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:
Google To Move Last Batch Of Sites To Mobile-First Indexing Soon
Google’s John Mueller said in a video hangout on Friday that Google has stopped automatically moving sites to the mobile-first indexing system. Instead, the last batch of sites are being queued up and will all be moved over sometime in the coming month or months.
Vlog #112: Dan Toplitt on Enterprise SEO & Looking At The Larger Picture
On a bit of a gloomy day, Dan Toplitt was out in my neighborhood and stopped by to get on the vlog. Dan and I met prior to him becoming an SEO…
Not Helpful Button On Google Local Reviews
Google is now testing a “not helpful” button in the local reviews within local listings in Google Maps and Google Search. Tom Waddington spotted this and posted the screenshot below on Twitter.
Google: It Is About Link Quality Not Link Quantity
For most SEOs, this is very obvious, that it is not about the raw number of links you have to your webpages but rather the quality of those links. Google can and likely does ignore the low quality links, so having a billion low quality links is worthless in many cases. But having one high quality link can be huge for a site.
Google Tests Chat Button In Local Panel (Instead Of Message)
Google’s local panel allows you to message or now chat with some businesses that enable the messaging feature in Google My Business. Previously, Google always called it “message” in the local panel but now Google is testing calling it “chat.”
Google Ads Tests Smart Matching Match Type
Last week, @PPCGreg spotted Google testing a brand new match type in Google Ads named “Smart Matching.” What is Smart Matching? I have no idea but Google Ads confirmed it was a “small tests that select advertisers have opted into.” But I have no idea what makes this match type “smart.”
Google Kippah
We have seen Google branded kippahs or yarmulkes before but here is one from the Jewgler, Matthew Yeager. He shared this photo with me on Friday and I figured I’d share it here since you all see me we
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Content Theft : How to Tackle Content Theft, WebmasterWorld
Search Engine Land Stories:
How to tell if you’ve outgrown your martech
Google clarifies the SharedArrayBuffer notification
2021 SEO and digital marketing salary and job trends guide
Featured snippets went missing but have now returned; Friday’s daily brief
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
A Look at the New Simpler and Better Google Analytics – Canada’s Leading Web Hosting and Domain Name Provider, Canspace
GA4’s Analysis Hub Makes Ad-Hoc Analysis Workflows Easier, CMSWire
Industry & Business
Google and the Age of Privacy Theater, Wired
Star Rating at Google Review Isn’t Defamatory-Gursten v. Doe 1, Eric Goldman
In 2020, Two Thirds of Google Searches Ended Without a Click, SparkToro
Next Billion Users head Caesar Sengupta is leaving Google, TechCrunch
Links & Content Marketing
How To Find Unlinked Brand Mentions in Ahrefs, Koozai
Local & Maps
The Local Finder vs. Google Maps: How Different Are They?, Moz
Mobile & Voice
Apple HomePod Mini Secret Sensor for Smart Home Thermostats, Bloomberg
Think Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are gimmicks? You’d better think again…, TechRadar
SEO
Clarifications about the SharedArrayBuffer object message, Google
Rand Fishkin’s View of the Evolution of SEO – Rand Fishkin, SparkToro
Core Web Vitals: Everything you, your SEO team, and your business need to know, DeepCrawl
Leverage Programmatic SEO (& Scale Your Approach), Seer Interactive
PPC
Staying home has made us rethink our spaces, Microsoft Advertising
Other Search
Ex-Trump aide tweets ‘executive orders’ after Google lists him as president, The Guardian
Non-English editions of Wikipedia have a misinformation problem., Slate
