We know that Google recommends using a 503 server status code for your your website goes offline or down temporarily for less than a day. But what if you know your site will be offline for days? John Mueller of Google said try to see if you can upload a static, HTML and temporary version of your site and/or most important web pages.

Google made some changes to the rich results report for the job posting structured data. You can obviously access this report in Google Search Console under the enhancements section if Google detects job posting structured data on your site.

Martin Splitt of Google gave me a softball yesterday when he said on Twitter “all things being equal (spoiler: they never are), a page with CWV field data may have a tiny advantage over one without.” In short, if your page has core web vitals field data, it might benefit you over pages that do not have this field data.

Google Local, I believe part of the local service ads product, is testing a feature to show estimated prices near you for specific types of queries. Anubhav Garg spotted this box for a query on [roofing companies hackensack] which showed estimated prices for a roofing job in that area.

Microsoft Bing now shows for some businesses a questions and answers section within the business’s local panel in the search results. Colan Nielsen spotted this and posted about it on Twitter. This Q&A box, unlike Google, pulls from the questions and answers from the website directly.

2021 has been insane with unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm updates and this week is no different with one over last weekend and one kicking off on Wednesday through Thursday. Heck…

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…

The BrightLocal tool picked up one of the the biggest updates I’ve seen it report in a long time or maybe even ever. It normally runs at the 2.x in terms of local pack changes but yesterday, Wednesday March 11th, it showed 6.78 out of 10 in terms of fluctuations in the local search results.

Microsoft sent me an email yesterday asking me to use the Bing URL Submissions Plugin for my WordPress site. No, this is not a WordPress site, but the intent was nice. Plus, this site already integrates with the URL submission API directly. So I am not sure why I received the email but hey, I am happy Bing is notifying users of Webmaster Tools of this.

There may be a bug with the Google My Business Google Posts feature. There is a spike in the number of complaints about rejection notices for Google Posts. So when a business owner posts an update to Google Posts, those updates are more likely to be rejected now.

I know, I know, this is getting ridiculous, at what won’t do I stop reporting on all these Google algorithm updates that are unconfirmed. But the beginning of 2021 is unlike anything I’ve seen from Google in terms of how volatile the organic search results are.

Google has added a local restaurant or businesses online ordering forms to the call to action overlays it provides in Google Maps and the local pack. Previously, Google only showed 3rd party integrated platforms in this overlay, not the custom URL order form option.

In 2019, Google had issues with displaying images in the rich results recipe carousel for a nice number of recipe sites. The issue I think was resolved twice and ultimately fixed. But it might be happening again, in 2021.

John Mueller of Google wrote something on Twitter that caught my eye (well, everything he writes on Twitter catches my eye but this one more than others). He said “Yeah, the difference between technically indexed, and practically indexed is tricky.” So I asked John to explain the difference.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…