A war is being waged in the deepest heart of the Open Source movement for that movement's very soul. Last week, Matt Mullenweg, the original founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, the commercial arm of WordPress, laid down his version of the law by banning WPEngine from the greater WordPress environment. The dispute centers around money and time contributed to the collective which provides the engineering for WordPress. From Mullenweg's perspective, WPEngine has contributed too little of either after extracting hundreds of millions in revenues over the years. From WPEngine's perspective, "WTF eh?" Webcology hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger try to make sense of a fight that threatens the web's very understanding of what Open Source means. Meanwhile, Sam Altman has pushed OpenAI away from being a non-profit to being a for-profit benefit organization with Altman enjoying a 7% stake in the newly constituted company. This has pushed several key figures at OpenAI, including CTO Mira Murati and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew to resign in the past week. In other news, Google has killed its helpful Cache feature while updating its Web Search Spam policies. Google also reported and is fixing a noindex bug that caused several JavaScript driven pages to be indexed when Google couldn't read the protocol. The show covered a lot more Google news in what was a busy post-COVID show after Jim caught and was sidelined last week by his first (and hopefully last) bout with the virus.

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So it seems that anyone who's anyone has an anti-trust suit or some other major legal challenge taking place, especially if you're with Apple or Google. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about the various anti-trust cases covering two types of Googley advertising monopolies and a spiffy tax dodge scheme the EU's angry with Apple and Google over. We also talk about the introduction of Gemini AI to Google's productivity suite including the feature that can turn your notes into a generic podcast. BTW, "Rutabaga". That's this week's safe word that proves we're real. Kristine introduces a story that suggests families should come up with safe words to combat AI loan scams in which the scammers run a short clip of a voice through AI to convince people's parents to send them money. Twixter is leaving San Francisco and the right wing American propaganda network, Tenet Media is shuttered by the DOJ because they're a front from Russian malfiance. We also talk about a lot of Googley goodness including Martin Splitt's declaration that no Exif Data was parsed to generate those search or image results, Google's spam warnings about misuse of their Indexing API, the move from FID to INP, and how changing your heading heirarchy isn't the massive fix you might think it is. Remember, rutabaga. Accept no substitutes.

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Back from a the July 4th long weekend's rest, hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk through events of the last couple weeks, that look like Google and other players in the search world are pulling back from the promise of A.I. generated answers to the real world queries of their users. One example is how Google is showing far fewer A.I. Overviews in result sets today than it was in early May when it announced a disaster ridden shift to the A.I. everything universe. Given the enormous expenses in money and resources used in training, maintaining, and running A.I., economists are speculating on if the hype around A.I. is producing real value or inflating the world's biggest bubble based on rampant speculation. But that's not the confusing part. We also look at some simplified answers to some complicated questions from Google spokespeople who are usually clearer when muddying stuff up. Happily, our reports about the Helpful Content Update and decimation were apparently quite helpful. Some people still think it's Redditiculous how a Reddit expert's opinion can rank above that of a medical, legal, engineering, or other certifiable expert's opinion in search engine rankings. That might be because of the complex dimensions of credible information beyond the flat first one, credibility. Confused? We still are and you might be too but we still gotta sell soap.

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Google Russia declares bankruptcy after Russian authorities seize bank account.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/googles-russia-subsidiary-is-filing-for-bankruptcy/

Canada forces Google and Facebook to pay news publishers for loss of ad revenue – Search Engine Journal and the misuse of the word tax.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-criticizes-canadas-proposed-link-tax/450878/

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-google-warns-ottawas-online-news-act-would-break-its-search-engine/

-Online News Act, Bill C18 

“to compel global tech companies such as Facebook and Google to negotiate payment agreements with news organizations as compensation for news content that appears on the large platforms.” Modeled on successful Australian legislation 

“There is no link tax. Canadians are not paying for anything, and no money goes to the government. Facebook and Google earn money from having links to news sites on their platforms because the work of independent journalists has value,” Ashley Michnowski, spokesperson for Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said. “We have had constructive conversations with Google, yet they’re pulling from their original playbook in Australia when Google tried to avoid regulation by exaggerating their concerns.”

Facebook’s Most Followed Content is mostly Spam – Facebook transparency Report

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebooks-most-widely-viewed-links-dominated-by-spam/450826/

Top 101 SEO Tools that are free – Jon Clark, Search Engine Journal

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-seo-tools-free/435299/

John Mu – Spam is Spam, no matter what language you speak

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-see-search-spam-in-multiple-languages-33438.html

Interaction to Next Paint might become a core web vital

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-core-web-vitals-fid-with-inp-33429.html

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Google Says Ignore Bad SEO advice and Removes Bad SEO Advice.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-drops-word-count-keyword-density-slide-33399.html

All Search related stuff from Google I/O

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-i-o-2022-search-related-announcements-33403.html

Use it or Lose it – Google Search Console will stop gathering data if you stop looking at it

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-stop-collecting-data-33402.html

PageSpeed Insights Adds new Lighthouse Speed metrics

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-lighthouse-page-speed-metrics/449842/

Google Updates Advice on Controlling Titles in Search

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-shows-how-to-control-titles-in-search-results/449866/

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The Right to Remove Personal Identifiable information from Google

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-remove-pii-33326.html

Google, “we’re not stealing your content, you’re stealing ours!”

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-stealing-knowledge-panel-content-33328.html

New editor-in-chief at Search Engine Journal, Amanda Zantal-Wiener former Deputy Editor and Content Manager at HubSpot 

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/sej-eic-amanda-zantal-wiener/447271/

Using AI, false DMCA notices, and fake lawyers to generate or coerce backlinks

https://www.seroundtable.com/fake-dmca-ai-generated-lawyers-links-33308.html

EU amendments to the Digital Services Act calls for Google to show key parts of algorithm and to perhaps allow users to influence the information they see 

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/proposal_for_a_regulation_on_a_single_market_for_digital_services.pdf

Google updates 3-strike policy for advertisers adds nine new areas of concern

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ads-implements-3-strike-policy-rule/447780/

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-strike-based-system-9-more-33306.html

Google notes financial impact of Russia’s illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine. 

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-feels-earnings-impact-from-russian-war-on-ukraine/447684/ 

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New Google tool allows you to import goals from Universal Analytics (UA3) to GA4

https://www.seroundtable.com/universal-analytics-goals-import-google-analytics-33268.html

Don’t tell them it’s broken Roger, tell them the issue is Statically Evolving. 

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-real-time-reporting-bugs-33291.html

Tweak New Twitter

Home > Extentions > Tweak New Twitter

Google AI creating Google sourced Knowledge Panels

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-writing-its-own-knowledge-panels-33290.html

lose-work-without-warning/

 

Don’t switch horses in mid stream. Don’t change tires while driving. Don’t try to test new URLs on live sites just because. 

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-dont-change-urls-and-change-them-back-seo-33237.html

Ahrefs has raised 1.5Million for Ukraine

https://searchengineland.com/ahrefs-ukraine-fundraising-383731

Guttenberg 13.0 showing features coming in WP6

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-gutenberg-13/446758/

Best times and worst times to post to social media

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/best-times-to-post-on-social-media-in-2022/446255/

 

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March 2022 Google Product Update has completed its rollout

https://www.seroundtable.com/march-2022-google-product-reviews-update-live-33235.html

Multiple Campaigns + multiple accounts support comes to Google Ads

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-aggregate-reporting-on-manager-level-33253.html

No Technical method for achieving a featured snippet beyond great content

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-featured-snippets-gaining-33249.html

You can’t just write, “I tested this product” and expect a bump from the new Product Update

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-tested-product-reviews-update-33255.html

You need good, original review content.

