Google Lets You Disable Targeted Ads & Keep Personalized Searches via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Mordy Oberstein from Semrush came out with some data proving I am not insane or crazy, at least, when it comes to my reports on the Google search ranking algorithm updates. Yes, I have been reporting on these updates more this year than previous years, but for good reason, the search results are more volatile this year than previous years.

Google seems to be testing a new local finder for local queries that trigger the local pack. Andy Simpson spotted this and posted some screencasts and screenshots on Twitter.

Google’s Gary Illyes said on LinkedIn this morning that you should “include the URLs that you would want to see as canonical in your sitemaps.” This is not necessarily new advice, Google has said this numerous times, but Gary had a reason to repeat this advice for some reason.