Daily Search Forum Recap: January 18, 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: Paying Bloggers To Write For Dofollow Backlinks Is Against Our Guidelines
John Mueller of Google was asked the following question, “if I dofollow backlinks due to paying bloggers to write highly relevant review articles or paying for high-quality PR news articles, are they paid links that go against Google’s guidelines?” John responded that the short answer is yes, it is against Google’s guidelines.
Google Search Console Coverage Report Validate Fix, Fixed.
Just a PSA, when Google rolled out the update for the coverage report last week, it also fixed the validate fix issue from December 16, 2020. This is when Google posted the “issue validation is temporarily disabled due to upcoming changes in the report.” The new coverage report changes are out, so this is now working again.
Schema.org vs Google Structured Data Rich Results
There is a difference between what you see at Schema.org and what Google publishes at its Google Search developer documents for structured data rich results. The short difference is that what Google publishes is what you can potentially see surface in the Google search results but what schema.org publishes you probably won’t.

Google Search Tests Expandable Accordion Carousels
Google seems to be testing a new feature in its search results. A way to expand a specific news section in the main web results to show a carousel of news stories related to that section. You can click on the diagonal arrows to trigger the action, here is a GIF of it in action.
Vlog #103: Phillip Thune On Writing Content, Finding The Right Author & Google Panda Penguin Shifts In Content – Part Two

In part one, Phillip Thune, the CEO of Textbroker, and I spoke about FindWhat Days In 2000 To Running Textbroker in 2020. Here is part two.

How To Prepare To Write:

In part two of my interview with Phillip Thune…

Tin Trailer At GooglePlex
Here is a photo that was recently posted on Instagram, I am not sure when the photo was taken, of a tin trailer at the Google offices in Mountain View, California. Nothing like an old tin can.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day Google Logo
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and to celebrate the day, Google and other search engines like Bing, have special memorials on their home pages. Google has this special Doodle designed by Pittsburgh-based guest artist Noa Denmon and Bing has the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Happy Birthday: Wikipedia is 20 Years Old, WebmasterWorld
With regards to SEO, there’s no SEO effect of any particular Analytics implementation. Use what gives you useful data to improve your site; implement it in a way that keeps users happy & your site snappy., John Mueller on Twitter
No. Google mostly differentiates between gTLDs and ccTLDs, pick which kind makes sense for your site. Sometimes there are non-SEO reasons for picking a specific TLD, which can be much more important., John Mueller on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

LinkedIn launches LinkedIn Marketing Labs on-demand courses for advertisers
How to Build a Marketing System of Record

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