Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that when you want to “unindex,” remove indexed pages from Google Search, you should not block Google with robots.txt, but rather use noindex. He said only unindex pages when if you don’t care if the page doesn’t rank but if you want it to rank, then improve the page.
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 9, 2021
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…
Google’s New Free Hotel Listings Option
Google has announced that it is now offering a free version of its hotel listings, this is now in addition to the paid option. This is very much like how Google made Google Shopping free last year. Google wrote “we’re improving this experience by making it free for hotels and travel companies around the world to appear in hotel booking links, beginning this week on google.com/travel.”
Google Search Does Not Use Blockchain (For Timestamps)
Google’s John Mueller asked if it would help if a site timestamped its content and pages using blockchain. John responded “Google doesn’t use that.” In short, he said Google does not use blockchain for search.
When Losing A Google Featured Snippet Hurts
A couple of weeks ago we reported a steep dive in the number of featured snippets Google showed in its search results. Those numbers have not improved and not it is settling in that this may be the new norm – for now. Glenn Gabe shared some examples of sites that lost featured snippets on Twitter.
Google PageSpeed Insights Now Supports HTTP/2 – Scores Might Go Up
Google announced that its PageSpeed Insights tool as of March 3, 2021 uses http/2 to make network requests, that is if the server supports it. If your site is on HTPT/2, you may see your PageSpeed Insights scores go up as a result. No, your rankings won’t go up as a result but just a heads up.
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 8, 2021
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…
How to Sing In Colder Weather
Let’s face it, singing in the cold sucks! Not only is your body cold, but usually your throat is more dry and your hands may be freezing from playing the stainless steel strings on your guitar or the piano keys. But since gathering in large groups inside isn’t an option right now, people are singing outside in the cold weather more than ever. So that means that as a singer you need to learn to sing in colder weather. Hi, my name is Matt from ramseyvoice.com and here are five tips to help you sing better when it’s cold outside. […]
The Best Way to Collaborate with Musicians Online
How to use Notetracks to streamline your online music collaborations. If you’re anything like me, long-distance music collaboration can be a nightmare of scattered messages: emails, texts, DMs, Dropbox or Drive links, and even Marco Polos. And when I say “nightmare,” I mean for my collaborators; I send them feedback in whatever way is most convenient in the moment. They pick up the pieces (and quietly hate me). Worse, when I’m paying those collaborators, any extra time they have to spend making sense of my scattered messages is on my dime. Get better and faster results when collaborating on music. […]
If Google Can’t Fetch/Read Your Sitemap File? Try A New File URL.
Google’s John Mueller was asked about an error with Sitemaps files. The question was around Google not being able to fetch and read two of the few XML Sitemap files but those files are perfectly valid. John said it can be a lot of issues but there is a trick you can try.
Microsoft Bing Search More Visual Updates
Microsoft Bing announced a slew of “visually immersive” upgrades to the search results interface. This includes updates to how it shows recipe results, image search similar looking items, expandable search result carousels, infographic knowledge panels and the local answers details.
Google: We Won’t Build Alternative Identifiers To Track Users Across The Web
Google announced last week that while other companies are planning to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers, Google will not. Google said “we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.”
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update/Instability Over Weekend
Over the weekend there are a nice amount of chatter from the SEO community around the Google search results rankings being all over the place. The chatter was unusually high for the weekend and some of the tools have also picked up on the fluctuations in the search results.
Vlog #110: Alex Genadinik On Why Focusing On Niches For SEO Is Important
Alex Genadinik is in the business of helping businesses and individuals learn about SEO and digital marketing. He owns a company named Problemio and is a top 1% instructor at Udemy and has authored numerous bestselling books on Amazon…