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:
- 500 SEOs Waitlisted For The Google Virtual Webmaster Unconference
Like we reported yesterday, the Google Virtual Webmaster Unconference was sold out within a few hours after it was announced. Google opened up a few more spots yesterday morning but those were taken very quickly. Martin Splitt of Google said there are now 500 people on the waitlist for this event. - Google Image Search Highlight Can Now Highlight Text On Your Web Pages
You know that Google Search on some browsers can now highlight text and even scroll down to the portion of the page with the text from the search results page to your web page. Well, now it seems to also work not just in web searches featured snippets but also in Google Image search. - Google My Business: Your Menu Managed By An External Service
Google My Business seems to be rolling out a useful feature to let business owners, mostly restaurants, know that their menus displayed on their local listing is managed by an external service. This screen shot, shared by Thibault Adda, shows an example of this. - Google Tests Search Results Interface Without Borders
We saw Google testing featured snippets without being enclosed in borders. Well, now Google is testing its search results interface without borders around any of the search result features. Not the people also ask, not the knowledge panels, not the local box and so on. - Moz Spam Score Does Not Influence Your Google Rankings
Google's John Mueller sometimes has to confirm the more obvious questions including that Google does not use DA, a Moz metric. And now that Google does not use the spam score metric from DA. Believe it or not, Google uses its own scores, signals and ranking factors and does not use Moz, a third-party company, metrics for its rankings. - YouTube Festival 2020 Recordings At Google Germany
It is not often when I see people working at the Google offices these days but here are some people doing some recording or taping at Google Germany offices for the YouTube Festival 2020. They are we
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- My opinion is: it depends. - we don't like "infinite spaces" (endless URLs, wasted crawl) - many search pages are low-quality landing pages but + some search pages are essentially category pages, John Mueller on Twitter
- New Twitter Settings For Improved Conversation Control, WebmasterWorld
- Putting random symbols, pipes or flowers, in the middle of sentences doesn't make much sense to me, but my guess is computers don't care as much about that. Also, usually sites use symbols there to separ, John Mueller on Twitter
- If it's your site, and your content, you know what's natural or not., John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- Majority of chains call local-digital marketing an ‘untapped opportunity’
- How to Identify Site Quality for Link Building
- Google makes it easier to control Shopping ads by country
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Distinguishing Good Data From The Bad, AdExchanger
Industry & Business
- Google, Facebook and Others Form Tech Coalition to Secure U.S. Election, The New York Times
- The man Google loves to hate, POLITICO
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
- Google Assistant song reminds people to wear a mask, 9to5Google
- Google Assistant Will Run the New Hands-Free Gboard Transcription, Voicebot
- US phone shipments rebound following COVID-19 closures, analyst says, CNET
- Top 10 Siri Commands for HomeKit (that you may NOT know), Homekit News
SEO
- 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective SEO Professionals, Search Engine Journal
PPC
- Bitesize: What are buyer intent keywords?, Vertical Leap
- Google Ads Structured Snippets Extension for B2B Advertisers, KoMarketing
- Image Extensions for Google Ads: What You Need to Know, Metric Theory
- Layer Affinity Audiences On Search Campaigns, PPC Hero
- New toys for the AMP Playground, The AMP Blog
- Wasteful Wednesday with Wil Reynolds #11 - Keyword of the Week "PDF", Seer Interactive
Search Features
- An update on our 2020 U.S. election efforts, Google Blog
Other Search
- 18 Alternative Search Engines To Google: Which Is Best?, SEM Rush
- Helping people spot the spoofs: a URL experiment, Chromium Blog
