Daily Search Forum Recap: January 14, 2021

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 Search Console Notification For Google Will Start Crawling Over HTTP/2
Last night Google began sending notifications via Google Search Console about HTTP/2 crawling. If Google has started to crawl your site over HTTP/2, Google will send you this notification. Just a heads up, this process began in a limited way in September and November of 2020.

Google Counts Links On Noindexed Pages? It Depends.
We previously covered John Mueller of Google say that “links are between indexed URLs, so if one side is gone, the link is ignored.” So if page A links to page B and one of those pages are noindexed, then it sounds like Google won’t count the link. But it might not be the case, Google’s John Mueller now says it depends.

Google Tests New Design For Sitelinks On Mobile
Google has tested countless designs and layouts for the sitelinks you see in both the desktop and mobile search results. But I honestly have not seen a test in a while around sitelinks in a while, that is until now. Here is a screen shot from Ric Rodriguez showing sitelinks with descriptions under them.
Google’s Thoughts On Selling Domains Based On SEO Value
A while back, John Mueller and Gary Illyes from Google reacted to a tweet around selling domain names based on their “SEO footprint.” Meaning, it has a lot of perceived SEO value (links and authority) based on third-party tools. And the domain name broker is pitching that as a reason to buy the domain name.

Google Video On Traffic Fluctuations
Aurora Morales, from Publisher Policy Education at Google, published her first video on the “Sustainable Monetized Websites” series. This one covers traffic fluctuations. It goes over how to spot them, what to watch out for, how to ensure you do not violate organic or paid rules and much more.

Google NYC Iron Chef Competition
Here is a photo a year before the Google office went on lock down of Googlers at the New York City office participating in an iron chef competition.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Bailing water out to prevent the ship from sinking sounds like a SEO metaphor if I ever heard one., John Mueller on Twitter
gTLDs can be geotargeted too, so it’s essentially up to you. Users in some countries prefer local TLDs, others don’t. You know your users best., John Mueller on Twitter
I don’t know what the policies on the ads side are. For Search, we just want to know what users coming from search will see. If you show users elsewhere something else, that’s up to you. (AFAIK it’s comm, John Mueller on Twitter
Google Search Console reports can get complicated. Especially when it comes to news-related reports. There are two distinct reports in GSC that sound the same, but measure completely different traffic types: the News search, Brodie Clark on Twitter
Hope your day is also fantastic! Yes, if we find links there, we might keep them as referring URLs in the reports. Sometimes they end up being canonicalized elsewhere, but that’s a separate step., John Mueller on Twitter
My hot take on this is that robots.txt is surprisingly complex, so even if a file is technically correct, it’s worthwhile to make sure that it’s unmistakenly correct too, for future, John Mueller on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

Why we’re creating a new content experience for SMX
Google pauses all political ads through inauguration

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