Google stipulates Ai written content is against guidelines when used to manipulate Google

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-automatically-generated-content-against-guidelines-when-intended-to-manipulate-search-rankings-33243.html

Latency issue in UA3 and GA4 is fixed, again, says Google

https://searchengineland.com/google-claims-to-fix-google-analytics-latency-issues-383524

 

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Today we'll discuss a bubble chart that can help you understand which queries are performing well for your site, and which could be improved.

Data Studio Visualizations

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/performance-optimization-bubble-chart  

AI Content against Google Guidelines

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-ai-generated-content-is-against-guidelines/444916/

Wayback Machine archiving Ukrainian Internet

https://spectrum.ieee.org/internet-archive-ukraine

Conference Organizer, Vasil Azarov died earlier this week at age 40. Details of his death are unavailable at this time. Vasil organized the Brand Growth, B2B Growth, and the Growth Marketing Conference. He was also a community advocate and fundraiser.

Google My Business App is being discontinued

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-my-business-app-going-away-33198.html

Facebook WiFi

https://www.facebook.com/facebook-wifi/getting-started

Zuck Bucks – like Whoopie Goldberg’s Flooz but backed by a multi-billion dollar corporation

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/04/07/1528241/meta-is-making-zuck-bucks

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/6/23013896/meta-facebook-zuck-bucks-finance-financial-services-products

Elon’s Twitter

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/elon-musk-twitter-impact/444860/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/twitter-shares-soar-more-than-25percent-after-elon-musk-takes-9percent-stake-in-social-media-company.html

Google doesn’t care who produces content as long as it’s good quality content

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-outsource-content-33205.html

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Google is rolling out a new label is search results for pages that are recognized as highly cited sources. Plus, Google Analytics 4 is Examined and Jim and Dave discuss this and more with Canadian SEO, Speaker, and Analytics Wrangler Alan K’necht.

Google on support for Ukraine

https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/warsaw-announcing-more-support-ukraine/

TikTok testing search ads

https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-tests-search-ads-383234

 

Product Reviews Update causing flux

https://www.seroundtable.com/volatility-march-2022-google-product-reviews-update-33177.html

Nofollow links are not followed, period

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-nofollow-dampening-factor-33169.html

Google Now Using MUM For Detecting Personal Crisis Searches & BERT For Detecting Shocking Content

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mum-bert-crisis-shock-33176.html

MUM – multitask unified model

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-multitask-unified-model-mum-31441.html

BERT - Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-bert-update-28427.html

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Jim and Dave speak with Ted Harrington who argues that companies need to take a similar approach to secure their systems. He explains how important it is to think outside the box and be willing to push boundaries in potentially troublesome ways, whether the subject is application security or something else entirely.

Ted Harrington is the author of HACKABLE: How to Do Application Security Right, and the Executive Partner at Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), the company of ethical hackers famous for being the first to hack the iPhone. He’s overseen security research hacking medical devices, password managers, and cryptocurrency wallets. Ted has helped hundreds of companies fix tens of thousands of security vulnerabilities, including Disney, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Adobe, Warner Brothers, Qualcomm, and more. For his stewardship of security research that Wired Magazine says “wins the prize, hands down,” Ted has been named both Executive of the Year [by American Business Awards] and 40 Under 40 [by SD Metro].  

He leads a team that started and organizes IoT Village, an event whose hacking contest is a three-time DEFCON Black Badge winner, and which represents the discovery of more than 300 zero-day vulnerabilities (and counting). Ted‘s work has been featured in more than 100 media outlets, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today. Ted is a Boston Marathon finisher, and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, where he started his first company while a student.

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Beware the Ides of March! Google announces end to Universal Analytics . 

“Universal Analytics was built for a generation of online measurement that was anchored in the desktop web, independent sessions and more easily observable data from cookies,” Russell Ketchum, director, product management at Google, said in the announcement. “This measurement methodology is quickly becoming obsolete.”

https://searchengineland.com/google-deprecate-universal-analytics-on-july-1-2023-382648

Google explained the timeline as follows:

• Until July 1, 2023, you can continue to use and collect new data in your Universal Analytics properties.

• After July 1, 2023, you'll be able to access your previously processed data in your Universal Analytics property for at least six months. We know your data is important to you, and we strongly encourage you to export your historical reports during this time.

• In the coming months, we'll provide a future date for when existing Universal Analytics properties will no longer be available. After this future date, you'll no longer be able to see your Universal Analytics reports in the Analytics interface or access your Universal Analytics data via the API.

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Jim and Dave discuss how John Mueller of Google responded to a complaint on Reddit where the SEO or site owner was upset his one month old site was not performing on Google Search. The SEO said despite him "created backlinks on top websites with good DA and low spam score" his site is just not showing up.

SERoundtable shared the back and forth.

Here was his post, "I have created backlinks on top websites with good DA and low spam score but its been 1 month and still I'm unable to see my backlinks getting index on google search. I cant even find them on Semrush. Is there any solution or I have to wait more?"

John Mueller's response was like a teacher giving a harsh one-on-one to a kid who caused trouble in class. John replies:

(1) You are wasting your time:

I'm torn about leaving a snarky reply, but to be a bit more useful, I'd consider that perhaps you're not spending your time on things that are as effective for SEO as you'd like. Dropping links on random sites is not SEO anymore, it's just spam. All search engines have had to deal & ignore these kinds of things for years now.

(2) You are focused too much on the tools:

This is not to mention that a SEO tool will never be able to tell you if a "link is indexed". Everyone who crawls the web does it in a different way, with different speeds, with different assumptions. Even if you can see a link in the Google cache, that says absolutely nothing about whether that link is used for anything in search.

(3) Throw your strategy away and focus on long term, real effort strategies:

If you're trying to improve on SEO, my strong recommendation would be to throw all of this thinking out. You're wasting your own time on it now, and even if something accidentally happens to stick for a bit, it will quickly dry up - search engines have a lot of practice with low-effort, low-quality stuff, and they have no interest in spending any energy on it if they can.

So the response from the SEO was that he has "no technical issues" on his site and the "content is of good quality and unique" but he is super upset about his backlinks (which makes no sense but okay). He then goes to list that he has "dofollow links" from sites like HotFrog, Yelp, Foursquare, Chamber of Commerce. He then demands that his "backlinks cant be ignored."

So John Mueller replies again in a harsher but caring way:

I don't know your site (and don't really have time to dig into anything at the moment), but to be quite honest, all of what you've said there raises red flags for me in terms of low-effort / low-quality sites. Maybe it's ok enough to scrape by at some point, but at that level, you're going to see things come & go randomly, as updates happen across search engines.Maybe you don't care about long-term success, maybe getting some quick traffic & leaving is fine for you - that's ultimately up to you and everyone has done quick hacks in the past too. If you do care about long-term success in search with this site, or want to learn how to work on legitimate long-term sites, I'd recommend, well, not spending too much time on trying to hack together links like this.

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It was a particularly newsy and seriously silly week. It was also the end of June which is also the end of the second quarter so, for most SEOs, it's reporting season. This year, reports are made more poignant knowing the end of June is also the end of the line for Universal Analytics data, which gets universally deleted on Monday at midnight. It's also the end of the June 2024 Google Spam Update, which concluded a few hours before this episode was recorded. Show hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about UA3 data, how to assess the Spam Update, the implications of OpenAI's purchase of the data analysis and indexing firm Rockset, Microsoft AI's craptastic views on the social contract of content, how Google Search measures its own quality, if AI can perform an effective and actionable technical SEO audit, and a whole lot more.

