SEO

Google may be testing a new search result snippet interface that overlays more details about that search snippet. It is like a preview feature when you hover over the search result. