Industry News

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

Google Search still has not calmed its ranking shifts, volatility and movement. The search results remain incredibly volatile with rankings and traffic changing again in a big way over the past day or so. I know I sound like a broken record but even some of the tools are adjusting their volatility thresholds to counter the new higher volatility in the search results.

Google has refreshed and updated its web search policies documentation. The big change is Google added more language around the site reputation abuse policy, while expanding, simplifying and clarifying other sections of its search policies.

Google AI Overviews generally do not show up for branded or navigational queries. So if you are searching for a brand or company, generally, Google has not shown an AI Overview.

Google now can show movies you recently viewed as an "activity card." I am not sure if this is based on a movie you actually went to see in the theatres, watched online or just based on you clicking on movie listings within Google Search.

Google Search has this newish news or top stories carousel format that Google titled "States in the news." It shows you news or top stories from news publishers related to the query by U.S. state.

Google Search has this news or top stories section titled "Backstory." It comes up from political queries, maybe other news queries.

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

Google is reportedly working on fixing a bug with not being able to properly respond to a noindex directive on some JavaScript generated pages. This is happening for some React apps using Single Page Applications (SPAs) that have the noindex directive on them but Google is not picking it up and thus indexing pages that should not be indexed.

Google now places a notice or warning on some Google Business Profile listings within Google Maps when it thinks some of the reviews may be fake or fraudulent. We covered this notice when Google updated its reviews restrictions documentation but I wanted to highlight the notice more.