Google begins experimenting with featured snippets in 2014, Google started answering complex questions at the top of its search results with detailed responses (or answers) taken from websites. Does that sound like featured snippets? It should. Because it was. We know from Google that featured snippets were introduced in January 2014. We don’t know the official date Google began testing it, but this was the day Search Engine Land first reported on the new search feature. We didn’t yet know these answers were called “featured snippets,” but clearly that’s what we were seeing. All Google would say at the time […]

A former employee allegedly leaked a Yandex source code repository, part of which contained more than 1,900 factors the search engines uses for ranking search results. Why we care. This leak has revealed 1,922 ranking factors Yandex used in its search algorithm, at least as of July 2022. Perhaps Martin MacDonald put it best on Twitter today: “The Yandex hack is probably the most interesting thing to have happened in SEO in years.” Yandex is not Google. If you plan to read the full list of Yandex ranking factors, remember that Yandex is not Google. If you see a ranking factor […]

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 Ads now supports negative keywords on the account level. SEOs trust YMYL content less if AI writes it…

To prevent unwanted impressions or clicks from certain search terms across multiple campaigns, advertisers can create a negative keyword list at the account level and then apply it to relevant campaigns. This will save you the effort of adding the same negative keywords to individual campaigns and make it easier to manage future changes to negative keywords across campaigns. How it works. Creating a list of negative keywords allows you to block your ads from showing for specific irrelevant terms for your brand, making it easier for your ads to reach your desired audience and resulting in more successful conversions. […]

Incoming links, or backlinks, still matter for SEO. But they are becoming less important for Google. We know the latter to be true since Googlers have reiterated this for years. In November, Duy Nguyen from Google’s search quality team expressed the same, while explaining why link building campaigns are a waste of time and money and indicating where to allocate your SEO spend instead:  “…you probably should not waste your money in spamming links. That money is much needed in creating a great website with great user experience and helpful content.” However, I don’t think spending 100% of your SEO […]

Gary Illyes, from the Google Search Relations team, said on LinkedIn that Google Search handles the marquee HTML tag “appropriately.” What does it mean by appropriately? That is Gary for you.

Did you know that in some browsers, specifically on Android on Chrome and maybe others, that you can scroll to see more of a longer and truncated snippet in the Google Search results? I didn’t but Kamran Badal spotted this the other day and Glenn Gabe was able to replicate it.

A new Twitter poll shows that most SEOs do not yet feel comfortable recommending using AI to write client content. The poll asked, “Would you recommend using an AI writer to your clients?” Most SEOs said no.

In the early 2000s, web search was mostly limited to search engines and online directories available at the time. But we have come a long way since then.  Optimizing for search remains important today. But users no longer solely rely on traditional search engines to look up information.  I believe it’s time for SEO professionals to think beyond Google and search engines and start looking at search holistically. Beyond Google: The reality of today’s search landscape As the competition online increases, the best way to do right by our clients is to ensure we’re working to improve their visibility, not […]

As I mentioned briefly last week, Google announced mass layoffs last week, and I discuss what I know so far about it. There are also reports that Google is pushing advertisers to use third-party resellers and not their internal staff. The DOJ sued Google again to break…

SEO professionals can access many free and paid platforms, tools, and software. But if you and your competitors are all using the same tools, data, and approaches – how can you set yourself apart? At SMX Next, I shared the SEO tools that will make up my toolkit in 2023. If you missed the session, read on as I share some highlights. Before we dive in, it’s worth noting that true to the fast pace of SEO, there’s already been a change in how you might think of one of the tools – but we’ll get to that shortly. So […]

Lily Ray ran a Twitter poll asking SEOs if they trust content in the YMYL, your money or your life, category more, less or the same if it was written by AI. The vast majority of responses said they trust AI-generated content less than human-generated content.

We knew it was coming, Google Ads now supports negative keywords for brand safety at the account level. Google has just added account-level negative keywords to Google Ads and the PPC community is happy about it.

A review of ethical concerns regarding how ChatGPT and other large language models use web content without attribution The post Is ChatGPT Use Of Web Content Fair? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

For subscription-model-based businesses such as yours, pivot your SEO strategy to maintain performance and return on investment using this guide. The post Sustaining A SaaS Brand & Organic Channel During A Recession appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

The mass exodus from Twitter is a challenge for digital advertisers, especially with the Super Bowl coming up. Here’s what you should know. The post Where Are The Advertisers Leaving Twitter Going For The Super Bowl? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.