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This week we have another special guest, Olesia Korobka, a SEO consultant based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Olesia is compiling a list of SEOs in Ukraine who need work or stability.

Google Search Central Virtual Unconference Returns at the end of the month – Martin Splitt tweeted with a “stay tuned” notice

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-central-virtual-unconference-back-for-2022-33018.html

No such thing as quotas for the number of rankings a website can achieve https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ranking-quotas-33014.html

Index Now added to Duda, All in One WordPress, and Rank Math SEO Plugins https://www.seroundtable.com/indexnow-duda-all-in-one-wordpress-rank-math-seo-plugins-33001.html

Yoast suggests IndexNow a lot more When than Now – Doesn’t improve crawl efficiency or lead to more traffic

https://www.seroundtable.com/yoast-indexnow-proof-33013.html

GSC URL Inspection Tool Errors

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-url-inspection-tool-errors-33010.html

They shalt not blocketh Americans https://www.seroundtable.com/blocking-usa-users-googlebot-33005.html

If you are not allowed to show your website to users based in the United States, then you also cannot show that website to Googlebot.

CSS colours are not ranking factors. 

https://www.seroundtable.com/css-colors-are-not-a-google-ranking-factor-32968.html

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Today's episode was recorded the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Jim and Dave speak with two SEO industry members living and working in Kiev, Igor Shulezhko and Anton Shulke.

Igor Shulezhko is a Russian speaking Ukranian living in Kiev. He is a brand ambassador for Serpstat, a cofounder of rankUP, and co-owner of Shmeo.link/. He has a friend translating for him.

Anton Shulke is head of Influencer Marketing at Duda, the highly SEO friendly CMS platform. Originally from Moscow, Anton lives in Kiev, Ukraine.

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Jim and Dave speak with Navah Hopkins, a search industry veteran, has officially launched her consulting business, Navah Hopkins Consulting, LLC.

Bill Hartzer.com reports:Navah is a a highly sought-after paid media and digital marketing strategist with over a decade of empowering brands and the agencies. In her new consulting firm, she plans on providing Digital marketing strategy, Account audits, SAAS product strategy, and General business strategy.

In the past, Navah has worked for companies like Adzooma, Justuno, Hennessey Digital, and WordStream. I’ve known her for years as one of the world’s best Paid Media specialists, and I’ve seen her speak about paid search and paid media at conferences such as Pubcon and State of Search.

Navah has a passion for innovation, fueled by a hybrid of strategic partnerships, data analysis, and consumer engagement. She loves connecting people who can mutually benefit each other, leveraging innovation to solve socioeconomic issues, and maintaining bottom line thinking with an ethics driven perspective.

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How The Pandemic Increased Demand for SEO

Joe Hall posted a Twitter poll asking the SEO community how the pandemic impacted their SEO business. The poll had 614 responses and most said that the pandemic has brought an increased demand in SEO.

83.2% said it is a true statement to say "the pandemic has brought an increased demand in SEO." 16.8% of those who responded said it is a false statement to say "the pandemic has brought an increased demand in SEO."

https://www.seroundtable.com/seo-pandemic-demand-32887.html 

Google introduces Google Ads API version 10-0

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-api-version-10-32903.html

Google AdWords API expires in April 2022 

Notice bigger fonts in your query? Google’s testing...

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-larger-fonts-in-desktop-search-bar-32897.html

Chrome Journeys

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-chrome-journeys-rolling-out-now-32895.html

More Messages in Search Console

https://searchengineland.com/expect-more-messages-in-google-search-console-380136

Search Ads 360?

https://searchengineland.com/google-launches-revamped-search-ads-360-380043

Dates in title tags

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-on-the-seo-impact-of-dates-in-title-tags/437397/

Kristopher Jones on SEO for Amazon

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/amazon-seo-sellers-guide/436454/

Doing product reviews? Use original photos

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-recommends-original-photos-for-product-reviews/437050/

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1+ Million WordPress sites affected by vulnerabilities that could lead to remote code execution attacks

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-vulnerability-in-essential-addons-for-elementor/436179/

Webcology named as one of the 15 top SEO podcasts

https://ahrefs.com/blog/best-seo-podcasts/

New Google Partners Program: After nearly two years, the new Partners program requirements have taken effect and Google will notify all Partners of their current status.

https://www.seroundtable.com/new-google-partners-program-32867.html

Facebook lost users for first time in a decade. Stock declined by 22%

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Jim and Dave welcome back Mark Traphagen and Mitul Gandhi to discuss the launch of ClarityAutomate a groundbreaking new platform that solves the most fundamental roadblock to achieving SEO results: execution.

ClarityAutomate empowers SEOs to take control of their results, tackling gaps in technology, skills and resources to execute SEO changes in real time through its innovative no-code SEO technology.

Equipped with flexible implementation and a powerful logic engine within seoClarity’s award-winning technology, users of ClarityAutomate can finally progress on their SEO project list with consistency, precision and ease — all within a matter of minutes — not days, weeks or months.

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Danny Goodwin Talks to Jim and Dave About Joining Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land is happy to welcome well-known search marketing journalist Danny Goodwin to the team as Senior Editor. Goodwin will join the editorial team, which also includes editors Barry Schwartz and George Nguyen, to help us to deliver best-in-class journalism on search and performance marketing to you – our global audience of digital marketers.

In addition to writing daily about SEO, PPC, and more for Search Engine Land, Goodwin will also manage and grow Search Engine Land’s roster of subject-matter experts. He will also help program our conference series SMX – Search Marketing Expo, working with our Events Content Director Kathy Bushman.

Prior to joining us, Goodwin was Executive Editor at Search Engine Journal, where he led editorial initiatives for the brand.

Goodwin is a respected member of the search community going all the way back to 2007 when he began as an editor for Search Engine Watch. He has spoken at many major search conferences and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts. He’s seen first-hand how this industry has evolved over the years and we are thrilled that he will bring his intelligence and perspective to Search Engine Land and SMX.

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Google Union Busting

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/google-hired-union-busting-consultants-to-convince-employees-unions-suck/

Project Vivian.” In the words of one senior manager, Project Vivian existed “to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck.”

National Labour Relations Board judge Paul Bogas

Content Priority

https://www.seroundtable.com/poll-seos-to-allocate-resources-32726.html

Aleyda Solis @aleyda

55.3% Content

23.7% Technical

17.1% Link Building

 

Google doesn’t understand fluff content.

“So much duplicated content about duplicate content” John Mueller, Jan 7, 2022

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-fluff-content-32747.html

 

Interesting conversation about how much information Google should (or will) share about Core Updates.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-debates-sharing-details-core-updates-32737.html

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-cant-provide-details-about-core-algorithm-updates/432651/ - Matt Southen

Search Off The Record podcast with John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt

 

Don’t block slow countries to improve Core Web Vital Scores

https://www.seroundtable.com/block-slow-regions-google-core-web-vitals-32723.html

I don’t think Google measures it like that...

 

Disavow is a machete. Only use it as such

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-whole-domains-links-32738.html

“Search Quality Guidelines are not for SEOs”, John Mueller, Jan 13 2022

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-quality-rating-guidelines-not-seo-32744.html

 

Cloudflare for SEO Guide/Article at SEJ

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/cloudflare-seo/429887/

by: Ludwig Makhyan

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Moving into the New Year I have a strange sense of déjà vu. Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 2020 Two, the updated edition.

