Search Engine Roundtable Podcast

I met up at one of Lance Bachmann's businesses, 1SEO Digital Agency, where we chatted about marketing and running a business. Lance started doing digital marketing over 20 years, and while he owns five other companies, his most favorite thing is marketing. Lance has purchased other businesses in the past and has sold some businesses but said he would never sell 1SEO Digital Agency.

We then spoke about his history in marketing, from his days working at YellowPages.com as the VP. Back then, the Yellow Pages online were insane and insane traffic. The early days of local search were super fun and we went back in time talking about these online yellow pages, City Search, and some of the other players from those early days.

Lance then said, "No one likes a winner," and added that "I am a winner." It was a good line.

1SEO Digital Agency is mostly locally focused and the rest is e-commerce focused. 1SEO Digital Agency does a ton of recruiting and they have two full-time recruiters hiring all the time. So the only way to scale, they know they need to continue to hire. Hiring is not cheap but it is the cost of doing business.

Lance and his sister started the company from nothing, and now are 150 or so people. When he was in a 15 or so-person agency, one of his employees asked him where can they go from there and where is the growth for that person’s job. It was at that point that Lance decided to grow.

And they grow by being efficient, and having systems in place is critical for growth. Lance actually stepped down as CEO a few years ago, focused on the marketing side, and let the new CEO grow the company.

This growth was not visionary, exactly. It was done to give the people who work for him more opportunities. There is no debt in the company and they only have four sales reps; all the sales leads are inbound.

It was good to talk business with Lance and we compared some notes.

Lance is so passionate about his staff, his team, and his employees, and it is really nice to see.

You can learn more about Lance Bachmann at Lance Bachmann Capital and 1SEO Digital Agency.

This week we covered a possible Google algorithm updater yesterday and today. We also covered how the new Google Search Generative Experience now can show both links to sources and videos in the answer snapshots. Google SGE also has these new “from Google” cards in the answers. Google Search Generative Experience does not always show those boxes cards, specifically for original responses. Google Search Console does not seem to track data in the AI-answer response in SGE. We are now seeing ads in the wild in the SGE results. Google said don’t write content based off of trending keyword tools. I posted the month Google webmaster report, it is jam-packed with important topics. Google revised its site name questions and resources thread. Google Ads new trademark policy flow is too time consuming for some advertisers. Google is testing a new local search ad format. Google Business Profiles is testing using AI to help write business descriptions. Google Business Profiles tests a view as customer link. Google Business Profiles has a new policies overview page. Microsoft is testing really deceptive looking Bing Search ad labels. Bing Chat seems to finally work in Chrome and Firefox. Bing Chat’s new infrastructure upgrade is taking longer than expected.And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to ⁠patreon.com/barryschwartz⁠. That was the search news this week at the ⁠Search Engine Roundtable⁠.

Sponsored by ⁠BruceClay⁠, who has been doing search marketing optimization since 1996 and also has an amazing ⁠SEO training platform⁠.

In part one, we learned more about Fabrice Canel of Microsoft Bing and spoke about indexing quality. In part two we dig more into the concern around content generation through generative AI tools and IndexNow. Then in the final part, we spoke about sitemaps and

While IndexNow is the best way to submit changes to search engines, sitemaps are more of a delicate mechanism for search engines. Sitemaps help Bing get a snapshot of what you think are the most important pages on your site.

He spoke about a study they did on XML sitemaps, which we published over here. He spoke about some of the adoption of sitemaps and how people get the lastmod date incorrectly. A lot of people get this wrong and it is why some search engines, like Google, do not trust that date. Bing might also not trust the lastmod date on your XML sitemap if you keep getting it wrong.

The future is to make indexing content in a more efficient way, through IndexNow. It is how Bing defines crawl efficiency.

Fabrice said there is a study that said 40% of the internet traffic is bot traffic and Fabrice wants to reduce that to almost zero through IndexNow.

He said machine learning helps Bing a lot know when developers implement IndexNow or Sitemaps incorrectly. So they have mechanisms in place to validate those. Bing Webmaster Tools will improve the sitemaps tool to report on sitemaps and discovery features, maybe it was this announcement?

Fabrice thinks the next big thing in search is AI, big data mining, a big understanding of things, and really satisfying the user. We are in the infancy of this stage now and it is exciting times.

