Daily Search Forum Recap: February 7, 2024

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 said big changes to improve search quality are coming in the near future. Google Business Profiles are being nuked through a Local Service Ads loophole. Google Search has this popular products spam listings issue. Google made some minor updates to its JavaScript documentation. Google Ads to sunset its commission bidding on hotel ads. Microsoft Advertising is expanding enhanced conversions and more updates.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google: Search Quality Improvements Coming In Near Future
  For the past few months now, Google has been saying there are big improvements coming to address some of the search quality issues we've all been seeing in the Google Search results. Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liason, wrote yesterday that these improvements "are on the way in the near future."
• Google Popular Product Spam Search Listings
  Google seems to be having a bit of an issue with spam getting into its popular products section. This may be fed in through Google Merchant Center or normal rich results - I am not 100% sure. But here is a screenshot showing one company listing the same product over and over again, even though it should be 10 different stores.
• Google Business Profiles Nuked Through Local Service Ads Loophole
  Google seems to have this loophole where you can essentially hijack or destroy a Google Business Profile that is also using Local Service Ads. What happens is if someone else links their Local Service Ads to that same Google Business Profile, the Local Service Ads will stop performing.
• Google Minor Updates To JavaScript Docs & Drops Most Of Dynamic Rendering Details
  The Google Search team has made a number of relatively minor changes to its JavaScript documentation and also removed much of the dynamic rendering documentation, as it has been deprecated as a workaround for many years now.
• Microsoft Advertising Enhanced Conversions Expansion, RSA Updates & More
  Microsoft Advertising published its monthly what's new feature announcing changes and new features to its advertising platform. Microsoft announced enhanced conversions is rolling out to more markets, new targeting options, new ways to set up campaigns, an update to hotel center subaccounts and RSA reporting updates.
• Google Ads To Drop Support For Commissions Bidding For Hotel Ads
  Google Ads will stop supporting Commissions (per Stay) and Commissions (per Conversions) bid strategies for Hotel Ads in October 2024. Google says this is because third-party cookies are being phased out and these models will not work in the future.
• Google W2 Email
  A couple of weeks ago, Google employees started to receive their W2 forms for their employment salaries to be filed with the various tax agencies. Here is a screenshot of Malte Ubl's W2 email from Google. Malte left Google last year but still worked at Google long enough to get a W2 in 2023.

Other Great Search Threads:

• Catching up on this. They should be able to match the same quality of favicon on both Search and Ads. It seems like they gave Ads a higher res one while we might only have access to the low, Google SearchLiaison on X
• Congrats to my @Google colleague @PanduNayak for his election to the US National Academy of Engineering for his work on web search ranking technology! Congratulations to all the other new inductees as well!, Jeff Dean on X
• Some of them, like Windows Copilot, improvements in Lockscreen, etc. It's not easy - Windows 11 has many improvements under the surface, not only UX changes., Mikhail Parakhin on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

• Snap revenue rises 5%, misses Wall Street expectations
• Microsoft expands enhanced conversions and ad targeting capabilities
• Google will sunset commission bid strategies for hotel ads
• Google Ads investigating bugs impacting payment methods and credit card updates
• One year later: Little change to Microsoft Bing’s search market share
• Google investigating ‘confusing ad text’ error impacting ad campaigns
• What is digital PR for SEO?
• 3 ways search marketers can prepare for the big cookie crumble

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

• Why & How to Implement Google Tag Manager Like an Expert, Measure Minds Group

Industry & Business

• Google Says The L Word & Teases “Valuable Traffic” Again, Serpsonar
• Microsoft CEO Nadella on AI LLM race: ‘We are waiting for competition to arrive’, TechCrunch
• World’s biggest AI tech companies push UK over safety tests, Financial Times (Sub)

Links & Content Marketing

• Link building for SaaS: A niche-specific guide, Wix SEO Hub
• Crickets? Rethink Your Livestream Strategy, Content Marketing Institute

Local & Maps

• Google Maps for Android rolls out corner weather widget, 9to5Google
• New EU Local SERP, Localizing Forums, Ranking Isn't Enough, Near Media

Mobile & Voice

• Apple Vision Pro for the Google (and Android) user, 9to5Google
• The Apple Vision Pro, Stratechery by Ben Thompson
• Apple Vision Pro Review: First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose, New York Times

SEO

• 6 Ecommerce SEO Tips to Help You Rank on Google, Entrepreneur
• How To Intentionally Show Up in Google’s SGE, iPullRank
• Why Google had to dismantle the E-E-A-T Experts, Primary Position
• Yahoo & Bing Knowledge Panels Are Sometimes Affiliate Links, Adam Riemer
• Yoast SEO 22.0: Supporting Organization schema, Yoast
• The Anatomy of a Content Knowledge Graph, Schema App Solutions
• What SEO clients should you take on?, SERP's Up SEO Podcast

PPC

• Announcing iOS Google Mobile Ads SDK Version 11.0.0, Google Ads Developer Blog
• Have You Heard of Negative SEO? Now there's Negative LSA (Local Service Ads), Bill Hartzer
• Three New Google Performance Max Features That We Love, JumpFly
• 8 Google Ads Best Practices to Maximize Return on Ad Spend, Semrush
• Google faces new pressure to delay cookie demise, Ad Age

Other Search

• Letter from the YouTube CEO: 4 Big bets for 2024, YouTube Blog
• New Google TAG report: How Commercial Surveillance Vendors work, Google Blog
• Apple releases 'MGIE', a revolutionary AI model for instruction-based image editing, VentureBeat

Feedback:

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