Search Engine Roundtable Podcast

This was a busy week and I drove out to visit Greg Finn and friends in Buffalo, I helped co-host the Marketing O'Clock show and record some vlogs for the channel - so check out Marketing O'Clock on YouTube and your favorite podcast player. We are finally seeing ranking volatility in the search results related to the product reviews update after not seeing much early on. Google also released a local search ranking update that supposedly corrected the Vicinity update from December. Google launched a new highly cited top stories label and improved the about this result with a come back later warning in search. Google said it now uses MUM for detecting personal crisis searchers and expanded BERT to handle the detection of unexpected shocking content. Google Data Studio can now bring in Google News and Google Discover data from Search Console. Google Search Console’s structured data error report is more descriptive now. Google is killing off the URL parameter tool on April 26th. Google launched trusted store badges for merchants that score well in the Google experience scorecard. Google’s visual stories are now ranking well for competitive keyword phrases. Google’s John Mueller said nofollow is not a dampening factor, which many SEOs for some reason do not believe. John Mueller also said do not keep redirected URLs in your sitemap for over 3 months. John Mueller of Google was giving advice on how to improve your DA, no this was not an April Fools joke. Google rolled out a new visual design format for some queries. Google continues to test the expanded tab search snippet feature. Google is also testing displaying the image previews on the right side of the image pack. Google is testing an audio feature for some knowledge panels. Bing has round category icons to explore more images. Bing also has this massive Wikipedia box at the top of its search results. Google AdSense anchor ads for AMP sites are now working for auto ads. 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:

For Google Updates, The Product Reviews Update III Is Not That Huge - So Far

Now Seeing Volatility For The Google Product Reviews Update (v. March 2022)

Google Local Search Update On March 23rd 'Corrects' Vicinity Update

Google Search Highly Cited Stories & Come Back Later For Evolving Results

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

New: Google Data Studio Supports Discover & Google News Traffic From Search Console

Google Structured Data Error Reporting Gets More Descriptive Names & Context

Google Search Console To Kill URL Parameter Tool On April 26th

New Google Trusted Store Badge Based On Shopping Experience Scorecard

Google Visual Stories Showing On Page One For Competitive Keywords

Google: Nofollow Is Not A Dampening Factor

Google: Keep Old Redirected URLs In Sitemaps Files Temporarily

Google's John Mueller Gives Advice On Increasing Your DA - No Joke

Google Search Results Rolls Out Much More Visual Design In Grid Formats & More

Google Continues Expandable Tab Search Result Snippets Test

Google Tests Image Search Pack That Loads Images On Right On Click

Google Audio Knowledge Panel To Listen In Your Language

Bing Round Category Icons To Explore More Images

Bing Interactive Wikipedia Box In Search Results

Google AdSense Anchor Ads On AMP Sites With Auto Ads

In part one of my interview with David Melamed, we spoke about his background and the beauty of the search marketing industry. David Melamed and I in part two then spoke about the long term viability and success of search spam, antitrust issues and more. In part three we talk about reviews, review gating and how to handle all of this properly.

David explained that you really just want to work with companies that provide amazing service where the reviews are just amazing. He brought up the recent FTC fine for review gating and blocking negative reviews. He explained why that company got in trouble. He said if he receives a call from a company that needs help cleaning up reviews, he said, he won’t work with a company that is bad, he doesn’t want to clean up the mess.

He feels most people are sensible enough to censor out bad or misinformation. I disagree with him, I think those in the SEM industry pick up on it quickly because we are good at finding manipulation. But the average person, including our senators and congressmen and congresswomen don’t know how search works.

He said this kind of came from cookies and ultra high targeting, driving mass traffic that was without value, including entertainment news sites. So these sites drove tons of low quality traffic to the site, that devalued the ads themselves. Not only that, David said it also led to trust decay.

David brought up an example of how Amazon lost his trust and his purchases for months because Amazon targeted him for baby gifts when he and his wife have fertility issues. He was mad at Amazon and Amazon lost his trust and him as a customer for months. That led us to talking about emotion and empathy that companies should look for in their data when doing targeting. Personally, I never really get upset by data but the average person does. I just don’t see a way for companies to handle this without missing out on opportunities. We discuss how important personalization and data is for marketing and targeting, and maybe it is not important? In short, we don’t think data or personalization is done with bias.

