Google has made a change to their search algo in Japan to lower the rankings of low quality sites in the search results. The Japanese Google Webmaster Blog made a post about improving search quality in Japanese search. As a part of this, we made improvements to the quality evaluation method of the website this […]
Archives for February 2017
Google’s Other Googlebots Don’t Affect Google Search
Gary Illyes from Google posted a couple of tweets on Twitter about Google’s use of Googlebots, and particularly other parts of Google that may also use Googlebots for their own programs. The software called Googlebot is used by many many teams at Google, not just search. Better not let every engineer reinvent the wheel pic.twitter.com/Ov8hSOJaKP […]
Google Local 3-Pack Drops Organic Listing for Local Ad
Google My Business is testing a bold new change. Google is now testing their local 3-pack to include one local ad and only two organic local results. Until now, Google has been using ads only in the new sponsored local panel or including an ad in addition to the 3 organic listings. Here is what […]
Google Sends New Round of Outdated Plugin Warnings
Google has been sending out a new round of Google Search Console warnings for site owners using outdated WordPress plugins. Casey Markee posted a screenshot of the latest warning. Revolution Slider was the reason why hundreds of thousands of WordPress blogs were exploited by hackers back in 2014. And one of the problems was that […]
Google Adds “Watch Live” Link to Sports Scores Box in Search Results
If you are a sports fan, you have probably seen sports score results in the top of Google search results when you search for a team while a game is happening. Google has now added a new feature of a link to “Watch Live.” Here is what it looks like: When you click to “Watch […]
Google Testing Card Style Product Listing Ads
Google is testing out the card style format on their Product Listing Ads now on desktop. This format stands out quite a bit against the regular formatted search results. Google is testing the card style PLAs at both the position at the top of the search results and the ones that appear in the right […]
Bing Testing Local Carousels With 50 Listings
This is quite an interesting test from Bing. They are testing a new carousel style for some of their local results, and they look more like a business card than a web or local result. Here is what it looks like: It seems to be organized by location, as the map shifts as you scroll […]
Google Adds Previews to Structured Data Testing Tool
Google’s updated Structured Data Testing Tool now offers previews when you submit a URL or code snippet for testing. This means you can check and see what your markup would look like in the search results without having to wait for it to go live. The preview functionality only works for some types of schema […]