Technically, if you change your content based on the IPs or user agents visiting that piece of content, specifically giving GoogleBot different content than your users, that would be against Google’s cloaking policy and warrant a Google penalty. But based on the intent of that change, most likely, you won’t be penalized.

Google has a bug with its Local Service Ads program where it may change your bid mode from “Maximize Leads” to “Max Per Lead.” Ginny Marvin from Google confirmed the issue yesterday afternoon and said “this is a bug that we are working on fixing.”

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

Google’s “what to watch” carousel in the search results now expand when you hover your mouse cursor over a specific graphic. The last time this watch to watch carousel was updated, at least from my records, was in 2019, and then it went into a carousel format. Now it is a bit more interactive.

Google has disallowed the sale and advertising of digital books on Google Shopping Ads. Google said “beginning May 18, 2021, Google will no longer support the advertising of digital books globally on Shopping ads.”

Rachel Maddow Of MSNBC posted on Twitter that she is switching from Google Search because Google is hiding its search ads, jumping the page all around and when you click on something, it triggers an unwanted ad that opens in a new window. This, to me, sounds like typical malware that overtakes the computer and is not coming from Google’s end.

Microsoft Advertising has announced it will soon begin to allow “phrase match will begin to incorporate behaviors of broad match modifier.” This is a similar move Google did back in February and Microsoft is saying the reason is to “simplify keywords and improve your relevancy when reaching customers.”

A competitor to Google Analytics named Simple Analytics wrote on its blog “Google penalizes you for using Google Analytics.” John Mueller of Google was asked if this is true and John said on Twitter “No, it’s not the case that we penalize for Google Analytics.”

Google’s John Mueller was asked if adding images to your web pages, if that will help you rank higher in Google Search. John said no, he said on Twitter “there is no automatic effect from adding images.”

Did you know that Pandora is the largest ad-supported streaming service in the US? Yep! And many musicians who use CD Baby are getting paid significant Pandora royalties. Obviously you want to get your music onto Pandora. Then you’ll want to submit your songs through Pandora’s portal for greater visibility. After that, it’s time to use Pandora’s music marketing tools to build your audience. This article will lead you through each of those steps so you can make the most of your music on the platform that defined customized streaming. Why should I get my music on Pandora? Although Pandora is […]

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

Google announced that is is temporarily pausing the ability to create custom search style experiments for your related search styles in your Google AdSense account. Google said it hopes to bring this feature back by early July 2021.

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that using a rel=external, rel=noopener and/or a rel=noreferrer have no impact on your Google search rankings or SEO. John said on Reddit that there is “no effect” by adding those link attributes to your hyperlinks.

Google offers numerous ways to verify your website with Google Search Console. Jackson Lo asked on Twitter which is your preferred method and without surprise, most SEOs said that they prefer DNS and HTML tag verification over the others.

In 2015 Verizon bought AOL for about $4.4 billion while AOL was under Tim Armstrong’s leadership. Then in 2016, Verizon bought Yahoo for about $4.83 billion while Yahoo was under Marissa Mayer’s leadership. Now, in 2021, Verizon is selling 90% of both companies to a private equity firm for a total of $5 billion.

Last month in the Google webmaster, SEO and search world was pretty busy to say the least. We had a few unconfirmed Google updates but on top of that we had the product reviews update rollout and the delay of the product experience update.