Well, I got to say, the last month was an interesting one for webmasters, marketers and SEOs in the Google organic space. We finished off the prolonger link spam update, safe browsing was removed from the page experience update, which should have been fully rolled out by now but Google did not confirm. Oh and that update might be bigger than just a tiebreaker but it is still pretty small. We also had a couple unconfirmed Google updates this month.

The big news in the SEO world this past month was the title change that we spotted mid-August and Google confirmed a week later. Don’t worry, it doesn’t impact your rankings</a yet but oh boy is it causing a stir in our space. I have a whole section devoted to stories I wrote on just that topic below.

On top of all of that, Google Search Console lost precious data. But Search Console did open up an indexing reporting tool and shared some more insights on insights reporting (sounds funny to write). We did and still are seeing weird indexing behavior from Google over the past couple of months – this is not confirmed by Google.

There is just a lot going on this past month – so here is this past month’s recap below, and you can catch up with the August report here if you missed it.

Google Search Algorithms:
Google Link Spam Update Took A Full Month To Roll Out
Safe Browsing No Longer A Google Ranking Signal
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Wednesday
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update August 6th Through The Weekend?
Google: Personalization In Search Is Extremely Light & Rare For Ranking
Google Says Now The Page Experience Update Is More Than A Tie Breaker Ranking Factor

Google Titles Change:
Google Displaying Header Tags Instead Of Titles For Search Snippets?
Google Confirms Titles Did Change To Not Use The Searcher’s Query
Google’s Title/Header Change Does Not Impact Rankings
SEOs Want Opt Out For Google Title Change But How
Google Hears Title Snippet Feedback, Hopes To Improve Results & Maybe Add Search Console Tools
Google Search Opens Complaint Thread For Title Changes
Google: Don’t Blindly Replace Your HTML Title Tags With Google’s Titles
Semrush: Google Dropped HTML Title Tags Usage By 77% & Replaced Those With H1s 75% Of The Time
Google: The Header To Title Tag Snippet Change Is Not Related To Passage Ranking
Google Search Snippet Descriptions Still Can Be Customized Based On Queries

Google Search Console:
Google Search Console Performance Reporting Is Currently Stuck
Google Search Console Performance Report Data Lost Completely
Cross-language Results Google Search Console Performance Filter
Google Opens Indexing Bugs Reporting Tool To Search Console Users
Google Shares Data Handling Details On Search Console Insights Reporting

Google SEO:
Possible Google Indexing Issues With Pages Dropping In & Out Of The Index
Each Google Core Updates Can Affect Search Rankings Differently
Google Made 12.5 Changes To Search Each Day In 2020
Google Internal Tool To Check Site Quality
Google Adds Author Markup To Article Structured Data Recommended Properties
Google Not Yet Worried About Faking Author Details In Structured Data
User Queries Help Google Determine What To Show In Knowledge Panels
Google Core Updates Can Sometimes Impact Image Search & Local Search
Google Investigating Cases Where Big Brand News Sites Ranking Above Small Specialized Publishers
Google: We Will Retry Old Redirect URLs For Years
Google: Cover All Your Bases With Searcher Intent & Your Content
Google On Being On The Right Track To A Google Core Update Quality Recovery
Google On Multiple Rich Results Per Page – Focus On One, There Is No Defined Order
Google: Content Behind Paywalls Is Not Automatically Thin Content
Google: Generally Removing AMP Page Shouldn’t Result In Search Ranking Decline
Google Shopping Bug Leads To Huge Impression Declines
Google Structured Data Testing Tool Directs You To Rich Results Test Or Schema.org
Google: Alt Text Is Important For SEO

Google Maps & Local:
Google Local Result With Reviews From The Web & Independent Sites
Google Local Pack Without Any Call To Action Buttons
Google My Business Products Approval Process
Google Posts Can Now Appear On Third Party Sites Without Your Knowledge
Google Local Pack Inventory Shows “Updated Today”
Google Enforcing Physical Addresses For Some Google My Business Listings

Google User Interface:
Google Search Tests Carousels: Research, People Also Shop & Similar Products
Google Continues Test Of People Also Ask & People Also Search For In Autocomplete
Google Tests Expandable Search Snippet Carousels
Google Search Tests Double Indented Results
Top Stories Images In Google Search Blank
Google Search Adds 3D Periodic Table
Google Affordable Picks Carousel In Mobile Search
Google Search Tests Discussions Carousel

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