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:
- Study Says 65% Of Google Searches Do Not Click On Results But Should They?
Rand Fishkin came out with yet an eye popping study, saying that based on SimilarWeb data "64.82% of searches on Google (desktop and mobile combined) ended in the search results without clicking to another web property." The previous year he used JumpShot data which showed 50.33% of all Google searches ended without a click to any web property in the results. - Google: Don't Use A 502 Status Code When You Should Use A 503
Recently, Google's John Mueller posted about what to do if your site goes offline. The advice was to serve a 503 server status code if the outage is short term. So someone asked if they can serve a 502 server status code instead. John Mueller said you shouldn't. - Update Google Featured Snippets Fast
Ever see one of your sites rank well for a featured snippet in Google Search but the information that was shown was not something you are proud of? Maybe it was inaccurate, maybe it has a typo, maybe it had some other issue? How do you update the featured snippet in Google so that the content is updated fast in Google Search? - Google: Page Indexed Without Content Notice Is About Page Being Blocked By Robots.txt
We've all seen the message in Google Search Console's index coverage report for "Page indexed without content." Google's Gary Illyes said when you see that, most of the time (not all of the time), it is about "pages that are blocked by robots.txt." - Google: Don't Worry About Bounce Rate For SEO Purposes
Google's John Mueller, once again, said that for SEO purposes, for ranking in Google purposes, you do not need to worry about your site's bounce rate. John said this on Reddit "Google doesn't use that for SEO, so if you're focused on SEO, you can ignore that." - Larry Page & Sergey Brin Knock On Your Door
Jacob Ritchie, a computer science PhD Student Stanford was surprised in December 2019 when the co-founders of Google knocked on his office door at Stanford. It was Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- GMB repeatedly changing Health & Safety and Service Options, Local Search Forum
- If the URLs show the same content, I'd try to use the same URL or at least use rel=canonical. (Also, those long "hashes" for the paging parameter seem a bit extreme, but I don't think Googlebot will care), John Mueller on Twitter
- rel=noopener is specific to browsers, like a lot of things in HTML, and not something that's used by search engines. It's good to read up about what it is though, don't just blindly follow advice on Twitte, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- Heineken USA builds ‘golden consumer records’ to enable 1:1 relationships with customers
- Zero-click Google searches rose to nearly 65% in 2020
- Lowest SMX rates expire Saturday — book now & save!
- Privacy AND targeted content: can they coexist?; Monday’s daily brief
- Video: Dan Toplitt, SVP, Head of US SEO at Reprise Digital, on enterprise SEO
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Increase conversions through funnel analysis, Amazee Metrics
- Using the New Google Analytics API to Get Most Popular Pages, JavaScript in Plain English
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
- How to produce high quality written content, Brainlabs
- Integrator vs Aggregator Growth, Kevin Indig
- Head-down organic link building, SISTRIX
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
- Apple Developing New 'HomePod' Models With Screens and Cameras, MacRumors
- 'Apple Car' integration with iPhone poses big threat to high-end auto manufacturers, AppleInsider
- 'Apple Glass' may use holograms to create 3D virtual objects, AppleInsider
SEO
- 7 Solid Strategies to Stand Out From Your Competitors on Google, WordStream
- Featured Snippets: Not Gone, Just on Holiday (Apparently), Moz
- How does video SEO work?, Yoast
- How To Increase Time to First Byte, ohgm
- The Ultimate List of Every Google Update Related to Mobile First, iPullRank
- Why Is Google Moving to Mobile-Only Indexing? - Jordan Koene, Search Metrics
- Yoast Local SEO 13.9: Primary location & shared properties, Yoast
Search Features
- Helping newsrooms experiment together with AI, Google Blog
Other Search
- Hospitals Hide Pricing Data From Search Results, Wall Street Journal
