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 #23: Aja Frost from HubSpot On Topic Clusters, Featured Snippets, Image SEO & Suggested Clips
Aja Frost (@ajavuu) is the senior SEO strategies at Hubspot, she joined the SEO team there 1.5 years ago but has been with HubSpot for over three years. Aja comes from a freelance writing background before she did SEO. - Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right With Google And Breaking Guidelines
Google's John Mueller every now and then has to respond to someone with the old saying, two wrongs don't make a right. Often enough people ask him, my competitor is doing X, which is against Google's guidelines. My competitor is ranking well, can I do that also? - No ETA On Google Search Console Speed Reports API
Google recently released the Google Search Console Speed Reports, which is still in the "experimental" stage. But SEOs want to know when there will be an API for this data. John Mueller from Google said there is currently no ETA for an API for these reports. - Google: Our Production Parser Is Different; The Search Console Parser Uses A Java Port
Gary Illyes from Google clarified on Twitter that the production parser, which Google recently opened sourced for all to see, it different from the parser Google uses in Search Console. So the results might come out differently. What is different, Gary said the Search Console parser uses a Java port that is disconnected from production. - Google & WordPress Robots.txt Handling Is Being Looked Into
One of the takeaways from the Google Webmaster Conference was that if Google tries to access your robots.txt file is unreachable but it does exist then Google won't crawl your site. Google said about 26% of the time GoogleBot cannot reach a robots.txt file. WordPress might make changes in order to reduce this error rate. - Another Google Says We Don't Use User Behavior As A Ranking Factor
I knew this Martin Splitt laptop head-bang GIF would come in handy the day he would answer this question. Many Googlers have said over the years that user actions, such as dwell time, time on a page, and so forth at not used by Google as a search ranking factor. Martin Splitt from Google has now also said it (he may have said it before, but I never saw it). - John Mueller Signs Google Banner For Fan
Here is a photo I took from the Google Webmaster Conference where John Mueller is signing a banner they had at the conference for a fan. He wrote down the number one secret to ranking well in Google
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Woohoo! My hair isn't quite up to par, but it has thrown some people off here in the office :-)., John Mueller on Twitter
- Did you just spam me?, Gary Illyes on Twitter
- Elevate your video campaigns with new extensions for YouTube ads, Google Ads Help
- Unexplained spike in GMB Views?, Local Search Forum
Search Engine Land Stories:
- It’s time to change your content marketing workflow
- Could Chrome’s targetText functionality have uses beyond Featured Snippets on desktop?
- FAQ: All about the BERT algorithm in Google search
- A deep dive into BERT: How BERT launched a rocket into natural language understanding
- 10 call analytics reports that will change your search marketing
- 5 tips and trends from Google Webmaster Conference
- Google extends Shopping ads to more YouTube inventory
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Calculate Readability Scores For Content, Simo Ahava's blog
- Measuring content performance in GA: analysis and dashboards, Builtvisible
- Troubleshooting Data Blending in Google Data Studio, Portent
Industry & Business
- Microsoft search engine Bing is going corporate, Quartz
- Supporting social impact startups, Google Blog
- Jeremy Stoppelman’s Long Battle With Google Is Finally Paying Off, BuzzFeed News
Links & Promotion Building
- Earning A Wikipedia Listing, InLinks
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
- Wearable Tech Spending Will Jump 27% Next Year: Report, Voicebot
- Did you know? “Ok, Boomer” can also wake up the Google Assistant, Android Authority
SEO
- A day in the life of the Technical SEO team, QueryClick
- International Search Engines: SEO For Baidu, Yandex, & Naver, Botify
- What Google Wants You to Know about Its Algorithm Updates, Cognitive SEO
- A Year of SEO Testing with ODN, Distilled
- October 2019 Winners and Losers: Amazon Soars While Travel Sites Plummet, Search Metrics
- Why URL Redirects Are So Important to SEO and Your Websit, State of Digital
PPC
