter During Video Call With Danny Sullivan - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 15 2021

How to audit Core Web Vitals A step-by-step process to identify problems and prioritize fixes ahead of the Page Experience [...] - Search Engine Land
Notice: Google My Business Auto Populating Services For the past few months or so, Google seems to have been auto populating the services section of [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Passage Ranking & Scroll To Text/Snippet Are Unrelated With the launch of passage ranking this past week, there has been a lot of confusion about if you [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google My Business Messaging Support Added To Desktop Interface Google is rolling out to some businesses the ability to respond to Google My Business messaging [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Search Console Adds AMP Error Disallowed !important CSS Qualifier Google has added a new AMP error to the Search Console AMP enhancements report for disallowed [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Tests Find Results On Other Search Providers In US Google may be testing showing the "find results on" other search providers in the US. [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Daily Search Forum Recap: February 15, 2021 Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today... - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 14 2021

Bing Launches Large Scale Spelling Correction Worldwide Microsoft Bing’s large-scale multilingual spelling correction models, collectively called [...] - Search Engine Journal

February, 13 2021

We can’t heartly wait for Valentine’s Day This year, we want to bring a little sparkle to your Valentine’s Day — literally. [...] - Inside Search

February, 12 2021

Google: Shorter Domains Are Not Better For Ranking Or SEO Google's John Mueller said that having a shorter domain name or a shorter URL is not going to [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Passage Ranking Is Live In The US English Results The day we have been waiting for has come on Wednesday, February 10th - passage ranking (formerly [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Five ways to use machine learning in digital marketing Intelligent machine learning applications can be used to increase the outcomes of digital marketing [...] - Search Engine Watch
Google Won't Penalize Your Site For Missing Logos, Menu Links Or Footers Google's John Mueller said Google does not have manual action penalties for building sites that are [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Image Search Update Reduces Duplicate Images (November 2020) Google announced it rolled out a Google Image Search algorithm update in November 2020 aimed at [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Search behavior has forever changed. How can you stay ahead of the pack? Learn some strategies to help you harness the power of local search and succeed in 2021. - Search Engine Land
Google SEO Advice On Temporarily Removing Site Functionality In Support Of Action Google's John Mueller shared a number of tweets the other day with specific SEO advice around what [...] - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 11 2021

Google passage ranking now live in US English search results Google said this can have a 7% impact on search queries - so this might feel like a big update. - Search Engine Land
Google Image Search update reduces duplicate image results Google said this launched in November, so it seems Google is November but is just announcing this [...] - Search Engine Land
3D Scene Understanding with TensorFlow 3D Posted by Alireza Fathi, Research Scientist and Rui Huang, AI Resident, Google Research The [...] - Google Research
Google My Business adds messaging to desktop interface Businesses can now message with customers through their web browser, not just the mobile app. - Search Engine Land
Google Search dark theme mode expands but search ads are hard to distinguish Light mode shows a black ad label on a white background but on dark mode, it shows a gray ad label [...] - Search Engine Land
A Google Ads setting allowed advertisers to exclude people of “unknown gender” Employers, landlords and credit providers could keep their ads from showing to people of [...] - Search Engine Land
Google Search May Use Core Web Vitals Data From Noindexed Pages Google may or may not use the Core Web Vitals metrics from pages not within Google's indexed, pages [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Video On Image SEO In Detail With 12 Tips Google's John Mueller released an almost 10 minute long video on image SEO best practices and tips. [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Case study: Schneider Electric’s digital transformation through centralized search Digital transformation and a redesigned paid search account structure drove more qualified traffic [...] - Search Engine Watch
Uncovering Unknown Unknowns in Machine Learning Posted by Lora Aroyo and Praveen Paritosh, Research Scientists, Google Research The performance [...] - Google Research

February, 10 2021

Google Adds 12 New Types of Manual Action Penalties Google has 12 new types of manual action penalties which involve violations of Google News and [...] - Search Engine Journal
Core Web Vitals Might Include Noindexed Pages John Mueller explains that in some cases the Core Web Vitals ranking signal might be calculated [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google officially displays years in business in local pack After several months of testing, Google has officially launched this new label that shows how many [...] - Search Engine Land
In-SERP lead forms convert Google Ads users without a click-through Lead form extensions are available for Google advertisers in Search, Video, and Discovery. - Search Engine Land

