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 Organic vs Ads, SEO Tips, Sundar Pichai on Core Search & Happy Holidays
This was a very slow week in search, because of the holidays and New Years break. But I did scrounge up some topics to cover. A senior Google search engineer said searchers can... - Google: We Don't Look at Max-Age Value Of JavaScript Or CSS Files For Search
Google's John Mueller confirmed that Google won't be looking at the max-age value of your JavaScript or CSS files when crawling and indexing those details. John Mueller said on Twitter "No, generally not for search" we do not look at that. - Both Google & Bing Support ETag/If-None-Match
Google's John Mueller said Google does support ETag/If-None-Match after this Search Engine Land article shows that Bing supports it. He said it is rare to see sites using it, most use If-Modified-Since instead. - Google: Hard To Understand URL Structures Can Lead To Indexing Issues
Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that sometimes hard to understand and really complex URL structures can lead to pages being removed from the Google search index. He said specifically "many URLs leading to the same content, making our systems assume that a part of the URL is irrelevant." - Google Query Leads To Infinite Loop, Like Recursion
Dejan noticed that if you search for [can't wow "banana"] - which is a very unusual query - it can lead you into an infinite loop if you click a specific pattern. This reminds me a bit of searching for [recursion] in Google, but in that case, it is on purpose. - Google Paris LEGO Eiffel Tower
Here is a photo from the lobby of the Google Paris, France office. You can see, it looks like there is a gigantic LEGO designed Eiffel Tower in the lobby. Jeff posted this photo on Twitter and said
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- I'm not a big fan of GSC auto-verification via GA. Although benign, this is why. There was a bug with GSC verification via GA on 11/12. Emails were sent out to users vs owners containing the person's email address. Only owners wer, Glenn Gabe on Twitter
- Adsense keeps on flagging my old deleted files, WebmasterWorld
- What 2018 is leaving behind, WebmasterWorld
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Industry & Business
- Help Us Celebrate 15 Years of Blogging, Online Marketing Blog
Links & Promotion Building
- 4 Sales Lessons for SEO Link Building, Practical Ecommerce
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
- Hebrew voice of Siri sues Apple, says it didn't obtain proper rights, Apple Insider
- Smart speakers hit critical mass in 2018, TechCrunch
- Why Voice Search Will Dominate SEO In 2019 -- And How You Can Capitalize On It, Forbes
SEO
- 5 SEO Factors to Monitor in 2019, Search Engine Journal
- 6 SEO Tactics Attorneys Need to Be Using, SEM Rush
- The SEO Elevator Pitch - Whiteboard Friday, Moz
PPC
- The 9 Biggest Online Advertising Stories of 2018, WordStream