Google is now showing a carousel to help shoppers find lower cost, cheaper and more affordable (I just said the same thing three times) products. Google displays this in an “affordable picks” carousel that matches more on your keyword phrase with “cheap” added on.

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. Google is still in the process of moving sites to mobile-first indexing…

Does Google think less of your website if you link your site to a “lesser” website? I guess the question is similar to if you hang out with a lower class crowd, do your more upper class friends think less of you? With Google, the answer is no.

Jason Barnard, a man who follows knowledge panels probably closer than anyone else, noticed some examples of Google showing knowledge panels that are empty. To be clear, I cannot replicate any of these examples, but Jason shared some screenshots of this on Twitter.

Google’s John Mueller said this week that the search company is still not done moving sites to its mobile-first indexing. This was suppose to be completed March of this year, after moving the deadline from September of last year.

Google is showing in the local pack for some of the business listings that show their local inventory, if that inventory information was updated today. A label next to the product item would say “updated today.”

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

Google recently started to support author.url and other author properties that let you communicate to Google which author wrote an article on your site. I asked John Mueller of Google if he is worried if people will fake author details and spam it, to try to possibly boost any rankings they may get from this. John said no, he is not worried right now.

Daniel Waisberg and Maya Mamo from the Google Search Console team published a blog post named Google Search Console Insights behind the curtains. This document, according to Daniel Waisberg, has new details on how Google “handles the data was not out there” before.

Google listed a boat load of changes it is making around children and search and ads. Google Ads will restrict ad targeting of children 18 or under by age, gender, or interests. Google Search and Assistant will automatically enable SafeSearch for children 18 or under.

Google is holding its inaugural Google News Initiative for the North American Community News Summit on August 17th and 18th. Danny Sullivan, the public liaison for Search at Google, will answer selected questions during the Summit and you can submit your questions over here.

Ginny Marvin from Google asked that if you want additional custom column metrics in your Google Ads report, that you let her know on the AdsLiaison account on Twitter. Ginny wrote “Is there a Custom Column metric you’d like to see added? The team is working on an update and open to suggestions.”

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…

How smaller playlists helped me get on an official Spotify playlist. I’m Cristina. I write and produce music as Siren and the Sea. I recently released my second album For Bathing and got my songs placed on a bunch of playlists. This helped me go from about 80 monthly listeners to over 1,500.  These were some of the playlists I got placed on: It’s been awesome to get so much love from my friends, fans, and people I didn’t even know! And getting on these smaller playlists (what some people call “user-generated,” “third party,” or “independently curated” playlists) has been […]

Google is now requiring some businesses to add a physical address and not be a service area business in Google My Business. Google told Stefan Somborac that this is a “new feature is an automated, anti-spam protection designed to reduce category misuse across millions of business profiles.”