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:
- Google New Mobile Search Design Side By Side Comparison
On Friday afternoon, Google announced the beginning of the rollout of its new mobile search results design. I now see this new design and I wanted to share some side by side comparisons of the old versus the new design for queries. - Google Adds Price Drop Enhancement Documentation
Google has added updated its product structured data documentation document to include details around price drop enhancements. There is a new section named "price drop" that explains that Google "automatically calculates the price drop." - Google: Digital Public Relations Is Not Spammy Link Building
Google's John Mueller has said something positive about one strategy SEOs use to attract attention and thus, hopefully, natural links. He said on Twitter "I love some of the things I see from digital pr, it's a shame it often gets bucketed with the spammy kind of link building. It's just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases." - Google: Paying For Content Review Or Time With Links Is Paid Links
What if you do not charge for do-follow links but you do charge for the time for link outreach or the time to review and publish that piece of content, that happens to have a do-follow link. Is that type of link an unnatural link and against Google's webmaster guidelines? Google's John Mueller says yes it is. - Vlog #104: Dawn Beobide On Educating Your Developers On SEO (Part One)
I met up with Dawn Beobide, the Director of Marketing at Consumer Labs and she started doing SEO and marketing back in 1999 - Dawn goes way back to the super early days of the SEO industry. She calls herself an SEO Geek and she is, to the core... - Annoying Call To Action Overlays Can Hurt Your Google Rankings
John Mueller of Google was asked by Michael Lewittes if those news websites you see overlay those call to actions asking you to sign up for their newsletter before seeing the content see harm in their Google rankings because of those actions. And yes, John Mueller said they would see the wrath of the mobile interstitial penalty. - Google Office In Slums
Okay, so this is not a real Google office but I am going through the archives to find interesting photos of Google and with COVID and no one being in the office, it is hard to find. Here is an old pho
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- When you spend 2 hours arguing with a prominent SEO that 'HTTPS headers' is not a thing, finally ruining their day by telling them we definitely won't change our dev docs to say 'HTTPS headers' instead of HTTP, Gary Illyes on Twitter
- I don't know what the web standards will do -- there's a lot involved with making web standards. Speed measurements, in the lab & in the field, are also always evolving; no single metric will ever be the "final, John Mueller on Twitter
- Why so complicated? Normal affiliate links are fine, just use rel=sponsored and leave it at that. Making things extra complicated just makes them break on Friday evening, just as you're getting ready to tra, John Mueller on Twitter
- I don't think any search engine uses the revisit-after meta tag; it won't harm, but it also doesn't help. 404 is fine. Highlighting them when they're back (eg "back in stock: x, y, z" on the homep, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- Google’s alternative to third-party cookies open for advertiser testing in Q2 2021
- Contextual links in featured snippets may present new opportunities and risks
- How to optimize SEO with user-generated content
- Google Search launches updated mobile design and interface
- Chrome 88 Adds to Core Web Vitals DevTools
- Google My Business updates flag review feature
- Google might remove search in Australia if forced to pay to link to sites
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- #GTMTips: Write Client ID And Other GTAG Fields Into dataLayer, Simo Ahava's blog
- Say hello to Google Analytics 4, CMI Media
Industry & Business
- Adthena acquires Kantar's paid search intelligence business, Adgooroo, Adthena
- Google workers across the globe announce international union alliance to hold Alphabet accountable, The Verge
- Taboola is going public via SPAC, TechCrunch
Local & Maps
- Improving Indian Language Transliterations in Google Maps, Google AI Blog
- Lawyer Can't Sue Google for Bad Client Review-Lewis v. Google, Eric Goldman
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
- Announcing new Real-time Bidding experiments, Google Ads Developer Blog
Search Features
- How we’re helping get vaccines to more people, Google Blog
Other Search
- Better content sharing with Custom Tabs, Chromium Blog
