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:
Programming Note: Offline For Last Days Of Passover 5780 – Wednesday & Thursday
This is a programming note that I will be 100% offline the next two days, Wednesday April 15th and Thursday April 16th, for the Passover holiday. This year I decided not to schedule any stories or videos. I won’t be back online until Friday and I will catch up on things then.
Google Can Send Manual Actions Without Sample URLs
Have you ever received a manual action for a client that did not contain sample URLs? This can happen and Google’s John Mueller said “It can happen, it depends a bit on the kind of issue & the site.”
No; Google Is Not Throttling Crawling Of Sites During The Coronavirus Outbreak
Google’s John Mueller was asked if Google is perhaps throttling, holding back on, crawling sites fully during the coronavirus outbreak. In short, John said no – but he said if your server cannot handle the Google load, Google will slow down crawling – but that is not any new behavior from Google.
Are Your Google Sitelinks Missing? You Might Have A Flat Site Architecture.
Now, if I understand John Mueller’s tweet correctly, I think he is saying that one visible sign that Google thinks you have a purely flat site architecture is when your site does not show Sitelinks for his name.
Google May One Day Drop Support For NoScript Tag For Images
Martin Splitt from Google said Google may decide to one day drop support reading the content within the noscript tag for images. He said Google currently does not support it for anything but images, but it may decide to stop supporting it as well for images.
Google Again: EAT Not In Algorithm But Hope It Aligns With Ranking Factors
In February, Danny Sullivan said that that Google’s “systems aren’t looking for EAT.” “There are many different signals that, if we get it right, align with what a good human EAT assessment would be,” he added. In March, nice find Marie Haynes, Google repeated that with an update to its post on “What webmasters should know about Google’s core updates.”
Car Trailer At Google Office
It seems the Google Netherlands office has a car trailer, a small one, inside the office. I suspect it is one of those unusual meeting rooms done by a designer. I spotted this on Instagram, it isn’t
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Google just changed their rules for GMB posts: If you are a chain, you can now mass post to all your GMB locations using a GMB post scheduling tool, Local Search Forum
It sounds like it’s too late in your case, but in general, I would strongly discourage restructuring your URLs (eg, “_” to “-“, or “.php” to “.htm”) unless you have a really important reason to do so. The SEO va, John Mueller on Twitter
‘Food orders’ tab in GMB inviting restaurants to do delivery with The Ordering App (https://t.co/iOmBvVZOgp). Looks like Google acquired them. @rustybrick @mblumenthal @gsterling https://t.co/SjH1v5o6Mb, Thibault Adda on Twitter
As with everything, you need to understand your tools & what they do, don’t just blindly follow their output. Understand what the disavow does, and use it for what it’s meant for. Also, John Mueller on Twitter
I’m not aware of anything specific happening in Feb, but indexing for sites goes up & down over time, that’s pretty normal. I assume it’s in Index Coverage in SC? If there are errors, usually they’d be shown, otherw, John Mueller on Twitter
There’s a bit about this at https://t.co/vWm9sIbOa2 if you’re curious. The short version is that a site-query really isn’t that useful for debugging, and having URLs be shown like this isn’t, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
French antitrust decision sets the stage for Google to pay for news content in Europe
5 steps to get your team up and running remotely in 48 hours with a cloud-based DAM
Video: Dan Leibson on local neural matching and Google My Business issues
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Make a Long-term Growth Dashboard for Google Analytics Data using Data Studio, Michael Howeely
Industry & Business
A CMO’s Guide to Post-COVID-19 World Segmentation – Doug Bell, Searchmetrics
Google readies its own chip for future Pixels and Chromebooks, Axios
Local & Maps
Google unveils Maps, Search and YouTube features in India to help people combat coronavirus, TechCrunch
Mobile & Voice
HomePod now runs on tvOS, here’s what that could mean, 9to5Mac
Google Assistant adds native support for TVs, set-top boxes, and media remotes, Android Police
SEO
Importance of SEO During COVID-19 Pandemic, BrightEdge
How to Track Rank: Real & Meaningful Advanced Tips, RankRanger
PPC
9 Retention Strategies for Digital Marketing Agencies During COVID-19, WordStream
How To Build Scalable PPC Tools, PPC Hero
Prepping Your B2B Marketing for COVID-19, Metric Theory
Will WFH SEO/PPC Teams Be the Rule Going Forward?, BruceClay
Search marketing in the context of Covid-19, Vertical Leap
Search Features
Search Algorithms In Artificial Intelligence, Towards Data Science
Other Search
Google Arts & Culture App: Bringing Artists to You, Google Blog
XTREME: A Massively Multilingual Multi-task Benchmark for Evaluating Cross-lingual Generalization, Google AI Blog
