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:
- Interviewing Five Google Webmaster Trends Analysts In One Room
Aleyda Solis interviewed not one, but five Google Webmaster Trends Analysts at the same time while at the Google Webmaster Conference in Zurich. It was pretty fun and interesting to see how they interact with each other while answering questions. How they all somewhat joke that SEOs really need to look at the bigger picture and not focus on the smaller detailed SEO questions. - Google Publisher Center Add Section Crawl Option Broken?
Google upgraded the publisher center over the past couple weeks but not everything in the new publisher center seems to be working properly. A Google Publisher Center help thread says that when you try to add a new section using the web crawl option, it simply doesn't work. - Google's John Mueller Answers Seven Common SEO Questions Including The Secret To Ranking
Google's John Mueller posted a single #AskGoogleWebmasters video answering seven SEO questions. All the questions are pretty basic and you probably heard John answer them before. He even answered the question "What is the secret to ranking better?" The answer, be awesome. - Google Ads Social Media Support Ends January 1, 2020
Google Ads announced on Twitter and Facebook that it is ending its social media support on January 1, 2020. Google wrote "Direct messages and comments will not be actioned starting January 1, 2020." - Google Holiday Season From Happy Holidays 2019 Doodles
Yesterday we posted two Google Doodles for the happy holidays season but something changed. The query when you clicked on the Doodle was for [happy holidays 2019!] that changed yesterday afternoon to [holiday season] for some reason. Also, Google added the day three Doodle where the Google logo is fully dressed up for Christmas day. - Google Winter Ball Pit
Google loves its ball pits and here is a winter ball pint theme for the holiday season. This was in a Google event in the Google New York City office. This was posted on Instagram.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Which is better in SEO for crosslinking via source code - absolute url vs relative url, Reddit
- Google rolled out đź‘Ťđź‘Žfor hotel reviews. cc: @rustybrick https://t.co/24mGTLumil, Sergey Alakov on Twitter
- Christmas and New Year Greetings, WebmasterWorld
- Sounds like it would be seen as a big part of the page by users, right?, John Mueller on Twitter
- Yep. Non-200 = not used for indexing. Not used for indexing = everything including the links are ignored., John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- Nine voice search stats to close out 2019
- Video: Matt Cutts, former head of Google web spam, on his days at Google, current work at US Digital Services
- Page load time and crawl budget rank will be the most important SEO indicators in 2020
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Get custom market research insights with Google Surveys, Google
- Google Analytics lacks the moral compass news needs, Easy Reader News
Industry & Business
- Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai Awarded $242 Million Pay Package, Bloomberg
- Our Best Moments in SEO Podcasting!, RankRanger
Local & Maps
- Apple working on delivering data to devices via satellites: Bloomberg, 91mobiles
- How to enable speedometer in Google Maps, Business Insider India
- How to use Yelp on an Apple Watch, TechRepublic
Mobile & Voice
- Honda to Launch Personal Assistant, "OK Honda," at CES 2020 Backed by SoundHound, Voicebot
- Cortana on mobile is officially dead everywhere except in the US, SlashGear
- Huawei Warns Google: We Are Almost Ready To Replace You—New Report, Forbes
SEO
- Should We Even Care About The 2019 Local SEO Ranking Factors?, Local SEO Guide
- Top 10 Search Engine Patents to Know About from 2019, SEO By The Sea
- Weekly Wisdom Special: What to Do in 2020, SEM Rush
PPC
Search Features
Other Search
- 2019 in review: Stories from Google this year, Google Blog