This is the sixth day of January, 2022. A year ago, before the attempted coup, we were all so much younger. Now it just feels numb, and dumb, and sometime sort of pointless. It feels like we’re entering the new year running it petal to the metal, full tilt in neutral. The incredible spikes in COVID infections over the last few weeks from Omicron is so far beyond believable it makes knowledge of what is coming in the next two weeks unfathomable. Happy New Year eh? I got Omicroned for Christmas. Myself and my partner Shana both got exposed and infected over the two week holiday period. I think it might have happened in a cell phone store. For me, it was very very mild. I had a nasty cold sore and a half day of sniffles. I would have been exposed 10 – 14 days after getting my third dose booster shot of SpikeVax, the punkrock name given to the Moderna vaccine. Shana, who as many of you know was infected early in April 2020, caught her second bout of Covid. In her it manifested as one of the harshest flues she’s had in years. She had yet to receive a booster shot.

The next two weeks are likely to be crazy. I hope I’m wrong but expect a lot of people to phone in sick and a lot of services and shops to be shut down for lack of staff. If we’re smart, four to six weeks from now could look very different but, if there’s one thing I am absolutely sure of, we’re not nearly smart enough when it comes to existential emergencies. 2022 is going to teach us all a lot of lessons, some good and some bad. I think how things work out will have a lot to do with how we learn them.

 

Blackberry old goes dark

(Mr. Jones, we’ve solved your Crackberry addiction...)

 

Bing IndexNow WordPress Plugin available

https://www.seroundtable.com/indexnow-wordpress-plugin-released-32709.html

 

Migration advice – don’t drop AMP during migration

https://www.seroundtable.com/migrate-domains-remove-google-amp-seo-32696.html

 

Ways to generate some Soft 404s

https://www.seroundtable.com/error-like-pages-soft-404-google-32690.html

 

Language quality can impact multilingual sites

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-language-version-site-quality-impact-32686.html

 

Danny Goodwin leaving Search Engine Journal Why? We don’t know but we’re gonna get the scoop on it. Danny’s joining us on January 20th to talk about a life editing decision and a life editing some of the largest and most read search news websites.

 

Did SEOS work over Xmas?

19.5% Yes, a lot

33.3%, Yes, a little

47.2%, Nope, not at all

https://www.seroundtable.com/seos-work-over-the-christmas-holiday-break-32662.html

 

Some basic questions answered by John Mu

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/does-domain-extension-affect-seo/431956/#close

 

2021, a year of changes and updates

https://searchengineland.com/google-algorithm-updates-2021-in-review-core-updates-product-reviews-page-experience-and-beyond-378017

 

 

The Google Developers Style Guide, on <h1>headings</H1>

https://developers.google.com/style/headings

 

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Jim and Dave speak to Mike Rhodes, a serial entrepreneur and founder of one of Australia's largest digital marketing firms, Websavvy about his book, the Ultimate Guide to Google Ads. 

Rhodes had immigrated to Australia from the UK and founded and exited three other businesses before founding Websavvy in 2006. He is now a conference speaker, an investor, and a father. He joins us from Melbourne Australia.

Covering the latest breaking news in Google AdWords, the book's fifth edition introduces revised, expanded and new chapters covering Enhanced Campaigns, Google AdWord's Express, Google's Product Listing Ads, and the introduction to Google's Universal Analytics. Nuances in Big Data advertising are also revealed and expanded sections and necessary updates have been added throughout.

Readers are given the latest information paired with current screenshots, fresh examples, and new techniques. Coached by AdWords experts Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes, and Bryan Todd advertisers learn how to build an aggressive, streamlined AdWords campaign proven to increase their search engine visibility, consistently capture clicks, double their website traffic, and increase their sales. Whether a current advertiser or new to AdWords, this guide is a necessary handbook.

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Covering a busy week in search this episode closes with a 20 minute interview with CEO of A.I. driven search engine You.com, Richard Socher. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about Google's freshly launched June2024 Spam Update, some Reddit heavy SERPS, unstoppable AI Overviews, the beneficial myth of traffic diversity, the ups and downs of crawl spikes, Microsoft's recall of Microsoft Recall, and a whole lot more. In the days before the show was recorded, Jim visited Web Summit's massive Collision Conference 2024 where big money, big ideas, and big organizations meet in a three day intellectual frenzy.   Jim speaks with one of the earliest pioneers of A.I., Richard Socher in a one-on-one interview recorded near the end of Collision 2024 in Toronto. CEO of You.com, Richard leads what is arguably the most innovative newer search engine. Combining generative AI from several sources with algorithmic search, You.com is working to build and perfect a set of highly proficient A.I. assistants designed around the idea that information should be easily accessible and easy to make use of. It was a fun conversation and a great chance to ask questions of one of the driving forces behind A.I. in search.

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The SEO Who Wasn’t or You Don’t Need Links to Rank.

The SEO who wasn’t (learned a few tricks)

https://www.seroundtable.com/seo-learned-a-few-tricks-job-32596.html

Google <3’s affiliates just like affiliates <3 Google – No nofollow? No Problems

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-wont-penalize-no-nofollowing-affiliate-links-32597.html

You don’t need links to rank. Links are not mandatory. 

https://www.seroundtable.com/links-are-not-mandatory-for-ranking-in-google-search-32558.html

Susequently ... Google: You Can't Tell Which SEO Efforts Led To Ranking Success

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-success-mystery-32599.html

G4 now supports GSC data https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-4-now-supports-google-search-console-data-32604.html

Log4J https://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-log4j-32605.html

Google wasn’t crawling or indexing new content for a few hours this morning

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-not-indexing-crawling-new-content-32606.html

Plus, Google Search Console was down intermittently for some. Two different sources received a 429 error. 

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The Effect of Expired Landing Pages and other items from your website’s landfill on SEO https://searchengineland.com/how-expired-landing-pages-kill-your-google-rankings-377055

Great piece by Kasper Szymanski at SEL.Google local search algo update last week – coinciding with the introduction of the new Google (my) Business environment 

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-local-search-ranking-algorithm-update-32562.html

Relevancy and Core Update Factors, 

John Meuller refers SEOs a blog post Google posted in August 2019 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-help-advice-core-algorithm-updates-27984.html

(https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/08/core-updates.html) 

The recent Google Products Algo update is said to be larger than the one that ran six or seven months ago in April

https://searchengineland.com/googles-december-2021-product-reviews-update-was-bigger-than-the-april-product-reviews-update-say-data-providers-377056

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Jim Hedger hosts a Holiday SEO Roundtable Discussion with Kristine Schachinger, Jenny Halasz, and Ryan Jones.

6 signs you need to migrate your ecomm store

Now that online shopping season is ending it’s the time for migrations

https://litextension.com/blog/6-signs-website-replatforming

18 years Congrats to Barry Schwartz and Search Engine Roundtable

https://www.seroundtable.com/18-years-old-32491.html

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-url-change-seo-drop-32516.html 

Old changes don’t make a lot of differences today

Parag Agrawal is new Twitter CEO https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/29/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-is-expected-to-step-down-sources-say.html

Google 2021 Core Update Rolled out and finished. Google 2021 product review update rolling out.

https://searchengineland.com/google-december-2021-product-reviews-update-rolling-out-376672

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Jim and Dave speak with Mark Traphagen (VP of Product Marketing & Training) and Mitul Gandhi, (Chief Architect & Co-Founder) of seoClarity.