You can follow Fabrice Canel on Twitter @facan or on LinkedIn.

This week, we noticed that many, but not all, of the Google rank tracking tools were cooling, but then later this week, the SEO chatter heated up. Google Merchant Center says AI-generated reviews are spam. John, Gary, and Martin spoke about TLDs and domains for Google SEO. John Mueller called programmatic SEO a fancy banner for spam. He also said just because Google removes your title from your title link doesn’t mean you should. Google is testing more visual search results again. Google is testing comparison sites boxes and lists, and interfaces. Bing now has dark mode for Bing Search and Bing Chat. Google Ads performance max upgrade tool is out for dynamic search ads. Google Merchant Center launched collections. Google Business Profiles moved the appointment link to the booking section. Google also updated the food ordering settings in Google Business Profiles. Google Business Profiles messaging has a new away mode setting. Google Business Profiles is testing automated FAQs features. Google and Microsoft reported earnings, and I dug into their ad business. And I posted part two of my interview with Fabrice Canel on generative AI content and IndexNow. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: This week's video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own.

In part one, we learned more about Fabrice Canel of Microsoft Bing and spoke about indexing quality. In part two we dig more into of the concern around content generation through generative AI tools and IndexNow. We now have 70 billion URLs per day that Bing processes, will that grow to twice or three times as much with these tools?

Fabrice said they are laser-focused on satisfying the Bing searcher. So if the Bing user loves the AI content, then it is okay. Years ago, Microsoft.com was the top fifth property on the internet, but that is no longer the case, new sites came out and replaced it. It is all about what users want and Bing will follow and anticipate those needs.

He is seeing a lot of new content on the internet on the web these days plus even more misspellings.

Two years ago, Microsoft started to push for IndexNow and they have seen a lot of adoption. IndexNow is a protocol to inform search engines of the latest changes on your web site, through a ping solution. We reported on this a lot here, and will continue to do so. IndexNow is even more needed during the times of generative AI, he said.

We then briefly spoke about the Bing URL submission API and also the content submission API, but he still recommends using IndexNow over those but they both work. Spam is still an issue for Bing, he said the biggest challenge is when a site is hacked and that can cause issues.

IndexNow has more than 20 million unique sites and 2 billion URLs per day processed through the protocol. It will grow a lot more in the next several months, Fabrice said.

You can follow Fabrice Canel on Twitter @facan or on LinkedIn.

Every week, the Google Search volatility keeps getting hotter, but Google did say we should have a confirmed update this summer. Google fixed the News indexing bug late last Friday. Google said AI-generated content is not, by default, well received by Google’s ranking algorithms. Google said journalistic awards are not a direct ranking signal. Google explained how to build trust with customers. Google said a good page experience does not fix other SEO issues. Google Search Console’s link report is showing fewer links. Google dropped support for the related search operator. Google is still working on improving the preferred language setting in Google Search. Most SEOs use noindex for archived category and tag pages. Google’s John Mueller posted his thoughts on keyword research. John also shared his thoughts on fake personas online. We saw some Google quality raters visiting sites. Bing Chat now supports visual search. In a week or two, Bing Chat will work on any browser, and in the coming weeks, we will see dark mode from Bing Chat. Google is testing compare systems and savings from government energy programs. Google News has suggested sources for you. Google Search has a new section for “updates for you.” Google Ads Editor version 2.4.1 minor release is available. I removed AMP from my site a few weeks ago, and I report on how it is going. Also, I interviewed Microsoft Bing’s Fabrice Canel; check it out. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: Wix - has been doing a lot of cool things for SEO. Check out what they've been doing. Now you can add hierarchy to static pages; beforehand, you could not put static pages under one folder (see here). Plus, more significant Wix news is their new Wix AI site builder tool that can make images and more for your site (see here).

Fabrice Canel is someone most of you who watch my videos know already, he has been with Microsoft for 26 years and is now the Principal Program Manager at Bing. He has been working on search since the very early days of MSN search, but even before that in 2001, he worked on internal search at Microsoft across many of the Microsoft properties, which was a big job. Then they used a lot of that technology in 2006 when they switched to MSN Search.

