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:
- March 2020 Google Webmaster Report
This was one busy month, filled with numerous unconfirmed Google search ranking updates both in web search and local. It is also after March 1st, and the nofollow link change for crawling and indexing is now just a hint but Google said no change. A Google patent application was published that may explain the Medic update. - Google Algorithms Do Not Give Shopify Preferential Treatment
John Mueller from Google was asked if Google does anything special for Shopify, since it is such a popular e-commerce platform. John responded "We generally don't have special search algorithms to help any particular CMS." He added "I don't think mass adoption changes much, but if something's important, we'll want to show it where relevant in search." - Google Video On How To Hire An SEO: Old vs New
Google posted a new video on how to hire an SEO. This video, I assume, will replace the one Google posted in 2017 done by former Googler Maile Ohye. Here are the two videos. - Google: There Are A Variety Of Things We Do To Watch For Wikipedia Vandalism
Danny Sullivan of Google said on Twitter "There are a variety of things we do to watch for Wikipedia vandalism. That's about as specific as I can really get into. It's not perfect, as nothing is, but there are protections in place." This was in response to how Google relies on Wikipedia for many of its knowledge graph panels. - Bing Blocked Some Pages By Accident; Another Reason To Check Bing Webmaster Tools
Jarno van Driel said he reached out to Bing via Bing Webmaster Tools support contact form and it turned out that Bing was blocking some of his "money pages" for some reason. He did nothing technically wrong and Bing fixed it on their end and now the pages are ranking again. - Some Google & Bing Employees Can Work From Home Due To The Coronavirus
The Coronavirus is now spreading in the United States and there is the beginning of an outbreak not too far from the Microsoft office in Seattle. Two Google offices, one in Zurich and one in Dublin, have had cases of employees being confirmed with the virus. While some Google and Bing employees are being allowed to work from home, not all are. - Yahoo! 25th Anniversary Party & Cake
Yahoo turned 25 years old yesterday, we had a design theme up for the day. The sad thing, Yahoo is no longer independently owned by itself, it is owned by Verizon. In any event, the company had a part
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Structured data for Products with prices in multiple currencies : TechSEO, Reddit
- There's more than just an internal link vs a sitemap mention... We try to figure out which one is more relevant to a user's query, and that might be one or the other. If they're the same content, then it's a matte, John Mueller on Twitter
- Usually the split is about 80/20 for the primary crawler and the other (so 80% mobile, 20% desktop for MFI sites), so it would be normal to still see some of those requests., John Mueller on Twitter
- Correct, we don't use that. Also, there's a lot more to conversion than just quality., John Mueller on Twitter
- DuckDuckBot first visits!, WebmasterWorld
- If it's findable in search, that's a sign that it's indexed. In general, I'd recommend using the testing tools rather than checking the cache., John Mueller on Twitter
- That's usually fine. But why would you do it? As a user I generally find that obnoxious - don't make me search for the content I care about., John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- Soapbox: Brand authority is the most underrated marketing goal
- Google tightens FAQ markup guidelines, disallows repetition of questions and answers
- Video: Aleyda Solis on remote SEO work, international SEO and YouTube optimization
- Amazon search ads: How to advertise on Amazon — profitably
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Create Slack Notification System For Google Tag Manager Changes, Simo Ahava's blog
- How to track clicks from emails in Google Analytics:, Conversion Uplift
- How to Visualize Data With Google Data Studio, Content Marketing Institute
- Measure your social media efforts with UTM tags, Yoast
- UTM Parameters: A Complete Guide for Traffic Attribution, Business 2 Community
Industry & Business
- Google Dublin working from home over possible coronavirus, 9to5Google
- Google and Microsoft just canceled two conferences ahead of their major ones, The Verge
- Lawmakers Push Again for Info on Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’, Wall Street Journal
Links & Promotion Building
- How to Handle Bad Links: In Search SEO Podcast, RankRanger
- The Right Link Building Approach That Leads Straight to Links, Search Engine Journal
Local & Maps
- Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients, Moz
- How to add Spotify to Google Maps for your road tunes, The Next Web
- How to get restaurant recommendations in Google Maps, Android Central
Mobile & Voice
- Google Home's Bluetooth disconnect issue will be fixed, 9to5Google
- New music controls, emoji and more features dropping for Pixel, Google Blog
- Siri and Google Assistant hacked in new ultrasonic attack, Naked Security
SEO
- 6 SEO Tasks to Automate with Python, Search Engine Journal
- Column: What is more important: SEO, or content?, American Bazaar Online
- SEO Knowledge Gaps [2019 Survey], Fractl
PPC
- Gmail Ads vs. Discovery Ads: Which Should You Leverage?, Seer Interactive
- Google Adwords: The Tiered Approach, Hallam
Search Features
- Cable TV meets Android TV: a new way to watch, Google Blog
- How an Automated Assistant May Respond to Queries from Children, Go Fish Digital
Other Search
