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: Google Ranking Fluctuations, Bing Search Improves With AI & Google Local Ranking Information
This week in search we saw a lot of ranking fluctuations in Google Search starting around Wednesday. Bing talked about some big AI improvements it made that helped with autosuggest, people also ask... - Google My Business SAB & Virtual Offices Guidelines Updated
Over the past couple of weeks Google has been making updated to its guidelines around service area businesses (SABs) and virtual offices in terms of their Google My Business use. Joy Hawkins documented a lot of the changes but here is a short summary. - Google: The Context Around Links Is Secondary But Anchor Text Is Primary
You know that many uses of anchor text on links around the web do not say much about where it is linking to. There are tons of "click here" links or other links that are not descriptive. Mihai Aperghis asked John Mueller of Google about the context around a link and how Google treats that. - Google Local Inventory Ads Gain "Pickup Later" Feature
Google announced that it is expanding its local inventory ads to support the option for stores to show a "pickup later" option. So you can show when the item is available for pick up in the store. - Ginny Marvin Is Leaving Search Engine Land & SMX
Ginny Marvin is leaving Third Door Media, you know the company behind Search Engine Land, SMX and more. She announced it a couple of days ago and the company is already looking for a replacement. - Orange Skies At Google During Wildfires
A couple weeks ago were those intense wildfires in California and the west coast of the United States. Here is a photo from that time in front of the GooglePlex, the Google headquarters, in Mountain
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- It's not a problem for SEO. We pick them up as we index the web pages, and it sounds like they're on HTTPS, so we'd use the HTTPS versions anyway. It might be worth fixing for security though, John Mueller on Twitter
- The confusing part is we only mostly focus on canonical URLs, for some search features we track the shown URLs in the performance report (eg, sitelinks track as the shown URL). Depending on where pages from, John Mueller on Twitter
- I think that's on the radar, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
- Is Amazon about to eat Google’s lunch?
- Insights to reimagine your holiday 2020 planning
- Yelp brings Ads Dashboard into Yelp for Business, debuts new ads features
- Top tips to improve your Google Quality Score
- The rise of reputation experience management
- Google brings bidding to Local Services Ads
- Bing applies AI and natural language models to autosuggest, People Also Ask
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Monitoring your BigQuery costs and reports usage with Data Studio | by Mike Shakhomirov, Towards Data Science
- Understanding Google Analytics 'Lifetime Value' with Artificial Intelligence, Lucrative
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Mobile & Voice
- Alexa will seem more human with breathing pauses and learning skills, Engadget
- Google Assistant Snapshot gets homescreen app shortcut, 9to5Google
SEO
PPC
- How to Keep Your Google Ads Costs Under Control, SEM Rush
- Launch of Open Perspectives Unplugged live series, Microsoft Advertising
Search Features
- What’s the Deal With Google Now?, New York Times
Other Search
