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:
- Search Buzz Video Recap: More On Google March 2019 Core Update, Google Drops Rel Next & Prev & Neural Matching vs RankBrain
What a fun week in the SEO space - we had Google do some explaining or myth busting around the March 2019 core algorithm update, no - it wasn't a reversal. Google just noticed that they have not supported the rel=next/prev markup for years now... - Google On Neural Matching vs RankBrain
After I wrote up the what is neural matching, I got to thinking and decided to email Google a bunch of questions, which I published at Search Engine Land as Danny Sullivan posted the answers on Twitter via the @searchliaison account. - Google Web Spam Report: Google Sent 33% Less Manual Actions Last Year
Google has released their annual web spam report and I just love comparing the previous year report to this one. Here are some of the highlights from the report, including Google sent 4 million manual actions in 2018, where sent 6 million in 2017. - Bing Uses rel=next and rel=prev For Discovery But Not Merging Pages
With all the controversy around Google just noticing they haven't supported the rel=next/prev and now trying to dig themselves out of a hole - folks are curious how Bing supports it. Frédéric Dubut from Bing said on Twitter that Bing uses them for discovery and understanding site structure but they do not use it to merge pages into a set. - Google's Latest Advice On Pagination & Page Series Post rel=next and rel=prev
As you know, Google told us they just realized that rel=next and rel=prev is no longer supported for the past year or so. Yea, I know. So now what? How do you ensure Google can find your paginated content? How do you communicate to Google a series of pages is part of a set? Mihai Aperghis asked Google's John Mueller a series of hard questions this morning in the webmaster hangout addressing this. - Google: There Is No Google Organic Traffic Budget
Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that Google doesn't have an organic traffic budget that will stop sending a site traffic once it reaches a certain number. He said "we try to show pages in search when our algorithms think they're relevant, not based on counters." - Google NYC Dance Dance Revolution Game
Google has what looks like the Dance Dance Revolution at their New York City office. I've seen it there with my own two eyes but I don't think I shared a photo of it. Here is one I found on Instagram
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- The claim by @EcoSenseNow that Google has removed him from their results for "founders of Greenpeace" raises a number of interesting (and epistemologically important) issues about the representation of facts in a knowledge graph, Aaron Bradley on Twitter
- This might come as a shock to no-one, but I'm not a perfect SEO and in early 2015 as I was starting my own agency one of my first 3 clients fired me when their traffic tanked suddenly and I couldn't fix it. THREAD, Joe Youngblood on Twitter
- It's hard to have any natural web page with less than 5 internal links on it :)…, John Mueller on Twitter
- Just to be clear: we are working on the update but we've never given any ETA because it takes time to make sure that the transition goes smoothly. It'll be done when it's done, as a famous video game company u, Martin Splitt on Twitter
- Yelp now filters reviews with check-ins, Local Search Forum
Search Engine Land Stories:
- How call tracking is becoming ‘conversational intelligence’
- Amazon to introduce video ads in mobile-app search results — report
- Survey finds Google Home users do more, have ‘far higher’ satisfaction than Alexa owners
- Google’s neural matching versus RankBrain: How Google uses each in search
- Let Customer Reviews Drive Your Conversions
- Google’s March 2019 core quality update: Stories of recovery
- Google launches News Initiative subscriptions lab for publishers
- Patent suggests how CTR, time on page could be used in search rankings (if Google did that sort of thing)
- Google hasn’t supported rel=next/prev for a while (thanks for telling us)
- Bing upgrades text-to-speech, expands intelligent answers, improves visual search
- What do the symbols mean in Google’s Map Pack and Local Finder?
- LinkedIn taps Bing search data for interest targeting
- Teikametrics adds hourly bidding optimization for Amazon advertising
- See What’s New at SMX Advanced!
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- How to copy Google Tag Manager tags between containers?, Analytics Mania
- Version History in Google Data Studio Now Available, MoreVisibility
- Adding additional site speed metrics to Google Analytics: measuring First Input Delay (FID), Martijn Scheijbeler
- GA Skills For Creating A Data Driven Culture: Secondary Dimensions, Arts Hacker
- Google Tag Manager Tutorial For Beginners, Marketing Unicorn
Industry & Business
- Digital News Innovation Fund: three years in, and 662 total projects supported, Google Blog
- The Latest SEO News You Need To Know! Interview with Barry Schwartz, Site Visibility
- Hot off the press: Talking media with Google News Lab's director, Google Blog
Links & Promotion Building
- Link Building Terms You Should Know: The Ultimate Glossary, Search Engine Journal
- Mobile UX: Content optimization tips and tricks with Andrew Lassetter, Search Metrics
Local & Maps
- Bing Maps adds colored traffic info to routes, OnMSFT.com
- Google Maps for web gets a few Material Theme changes, 9to5Google
- Zenrin Falls on Speculation That Google Maps Partnership Is Over, Bloomberg
Mobile & Voice
SEO
- Google's Algorithm Update Impact On Digital Publishers (March 2019), Ezoic Blog
- Why are people afraid of SEO?, JB Klutse
- Advanced SEO Techniques: Equip Yourself with All the Knowledge You'll Need to Rank, Raven Tools
- Google Webmaster Hangout Notes: March 19th 2019, DeepCrawl
- Google's March 2019 Core Update, Seobility Blog
- Image Optimization Tips for Today's Search, State of Digital
- Is Javascript Bad For SEO? Do Bears Poop In The Woods?, Portent
- Optimizing For Search Entities Can Improve Your SEO, Conductor
- SEO Is a Means to an End: How Do You Prove Your Value to Clients?, Moz
- The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 2: Keyword Research - Whiteboard Friday, Moz
PPC
- Structured Data Files v4.2 now available in the DoubleClick Bid Manager API, Google Ads Developer Blog
- Google testing its new personalized Shopping homepage in France, 9to5Google
Search Features
- Bing delivers text-to-speech and greater coverage of intelligent answers and visual search, Bing Search Blog
Other Search
- Update on the Google Groups Settings API, Google Developers Blog
- Honoring J.S. Bach with our first AI-powered Doodle, Google Blog
