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:
- Programming Note: Offline Wednesday For Yom Kippur 5779
This is just a programming note that I will be 100% offline starting Tuesday night through Wednesday night for Yom Kippur. I am not scheduling any stories on Yom Kippur, everything here will be paused until Thursday morning (or if something is urgent, Wednesday night). - Google Search Launched 2,453 Changes In 2017
In that CNBC article, Google told them that in 2017 Google ran 31,584 side-by-side experiments with its raters and subsequently launched 2,453 search changes. Of course, the "2,453 search changes" can be small design tweaks and such. Google does not disclose the number of algorithm changes. - Google Guidelines: Can You Hypnotize Someone For Links?
A funny question came up in a Reddit thread, and I am in the mood for funny right now. The question was, can you hypnotize someone to get links to your web site and if you do, is it against Google's webmaster guidelines? The funny thing is also that John Mueller from Google responded. - Google: Don't Build Sites Where You Need To Test To See How Search Engines React
Google's John Mueller has said on Reddit that it is better to build a site where you know how Google and search engines will treat it then build a site where you are unsure. There isn't always a need to get fancy with your code to the point where you need to go through various tests to make sure Google will crawl, index and rank those pages. - New Google Sitelinks With Image Thumbnails
Google seems to have launched image thumbnails in the sitelinks of the mobile search result snippets. If you search for [bear] on Google mobile search and look at the Sitelinks for the Wikipeida snippet, you will see these images in the Sitelinks carousel. - Google Image Search Tests Image Refinement Buttons
Google seems to be testing yet another feature to show image thumbnails in the refinement bubbles/buttons at the top of your Google Image Searches. The refinement buttons let you further filter your image search to specific categories and here Google is testing to see if adding thumbnail images help. - Dalek At Google London Office
Here is a photo from the Google London office with Dalek, which are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television program Doctor Who.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- iPhones and iPads Subject to CSS Code Which Causes Restarts, WebmasterWorld
- New GMB Insights layout…, Thibault Adda on Twitter
- Yeah, there's no particular order.…, John Mueller on Twitter
- Another batch of mobile first indexing enabled emails started going out this morning (CET time). Looks like a good bunch of them again. /Cc @rustybrick, Joost de Valk on Twitter
- This is a super interesting read about the connection between the Quality Raters' Guidelines and how Google makes algorithm changes. https://t.co/iQR0LOetz6 (H/T @glenngabe)… https://t.co/3ny0JHiGIl, Marie Haynes on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- How to choose the best content format for link building
- Customer Data Challenge: Improve martech efficiency and ROI with unified data
- Ask the SMXpert — Page speed, site migrations and crawling
- Bing shuts down public URL submission tool
- How e-commerce can compete for informational queries by optimizing for intent
- Bing improves visual search, adds educational carousel, American Sign Language and NFL answers
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Is your website’s menu broken? Find out fast using the Navigation Summary report in Google Analytics., Orbit Media Studios
Industry & Business
Links & Promotion Building
- Earn PR links before you even launch – a digital PR case study, Majestic Blog
- How Many New Backlinks Do Top-ranking Pages Get Over Time [New Data by Ahrefs], Ahrefs
Local & Maps
- In Major Auto Partnership, Google’s Android System to Power Dashboard Media Display, Wall Street Journal
Mobile & Voice
- Amazon might launch eight Alexa devices this fall, Engadget
- Google Assistant adds streaming support for Bugs Music, 9to5Google
SEO
- Google Update Survival Guide: What To Do When Google Updates It's Algorithm, cognitiveseo.com
- The Ultimate SEO Audit [Works GREAT in 2018], backlinko.com
PPC
- 9 Effective Tips To Help Create Engaging PPC Ad Copy, KobeDigital
- The Importance of Google Quality Score, PPC Hero
Search Features
- Measuring user journeys across the AMP Cache and your website, Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
- New-style TripAdvisor aims to be the world's first ‘travel feed’, The Guardian
- An open governance model for the AMP Project, Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