February, 9 2021

Google: Removing Blog Comments May Impact Search Rankings Google’s John Mueller advises site owners that removing all comments from a website may [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google’s updated phrase match simplifies keywords and worries advertisers What advertisers are gaining and losing under the new treatment, and what they can do to prepare [...] - Search Engine Land
Unconfirmed Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update February 8th There are some early signs from both the SEO community and the tracker tools that there is a big [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Quest for More Coverage: Making a case for larger exports from Google Search Console’s Coverage reporting Google Search Console's Coverage reporting only allows one thousand row exports, which limits the [...] - Search Engine Land
Get Your Complete Guide to Law Firm SEO [Ebook] Looking to grow your legal practice? Learn how to boost your law firm’s online presence and [...] - Search Engine Journal
Solving the agency search intelligence gap How can agencies fill the voids in their search intelligence? Ian O’Rourke, CEO, Adthena, and [...] - Search Engine Watch
YouTube achieves MRC brand safety milestone YouTube’s multi-year commitment to responsibility ensures that we protect our viewers, [...] - Inside Adwords
Google Ignores Low Quality Blog Pingback Links Back in the super old days of blogging, like 2004 days, we use to love pingback technology in blogs [...] - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 8 2021

Google publishes new manual actions aimed at Google News and Discover penalties Google has not yet announced the addition of these new manual actions but they are all visible in [...] - Search Engine Land
Google’s John Mueller Explains Inconsistent Discover Traffic Google’s John Mueller offers insight into why traffic from Google Discover is likely to be [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google: Patents Are Not Always Used in Search Google’s John Mueller advises site owners to be mindful that not everything the company [...] - Search Engine Journal
New: Google News & Discover Manual Actions In Search Console It looks like Google added a whole set of new manual actions to the list of manual actions. The new [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Can Recognize If A Site Has A Good Reputation On A Specific Topic Area Google said it can recognize and understand if a site is reputable about a specific topic area. [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Raise the woof for these Puppy Bowl search trends Every February, search interest peaks for one of our favorite events. A round of appaws if you [...] - Inside Search
Google Tests Infinite Scroll On Mobile Search Again Google is once again testing infinite scroll on the mobile search results. We've seen numerous [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Local Pack Removes Some Business Addresses Google is changing the local pack in the web search results to remove some of the addresses of [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google: No Such Thing As Levels Of Site Quality Demotions Google's John Mueller was asked in this past Friday's Google Search Central SEO office hours if [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Daily Search Forum Recap: February 8, 2021 Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today... - Search Engine Roundtable
Cute Dog In Basket Of Google Bike - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 5 2021

Google Agrees to Pay for (Some) Australian News Google announced an agreement to pay Australian news publishers who agree to participate in Google [...] - Search Engine Journal
TracIn — A Simple Method to Estimate Training Data Influence Posted by Frederick Liu and Garima Pruthi, Software Engineers, Google Research The quality of a [...] - Google Research
Google Video On Duplicate Content From AdSense To Search Google's Aurora Morales in her latest video spoke about duplicate content from the view of not just [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Ads Phrase Match Expands To Cover Broad Match Modifier Traffic Google is making some changes to its match types again, this time phrase match will expand to cover [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Apple Maps Showing Restaurant Menus From Yelp Apple Maps both on iOS devices and desktop seem to now be showing menus from some restaurants. The [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Android Claw Machine: Chrome, YouTube & Google Maps Pillows - Search Engine Roundtable
Search Buzz Video Recap: Google About This Result, Googlebot Enforcing Cart Prices & Google Discover Chrome Data & Google Match Types Expand This week in search, I posted my monthly recap of the Google Webmaster Report... - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Image Search COVID Warning & Notice Some of Google Image search results may show you a notice at the footer of the image results. The [...] - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 4 2021

