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:
- SEMrush Selling Links That Are Against Google's Guidelines
SEMRush launched the SEMRush Marketplace about a year ago and at some point, within that marketplace, began selling guest posts that drive "natural links to your site." Now, we all love SEMRush, but John Mueller of Google said this is "an unnatural link - the kind the webspam team might take action on." - Google Featured Snippets Now Highlight Answers On Your Website
Back in 2018, Google launched a feature in mobile search for featured snippets that were AMP. When you clicked on the featured snippet and you went to the AMP page, it would highlight in yellow the answer on that page. Google then began testing this on desktop for non-AMP pages a year ago and now it is officially live on desktop. - John Mueller: Often I Don't Report Spam To Webspam Team
John Mueller of Google said on Twitter that when he is asked for input publicly around web spam issues, like on Twitter, he often would not report that directly to the Google webspam team. He said "in most cases I run across here, where people ask us for input, or where it looks like sites would do better if prompted, I don't forward things to the webspam team." - New Google My Business Custom Hours By Category
Google released a new feature within Google My Business to let you set "more hours." More hours are by categories of types of hours; like if you are a supermarket and you have special hours for seniors, or you have special pickup hours for a hardware store, or if you have special access hours for a dental office. - Google To Fix Custom Date Range Google Search Bug
Danny Sullivan of Google said by Friday the bug with using the custom date range in Google Search. There are numerous complaints about it not filtering the results to the date range you selected. Danny said on Twitter "yes, there's a bug we expect to be fixed by Friday." - Pick A Google Door
If you had to pick a door, which Google door would you pick? Which would lead to higher AdSense earnings or better Google rankings or maybe a massive Google penalty? You choose? This photo was from
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- I'll pass these examples on to the quality team to review just to be sure, but this is usually the kind of site that I have trouble escalating: it's not bad, but it's not great either. I struggle to find a s, John Mueller on Twitter
- Shared hosting & CDNs on a single IP is really common, having some bad sites on an IP doesn't make everything on that IP bad., John Mueller on Twitter
- That's up to you. You can either use a "global" language (whichever one you prefer, it doesn't need to be English), an automatic redirect, or a language/country-picker page (combinations are fine too)., John Mueller on Twitter
- Handling hyperlocal product SEO, WebmasterWorld
- No, of course not. There are plenty of sites that monetize completely or partially with affiliate links that I find great. There are also many that are built just to drive traffic to affiliate l, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- How location data can drive your marketing strategy during COVID [Video]
- Google launches featured snippet to web page content highlight feature
Other Great Search Stories:
<Analytics
- Activate Powerful Customer Insights with Voice of the Customer, Blast Analytics
- Control your Google Analytics data collection against property limits and quotas with a Data Studio report, Mehdi Oudjida's analytics blog
- How to Implement Google Analytics App + Web on Your Website & Mobile App, Bounteous
- Sessions vs. Users vs. Pageviews in Google Analytics, Databox Blog
Industry & Business
- My Experience Working at Seer Interactive, Seer Interactive
- Standing with the Black community, Google Blog
Local & Maps
- 13 Essential Google My Business Optimizations for 2020, WordStream
- Google My Business Adds Insurance Info Feature For Healthcare Provider Listings, Seer Interactive
Mobile & Voice
- Making the Advanced Protection Program and Titan Security Keys easier to use on Apple iOS devices, Google Online Security Blog
- How to use Action Blocks to automate your Google Assistant actions, Android Central
SEO
- 4 SEO Tips for Small Nonprofits, Seer Interactive
- Searching without result: Insights from zero result searches, Yoast
- SNYCU Podcast Transcription with Marie and John Mueller, Marie Haynes Consulting
- Google's Getting Smarter: It's High Time To Rethink Your SEO Approach, Hallam
PPC
