This week, Google made big news by announcing they are working on making the Robots Exclusion Protocol a real standard. With that they announced they will no longer support unsupported features including the noindex directive in the robots.txt file. Bing said they never supported it in the first place. Google also listed out the changes with this announcement in their developer docs. Google open sourced how GoogleBot parses robots.txt files to the world. Google said they may crack down on when SEOs lease or use third-party subdomains. Google said they won’t be shutting down more Google Search Console features. I posted the monthly Google Webmaster Report, this is the July report. Google said old posts can still be relevant and rank in featured snippets. Google featured snippets is testing show more images. Google Image Search is testing a sticky preview box. Google Image search now lets you more easily share GIFs. Google Ads API went back into beta – how weird. Google Maps launched place topics that summarize your reviews. Google My Business may be testing a new home view. Gary Illyes from Google may be up to something new said John Mueller. And I posted my first vlog this week, interviewing Ryan Clutter – let me know what you think. Sorry about my face – I think I got burned. That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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Search Topics of Discussion:
Google Works To Make Robots Exclusion Protocol A Real Standard
Google To Drop Any Support For crawl-delay, nofollow, and noindex in robots.txt
Bing: We Never Supported Noindex In Robots.txt
List Of All The GoogleBot Robots.txt Specifications Changes
Google Shares Its Robots.txt Parser Code With Open Source World
Will Google Crack Down On Sites Leasing Out Its Subdomains
Google Probably Won’t Be Turning Off Any Other Search Console Features
July 2019 Google Webmaster Report
Google Says Sometimes Old Posts Are Still Relevant, But Not In That Example
Google Featured Snippets More Images Section
Google Image Search Tests Sticky Image Preview Box
Google Images Makes It Easier To Share GIFs
Google Ads API Goes Back Into Beta
Google Maps Launches Place Topics
Google My Business Tests New Design For Console
Something New Is Coming From Google…Gary Has A New Idea…
Vlog # 1: Ryan Clutter of Horizon Media on Google Core Updates & More SEO

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