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.
Google blasted agencies that both do link building and disavow link work at the same time. Google said Search Console verification does not help with indexing or crawling. Google recommends you nofollow sitewide credit footer links. Google said the most common reason Googlebot is blocked is due to CDN or firewall issues. Google Ads posted a policy update on government documents and official services.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google Blasts Agencies That Sell Links & Disavow Link Services
John Mueller of Google blasted SEO or marketing agencies that sell both link-building services and disavow link services. He said on Twitter, "These agencies (both those creating, and those disavowing) are just making stuff up, and cashing in from those who don't know better." - Google: Search Console Verification Does Not Impact Your Ranking
Gary Illyes said in the Google SEO office-hours from yesterday that verifying your website in Google Search Console won't impact your Google Search indexing or ranking whatsoever. - Google: Firewalls or CDNs Issues Are The Most Common Reason For Blocking Googlebot
Gary Illyes from Google posted a new PSA on LinkedIn saying that the most common reason a site unexpectedly blocks Googlebot from crawling is due to a misconfiguration of a firewall or CDN. - Google: Nofollow Site Credit Links Footer Links If You Control Them
Google is still recommending that you nofollow your credit links in your footer, if you have control over those links. So the site designed by or powered by or made by types of links, nofollow those links if you can. If you can't - then don't worry about it, Google added. - Google Ads To Update Government Documents and Official Services Policy On March 31
After months of silence and no policy updates from Google Ads, Google has posted that it will be updating its Google Ads Government documents and official services policy in a big way. - Gaggle Of 3D Printed Googlebots
John Mueller said a few weeks ago that he "came back to my desk in the office to find a Gaggle of Googlebots messing around." So he took a photo of the flock of bots and shared it on Mastodon.
Other Great Search Threads:
- Advertising agencies that do not charge a setup fee are. Just set up a campaign doing everything from: - Building LP's - Designing creatives - Setting up tracking - Uploading Ads Took 6-7 hours. Do not think that's slow, Derek Mollins on Twitter
- AFAIK pagerank is an iterative algorithm, where you repeat until you reach a tolerance. That can be offline iterative, not tied to crawls. I don't know if we've published anything about it since the original papers, it's been a while., John Mueller on Twitter
- GA4 rolled out various updates to make finding and switching accounts and properties easier. You can even navigate directly to the admin/property settings with the right terms, Charles Farina on Twitter
- There are so many aspects of a "web presence" that have intricate details which are hard for non-experts to recognize, and all too often we assume "everyone knows" when it's one of those things that people tend to learn by making mistakes, rather than lea, John Mueller on Mastodon
- I'd see URLs as identifiers primarily. For site structure, I'd work more with internal linking, rather than URL segments., John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- New updates for the GA4 search bar
- Yandex scrapes Google and other SEO learnings from the source code leak
- Twitstorm timeline: The latest on Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0
- Baidu working on AI chatbot service that will be added to search
- Teams that train together, win together. Send your team to SMX!
- 9 tips to get the full SEO benefits of long-tail keywords
- How to write a listicle (with 6 examples)
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
- Breakup of Google’s Ad Business Would Reshape $500 Billion Sector, Wall Street Journal
- Police Search of Google Location Data Invades Privacy, ACLU Says, Bloomberg
- EU Mulls How to Charge Tech Firms Like Netflix For Telecom Work, Bloomberg
Links & Content Marketing
- 5 Simple Things You Can Do To Improve the Content Experience for Readers, Content Marketing Institute
- What Makes a High-Quality Backlink?, 3Q/DEPT
- How to Become a Content Developer, Semrush
- Pillar Pages: Why and How You Should Add Them to Your Content Strategy, Moz
- Should You Use ChatGPT to Write SEO Copy?, JumpFly Digital Marketing Blog
Local & Maps
- Mercedes-Benz is the first to bring Level 3 automated driving to the US, The Verge
- Can You Get Notifications of New Google Reviews Even When Your GBP Page Is Suspended?, Local Visibility System
Mobile & Voice
- Matter: everything you need to know about the new smart home protocol, The Verge
- The 6 smart displays make apartment living so much easier, Yahoo News
- Why the Apple AR headset's secret weapon might be a smarter Siri, BGR
SEO
- How the Yandex Leak Will Forever Change Your SEO, Rank Ranger
- IndexWatch 2022 - UK Retail in Google Search, SISTRIX
- On-Page Optimization Comes First: Immediate SEO Priorities, Level343
- SEO Is To Search Engine Optimization; As AIO Is To Artificial Intelligence Optimization, Joe Hall
- State of the SERPs: 7 Enhanced SERP Features & Rich Result Types to Know, Lumar
- 9 Common Technical SEO Issues That Actually Matter, Ahrefs
PPC
- 9 Non-PPC Questions Your PPC Clients Will Ask (& How to Answer Them), WordStream
- A look into 2023 for Microsoft Advertising Partners, Microsoft Advertising
- Getting Started With Automated Bid Strategies in SA360, Adswerve
Other Search
- Google Made an AI Bot That Makes Music From Text but Won't Release It, Business Insider
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