They discuss the findings of new a new CTR study where they used over 750+ billion impressions across 17+ billion unique keywords to analyze CTRs by position, device (mobile and desktop), country, seasonality and even industry.

What makes seoClarity’s study remarkably different from all other studies is the sheer volume of actual data analyzed - 750+ billion impressions, 30+ billion clicks across 17+ billion unique keywords. This makes it the largest CTR study ever!

The end result is a robust CTR model broken down by device, keyword type, country, seasonality and industry. This provides more actionable data for search marketers who are looking for the most reliable figures unique to them and their industry.

Some of the notable findings included:

CTR by Device

Mobile users are less likely to click top-ranked listings than desktop users.

Mobile results gain 85.8% more impressions than results on desktop.

Click-through rate for position 1 decreases from 8.17% on desktop to 6.74% on mobile devices.

CTR by Country

For position 1, the lowest click-through rates are seen in the US, at 9.13%.

The US has the lowest click-through rates both for the Top 10 search results and the Top 20.

Users may be scrolling more than ever before - CTR in positions 17-20 is actually higher than positions 11-16 across the globe.

CTR by Seasonality

May and December are the months with the lowest click-through rates, and July through to September are the highest.

CTR By Industry

CTRs by position vary significantly from industry to industry.

‘Real Estate’ has the highest average CTR (all devices) across the top 10 positions (2.45%), and ‘Apparel & Fashion’ has the lowest (1.43%).

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Old XML Sitemaps won’t help your migration recoveries very much

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-old-xml-sitemaps-url-migration-32441.html

Google isn’t crawling pages based on the XML sitemap. New sitemaps might prompt new crawls but old ones won’t push Google to new pages faster.

--

Google’s SEO Interactive Checklist

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-interactive-seo-checklist-32447.html

https://developers.google.com/search

Google Translated Search

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-translate-help-docs-32446.html

Google Updates Indian searches with Translated Search

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-translated-serps/427428/

Lighthouse 9.0

https://searchengineland.com/lighthouse-9-0-includes-api-changes-user-flows-updated-reports-and-more-376120

Twitter no longer sends users to AMP pages

https://searchengineland.com/twitter-rolls-back-amp-support-no-longer-sends-users-to-amp-pages-376168

--

Schema markup – Logos need to look good on white backgrounds - https://searchengineland.com/google-logo-schema-markup-now-requires-logos-to-look-good-on-white-backgrounds-376170

--

Edward Snowden calls Google on privacy

https://searchengineland.com/edward-snowden-calls-out-google-over-search-engines-privacy-376115

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Google November spam update is fully rolled out by @rustybrick. November Spam Update might be a bit less well adjusted than...

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-november-spam-update-impactful-32394.html

Hi Robot

https://www.seroundtable.com/googlebot-ip-addresses-32402.html

Google releases the IP addresses of its various bots in a JSON file. Google can kill your ads if you violate the organic webmaster guidelines – very rare but it’s happened. I know it happens in reverse too eh?

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-account-suspensions-over-violating-webmaster-guidelines-32386.html

Goog wins some Goog lose some. It was a busy morning for Google in the European region; first losing its EU antitrust case for $2.8 billion for abusing search engine dominance by promoting its own shopping service. Then the UK Supreme Court dismissing the case against Google for allegedly tracking iOS Safari users without their consent for $4 billion.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-loses-antitrust-shopping-search-but-wins-ios-tracking-uk-case-32399.html

SEO to Everyone: 02:00 PM

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/discovered-not-indexed/426457/

You should be creating links to yourself

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-you-shouldnt-be-creating-links-to-your-site-32398.html

RIP John Carcutt

https://www.seroundtable.com/rip-john-carcutt-32388.html

Sites need to be worthwhile to be indexed

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/discovered-not-indexed/426457/

 

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Google Tackles Spam and Adult Content

An update targeting content that doesn’t follow the Google guidelines started rolling out today. Named the November Spam Update...

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-november-2021-spam-update-32365.html

Google doesn’t necessarily know what smut is but it knows smut when it sees it.

Google has no objective measure of “adultness”

Lily Ray asked about the rating = adult tag and when it should be applied 

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-metric-adult-content-32349.html

Who you gonna call? GSC Property Verification Busters!

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-contact-domain-verification-user-access-issues-32355.html

Google uses a lot of signals to detect guest posts beyond anchor text https://www.seroundtable.com/google-uses-many-signals-to-detect-guest-posts-32338.html

Penguins can be scary at Scale

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-target-whole-site-32336.html

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Facebook changes company name to Meta https://cnb.cx/3blo77s

The company will also change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS, effective Dec. 1

Out of the Box Core Web Vitals Speeds

Who wins the CMS race? WordPress, Duda, Drupal, or Wix?

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/core-web-vitals-wordpress-drupal-duda-wix/425071/

Images don’t help you rank... (not so sure this answer is entirely thought out)

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-web-search-images-32318.html 

John Mueller suggests images aren’t important to web search. Using the example of a grey box, John said, “within web search we don't really care if it's a gray square or if it's a picture of a beach.” He goes on to say Google does care in image search what the content of an image is but in web search, adding more images won’t help you rank. 

That may be well and true but there are a number of attributes and basic properties to and about images that Google does need to care about. How big is it? How is it loading? When is it loading? Does its existence add to or take away from page usability? Is there alt text describing the image? These are important items that speak to more than the mere content of an image.

Site Quality can cause a loss of rich snippets

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/site-quality-and-rich-results/425186/

Remove images of minors from Google search 

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-remove-images-of-minors-32321.html

Black Hat work? SEO Poll sees a 50% / 50% spread in community

https://www.seroundtable.com/seos-split-on-doing-blackhat-seo-32304.html

So like, this is a public service announcement for the people of Tumbler Ridge British Columbia up in way upper Canada eh? Like, so we heard your Internet was down last weekend eh? You probably knew that already though. We just wanted to tells ya that Telus found out whose been skunking your systems eh? It was the beavers. The damn beavers did it building another damn dam. For sure eh? You can see the pictures that Telus posted overs on their like Internet web page or at Arstechnica, which is thoroughly amused by the story. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/04/cable-chewing-beavers-take-out-towns-internet-in-uniquely-canadian-outage/

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Facebook Corporate Rebrand To Reflect Role In the Metaverse

https://dailyhive.com/toronto/facebook-new-name-rebrand-report

Story broke in TheVerge https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/19/22735612/facebook-change-company-name-metaverse

Facebook doesn’t know how they will rebrand (short history of renaming efforts at FB)

https://mashable.com/article/facebook-zuckeberg-new-name

Facebook slammed by its own oversight board for VIP treatment of VIPs

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1047928585/oversight-board-slams-facebook-for-giving-special-treatment-to-vip-users

Martin Splitt on How Google Sees and recons content on a page and in a site

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/centerpiece-annotation/424152/

Roger Montti breaks down a long Duda Webinar from Jason Barnard in which Google’s Martin Splitt describes how the search engine examines content, determines topic, and separates out other sections of content

Google Analytics Bug Data Loss

13:59:44 From Dave Davies : https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-bug-data-loss-32281.html

PayPal Pinterest Acquisition Offer

From Dave Davies : https://www.searchenginejournal.com/paypal-pinterest-acquisition-offer/424221/

YouTube SEO Auto Chapter Now a Metadata For Search

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/youtube-seo-auto-chapters-now-a-source-of-metadata-for-search/424266/