Then we start talking a bit about Google Ads, the value of an impression and conversion rates but the action camera cut out.

You can learn more about David Melamed on his website at davidmelamed.com.

This week was pretty busy, we had the third Google product reviews update and I go deep into this algorithm update. We saw what I called a Spring 2022 Google search update, Google did not confirm it and it was unrelated to the product reviews update. Google released some data on how search improved, how much it tests, how much they experimented and how searchers change how they search. Google Maps released a lot of data on their spam and fraud protection and fighting. Google did look into giving sites an eco-friendly ranking boost but didn’t do it yet. Google spoke about if you can redirect old 404ed pages to gain its old link value. Google said machine learning and AI generated content still is not high quality enough for search. Google said leaving redirects in place for only 3 months is not enough. Google said pricing is not a ranking factor, again. Google explained again why it does not crawl and index everything. Google’s Gary Illyes, Martin Split and Lizzi Sassman spoke about de-SEOing. Google Ads Editor version 2.0 is out with performance max support. Google launched the new Google Partners directory. Google has paused ads that exploits, dismisses or condones the Russia - Ukraine war. Google Business Profiles added emergency help attributes for Ukrainian refugees. Google Search is testing appointments and booking at healthcare providers. Microsoft Advertising updated its reporting capabilities in a big way. Google Search is testing a gray search box which in dark mode looks horrible. Google Search has discount codes in the shopping pack. Google Ads is testing new icon ad extensions. Google is testing a lower price label in the shopping results. Microsoft Bing is testing “on this page” jump to links for its search results page. With Google Analytics 4, make sure to run both the GA4 and Universal Analytics UA tracking codes in parallel. Google Merchant Center is now a linking product in Google Analytics 4. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: Duda

Search Topics of Discussion:

March 2022 Google Product Reviews Update Rolling Out - Everything We See So Far

Spring 2022 Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update

Google: We Reduced Irrelevant Search Results By 50% & Made 5,000 Changes In 2021

Google Maps 2021 Blocked 100 Million Fraudulent & Abusive Edits & More

Google Looked Into An Eco-Friendly Search Ranking Boost

Does Redirecting Links That Lead To 404 Pages Gain Google SEO Value?

Google: Machine Or AI Generated Content Still Not High Quality

Google: Site Moves With Redirects In Place Only For 3-Months Is Too Short

Google Again: Product Prices Not A Ranking Factor But Explains Why...

Google Explains Why Google Does Not Crawl & Index Every URL

Google Talks About de-SEOing The Search Central Web Pages

New Google Ads Editor v2.0 Live With Performance Max Campaign Support & More

New Google Partners Directory Now Live

Google Pauses Ads That Exploits, Dismisses Or Condones The Russia-Ukraine War

Google Business Profile Emergency Help Attributes

Google Search Tests Healthcare Provider Appointments & Booking

Microsoft Advertising Updates Reporting Capabilities & Usability

Google Search Tests Light Gray Search Box

Google Search Bar Bug Makes Autocomplete Query Hard To See

Google Search With Discount Coupon Codes In Shopping Pack

Google Ads Tests New Ad Extension Icons

Google Testing Lower Price Icon In Search Shopping Results

Microsoft Bing On This Page SERP Feature

Run In Parallel The Old Google Analytics UA Tracking Code With New GA4 Code

Google Merchant Center Integration Live For Some In Google Analytics 4

In part one of my interview with David Melamed, we spoke about his background and the beauty of the search marketing industry. David Melamed and I in part two then spoke about the long term viability and success of search spam.

David explains he is pretty creative when it comes to coming up with ideas for websites to do well in search. He brought up some old local spam strategies that simply did not work. He said just the other day he received a question about exact match domains. In short, the shortcuts don’t work anymore. You need to be legit and do it the right way and build a real business.

This pivoted our conversation towards the topic about anti-trust issues with Google and how other search engines are just one click away. There are about 20 start up search engines trying to compete with Google. I talk about the early days of Google and we get into politics a bit.

We briefly also spoke about branded search results and the Google Ads policies around there. He is not happy with how Google handles branded searches and how competitors use that to their advantage. But he does not like that this is allowed and even more so, how Google broad matches on those competitor names.

