Search Engine Roundtable Podcast

To start things off, I quickly covered the monthly Google webmaster report. Google also had some big unconfirmed update on or around October 28th. Google confirmed a search bug with top stories and search features starting on October 18th through October 28th. I provided one example of one site that got slammed by the Google spam update in October. Links might not be as important of a ranking factor in the future, Google’s John Mueller said. Google finally added Google Lens to the desktop search box. Google search added new ways to find deals in Google Search. Google is now testing the site name and favicons in the desktop search results. Google Search docs had some minor updates that may interest you. Google said duplicate content URLs in a sitemap file is not going to cause ranking issues. Google Search Console verified sites don’t get crawled faster or more. Google said sites do not need 200,000 words to be considered authoritative. Google said do not write content based off of keyword search volume lists. The Google Business Profile manager is now redirecting to Google Search. A brief study said that keywords in your local reviews do not impact your Google local rankings. Google Business Profile photo insights will be going away. Google Ads is killing off similar audience segments next year. Google Ads has a new policy update for government documents and official services. Google is showing on-time delivery, order accuracy estimates, and more in search ad snippets. Bing Image search is testing animated ads. Microsoft Advertising has updated its Google performance max import tool. 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. Check out their Halloween SEO commercial, it is fun.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Rick Mariano is the Vice President of Digital at Hearst and he runs LocalEdge, a local digital marketing agency for small businesses. They do high volume digital marketing services for low cost and less budget. He also runs another sub-agency that is more boutique style that does higher-budget marketing for fewer clients.

Rick explained the process of providing high-quality digital marketing services for lower cost is a huge challenge and something they are very good at. They have a pretty large agency that is able to do this at scale through many different strategies, as he explained. This includes partnering with other agencies and hiring smartly. Plus, having internal systems they built helps them scale without reducing quality.

He explained how Hearst has helped with the growth and the scale. I love how he shared some mistakes they made during the process of building the agencies.

You can follow Rick Mariano on LinkedIn and at LocalEdge.

This week, we covered how the day after Google announced the Google October 2022 spam update was done, only then did we see some really massive changes. Google fixed a month-long bug with Google Analytics 3, where the Search Console query data was missing. Google Analytics 4 added a bunch of new features and more details about the deadlines. Google Search Console fixed another bug with mislabeled rich results errors. Google fixed a favicon bug in Google Search. The old page speed algorithms are no longer in use at Google Search. Google said the Site name is at the domain level but Favicons are at both the domain and subdomain levels. Google said there is no documented length for the Site name. Google said you'd be lucky if you ended up in the same place in Google Search after URL changes. Google may be showing fewer FAQs and other rich results in search, while also possibly showing fewer local panels. Google Business Profiles full menu feature in web search seems fully live. Google is testing an “explore” in the more visual products section. Bing is testing a full-size search bar in the bottom right section of the search results page. A new zero click study by Semrush puts the figure more at 25% as opposed to 65%. Google Ads released version 12.0 of the API. Google Ads added Performance Max features for the holidays. Google and Microsoft both reported earnings, that disappointed Wall Street. Google spoke about doing SEO for its own SEO documentation, it was pretty funny. 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.

Search Topics of Discussion:

In part one, I do a lot of bantering with Greg Finn and talk about his history in the space and the growth of his agency, Cypress North. In part two we start to talk about his contributions to the industry, and then here in part three, we get into Google Ads.

Greg explained he loves Google Ads for what it used to be and what it can be but there is a misalignment in the short-term goals and he thinks it will lead to a major decline in Google Ads. He explained that the Google OKRs are short-term goals and there are no long-term results with it. He sees the changes Google is making are too focused on the short term, this quarter's results, and not the long term. Google’s earnings have been insane and he thinks it might result in long-term issues.

He said what Google is doing is you tell me your budget and then trust us, we will show your ads in the right place, not show you what keywords you are bidding on but trust us, we will spend your budget properly. If you are paying for specific search terms, you should be able to know what those terms are. In some cases, you can’t see 33% of where your ads are coming from and that is just insane.

Google is showing your ads in placements that you might not want to show up and then you will block and Google doesn’t want you to do it. So he thinks that is some of the reason behind the privacy changes. We debated about this a bit.

You can learn more about Greg Finn and follow him on Twitter @gregfinn.

The Google October 2022 spam update, the first spam update since last November, started and was completed within 42 hours, I have more on that in the video. Google also has rolled out a new Site name and favicon design for the mobile search results, with new structured data. With that, Google has rolled out the new bold black “sponsored” ad label. On that label, Google is working on a fix for some favicons not displaying properly in Google Search. Google product panels are testing an expanded pricing detail interface. Google is also showing trending now on the shopping results. Google is testing the interactive knowledge panels directly in the auto-complete search drop-down box. Google is testing a new local find and also grouping photos by categories in the local panels. We are also seeing third-party appointment services hijacking the local business profiles links. Also, we are now seeing reviews being removed in mass from some local business profiles. Google is rolling out My Ad Center to all. Google Ads is working on decreasing invalid leads through Performance Max. Google Ads is testing a broad match-only setting, which upset many advertisers. Google Ads has three new reporting columns now. 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 Wix - Did you know that Wix now is integrated with Semrush for keyword research? Here are more details.

