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:
- Search Buzz Video Recap: Google New Years Update, Video Text To Speech Spam, Google's Company Culture Failing?
Happy new years everyone, but there may have been a Google search algorithm update on New Years, I doubt it... - Google Snippet Shows List Includes For Some List Based Content
Brian Freiesleben posted a screen shot, that I can replicate on mobile, of Google adding to a snippet "list includes." Google is showing the listed items but titling those lists in the snippet with "list includes." This is not on desktop, but right now just on mobile. - Google: Fewer Page Types Is Easier
Google's John Mueller was asked by a webmaster if he should remove the mobile alternative pages since the site is now responsive. John Mueller said yes, saying "Fewer page types make things easier, so if you can migrate away from m-dot that seems like a good idea to me." - Google: Put Voice Search Optimization Fad To Sleep Already
Gary Illyes from Google posted on Twitter "It's a new year, maybe we can put the voice search optimization fad to sleep finally..." What does he mean by this? I don't think he means that voice searches aren't growing but rather that SEOs can optimize differently for voice search than what they normally do? - Google Company Culture Not Doing Well?
There has been a string of articles in the past few weeks about Google not being the same company it use to be. The culture, the strive, the attitude and passion, the do no evil, seems to have somewhat gone out of the window. I don't have any inside information, but I found a former Googler Jonathan Rockway comment about it on Reddit and wanted to share it with you. - Google's Doogler Wall
I found this random photo on Instagram from the Google London office. It shows that there is a wall of photos of Dooglers, Google dogs. I don't know why but someone put up photos of dogs from Google a
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- January 2020 AdSense Earnings & Observations, WebmasterWorld
- Sure, sure. People have been linking to Wikipedia, CNN, etc for decades now, in the hope that their low-quality pages are suddenly seen as being high-quality. That's not how you make high-quali, John Mueller on Twitter
- .club is a generic top level domain just like .com for us. There's no bonus for using a .com domain., John Mueller on Twitter
- AMP is still not a ranking factor., John Mueller on Twitter
- If you want something to be seen as a valuable, unique website, it should be one first. In general, my recommendation is to consolidate rather than to split and dilute. Things are easie, John Mueller on Twitter
- It's not a great idea to redirect users blindly - they need the option to go to their preferred versions (show a banner, let them click themselves). Redirecting automatically will result in Googlebot only seei, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- The big comings and goings in paid search 2019 that will shape how we market in 2020
- Online tax-filing services can no longer hide free services from Google Search results
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Measuring Page Speed with Google Analytics, Analytics Ninja
Industry & Business
- I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left., Medium
- Court (Barely) Allows Class Action Lawsuit Over Google's Location Tracking To Move Forward, TechDirt
Links & Promotion Building
- 7 Elements of Your Link Profile That Drive SEO Results, Business 2 Community
- 61% of B2B Marketers with a Content Marketing Strategy Have Seen Improved Performance, KoMarketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
- Baidu Beats Google With New AI Language Training Technique, Voicebot
- Google shutting down Xiaomi access to Assistant following Nest Hub picking up strangers' camera feeds (Updated), Android Police
- In 2020, Apple is poised to push HomeKit forward, Macworld
- Samsung sold 6.7 million 5G phones in 2019, beating expectations, The Verge
SEO
- Google Top Stories Are Chosen By Importance Scores, SEO By The Sea
- Google Webmaster Hangout Notes: December 27th 2019, DeepCrawl
- SEO 2020: Google becomes your competitor, SISTRIX
- How to Create 10x SEO Reports - Whiteboard Friday, Moz
- How to Develop Actionable and Impactful SEO Audits: The SP2 Principles, Aleyda Solis
- How to Use Header Tags: SEO Best Practices, Search Engine Journal
- Nine Questions To Help You Identify A Good SEO Company, Forbes
PPC
- Mobile A/B Testing: 7 Errors and Misconceptions to Avoid, PPC Hero
- The Microsoft Advertising Sweepstakes, Microsoft Advertising