Then we spoke a bit about easy it was to spam Google and search engines but nowadays it is simply not as easy. We spoke about some examples and also about the concept of testing platforms for SEO.

You can learn more about David Melamed on his website at davidmelamed.com.

This week, I covered a possible Google update that ticked off a week ago, but it was weird, the tools didn’t pick up on it. Google announced it is sunsetting Google Analytics Universal Analytics in 2023 and you will need to start using Google Analytics 4. Google said it won’t encourage people to switch to GA4 by giving them a ranking boost - it won’t happen. Google had a bug with reviews not posting that Google should have fixed. The free Google hotel listings have expanded and added more features and reporting. Google refine this search and broaden this search are live now, but do not use MUM. Google is testing offer carousels for some search results. Google said site quality issues don’t go away when you move the site to a new domain name. Google said the page experience update can be assigned to sections of your site. Google again said it does not use user experience as a ranking factor. Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool is still not fully fixed. Google’s favicon crawler now uses Googlebot and Googlebot-Image tokens. 80% of SEOs expect to see some traffic loss after a site migration. Most SEOs say they use canonicals to manage faceted navigation. Google image search is testing Lens with search, text, and translate options. SMS messaging might return to Google Business Profile messaging. Google is testing “on these lists” in the local results. Google hotel listings have an attribute for free or discounted accommodations for those displaced from Ukraine. Google officially announced the Search Central Unconference. 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.

Search Topics of Discussion:

David Melamed, who I’ve known for about 15 years or so, has been in the space for about that long or even longer. David Melamed is now a search marketing consultant for many companies. You can learn more about him on his website at davidmelamed.com. David and I worked on some projects together early on and we were discussing some new projects, since he was in town and I convinced him to do a vlog with me. The batteries on one of the cameras died, so we ended talking at some point, otherwise we probably would have gone on for hours and hours.

We spoke about how David entered the search marketing space, first leveraging Metacrawler, one of the early search engines from 1995. We spoke about some of the early SEO conferences, SES and where we met. I checked my emails after we spoke and I think we first emailed back in 2008 or so but we probably met in 2007 at the conference.

David said search was his first love and his dream was to do marketing, specifically Super Bowl commercials. He grew up without a TV (sounds horrible to me) but he says that kind of fueled his desire to do marketing. Between that and his dad being a programmer, he really dived right into search marketing.

He sees every marketing problem through the lens of search, the intent level is a layer on the world he said.

We then spoke about some of his work history in search marketing space. This includes how he interviewed for his first SEO job and he was rejected. But he begged them to reinterview him, he learned SEO in a couple weeks through Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, so he credits Aaron Wall for his success in this space.  David explained that it is hard to know who to trust in search marketing and he said he often feels like he personally does not know enough himself.

We spoke also about how the SEM industry is one of the most sharing industry, he believes because we all wanted links, so we shared as much as possible just to get links. He said he loved the old Stuntdubl blog from Todd Malicoat - but it is not updated as much.

And this continues to be important, write great stuff that people want to link to and Google will rank it well.

You can learn more about David Melamed on his website at davidmelamed.com.

On March 4th we had more Google search turbulence, a possible Google search ranking update around then. Google's John Mueller said they sped up the SafeSearch filter classification process. The translated indexing issue we spoke about last week was from the Google Cloud team, ironically. Google said indexing issues can be old spam related but likely not old adult content related. Google said it ignores widget links, so why bother. One SEO claims that content outside of hidden tabs will result in higher rankings, despite what Google says. Google posted on how they discover content within videos today. Google’s people also ask can be displayed two or more times on a search results page. Does having subdomains give you more of a shot at having more indented grouped results in Google Search. Google web stories tests the URL in the outer and instructions. Google’s Danny Sullivan corrected Andrew Yang and Ramesh Srinivasan on how search works. John Mueller gave a lesson to a novice SEO on links. Google Search Center’s virtual unconference registration opens March 17th and the event is March 23rd. Google Shopping has a filter to see only products from smaller stores. Google Ads is testing grayed out parts of URLs. Microsoft Advertising launched professional service ads and Microsoft Advertising Editor gained audience network support. Google Search also added Jewish Shabbat times to search. 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:

Taylor Kurtz (@realtaylorkurtz) is the Founder of Crush the Rankings and he stopped by my office to talk SEO. In part one, we spoke about his background in search, the gratitude he has in the industry and getting up early to work. In part two we speak about AMP, Apple Search and video SEO.