Bing and Yandex introduce IndexNow

https://www.seroundtable.com/indexnow-bing-yandex-instant-indexing-32268.html

Just in case you needed to know

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-links-in-existing-or-new-windows-32261.html

Search Quality Evaluators Guidlines Changes

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-search-quality-raters-guidelines-32276.html

Google Search Quality Guidelines Update

https://searchengineland.com/google-search-quality-guidelines-update-expand-ymyl-category-defines-lowest-quality-content-and-more-375276

If you think there's been a lot of algo action

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-updates-more-extreme-32277.html

 

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More actionable error reports for Rich Results in Google Search Console
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-rich-results-status-reports-detailed-32212.html
Penalizing Interlinked Link Schemes
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-interlinked-link-schemes-32207.html
Carbon Rating your Flying Routes – Sustainable with Google
https://www.seroundtable.com/sustainability-with-google-32206.html
Google Search Console Adds New Rich Results
https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-adds-new-rich-results-status-reports-374993
Google Local Pack Offer Label Attribute
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-local-pack-offer-label-attribute-32201.html
Google Hints It Will Penalize Interlinked Link Schemes?
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-interlinked-link-schemes-32207.html
Chrome Tests Side By Side Search & Journeys; Browser History With Search
big - https://www.seroundtable.com/chrome-tests-side-by-side-search-journeys-32190.html
Google Ads With Larger Sitelinks Block Design Also
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-larger-sitelinks-block-design-on-google-ads-32189.html
Google Ads Keyword Planner Tool With Trending Data
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-keyword-planner-tool-testing-trending-data-32196.html
Huge Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On October 2nd & 3rd
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-algorithm-update-32185.html
did we talk about this ?
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/build-fewer-but-stronger-pages-or-create-lots-of-pages/421587/

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Amidst months of controversial punishing updates, a disastrous A.I. rollout, and at least a year of questionable search results, SEOs and general search users are starting to ask if Google is actually broken. If it is working as it's supposed to, why are they trying so hard to fix it? Google says it's a matter of perspective so hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger try to walk through both sets of perspectives. The show also covers take aways from Barry Schwartz's SMX Advanced interview with Google's Elizabeth Tucker, Google's most recent responses to The Leak, a lot of turbulence at TwiXter (including Elon Musk's annoyance at the Apple - OpenAI deal), and, of course, the Apple - Open AI deal itself. An interesting week of as many news items as we can fit in an hour long show.

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Are You Older Than Google?
MUM (multitask unified model)
It’s not just a new algorithm; it’s a new way of ordering and facilitating search
-Things to Know – paths users take when exploring this topic (web surfing?)
-Topic Exploration – Using related topics user can zoom into or broaden topic
-Visual Exploration – Image search but actually useful.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-redesign/421415/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mum-is-coming-to-lens/421385/
-Google Merchant Center
-Clarity

Google Results Cards
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-about-this-result/421394
Google Doesn’t see stuff behind captchas
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-cant-see-content-behind-captchas/421202/
Google Product Rich Results in Search Console – More info
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-products-rich-results-report-search-console-granular-32173.html
Google gets that search query intent shifts over time
https://www.seroundtable.com/searcher-intent-shifts-google-32155.html
Google and Duplicate Content in product descriptions
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-duplicate-product-descriptions/420899/
“With duplicate content we have essentially two, roughly, different things that we look at.
On the one hand we check if the whole page is the same.
And that includes everything like the header and the footer and the address of the store and things like that, which in your case this would not be the case because one is maybe a manufacturer’s website and the description is the same but everything around it is different.
So that’s kind of the basic kind of duplicate content.”
Search Quality Raters Guide piece
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-eat/quality-raters-guidelines/
EAT and Structured Data
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-eat/structured-data/#close

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Google Search Console Performance Data outage appears to have ended
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-performance-report-back-32131.html

SMX will remain a virtual conference until at least 2022.
https://www.seroundtable.com/smx-virtual-through-2022-32128.html

Google is now allowing advertising of at-home COVID-19 test kits
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-at-home-covid-19-test-kits-listings-32134.html

Author Byline Critical, Needed, or Just Good Practice?
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-bylines-for-trust-on-articles-32110.html

ALL CAPS – Google doesn’t treat them differently
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-all-case-seo-32105.html

Removing old news from your site for SEO reasons isn’t really useful
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-old-news-seo-32109.html

WordPress Ninja Forms plug-in closes two vulnerabilities affecting about 1MM sites
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-ninja-forms-vulnerability-exposes-over-a-million-sites/420726/#close

Getting Verified on Facebook
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-verify-facebook/417649/

Oh the things we know you’ll do when we tell you what to see and who...
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-announces-things-to-do-free-listing-ad-unit/420712/

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Jim and Dave interview Lily Ray, the Sr. Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital, where she provides strategic leadership for the agency’s SEO client programs. Born into a family of software engineers, web developers and technical writers, Lily brings a strong technical background, performance-driven habits and forward-thinking creativity to all programs she oversees. Lily began her SEO career in 2010 in a fast-paced start-up environment and moved quickly into the agency world, where she helped grow and establish an award-winning SEO department that delivered high impact work for a fast-growing list of notable clients, including Fortune 500 companies. Lily has worked across a variety of verticals with a focus on retail, e-commerce, b2b and CPG sites.

She comes on to discuss What Does it Take to Rank in Google Discover?
https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/what-does-it-take-to-rank-in-google-discover/

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sometimes website quality can’t be fixed with technical changes
Maybe it’s not the Core Web Values. Perhaps it’s not links or that nasty pagination problem. You can make it fast and sometimes Google still doesn’t care. Sometimes a website’s quality isn’t found in the presentation. Sometimes it’s what’s being presented.
“if you want search engines to take your site more seriously, you really, really need to improve the game there."
So making changes to your site speed, core web vitals, changing your structured data, title tags, etc - is simply not enough. You need to look at your website as a whole and see what you can vastly improve on, including site content, navigation, user experience and much more. It is very rarely just one thing.” John Mueller via Twitter
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-website-quality-technical-changes-32058.html
Microsoft Start – Bing’s version of Discover
https://www.seroundtable.com/microsoft-start-32057.html

Syndicated Content be Damned. Don’t republish and expect to rank for that content
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-on-syndicate-or-republish-content-32052.html
14:03:37
Google Ads to start showing advertisers more search term data

•6.5X more data
•retroactively populated back to February 1, 2021 for applicable search terms.
•Google is going to remove search term data predating September 1, 2020 sometime in February 2022
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-to-begin-sharing-more-search-term-data-with-advertisers/419065/
It is historic query data for impression that didn’t result in a click
https://searchengineland.com/google-search-terms-report-adds-historical-query-data-for-impressions-without-clicks-374323


State of Search Survey from SEJ
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/state-of-seo-opportunities/418703/
Get the Lowdown on post-load activity from Project Fraggle Rock
Lightspeed updateds to version 8.3.0. It runs live on Page Speed Insights and will be added to Chrome90s Dev Tools, Sept 21.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/lighthouse-pagespeed-insights-update/418957/

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Google’s Data’s Gone Dave it’s Gone, the Data’s Gone... the data’s gone away
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-performance-report-data-gone-32011.html
(read from page if necessary)