Google expands phrase match to include broad match modifier traffic Broad match modifier will be phased out as part of the change. - Search Engine Land
Google will suspend merchant sites that show higher prices in the checkout Starting on April 6, 2021 Google will begin to enforce that the price showing on your product [...] - Search Engine Land
Google Taking Action Against Sites With Inaccurate Pricing Google will soon start to take action against sites that show a different price at checkout than [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google Ads Auto Applied Recommendations: Every setting, explained There are 35 AI-based ads suggestions. Here's tactical guidance on how to apply them to optimize [...] - Search Engine Land
Google May Suspend E-Commerce Sites That Change Prices On Checkout Page Google announced that starting on April 6, 2021 it will begin to enforce that the price feed to [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Experience Update Label Requires All Factors To Be Complaint Google's John Mueller said in Friday's Google Search Central SEO hangout that if Google does launch [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Machine Learning for Computer Architecture Posted by Amir Yazdanbakhsh, Research Scientist, Google Research One of the key contributors to [...] - Google Research
Google Displays Stars With Reviews In Local Knowledge Panel Google is now showing actual stars in the reviews section of the local knowledge panel reviews [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Daily Search Forum Recap: February 4, 2021 Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today... - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 3 2021

Google My Business Adds Guidelines For Co-Working Spaces Google has added one line to its Google My Business guidelines around co-working spaces. In short, [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Huddle up: Here’s your guide to football’s biggest day As the returning champs take on the hometown team this Sunday, you may be feeling a bit nostalgic [...] - Inside Search
How data science can change the way you look at SEO Learn how data science can evaluate, predict, automate, or even influence different tasks or [...] - Search Engine Land
Evaluating Design Trade-offs in Visual Model-Based Reinforcement Learning Posted by Mohammad Babaeizadeh, Research Engineer and Dumitru Erhan, Research Scientist, Google [...] - Google Research
February 2021 Google Webmaster Report So the first month of 2021 is now over and it has proven to be an important month. We had Google [...] - Search Engine Roundtable

February, 2 2021

Google Updates Shopping Search Results With “Black—owned” Label Google is beginning Black History Month with an update to shopping search results that makes it [...] - Search Engine Journal
John Mueller Recommends Pyramid Site Structure Observations on the potential pitfalls of radical changes to site navigation and the benefits of a [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google Search Console Discover performance report now includes all data Also be on the look out for the new origin referrer for Chrome Google Discover traffic. - Search Engine Land
Australia’s showdown with Google has profound implications for domestic businesses and other digital platforms The proposed legislation could create an untenable position for search engines in Australia, and [...] - Search Engine Land
Search Console Discover report now includes Chrome data Starting today, all your Discover traffic (including from Chrome) will be shown in the Performance [...] - Google Webmaster Central

February, 1 2021

Honoring the legacy of Black-owned businesses in the U.S. In this post: This Black History Month, we’re highlighting Black-owned businesses and showing [...] - Inside Adwords
Google: All Core Web Vitals Must Be Met For Ranking Boost All three Core Web Vitals benchmarks must be met to qualify for the ranking signal boost rolling [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google adds Black-owned business label to product results This was first launched for the Google local business results in July 2020 and now is supported by [...] - Search Engine Land
A quick way to learn more about your search results When you search for information on Google, you probably often come across results from sources that [...] - Inside Search
Google Adds More Info About Domains in Search Results Google is surfacing more information about domains in search results, helping searchers learn about [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google Search launches about this result feature Google launches a feature to help searchers learn more about the search result listing before they [...] - Search Engine Land
Google Updates Event Structured Data Requirements Google changed the requirements for the Event Structured Data. Publishers who charge for events [...] - Search Engine Journal
Google My Business Not Applied Changes Now Offer Send Edit Feedback Amy Toman spotted a new feature in Google Local and Google My Business. The feature seems to allow [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Five ways to use VPN in digital marketing Virtual private networks (VPN) ensure a private and secure connection, but marketers can also [...] - Search Engine Watch
Leveraging customer data and AI to drive ecommerce growth in 2021 Qubit’s Chief Revenue Officer Tracey Ryan O’Connor discusses pandemic-related ecommerce [...] - Search Engine Watch
Google Ads Adult Policy Change For Sexually Suggestive Themes Google is making changes to its adult policy for Google Ads starting on March 29, 2021. Google said [...] - Search Engine Roundtable
Google Search CLS Annoyance With People Also Search For So you know, Google is going to slam sites that shift around and end up making you, by accident, [...] - Search Engine Roundtable