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:
- Google News Stopped Supporting Stock Tickers & Genre?
Joost de Valk noticed that the Google help document for Google News sitemaps has removed any mention of support for stock tickers and genre. We know Google dropped support for the Google News specific meta keywords tag and in the XML sitemap in February 2018 but stock tickers and genre? - Google Tests Featured Snippets With "See What Others Say"
Emily Perry shared a screen shot with me on Twitter of a new Google featured snippet test. In this interface, Google shows the main featured snippet but below it has a section with "see what others say" and then lets you click on an accordion interface to expand those other sources. - Google May Treat Some 404s As 301s & Canonicalize To A New URL
Google's John Mueller was asked by Mihai Aperghis in a webmaster hangout at the 58 minute mark about a page Mihai 404ed but Google is showing as a 301 to a new URL, like Google canonicalized the 404 URL to the new URL. - 85% Of SEOs Do Not Report Bing & Yahoo Rankings To Clients
Russ Jones from Moz did a Twitter poll asking if you report rankings related to Bing and Yahoo to your clients and stakeholders. With almost 900 responses, 86% said they do not, while only 14% said they do. - Google Search Console Speed Report Changes
As you know, Google launched a speed report in experimental mode in Google Search Console. Since it launched I've seen numerous complaints that Google is all of a sudden reporting the site as slow when it was moderate or OK. Well, now I am seeing the reverse. - Google Search Console's Coverage Report Shows More Indexed Pages
Google posted in the data anomalies page and on Twitter that it has updated the coverage report within Google Search Console and as a result, you may see more indexed pages being reported as of December 15, 2019. In short, some pages that were "Crawled - currently not indexed" are now known to be indexed. - Googlers Can Kayak Between Seattle Offices
Here is a photo from Google showing two Googlers using a kayak to go between the different offices in the Seattle office. Google wrote "Googlers in the Bay Area ride bikes to travel around campus, bu
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- IMO if RSS readers were critical for users of the web, they would be used more. Anecdotally, I haven't seen anyone write about collecting analytics from RSS feeds in about a decade. :) I really l, John Mueller on Twitter
- Search for Beginners: Episode 5 In this episode, we cover how to check whether your site is showing up in Google Search. Additionally, if it’s not, how to ensure your site gets crawled and indexed. Watch now, Google Webmasters on Twitter
- Thanks! I passed that on to the search team as feedback., John Mueller on Twitter
- The awesome thing about the web is that there's room for all kinds of unpopular & niche things. That doesn't mean Google should do them all, and to be honest, I'm glad that's the case, John Mueller on Twitter
- We are aware of this and reported it to the relevant teams. Thanks, John Mueller on Twitter
- Do migrating to "google domains" will improve my SEO in any way ?, Reddit
- Trouble Brewing Over Facebook Location Tracking, WebmasterWorld
Search Engine Land Stories:
- 6 of the best social listening tools for 2020
- Bing partners with flight booking sites to bolster flight search offerings
- SMX Overtime: Opportunities and challenges for conversational voice search
- Marketers moving away from home-grown tools, hiring fresh teams for new martech
- The big list of 2019 Google search algorithm updates
- Google Search Console Coverage report improves accuracy on indexed pages
- Yandex, the big Russian search engine, releases Vega update
- Video: Will Hanke on teaching SEO and lead generation
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
- Google Data Studio - Optional metrics serving the good of visualisation and analysis, Wissi
- OKRs Elevate Your Analytics Processes and Outcomes, Blast Analytics
- When should you run an A/B test?, Go Fish Digital
Industry & Business
- Google’s Larry Page gave $400 million in Christmas donations. Not a penny went straight to charity., Vox
- Texas, Google battle over experts in states’ antitrust probe, Washington Post
Links & Promotion Building
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
- Amazon, Apple, and Google want all smart devices talk to each other, Vox
- Apple's Siri the Most Popular Virtual Assistant With a 35 Percent Market Share: Report, NDTV
- Pixel 4 owners can soon use Google Assistant to control Chrome, Android Community
- Virtual Assistants to Exceed 2.5 Billion Shipments in 2023, Futuresource Consulting Press
SEO
- What Is Naver? Inside Conductor's Naver SEO Integration, Conductor
- How will SEO change in 2020?, DealerOn
- Key Considerations When Forecasting Organic ROI, Koozai blog
PPC
- Google Display Network Remarketing: The Basics, Metric Theory
- Important Notice: Recent Google change that affects your Ad Testing & Management, Adalysis
Other Search
- Bing’s Top Search Results Contain an Alarming Amount of Disinformation, FSI | Cyber | Internet Observatory
