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:
- Vlog #79: Andrew Goodman On Stopping The Bleed Of Paid Search Ad Spend & Proper PPC Experiments
Andrew Goodman has been doing the Google Ads, back then AdWords, thing since 2000, so for over 20 years now under his agency Page Zero Media... - Google Says Lighthouse Header Order Suggestion Isn't For SEO
The other day I reported that Google said the order of your header tags and elements do not matter for SEO purposes. Then a bunch of SEOs say but Google's Lighthouse tool gives you warnings when your headers are out of order. So Patrick Hulce, the former Google engineer who worked on Lighthouse said the header suggestion is in the "audit in the accessibility category, we don't tell you to do it for SEO reasons." - Google: Image License Or Copyrights Does Not Help With Rankings
John Mueller from Google said he does not believe that an image that is licensed and copyrighted would rank better in search because it has a copyright label on it. Google does have that newish license metadata but all that does it let you show a licensable badge on your images in image search. - Google Has Not Cut Crawling & Indexing To Save Money During The Pandemic
I don't know where these rumors come from and how they persist but just like we reported in April and May, Google has not slowed crawling or indexing to save money and resources during the pandemic. COVID-19 and this coronavirus has not made Google look to search for a way to save money at the company. - Google: Guest Blog Post Links Have Zero Value
Google's John Mueller said that links from guest blog posts have zero value. He said on Twitter when asked about that as a link building strategy, he said "those links have zero value." "It's a waste of time if you're just doing it for the links," John added. - Google Images Structured Data Formats Include BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG
Google updated its Google Image best practices to specify that images referenced in structured data must be in one of the image file formats that are supported by Google Images. These formats include BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG. - New Google Basketball Sport Court
Here is a brand new sport court Google put in near the GooglePlex office in Mountain View, California. This is a basketball court and a roller hockey rink, as you can clearly see.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Meta descriptions can be used for the search result snippet, so if you don't specify anything (on the mobile page, with mobile-first-indexing), we'll have to figure it out ourselves. They're not used for ranking thoug, John Mueller on Twitter
- "Uncommon SEO Knowledge #2 Titles and Meta Descriptions + Snippets Let's see if I can cover something most SEOs don't know about the tags they're most familiar with. (thread), Patrick Stox on Twitter
- How to replace data-vocabulary.org with schema.org markup?, WebmasterWorld
- It's a pretty common pattern to link back & forth between pages on your own website, it makes it easier for users (and crawlers) to find their way., John Mueller on Twitter
- Same as when this person asked me. Short answer: image creators only tend to note the race of someone when they aren't white unless pictured with those of other races. Not how it should be but why this ty, Danny Sullivan on Twitter
- Sure! Keep working on your site to make it the best it can be. If that means moving content from the homepage to somewhere else, or moving content from somewhere to the homepage, that's totally up to y, John Mueller on Twitter
- These reports are based on what people found your website for in Search; they're not theoretical. Sometimes it's worth drilling into the details to find out more, but given the queries you showed, your time is pr, John Mueller on Twitter
- Twitter Tests Quote Tweet Counts, WebmasterWorld
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- How to Get All Your Ad Data into Google Analytics, Business 2 Community
Industry & Business
- Code Coverage Best Practices, Google Testing Blog
Links & Content Marketing
- Backlinks and Domain Authority Explained, BrightEdge
Local & Maps
- Google Gets User Report All Wrong, Mistakenly Renames Famed River on Google Maps, AutoEvolution
- Google Maps for iOS bug breaks Street View, 9to5Google
Mobile & Voice
SEO
- Context Clues and Signals… is a Ranking Factor by Another Name as Sweet?, JLH Marketing
- WordPress SEO Plugins: Why Real-Time and Customized Data Matters, BruceClay
- Why Do Organic Rankings Fluctuate?, Koozai
PPC
- A human-centered approach to business, Microsoft Advertising