Twitter $uper Followers
Twitter is allowing a select group of creators (read, American residents) to charge a $3 premium to exchange $uper $pecial inspirations with their followers. Currently available to American users only, $uper Follower Creators need to be
•18 years old
•Have 10K+ active followers
•Have at least 25 tweets posted the previous month
•Be active for at least 3 months
•Have a fully tricked out Twitter profile
•Have a verified email address, and be double authenticated to offer account security
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/twitter-super-follows/418378/
Chrome Beta Continueous Search
https://www.seroundtable.com/chrome-beta-continuous-search-32023.html
The beta of a new version of Chrome reportedly displays search results in a scroll across the top of the browser. Glenn Gabe, who is testing the beta version, is noted in SERoundtable with a screenshot of a visit to the Dick’s Sports website. Just above the header containing Dick’s Sporting Goods logo is a Google ad for “The best men’s golf shoes...” at Golf Digest .com
Google Debugs Using Bing
John Mueller wrote he often uses Bing to check if an issue he’s working through is a problem at Google, or a problem on the website in question. SEOs very frequently optimize for Google, given that’s where around 4/5 of the traffic comes from. Though search engines crawl and refresh at different rates, over time you can judge a website’s health by the behaviour of both search engines. If a site is tanking on Google but not so much tanking on Bing, the problem is likely a Googley issue. If the site is having problems on both search engines, the issue is likely a site quality or content clarity issue.
“I often use Bing when debugging. It shows if it's just Google doing something weird, the site doing weird things, or if it changed over time (search engines index at different rates, faster/slower doesn't matter). One of the simplest & fastest checks to do.” John Mueller
https://www.seroundtable.com/john-mueller-debugs-google-using-bing-32022.html
Google’s now warning webmasters not to change title tags to the one’s Google replaced them with.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-html-title-tags-with-google-titles-32007.html

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Rumour has it TikTok might have just bought a Virtual Reality company – Robert Scoble FB Tease
The metaverse is quickly gentrifying from a virtually real place to a very real place. I think people really need to think about this space.
UK, as part of Brexit to do away with many EU privacy laws, including the laws covering use of cookies. The plan is to create a more flexible data environment with less bureaucracy and very probably less transparency.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9928843/Britons-rejoice-Government-promises-post-Brexit-end-EUs-GDPR-rules-cookies-pop-up.html Google is not only rewriting title tags, they’re asking you to help them improve!
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-title-complaint-form-31988.html
Google Title Complaint Forum
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/122879386/your-feedback-on-titles-shown-in-search-results (pre-open - read a few bits of feedback)
Titlepocolypse
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/titlepocalypse/417472/
New Title tag system is dyanamic and responsive, says Google’s Danny Sullivan
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-page-title-update-is-dynamic-and-reactive-to-changes/417432/
The Google Link Spam Algorithm finished its scheduled two week rollout two days ago (August 24), two weeks after it was supposed to complete. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-spam-update-done-31980.html
Clicks on Email, social media, and paid ads do not have any effect on your website or landing page’s SEO whatsoever. https://www.seroundtable.com/newsletter-email-clicks-seo-google-31987.html
Desktop and Mobile pages don’t need to match, they just have to do the same thing. (16 pages vs. 8 pages as example) https://www.seroundtable.com/google-desktop-mobile-match-fulfill-31971.html
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-performance-report-stuck-31984.html
It’s not you, it’s Goog. Google Search Console was sorta stuck for a couple days. If you see weird data for August 23 and 24, it’s not you it’s Google. According to Google Webmaster Support,
GSC Goes Gaboinki - August 23-24 (Search, Discover)
An internal problem caused a data loss in Search and Discover performance during this period. Users might see a significant data drop in their performance reports during this period. This does not reflect any drop in clicks or impressions for your site, only missing data in Search Console.
Listeners should know, we rewrote the title as applied by Google because we thought ours was more descriptive.
Google Keyword Planner not showing Keywords
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-keyword-planner-tool-no-data-31978.html
(you can export the data to Excel or Google Sheets, even if it doesn’t appear on screen)
Most canonicalise – SEO poll shows 58% of SEOs canonicalise in the case of dupe content. 18% will rewrite everything, 12% will use a noindex, and a further 12% will do something other.
https://www.seroundtable.com/most-seos-canonicalize-their-duplicate-content-issues-31969.html

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Core Update Recovery – How do you know you’re on the right track?
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-core-update-quality-changes-track-31940.html

Keep Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’ – Google Spam Update still rolling out after three weeks
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-spam-update-still-rolling-out-31948.html

Google using H1 tag to form title tags
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-header-tags-vs-title-tag-snippet-change-is-not-related-to-passaging-ranking-31954.html

Write content to cover all searcher’s needs
https://www.seroundtable.com/cover-all-your-bases-seo-google-31930.html

Facebook Content Report
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebooks-first-ever-report-on-most-viewed-content/416808/
https://transparency.fb.com/data/widely-viewed-content-report/

The 15 areas of knowledge webmasters must master to be competent SEOs
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-areas-of-knowledge/273873/

Wordfence reports a vunerablilty in SEOPress Plugin
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seopress-vulnerability/416610/

Adobe issues 33 security enhancements to fix cracks in Magento2
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/magento-vulnerabilities/416590/
Commercial Magento Versions that are Affected:
•2.4.2 and earlier versions
•2.4.2-p1 and earlier versions
•2.3.7 and earlier versions
Open Source Magento Versions that are Affected:
•2.4.2-p1 and earlier versions
•2.3.7 and earlier versions

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Maximize Discover results with the Max Image Preview tag.https://www.searchenginejournal.com/increase-google-traffic-with-max-image-preview-tag/416123/

Explaining Google’s new Work at Work or Lose at Home Pay Scale Plans
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pay-cut-google-employees-home-100348715.html

In which Google gives three options on audit plans for Core Web Vitals. (First they say it’s a thing and they say it’s not such a thing and then they say it’s much more than that and then they say... . I think it’s more than that)
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-recommends-this-core-web-vitals-audit-workflow/416132/#close

Wix beats WordPress in CWV competition
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-vs-wix-core-web-vitals/416029/

Kris Jones with Six Ways to Optimize User Review Pages for Google
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/product-review-page-seo/414409/

Roger Montti covers Cumulative Layout Shift
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/core-web-vitals/cumulative-layout-shift/

Google continues to move sites into Mobile First Indexing. (Not a big deal but sort of surprising. Thought they finished this in the spring after pushing back from last autumn)
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-first-indexing-not-done-31904.html

Google and Authorship, a strange relationship
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-spam-author-url-31913.html
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-author-article-31889.html

Yahoo Sign Begowned from Sunnyvale
https://www.seroundtable.com/photos/yahoo-sign-taken-down-from-headquarters-31882.html

Martin Splitt reminds SEOs that Alt Text is important for SEO.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-alt-text-important-seo-31872.html

Google Enforcing Business Address on some GMB listings as means of spam protection
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-my-business-physical-addresses-31891.htm

Google Drops Safe Browsing as a ranking signal
https://searchengineland.com/google-drops-safe-browsing-as-a-page-experience-ranking-signal-350995

Structured Data test tool gone -> Landing page directs users to Google Rich Results tool or to Schema.org tool.
https://searchengineland.com/googles-legacy-structured-data-testing-tool-now-is-gone-351128

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Google: If You Remove A Part Of Your Site, The Site Will Rank Differently
https://www.seroundtable.com/remove-part-of-site-google-seo-31854.html
User Queries Help Google Determine What To Show In Knowledge Panels
https://www.seroundtable.com/queries-google-knowledge-panels-31869.html
Make Every feature Binary: A 135B parameter sparse neural network for massively improved search relevance
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/make-every-feature-binary-a-135b-parameter-sparse-neural-network-for-massively-improved-search-relevance/
Data: Most Popular Google Search Features Are People Also Ask & Local Pack
https://www.seroundtable.com/popular-google-search-features-31867.html
Google: You May Get Some Ranking Benefit If Someone Steals Your Original Images
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-stolen-images-benefit-31846.html

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Webcology – July 29, 2021

We have another sad announcement to start the show with this week. Erik Stafford, the witty and well loved Creative Director at aimClear passed away last night. He had a heart attack two months short of his 48th birthday. If you grew up in Chicago in the 80s and 90s, you might have known him as the guerilla street artist, GEAR. Eric was a frequent writer and conference speaker. He was a father of two children and passed way too young. Erik D. Stafford, rest in peace, you’re going to be missed.