Search Topics of Discussion:

In part one, I do a lot of bantering with Greg Finn and talk about his history in the space and the growth of his agency, Cypress North. In part two we start to talk about his contributions to the industry, including writing at Search Engine Land and speaking at Search Marketing Expo. He started writing at Search Engine Land in 2007 or so and then he became more part-time, on a regular basis, shortly after.

We discuss a lot of what Finn and Cypress North do for the community. The podcast, Marketing O’Clock, puts 25 hours or so into each episode. That is a lot, a lot of time, and it shows. We talk about the show for a while, which I think you will all like and should subscribe to. Greg is a true treasure for the search marketing community.

You can learn more about Greg Finn and follow him on Twitter @gregfinn.

This week, Google pushed out a revamped Google Webmaster Guidelines and renamed it the Google Search Essentials. Google also seemed to release an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update. Google told us that the product reviews update primarily works on a page-level basis but not always. Google added three examples of what types of pages are product reviews. Google also said structured data may help Google understand what content is product reviews related. Google has a new error in the Google News Publisher Center. I posted an example of a featured snippet call-out. Google now supports image credits on image metadata. Google does not shuffle the search results after they are loaded. Microsoft said now half of BingBot crawls are over the new user's agent. Google released a bunch of older reviews for local businesses this week. Google Business Profiles now lets you edit your ticket procures. Google’s local panel is testing “hear about this place” in some regions. Google AdSense now supports personalization with first-party cookies and added new blocking controls. Google Data Studio was also renamed, this one was renamed to Looker Studio. I am once again going to be offline Monday and Tuesday, it is the last of the set of Jewish holidays. 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 Semrush.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Greg Finn and I have known each other for a pretty long time, so this video is pretty fun and we kind of go off topic a bunch but I promise, there is some knowledge throughout. We both miss the old days, the golden era, of search marketing - it was just a lot of fun. We dug into Greg's professional history, which you can look up on his LinkedIn profile and listen to on the podcast. It is interesting to hear how Greg fell in love with paid search and PPC campaigns.

Despite how negative Greg can come off about Google Ads, he is one of the biggest fans of Google Ads. He won’t work for Google, he said on the record. We then talked about who at Google has the worst job, John Mueller or Danny Sullivan. We got off on some tangents on the old SEO podcasts we use to do.

He described why and how he started Cypress North and spoke about the early days of his business modes they had back then. We spoke about the growth of his company and the challenges of hiring.

You can learn more about Greg Finn and follow him on Twitter @gregfinn.

This week, I posted the monthly Google webmaster report, an excellent place to catch up on the past month in SEO. Glenn Gabe shared some wild charts showing how Google’s various search algorithms can't make up its mind about on-site quality. Google Search Console’s queries report in Google Analytics UA3 is not passing query data. Google Search Console’s performance report is missing data from September 21st. Google also is still working on the timestamp issues for news articles in Google Search. Google does not track Multisearch in Google Search Console. Google’s John Mueller said that visually searching is rare. Google dished out advice on what to do when copy sites outrank you. Google updated its review guidelines to disallow discouraging negative reviews and more. Google Business Profiles are being suspended big time. Google Business Profiles also has weird spikes with some Insights reports. Google has removed the health and safety section from Google Business Profiles. Google Shopping has a new chat feature. Google Ads will update its financial services policy in the UK soon. Google Ads now lets you apply a recommendation as an experiment on the experiments page. Microsoft Advertising added performance max imports, new data exclusion features, automated extension additions, and much more. Google Ads released the API schedule for release dates and sunset dates in 2023. Google Tag added tap coverage summary and new Google Ads, Google Analytics, and popular CMS integrations. Also, I am offline this and next Monday and Tuesday for the last set of Jewish holidays. 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.

Search Topics of Discussion:

We learned about Maggie Humphrey in part one and what she did while working at DAC and in part two, we dig a bit more into content development strategies for franchises.

She explained the strategy is often about the franchise to give a peek into your office and work. They do a lot of social media campaigns for these clients as well. She mentioned that COVID had a big impact on these businesses. So it forced these businesses to focus more on digital.

So the cool thing is that they have a lot of clients but all the content, social media, Google Business Profile content, and posts, all of that is unique to each individual client.

We briefly spoke about the Google March local search update and Maggie said they are proactive about this and normally know about it prior to the client noticing. But these clients have really big well-known names and this client doesn’t really depend solely on local search, so it is not a huge deal.

You can follow Maggie Humphrey on LinkedIn and connect there.