Webcology

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.

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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

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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

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

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

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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