--
https://searchengineland.com/googles-universal-search-results-bid-for-placement-and-may-be-influenced-by-clicks-350858?utm_source=webcology
https://searchengineland.com/googles-universal-search-results-bid-for-placement-and-may-be-influenced-by-clicks-350858?utm_source=webcology
Yo Dawg, I hear you like search engines so Google built a search engine full of search engines that all flow to a master search engines to figure out which result set is more relevant than the others. But, uhhh, what would ya tell me if I told you it was influenced by clicks?
Gary Illyes’ on how Google compiles results by having elements of search “bid” for placement against each other. Barry explains it well in today’s SEL.
--
Google Link Spam Update ran on Monday
https://www.seroundtable.com/quiet-google-link-spam-update-31836.html
From jim hedger to Everyone: 02:06 PM
--
Nofollows are universal signals in places you’d think a nofollow should go. You don’t need to specify why. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-switch-rel-nofollow-to-rel-sponsored-31830.html
--
https://www.seroundtable.com/edge-of-google-quality-threshold-31832.html
The Quality Threshold Cliff – Falling off but reappearing through manual submission is apparently a clue that you’re about to fall off. Confused?
--
Google Page Experience – This update replaced what was the Google speed update. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-page-experience-update-replaced-speed-update-31817.html
--
Both Google and Facebook will require staff to be fully vaccinated before returning to work at all US offices. Google has also pushed back its reopening to October. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/28/1021798222/google-mandates-vaccines-for-workers-pushes-back-return-to-office-date
Other firms like Microsoft have not made vaccines mandatory for employees but all are strongly recommending staff get vaccinated before returning to work.

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Maybe it's the eye of a hurricane, maybe it's the calm before a brand new storm. It's really hard to tell these days but after a disasterous rock-eating rollout, Google is pulling back on AI Overviews. The SEO world has mixed reactions to The Leak, which is turning out as predicted, much ado about something but we're not sure exactly what. Some sort of garbled sense of stability appears to be returning to the SERPs as the effects of the March 2024 Core Update and the slew of previous and attendent updates start to play together, more or less as Google planned, or so we think. As the dust settles in Googlandia, the effects of flaky search results are showing in user comments with 54% of people complaining they have to look through more results than they did five years ago to find information, often having to rephrase their queries altogether. Meanwhile, OpenAI workers are asking for the "right to warn" of potential dangers, TwiXter has made distributing porn great again while running paid ads against racist and antisemitic hashtags, Microsoft's Recall AI can be tricked into revealing ever-saved personal data, MozCon20 perceives a crisis, and Google says Mobile First is... actually, we're not exactly sure what they were getting at. Confused? You won't be after listening to this.

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SEO Bob Gladstein – died last Friday at age 57.
https://www.seroundtable.com/bob-gladstein-rip-31788.html
Bob was one of the originals. He’s one of the guys who taught second gen superstars like Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin. He was QWERTY in the early community spaces like Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Forums or the IHelpYou community. On Twitter he was @bubba_ji.

His employer, Overdrive Interactive suggested honouring Bob with donations to the Mass SPCA in his name: @MspcaAngell – a renowned leader in animal protection and veterinary medicine.

Google Tells You Why...
https://searchengineland.com/google-now-shows-why-it-ranked-a-specific-search-result-350659

Consider your Redirects solid after a year has passed
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-redirect-signals-stick-year-31797.html
Slight differences in how 301 and 302s are treated by Google. 302s eventually become treated like 301s but you’ll get a better bang for buck by using correct one at correct time.

Deal Page or Site? Google just published a Best Practices Guide
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-best-practices-for-deal-pages-31795.html
-Read top few
-More to come? – e.g. Back in October 2020, Google created a best practices guide for Black Friday promotions.

Search Traffic Drop visualizations
What different patterns might mean and how to diagnose and deal with them (simplified)
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/07/search-traffic-drops

Google’s three strikes and you’re out ad policy
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-three-strikes-and-your-out-policy-31784.html
(X) Warning: First instance of ad content violating our Enabling Dishonest Behavior, Unapproved Substances and Dangerous Products or Services policies. No penalties beyond the removal of the relevant ads.
(1) First strike: Violation of the same policy for which you’ve received a warning within 90 days. The account will be placed on a temporary hold for three days, during which ads will not be eligible to run
(2) Second strike: Violation of the same policy for which you’ve received a first strike within 90 days of the first strike. The account will be placed on a temporary hold for seven days, during which ads will not be eligible to run. This will serve as the last and final notice for the advertiser to avoid account suspension
(3) Third strike: Violation of the same policy for which you’ve received a second strike within 90 days of the second strike. Account suspension for repeat violation of our policies.
Strikes expire (or get renewed) after 90 days. If you’ve cleaned up and have no new issues, consider yourself in good standing. The plate’s clean.
The Forced Acceptance – G4 is the new Default
Luckily Brie E Anderson from SEJ is there with, 7 GA4 Features that Make it Worth Trying Out
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/useful-google-analytics-4-features/413920/?ver=413920X3

Mueller on how long it takes to rerank a rehabbed site
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-long-to-rerank-website/414181/

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July 2021 Core Update is over
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-july-2021-core-algorithm-update/413204/
seroundtable.com/google-local-core-update-31739.html

Yandex SEO Comrad
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yandex-seo-guide/252885/

Google hit by fine by French Government
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-fined-e500-million-for-french-news-negotiation-breach/413436/

News Corp Website set up as reaction to Google./Facebook deal in Aus. Fails
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/news-site-created-to-oppose-google-and-facebook-fails/413326/

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Brand SERP optimisation and knowledge panel management with Jason Barnard

This is a day of reflection and contemplation in Canada. Please take care wishing us a "happy Canada Day". Many Canadians are thinking about the buried history of cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing that made Canada. This month Canadians have been reminded of the tens of thousands of children of First Nations who died in residential schools run by religious orders after being stolen from their parents and families in a bid to destroy their cultures. Over 1300 unmarked graves have recently been discovered at three different sites with tens of thousands more remaining to be found.

We still love our country, we just can't rest on the false histories or hide behind empty nationalism any longer. To grow into the people we aspire to be, we need to honestly and truthfully tell the stories of how we got here. Canada is built on an ongoing genocide. We want to be better.
2 deaths in our community to report
Russ Jones, Data scientists, conference speaker, father of three. Chief data scientist at Moz frim 2015 – 2020. Was CTO of Virante (now Hive Digital) before that. Well loved speaker and friend. Died in his sleep just short of his 40th birthday.
Dan Bell

Google Core Update
CWV Update
Spam Update
Google Core update just started running this morning

Jason Barnard specialises in Brand SERP optimisation and knowledge panel management.
He’s also variously been a musician, a screenwriter, a songwriter and a cartoon blue dog.

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