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.
We some signs that maybe one of the things Google went after with the November spam update was cloaking content spam with injected links in that content. Google spoke about being on the edge of indexing and how improving quality matters there. We dug into a Twitter thread about why the Daily Mail doesn't rank as well as it should, it might be about the author bylines. Google keyword planner tool added year over year change columns. Microsoft Bing launched a bunch of shopping features including departments, stores, editors picks, deals, price tracking and more. I am also very sad to report the passing of a legendary SEO, John Carcutt.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google November Spam Update Target Cloaked Spam Content With Injected Links?
Last week, Google announced the rollout of the November spam update, which Google said targeted types of content spam. Glenn Gabe said it may have targeted cloaking content spam that had links injected in that cloaked content. - Why The Sun and Mail Online Don't Rank As Well As They Could In Google Search
Matt Rogerson, the Director of public policy at Guardian Media Group, posted a Twitter thread dissecting why he believes the claims from The Sun and Mail Online about Google Search mistreating them, are false. He then spent time going through why Google does not rank them well - and it might be heavily around author bylines. - Google Keyword Planner Tool New YoY Change Column
Google Ads has added to the keyword planner tool a new column for YoY, year over year, change. Last month, Google added three month percent change and three month trend type to the report, and now we have the YoY change column. - Bing Shopping Adds Departments, Stores, Editors Picks, Deals, Pricing Trends & Amazon Integration
Microsoft announced it has added the ability to browse Bing Shopping by department, store tabs, editors picks, insights on item popularity, price across multiple stores, and deals. Microsoft said "these enhanced options provide useful hover menus and informative page guides which highlight choices, deals, and trends." - The Industry Mourns The Loss Of John Carcutt - Legendary SEO
I am so sad to report that John Carcutt, an SEO many of us have known, has suddenly passed away. John Carcutt has been in the SEO industry for two decades, not only doing the work day in and day out but also sharing his knowledge with the SEO community at large. - Feats Of Engineering Google Award Comes Apart
We've seen the Feats Of Engineering Google award before but here is a photo of the award being taken apart to reveal the G logo in the center. I found two recent photos of it on social media but the
Other Great Search Threads:
- Via @johnmu: If you added many links to your disavow file recently & saw a big drop a few days later, it's probably unrelated to the disavow file. Google takes that file into account when it reprocesses the links over time. Ca, Glenn Gabe on Twitter
- First I have seen a Google business profile use a LinkedIn profile for the description https://t.co/r3EbD8JMOg, Mike Blumenthal on Twitter
- It feels like that post is conflating a lot of things, and the takeaway that if you're buying links, you shouldn't pay scrapers seems a bit odd (don't support spammy site, John Mueller on Twitter
- It's a part of how we determine how much we can crawl; you can't analyze just the "search" crawling without taking into account how much crawling we're doing overall., John Mueller on Twitter
- Per @semrush data.. You know that bump in search volumes for product-related KWs that happens between Oct and when Black Friday comes around. Yeah, that "bump" shrunk in 2020 by over 50% A bit concerning heading into this, Mordy Oberstein on Twitter
- I don't know if the dedicated video landing page would be considered a news article (and don't have much insight into what makes sense for a news sitemap), but for normal sitemaps: sure. Web pages are web, John Mueller on Twitter
- Like everything in search, you don't have to compete with *all* other sites, you end up competing with those who are similarly relevant for the queries you care about. That said, if the others in your niche, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- Yelp’s new home feed looks like a certain popular social media app
- Speed matters: 3 ways to win with marketing velocity in the new year
- Google’s local rebrand prompts SMB support amid antitrust lawsuits, says local SEO expert
- What digital marketers should know about Google Analytics 4
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- 3 Tips to Create a User-Friendly Google Data Studio Dashboard, Liquidint
- Bye, Bye Last Click… Enter: Data-Driven Attribution, Tinuiti
- How to split comma-separated values to single values with Google Data Studio, Wissi
- How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media: Here are 5 Quick Ways, Orbit Media Studios
Industry & Business
- Google Parent Alphabet (GOOG) Hits $2 Trillion Market Value After Rally, Bloomberg
- Google’s New Business Profile: When Search Becomes a Political Tool, Near Media
- Yoast has a new CEO: Thijs de Valk, Yoast
Links & Content Marketing
- 268 Creative Business Name Ideas (Curated, Not Generated!), WordStream
- Links and Brand as Ranking Factors: 2021 Correlation Study, Moz
- Get the Most From Your Webinars With These 13 Repurposing Ideas, Content Marketing Institute
Local & Maps
- Learn From Your Online Reviews | Do Better Business, Sterling Sky Inc
- Meet our next guest on Ask a Googler: Kevin, Local Guides Connect
Mobile & Voice
- Improved On-Device ML on Pixel 6, with Neural Architecture Search, Google AI Blog
- How to insert emojis using your voice with Google Assistant, Android Central
SEO
- 7 quick clues SEO is underutilized in your businesses for growth, Capture Commerce
- Ask a news SEO: How do you advocate for search in your newsroom?, WTF is SEO?
- Google Title Rewrites - 2021 Research Study, SEO Clarity
- SEO strategy archetypes and how to leverage them, Kevin Indig
- The Age of Dinosaurs & Search Engine Bots: a short SEO timeline, Billie Geena
- Sun and Mail Online think they get buried in Google search rankings, Press Gazette
PPC
- 7 PPC Trends To Follow In 2022, PPC Hero
- Announcing DSA Page Feeds and Dynamic Remarketing Feeds are migrating to Assets, Google Ads Developer Blog
- November 2021 update to Display & Video 360 API v1, Google Ads Developer Blog
- Retail holiday outlook: Apparel and CPG, Microsoft Advertising
Search Features
- Paws meet machine learning with Pet Portraits, Google Blog
- Shopping across stores, now even more convenient!, Bing Search Blog
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