Industry News

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.

The Google Search ranking volatility has not calmed...

It's like Google cannot make up its mind - with all the volatility we reported post Google August 2024 core update, a lot of that volatility means ranking changes for sites like yours. Some of you who saw modest increases in your Google Search rankings during the core update are now reporting those gains are being lost.

Google Ads can show a nice number of sitelinks under the ad, as sitelink extensions. But I've never seen Google show 10 sitelinks under a single sponsored listing. Google did respond saying "this is not intended," which implies this is some weird bug.

Google is testing using its top card format for shopping and e-commerce related queries and information. This shows product results with pricing on the left, with popular stores on the right, and then some review content in the from on content and videos on the right side of that.

The Information posted survey results of its 1,088 subscribers they surveyed and said that 77% said they are using traditional search engines like Google because of generative Al products. So I ran the same'ish poll on X and I got only 55% are using Google/traditional search less.

Google's John Mueller responded to questions around image SEO, specifically explaining that while the image itself and the alt text is useful, so is the page that image is embedded on. This is all useful for Google to know the relevance of an image based on a specific query.

This is excellent advice from Will Larson:

Many high-agency managers try to prevent executives from doing silly things, but it’s almost always more effective to translate their energy for a silly thing into energy for a useful thing. It also leaves the executive feeling supported by your work rather than viewing you as an obstacle to their progress.

He shares some practical examples in the post to illustrate the principle. Also relevant—Casey Winters’s story about executives sometimes...

I love this sentiment from Austin Kleon:

I am big on being a "curious elder”—and one way, I think, to expand the curious elder idea is to not just be curious about what young people are into, but to also share your curiosity about the world in a way that is generous but without expectation. To point out the things you think are good… just in case somebody, maybe even somebody younger, is looking for them.

I’ll go ahead and keep sharing the things I like, and I hope everyone else...

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Another week and more Google Search ranking volatility, in fact, it has not calmed but we saw even more spikes in the middle of this week. Google Search Console may have a bug with product snippets reporting. Google...