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.
It was a busy day today, we had a massive Google some big indexing or serving issue today. Also early in the morning, the Google Ads interface was offline for an hour or two. Google's product reviews update will continue to roll out right up until around Christmas Eve - hope you all have a relaxing holiday 🙃. The Google AdSense team will, the AdSense support team is offline from December 17, 2021 to January 4, 2022. Google said it is almost impossible to tell which SEO efforts led to ranking improvements. Google Analytics 4 now connects to Google Search Console. Google offered some SEO tips for what you need to do if you need to take down your site to fix Log4j security issues and not see ranking issues.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google December 2021 Products Reviews Update Will Roll Out Until Right Before Christmas
Google started to roll out the December 2021 product reviews update on Wednesday, December 1, 2021. Google said then it would take about three weeks to fully roll out, which means probably around December 22nd, a couple days before Christmas eve. - Google Seems To Be Not Indexing Or Crawling New Content This Morning (Update Fixed)
It seems like Google is having a major indexing or crawling issue this morning - again. Google seems to have not picked up on new content in the past hour or two. You can see sites like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and niche publishers like TechCrunch and The Verge are not seeing their new published content show up in the Google Search results. - Google: You Can't Tell Which SEO Efforts Led To Ranking Success
John Mueller from Google shared something both funny and mostly true about SEO tasks. He basically said that it is often hard or even sometimes impossible to know which SEO tasks led to ranking success, even after it is all set and done. John said on Twitter "you can't even tell afterwards" which SEO tasks worked or not. - New: Google Analytics 4 Supports Google Search Console Data
Google announced that now Google Analytics 4 supports data from Google Search Console. This was something Google has supported with the original Google Analytics since 2011 and now has brought over support for with the new GA4. - Google Ads Console Was Offline For A Couple Of Hours This Morning
Not only did we have a two hour Google Search indexing outage this morning, but between around 3am ET and 5am ET the Google Ads interface and advertising console was offline as well. We saw numerous reports from advertisers about the outage this morning. - Google SEO Tips On Taking A Site Offline To Fix Log4j Security Vulnerability
I previous wrote about how Google Ads is not impacted by the Log4j security vulnerability but many sites and servers are. So if you have a website that needs to have updates because of the Log4j security issue, do you have to worry if you need to take down the site and Googlebot is unable to reach it? - Google AdSense Support Team Going Offline For 18 Days For Holidays
The Google AdSense support team will be offline from December 17, 2021 to January 4, 2022 - a full 18-days. Google said the team is going offline for the holidays and that you should use the help forums and self help during that 18-day period. - Stitched Dino T-Rex
Here is a photo of the stitched dino t-rex, famed in some Google products, that was made by Lizzi Harvey of Google and actually made it into a Google video. Lizzi shared it on Twitter and said "ahhh t
Other Great Search Threads:
- Canonicalization - What, Why and How ::: Want to know about Canonicalisation? How to handle Duplication? What to avoid doing? I'm Darth Autocrat, and we're going to look at Canonicalisation: * What it is * Why we need it * Ho, Semrush on Twitter
- Episode 1 of SEOs and Devs is here! In the first episode, @g33konaut talks with Google Chrome developer advocate @DasSurma about how SEOs can partner with developers to improve loading performance, accessibility, Google Search Central on Twitter
- Good question - I suspect it can be both. I don't think there would be a practical difference though., John Mueller on Twitter
- It basically won't change. We only crawl sites from one location, which is usually the US. There are a tiny number of other locations we crawl from, but we pick one location per site. We don't crawl from multipl, John Mueller on Twitter
- My older neighbor is having a company build a new website for his business, and received the following in an email from them. I'm not well-versed in SEO, but it pinged my BS-meter, what do you think, Reddit
- That paper is from the 1990's -- a lot has changed in search since then. It feels like the more I go into the details about this, the more some SEOs cling on to the past with all possible ar, John Mueller on Twitter
- v2.2 of the AMP plugin for WordPress is out! Site Scanning, experimental support for flexible AMP via Bento, highlighting compatible plugins and themes, improved support flow, and more to help build great Page Experiences!, AMP Project on Twitter
- We index lots of things. Canonicalization is more than the rel-canonical. Also, a site:-query is not useful to diagnose canonicalization, it's not meant for that and will give you misleading results if you try to, John Mueller on Twitter
- Yes. Blocking a bounce-URL via robots.txt is fine & pretty common., John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- How to build trust and value privacy with a consent management platform
- Google Search launches enhanced autocomplete with second column
- How marketers can create linkable content to drive more site traffic
- 3 do’s and don’ts for attracting new clients
- You can now link Google Analytics 4 to Google Search Console
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
- Google employees refusing vaccination to be put on leave, 9to5Google
- Google offers behavioral pledges on news payments in France to try to end costly antitrust litigation, TechCrunch
- Google Warns That NSO Hacking Rivals Elite Nation State Spies, WIRED
- Unbundled & Commoditized: The future of SEO careers?, The SEO MBA
Links & Content Marketing
- Link Building Metrics, Semrush
- What Is Content Writing? 13 Tips for Creating Amazing Content, Ahrefs
- Alone at Work? Use Quiet Days To Set Up for Personal Growth and Content Success, Content Marketing Institute
- The Core Elements of Storytelling that B2B Can Learn from B2C, Moz
Local & Maps
- Local Guides Dominate Reviews, SMB Freemium Adoption, Airport Facial Rec, Near Media
- Local SEO is a Dealership's Best Friend, DealerOn
- SOCi Study Finds 62% of Google Reviews Are Written by Local Guides, Street Fight
Mobile & Voice
SEO
- 7 Winning SEO Tests from SearchPilot, SearchPilot
- How to write clear and SEO-friendly paragraphs, Yoast
- SERP Content: Using Structured Data to Drive More Organic Traffic, Deepcrawl
- Steal Our SEO Report Template (Inspired by SEO Experts), Ahrefs
- What Can Search Results Tell Us About Black Friday and Cyber Monday?, BrightEdge
PPC
- 5 Changes that Impacted Paid Social Advertisers in 2021, Tinuiti
- How to Give Account Access to Your Marketing Agency Partner, Amsive Digital
- How to Use the Google Ads Budget Report (+10 Smart Tips), WordStream
- Set asset names by February 9, 2022, Google Ads Developer Blog
Search Features
- Why is everything so expensive? Trending Google and Reddit queries reflect everyone’s pain right now, MarketWatch
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, you can follow us on Facebook and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
