Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form: · Name: Google helpful content update · Launch Date: It began to rollout on August 25th · Rollout: It will take about two weeks to fully roll out · Targets: It looks at content that was created to rank well in search over help humans · Search Only: This currently only impacts Google Search, not Google Discover or other Google surfaces. But Google may expand this to Discover and more in the future. · Penalty: Google did not ...
Aug 26, 2022•55 min
A lot of search news this week and with Dave on the road in meetings Kristine Shachinger from Sites Without Walls in Las Vegas sat in with Jim to cover it. We started talking about Google's well-named new multi-analytic tag, The Google Tag, and how to properly apply it. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Aug 05, 2022•58 min
It's reporting season and there's fallout on the floor. Shopify lays off 10% of the workforce on bad Ecomm bets while Meta(Facebook) posts its first quarterly loss in the company's history... Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jul 28, 2022•48 min
Most SEOs consider Google Search Console (GSC) their source of truth and trust the data to be accurate. What if I told you that GSC doesn’t tell you all of the keywords you’re getting traffic from? In fact, the tool doesn’t show a term for nearly half the clicks. These instances of hidden terms account for 46.08% of all clicks in our study. The study includes one month of data across 146,741 websites and nearly 9 billion total clicks. Google Updates Help Docs in wake of Stox’s Study. https://www...
Jul 14, 2022•50 min
John Mueller Says Search Result pages are relatively similar to no to low effort category pages. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-query-pages-equivalent-to-low-effort-category-pages-33699.html FCC does not have the authority to force Apple or Google to remove TikTok from their stores however the US government continues to warn against it after US data was accessed by ByteDance Engineers from within China. FCC can fine TikTok and even force reforms on the company as reported in Axios ea...
Jul 08, 2022•50 min
Several years of Mobile First. What’s changed? https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mobile-first-index-guide/437472/ Google clarifies 15MB is really big https://www.seroundtable.com/google-clarifies-15mb-googlebot-limit-33670.html 8 Tips on Ecommerce from Googler, Alan Kent https://www.seroundtable.com/google-offers-8-tips-on-e-commerce-seo-33676.html FCC Commissioner asks Google and Apple to ban TikTok from their respective stores https://www.searchenginejournal.com/fcc-requests-tiktok-ba...
Jun 30, 2022•54 min
Greg’s Guide to Social Media Algorithms https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media-algorithms/453220/ Roger Montti on LaMDA https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-lamda-sentient/454820/ Google updates its notes on HTTP status codes https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-http-status-codes-googlebot-job-posting-docs-33638.html Google: Hypens over underscores in URLs https://www.seroundtable.com/google-underscores-hyhens-in-urls-seo-33631.html Content that’s not visible isn’t as crit...
Jun 23, 2022•58 min
Google Researcher Punished Saying " Google’s Artificial Intelligence Had Achieved Sentience" as Google placed Blake Lemoine on leave last week after he published transcripts of conversations between himself, a Google “collaborator”, and the company’s LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system. Is AI sentient? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine Google Business Profile – Profile Strength Widget produces ...
Jun 19, 2022•57 min
Google Core Update finished rolling out https://www.seroundtable.com/google-may-2022-core-update-done-rolling-out-33562.html EU Publishers and Webmasters can’t block US traffic without also blocking Google and Googlebot https://www.seroundtable.com/eu-publishers-block-us-users-google-33557.html Don’t add your company name to image alt-text. It’s redundant, undescriptive, and not helpful https://www.seroundtable.com/google-company-name-in-blank-image-alt-text-33538.html Yoast and IndexNow “They c...
Jun 09, 2022•55 min
Reports say Apple is likely to announce a new user-centric web search. However, for the search engine to become functional, Apple wants to wait till January 2023 to do so. Apple published a list of things that might affect rankings back in 2020 • Aggregated user engagement with search results • Relevancy and matching of search terms to webpage topics and content • Number and quality of links from other pages on the web • User location based signals (approximate data) • Webpage design characteris...
Jun 02, 2022•57 min
Jim and Kristine comment on the sudden passing of the great Bill Slawski, the Dean of SEO https://www.seroundtable.com/rip-bill-slawski-33446.html May 2022 Broad Core Update https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/05/may-2022-core-update More FAQs being promoted in Rich Results? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-showing-more-search-results-with-faq-rich-results-33479.html Don’t get hung up on Toxic Links https://www.seroundtable.com/google-on-toxic-links-tool-marketing-33435.html Suing ...
May 26, 2022•1 hr 1 min
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-se...
May 19, 2022•58 min
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 metri...
May 13, 2022•55 min
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, an...
Apr 29, 2022•58 min
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-kno...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr
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 exp...
Apr 15, 2022•1 hr
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 ...
Apr 07, 2022•56 min
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 http...
Mar 31, 2022•59 min
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 fam...
Mar 25, 2022•59 min
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...
Mar 17, 2022•58 min
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 backlink...
Mar 11, 2022•55 min
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/goo...
Mar 04, 2022•1 hr 3 min
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, Uk...
Feb 25, 2022•55 min
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 ...
Feb 17, 2022•58 min
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...
Feb 10, 2022•50 min
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/ne...
Feb 03, 2022•55 min
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-w...
Jan 27, 2022•58 min
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 La...
Jan 20, 2022•1 hr
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 Go...
Jan 14, 2022•53 min
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 believab...
Jan 10, 2022•1 hr 3 min
