Daily Search Forum Recap: April 4, 2025

Google has updated its search ranking algorithm to “more strongly affect the sites that host explicit videos but don’t allow Googlebot to fetch those video files” which may lead to a “significant drop in ranking” for some of these sites. Google also updated its SafeSearch documentation with new best practices and details.

There are new reports that a booking/appointment system run by Thumbtack, a local search service, is automatically adding its booking links and service to Google Business Profiles. Well, you can opt out, if you don’t want it. But I am sure most businesses will have no clue this was added to their local listings in Google Search and Google Maps.

Google’s John Mueller explained, one again, why it takes weeks to roll out a core update. It is often because there are different components to core updates through the rollout stages, and each needs to be pushed individually.