Fabrice is the man in charge of indexing at Bing. Fabrice said they discover 70 billion URLs per day (they said this before) but most of that is junk, so we spoke a bit about size (quantity) versus quality. Even with indexing so much every day, they cannot index everything, just like Google said.

We then dug into what quality is when it comes to indexing and how Bing decides what to crawl and index. He said much of the issue of Bing not indexing stuff is around what spammers create, but not all.

I did ask Fabrice what defines quality when it comes to indexing; he said, yes, links do help big time with discovery but he recommended we all read the Bing Webmaster Guidelines. In fact, the day we recorded, Bing updated its guidelines to include items around conversations mode and Bing Image Creator. In short, f follow the rules and you should be fine, especially if you have unique and useful content, Fabrice said. It is not just about internal Bing thoughts but, more importantly, about what outside users want, and they take that very seriously.

You can follow Fabrice Canel on Twitter @facan or on LinkedIn.

Surprise, surprise, we had another unconfirmed Google search ranking update. Google confirmed it had a Google News indexing bug for weeks and just fixed it at the end of this week. Google Search Console page indexing report, was updated back on June 2nd, causing a ton of confusion. Google Search Console forgot to notify us of a page indexing report update, causing a ton of confusion. Google will release improvements to site names in the near future. Also, site names might not show if Google has a confidence issue with the name. Google Bard released new features and rolled it out to most regions. Google Search Generative Experience seems to not be less exciting these days. Google said its core SEO advice has not changed in two decades. Google detailed its SEO guidance for content syndication partners, which upset a lot of news SEOs. Google Search Console sent out notifications around the new INP core web vitals, also causing confusion. Google is testing a swipe to share and save feature for snippets. Google Search is testing snippets with drop-down to translate. Google Search's Explore section can now show ads. Google AdSense can accept payments through SEPA. Google Universal Analytics 3 is still collecting data for many properties. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Sponsored by Rank Ranger, the all-in-one- professional SEO software. Rank Ranger is a comprehensive SEO platform that allows you to grow your business with data and analytics. It offers valuable insights through advanced rank tracking, including above-the-fold tracking, Organic Share of Voice reporting, actionable SERP feature data, and SERP analysis tools.

In part one, we learned about Matt Abbagnaro and also about his experience with Performance Max Google Ads campaign. In part two, we moved on to talking about client services and he spoke about Kirk Williams (aka @PPCKirk) book, Stop the Scale.

He said it is all about client service work and giving the best to your clients first, as opposed to just growing your business as quickly as possible. He said a lot of these companies are really good at sales but have not mastered their service.

I told him that I agree about doing what is best for your customers is important, more than just growing your business. But I do give credit to those agencies that can scale and grow quickly. So I see both sides of the coin, and you got to do what you are good at for your business and clients.

So we talked about the two different types of business strategies and to each their own.

He personally spends more time doing the work, fulfillment, than doing sales and business development. He does cold emails, Instagram and DMs people to find new clients. He recommends Instagram voice messages and I told him I find the video messages are creepy to me. But he said it works for him but it is a numbers game.

Then the bell rang and we had to end the interview!

You can learn more about Matt Abbagnaro on Twitter @TheRealLilStain and on LinkedIn.

This morning, we are seeing significant movement with the Google search results ranking and algorithm. Twitter blocked unregistered users from seeing tweets, which blocked Googlebot and resulted in huge drops in Google Search traffic but a few days later, Twitter fixed it. Bing Chat improved its efficiency and dropped latency by 25%. OpenAI disabled the Bing Search feature in ChatGPT due to paywall issues. Bing Chat will add a way not to search the web for answers. Google said it would work up new ideas for robots.txt that might work better for generative AI technology. Google Search Generative Experience can show local store inventory. Google is testing showing author names in the top stories carousel. I posted the monthly Google webmaster report. Google said no ranking factor compensates for missing relevance. Google said /blog or not, it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t say Google is wrong. Edits you make to your Google Local Service Ads hours will show up in Google Business Profiles in 24 hours. Google Merchant Center is rolling out automated discounts. Google Ads Editor version 2.4 is now out. Google Ads will remove examples from the legal requirements policies. Google Analytics UA3 is still collecting data for some but for how much longer. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Sponsored by BruceClay, who has been doing search marketing optimization since 1996 and also has an amazing SEO training platform.