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.

Google I/O was today...

Gary Illyes from Google confirmed that Google has "suddenly" dedindexed a "vast amount of URLs" from the Google Search index this past February. He said this was done because Google's "perception of the site has changed."

Six months ago, I covered the famous (non) "buckle up" comments about the changes coming to Google Search over the next several months. Well, Andy Simpson posted a recording of Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, who said these comments and I thought it would be good to listen to them now - 6 months later.

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said yesterday on X that he has read the feedback from the community related to the March 2024 core update and the general feedback about search quality over the past few months. He said there are places where Google can do better, but it won't happen overnight.

For over a decade now, I've been talking about Google adding an automated action viewer to Google Search Console to accompany the manual action viewer. This would provide a way to see if a Google Search ranking algorithm negatively impacts your site's performance.

About 45 minutes before OpenAI's announcement of GPT-4o, Google posted on X a demo of new Gemini capabilities where you show Google Gemini something on your camera via a live video feed and Google will answer your questions about it. Then OpenAI shortly after demoed its GPT-4o assistant features that blew everyone's minds away.

Google announced and emailed advertisers that they are changing the functionality of Google Ads accounts that are suspended. These changes go into effect in June 2024 and will limited what suspended accounts can do in Google Ads.

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.

Google explains the differences between algorithm updates...

Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, posted on X explaining the differences between algorithm updates, like core updates, and then data refreshes, the data that goes into those ranking systems. This is actually something Matt Cutts, former Googler, did back in 2006, on his blog and now Danny Sullivan did a short version of it on X.

Google Ads will be modifying its disclosure policy for event ticket sale. The update will say that the "disclosures should be easily visible and clearly explained in the top 20% (above the fold) of any destination when reached via an ad."