Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google BERT, NY Times Hit, Flash Dies Again, Link Building & Much More
In this weeks video I get a bit more fancy with my editing, I hope you find it funny and I apologize about my congestion but I hope the video editing makes up for it... - Google Talks About Building Too Many Links Too Fast
Google's John Mueller in this morning's video at the 22:47 mark said that building too many links in a short period of time is not an issue by itself but rather it is the types of links you are probably building in that time period. He said often it leads to links that are against Google's guidelines. - Google: Mobile First Indexing Isn't Aimed At Adjusting Rankings
When Hannah Poferl said the New York Times saw a decline in Google organic search traffic because of either the Google BERT update or the site being switched to mobile-first indexing, John Mueller from Google said it probably isn't the mobile-first indexing thing. - Google Video Snippets Showing Different Web Sites?
Joost de Valk from Yoast SEO, who has a wealth of access to tons of SEO data, asked Google on Twitter "did Google roll out a change in video snippets? We're seeing video card and snippets in the normal search results for loads of sites that didn't have them a while ago." Google did not respond but the tracking tools do show some fluctuations in the video boxes. - Google: Site Kit Now Available To All WordPress Sites
Google announced last night that those running WordPress site can now install Google's Site Kit with ease. Site Kit gives you data from Search Console, Analytics, AdSense, PageSpeed Insights, Tag Manager and Optimize - assuming you use all of those features - directly in your WordPress console. - Danny Sullivan Meets With BERT
Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, posted a selfie with him and Bert from Sesame Street on Twitter. Danny wrote "Just checking that BERT is working OK. Says he's good."
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- In short, if you significantly change your website, we'll use the new website as a basis for determining when & where to show it in relevant search results. Changes can be good, chan, John Mueller on Twitter
- I don't think so. In fact, the statement we made at Chrome Dev Summit last year seems to be on the more pessimistic side of things., Martin Splitt on Twitter
- Yeah, that can be a bit confusing. The way I understand it is that we're showing products more broadly in Search now, so instead of crawling multiple times, we can reuse those crawls directl, John Mueller on Twitter
- You don't need to make AMP pages, but AMP is a great way of making really fast mobile pages, if you care about that. Also, depending on your setup, it might be that there's a plugin that takes care of it al, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- SEO best practices support ADA compliance for digital accessibility
- Google launches Site Kit plugin for WordPress
- Study: Killing ‘review gating’ doesn’t hurt scores and grows overall volume
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
- Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs gets conditional nod for Toronto smart city, CNBC
- Google announces $5.3M investment in San Jose affordable housing project, San Jose Spotlight
- Google to acquire Fitbit, Google Blog
Links & Promotion Building
- What is Content Marketing?, Distilled
Local & Maps
- How to Map 301 Redirects to Relevant Content, Go Fish Digital
- Incognito Mode for Google Maps is now rolling out to Android users, Android Central
Mobile & Voice
- Assistant on Smart Displays can now listen for and speak Italian, Android Police
SEO
- Beta: Search Intention Analyses in the Toolbox, SISTRIX
- DeepCrawl’s Ultimate Guide to Improving SEO & Developer Relationships, DeepCrawl
- Evolution of Google's News Ranking Algorithm, SEO By The Sea
- Squarespace SEO vs. WordPress: 3.6M Domains Studied, Ahrefs
- Google Webmaster Hangout Notes: October 29th 2019, DeepCrawl
- Hypothesis Testing in SEO & Statistical Significance - Whiteboard Friday, Moz
PPC
- Facebook’s political ad ban created a disaster in Washington state, The Verge
- Google is Helping Small Businesses in Underserved Communities, Small Business Trends
Other Search
- Chrome 79 Beta: Virtual Reality Comes to the Web, Chromium Blog
