Daily Search Forum Recap: March 19, 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:

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Featured Snippets Return, Google Ads Blocked Tons Of Ads & Check The Status Of Google Reviews
I am back in my real office after over a year of recording from home – it is weird but good to be back. After Google dropping featured snippets significantly in the Google Search results a few weeks ago, they returned this week, out of the blue and with no explanation from Google…

March 19th Google Search Ranking & Algorithm Tremors
I am seeing some early signs of yet another Google Search ranking algorithm update – it is early but the chatter is kicking up and some of the tools are already picking up on the fluctuations and tremors in the search results. Yes, we had some quiet this week but it was super busy the past couple of months.

Microsoft Bing Search Replaces Magnifying Glass With Search Button
Microsoft Bing seems to have swapped out the magnifying glass button on the search bar in the search results landing page with the button that says “search.” It is a small but interesting change, below are before and after screen shots.

45% Of SEOs/Marketers Do Some Affiliate Marketing
Cyrus Shepard posted a poll on Twitter asking SEOs and marketers if they do any affiliate marketing in the course of their day. Only 45% of those who completed the poll said yes, they do affiliate marketing. I am a bit surprised, I would have thought more SEOs do affiliate marketing on the side, at least.

Google” Many Sites Think About Links Much More Than Necessary
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that he thinks that many SEOs and sites think about links “much more than necessary.” He said Google does “use links to help discover new content.” He didn’t mention ranking but yes, Google does use links for rankings.

Google Does Not Count The Number Of Blog Posts On Your Blog For Ranking Purposes
Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google looks at the number of blog posts on a blog as some sort of metric to figure out if the site should rank well or not. John Mueller said “Google doesn’t count your blog posts.”

Google Merchant Center Regional Availability And Pricing In US
Google added support for regional availability and pricing to Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping feeds in the United States. Regional availability and pricing let you provide product availability and variable pricing based on your business presence and the location of your customer base.

Jewglers Menorah Sticker
Here is a photo from a couple of years ago shared by Matthew Yeager with me on Twitter of a sticker from Google for Jewish Googlers, Jewglers. Matthew is a Googler in the London office, I assume he is

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Googlebot is essentially the infrastructure, there are various services that use the same infrastructure since it tends to be well-supported & reasonably safe (prevents sites from being hammered by too many reques, John Mueller on Twitter
That graph, going to almost zero, looks very much like a technical issue on your end. Maybe a CDN or firewall that’s deciding to throw up some kind of block for Googlebot, John Mueller on Twitter
Still unable to reach UK Google News without being (poorly) redirected to the old Spanish language deprecation of news page (browser is set to EN) is this a Bug or Feature? @googlenews @dannysullivan @rustybrick https://, Peter Mindenhall on Twitter
Twitter Testing YouTube Video in Users Timelines, WebmasterWorld

Search Engine Land Stories:

Everything has changed. Has your martech stack?
Lowest SMX Create rates expire next week… book now for $99!
Can you believe we’re talking about in-person events?; Thursday’s daily brief

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