Daily Search Forum Recap: September 18, 2020

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 Buzz Video Recap: Confusing Google Search Fluctuations, Many Google Bugs & How Google Core Updates Work
This week was an interesting one, we had a huge amount of Google search ranking fluctuations according to the tracking tools but overall the chatter within the SEO community was not all that much. Google had a bug with news…

Google Merchant Center Additional Countries Setting Is Coming
Google said by the end of this month you will need to control global product availability in your product feed. You can apply the shipping attribute to products directly in the feed or specify countries by using the “additional countries” feature. This applies to both Shopping ads and free listings, Google said.

Can Cheap Hosts With Many Low Quality Sites Can Hurt Your Google Rankings?
Recently an interesting experiment was published on Reboot Online that says cheap hosting with low-quality, spammy bad neighborhoods of sites, can actually impact Google rankings. But John Mueller of Google disputed this study saying it is not really true and it doesn’t work that way at Google.

Google Search Feature Online Therapy Providers
John Vantine shared a screen shot of Google showing an “online therapy” box in the search results that helps you find options for therapy that is covered by your insurance. I can replicate, so it does seem to be live, at least in the US.

Gift Cards Can’t Be Sold On Google Shopping With Buy on Google
Google has updated its gift card policy in the Google Merchant Center to disallow the sale of gift cards using Buy on Google starting on September 30, 2020. Google said “Beginning September 30, Google will be changing the gift card category policy to prohibit the sale of gift cards on Buy on Google.”

Google Logo On Spare Tire Cover
Here is a van, actually the Google Research Van, with a Google logo on its spare tire cover. Everyone needs to have their company logo on a spare tire cover. Without it, can you really call your comp

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

TV in Reach Planner now available in 5 more countries, Google Ads Help
Yep. I mean: You can self-canonicalize both, but we’ll likely treat them as duplicates and pick one or the other anyway 🙂, Martin Splitt on Twitter
Australia to Amend Proposed Law Making Google & Facebook Pay for News, WebmasterWorld
I wanna say no, because we would have to request something for counting it in "crawl budget", but I’ll confirm with the Googlebot team. I’ll get back to you if the answer is different th, Gary Illyes on Twitter
Outbound links can be a useful part of a website for your users. You know your users & your content best. Don’t be afraid of linking to other sites., John Mueller on Twitter
There are lots of Google products, they can be good even if they’re not perfect for Search. You could host content on Google Spreadsheets, but it’s not going to be great for SEO. Use & combi, John Mueller on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

A new era has arrived in local search: Google’s Local Trust Pack
SMX is Coming to You in December 2020: Be a Part of it!
This decade’s most important marketing question: What data rights do advertisers possess?

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