Daily Search Forum Recap: February 8, 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.

We are seeing signs of another Google search ranking algorithm update brewing. Google finally fixed that indexing issue that started over a week ago. A "legit" guest blog post led to a Google manual action for unnatural links. Microsoft pulled back Bing Deep Search. Gogole is testing up-and-coming stores. Google slowed the dynamic search ad crawler.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Brewing February 7th and 8th
  I am seeing signs of a new Google search ranking algorithm update brewing. It started yesterday, Wednesday, February 7th, and is going into today, Thursday, February 8th. There is an increase in chatter within the SEO industry and also some, not all, of the tools are showing spikes in volatility.
• Legit Guest Blog Post Leads To Google Manual Action, Says Site Owner
  Over the past few days the SEO industry has been chattering it up about how a site received a Google Search manual action for unnatural links for a "legit guest blog" post. But when you look, this manual action only affected "some pages," not the whole site.
• Microsoft Pulls Back Flighting Deep Search
  Microsoft has stopped fully testing Bing Deep Search in the wild, saying they stopped "flighting" it for searchers. Now Bing Deep Search is in some sort of "shadow flight" to a very limited number of users.
• Google Slows Dynamic Search Ad Crawler To Every 3 Weeks vs 2 Weeks
  Google has updated its managing crawl budget guide documentation to say that the crawl frequency of the Dynamic Search Ad targets. It use to be every 2 weeks, 14 days, and now it is every 3 weeks, 21 days.
• Google Search Carousel: Up-And-Coming Stores
  Google has this new product or shopping-related box in the search results named "Up-and-coming stores." This box seems to show trendy stores in the Google Search results as a carousel you can swipe through on your mobile phone.
• Massive YouTube Speaker Room
  We saw this before but here is another view of this room with an absolutely massive speaker wall. It is branded with the YouTube logo and theme.

Other Great Search Threads:

• It has arrived... #GoogleGemini, Andy Simpson on X
• Hi Kirk, I don't have timeline specifics to share. The team is continuously working on adding new tools as well as features from the classic version to GMC Next., AdsLiaison on X
• There are many days that I get disheartened about graphs being too complex to use as an interchange format. My world (structured data at Google) revolves around graphs but humans just have a lot of problems reasoning about higher dimensional data. Somet, Ryan Levering On Mastodon
• I haven't looked at detail into the setup (and I'm not the spam team), from my understanding of how it works (it's not a link marketplace, $1 doesn't buy you a link), it's perhaps just being abused by link-chasing "SEO-spammers", and not inherently bad. Y, John Mueller on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

• Microsoft Copilot updates: New design, image editing tools and video highlights
• Want to speak at SMX Advanced? Now’s the time to submit your session ideas
• Google investigating ‘brutal’ Local Service Ads tactic destroying leads for businesses
• Value-based bidding: Why it’s key to boosting your Google Ads
• Product page SEO: A complete guide
• SEO and UX: Finding the strategic balance for optimal outcomes

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

• Pageviews in Google Analytics 4: The Complete Beginner‘s Guide, Semrush
• Search Ads 360 and Display & Video 360 linking for subproperties and roll-up properties, Google Analytics Help

Industry & Business

• Judge dismisses Apple & Google antitrust class-action case, AppleInsider
• Denmark orders schools to stop sending student data to Google, Bleeping Computer
• Kara Swisher: How Silicon Valley Tech Bros Ruined Media, NY Mag
• US says leading AI companies join safety consortium to address risks, Reuters

Links & Content Marketing

• 5 Content Marketing Ideas for March 2024, Practical Ecommerce

Local & Maps

• Brand Beacon Report 2024: The Secrets to Multi-location Marketing Success, BrightLocal
• Google Maps redesigning directions search, drops fullscreen UIs, 9to5Google
• Mobile Local Marketing: 6 Strategies to Drive Local Customers, Semrush
• Real Estate Agents: Do Business Hours Impact Your Google Rankings?, SEO Savvy Agent

Mobile & Voice

• Apple Develops a Foldable Clamshell iPhone, The Information
• Vision Pro Teardown Part 2: What’s the Display Resolution?, iFixit News

SEO

• 9 Best Enterprise SEO Blogs to Read in 2024, Measure Minds Group
• How To Interpret SEO Correlation Studies ft. Erika Varangouli, iPullRank
• 10 SEO Keyword Research Steps for Successful Organic Search, JumpFly
• Google’s Core Update vs. Helpful Content, Practical Ecommerce
• Save Google Inspection URL data into Google Cloud Storage, GOKAM

PPC

• Deprecating Commissions Bidding Strategy, Google Ads Developer Blog

Search Features

• Delivering Copilot for everyone, The Official Microsoft Blog
• 6 Google AI tools to help you find the perfect gift, Google Blog
• Apple releases an AI model that can edit images based on text-based commands, Engadget

Feedback:

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