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. Almost a week into the Google Product Reviews update for March 2022, it looks like this update is not that huge…

Google today has rolled out more specific, descriptive and contextually helpful names for the structured data error reporting it shows in Google Search Console rich result status reports, the Google Search Console URL inspection tool and Rich Results test.

Google’s John Mueller said there is nothing wrong with using the Google Search Console URL inspection tool to request indexing but the better route is to have Google discover those new URLs on that new site through external links. Google said it is simply better to have links to the site and for Google to pick up the site that way.

So far, I will say that the Google Products Reviews update version 3, the March 2022 version, is not that huge. That is, not that huge compared to the previous product review updates or core updates. Some would say this update is a mild update, again, so far…

Google AdSense announced that those with AMP sites that have Auto ads with AdSense will now support anchor ads. From April 11, 2022, if you’re using Auto ads for AMP, anchor ads will start to appear on your sites.

Google has launched a new Trusted Store badge for merchants who have an excellent Google Shopping experience scorecard score. Google also launched a new set of Google Merchant Center insights reports.

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 had a local search update last week that seemed to have reversed the previous December…

Google has announced this morning that on April 26, 2022 it will be killing off the URL parameter tool under the legacy Google Search Console. This is a bit of a surprise being that Google did say it was planning on vastly improving it but some Googlers also wanted to see the tool go away.

On Friday afternoon, Google confirmed with me that the search company has rolled out more visual results for some queries in the mobile search results. I’ve been experimenting with a number of queries and for some of those queries, saying the results are “more visual” is an understatement.

Brodie Clark reported that Google is now showing web stories / visual stories on the first page of the mobile results even for competitive keyword phrases. I can confirm that do see these coming up for me in New York as well.

On March 22nd and 23rd I noticed the BrightLocal tracking tool spike up a bit, so I kept tabs on that we may have had a Google local search update. Well, Joy Hawkins posted in the Local Search Forums that this update seems to have been a “correct” of the “Vicinity Update,” which was the update we reported on in December 2021 that later Google confirmed.

Google is always testing, always, and here is another test where Google is testing snippets in the Google News search results without borders.

In part one of my interview with David Melamed, we spoke about his background and the beauty of the search marketing industry. David Melamed and I in part two then spoke about the long term viability and success of search spam, antitrust issues and more…

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 Maps released a bunch of data on its efforts to combat spam, fraud and abuse on its platform…

Google’s Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman sat together on the latest Search Off the Record to talk about de-SEOing – what we would probably call over-optimization strategies. It is an interesting listen to, stuff you probably heard before but it is interesting to hear Googlers who are intimate with how Google Search works tackle this issue on their own site.