AMP seems to be shifting away since Google’s new page experience update stopped requiring AMP for the top stories carousel. AMP years ago was all the crazy and all the buzz he said, which is not unusual for Google to put everything into something new and then several years later let it die out. Now that you can achieve the same performance without AMP, then why use AMP?

We spoke about the difference between the pre-announced Google algorithm updates versus the updates Google does not give you a lot of heads up on. The pre-announced updates are generally very light weight compared to the ones Google does not pre-announce.

Apple Search was the next topic we spoke about and he thinks Apple Search and Spotlight might be able to compete marketshare wise with Google. Mobile Safari controls a huge share of the mobile browser share and now the default search engine on mobile Safari is Google, Google pays a lot for that - $15 billion per year and rising.

I brought up how I thought that back in 2004 Microsoft would be able to take over search market share from Google. I said that because back then, Microsoft owned the browser, the operating system and PC market. Google had none of that, they didn’t have Chrome, they didn’t have Android, they didn’t have an OS back then.

This is a topic we covered a few times, as some of you know, I am a big Apple fan boy.

Then we rounded out our conversation talking about video and SEO and using videos for SEO. We briefly talked about how speed can be an issue with videos on pages but also, Google likes to rank videos in search from this story. He explained there is no definitive answer on how to implement videos on pages with SEO considerations. There can be issues with Google not indexing videos if you only load a video on click, so that video might not get indexed by Google in some of those cases.

We spoke about how Google is now able to parse out content in a video, we even saw a feature where Google showcases what answers are found in videos. But videos are super powerful for search and SEO, so focus a bit more on it.

You can learn more about Taylor Kurtz @realtaylorkurtz on social.

This week in search, I reported how the Google page experience update for desktop has been fully rolled out. I also posted my monthly Google webmaster recap, for you all to check out and catch up with. Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool is erroring out for some folks. Alan Kent from Google said no worries on merchants trying to fake the Shopping experience scorecard metrics, Google has ways to verify the metrics and will penalize merchants that try. IndexNow has grown with integration from Duda and a couple new SEO plugins but Yoast’s founder is not too optimistic about it. Google said it does not use the disavow files to discover link networks. Google spoke about the issues with translated content and garbage parameters in URLs. If you block users in the US, you need to block Google as well. Don’t forget, there are not more eligibility requirements for showing up in top stores. Google’s local pack map is now an interactive map. Google is showing how the business details are confirmed in the local listings. Google business profiles may require double verification. Google is testing a search bar filter at the top right section. Google is testing dropped the estimated results. Google has an upcoming SEO workshop with its internal SEOs and the Search Central unconference is coming later this month. Most people think Google will remain dominate over the next ten years. Google has pauses all ads from serving in Russia temporarily. Anton Shulke, a beloved SEM, is in Kyiv, Ukraine, trying to live a normal life but also making badges out of bedding - praying for you all. That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSORED by Bruce Clay, one of the founding fathers of the SEO space, doing search marketing optimization since 1996. Bruce Clay is big into SEO training, check out seotraining.com to learn more and check them out at bruceclay.com.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Taylor Kurtz (@realtaylorkurtz) is the Founder of Crush the Rankings and he stopped by my office to talk SEO. Crush the Rankings is now about four years old and he started this company based on him working on a site that was “black listed” in Google. He credited his mentor, Mindy Weinstein, in helping him through that process. He spoke about his process to recover that site and how he learned about SEO to accomplish that.

He had the flexibility to start his own company and do it his own thing, so he is super grateful he was able to start his own company. He actually launched his company on the day he graduated from university. You can hear from Taylor how appreciative of the support he had along the way, which is such a nice thing to hear from people on the industry.

Taylor’s work ethic is insane, he is up at 4am and checks email before he even gets out of bed. But he does go to sleep pretty early, which I think is amazing and a great thing. Being productive is much easier for some people earlier in the morning than later at night. I personally wake up at 5am but I don’t go to sleep until after 11pm.

You can learn more about Taylor Kurtz @realtaylorkurtz on social.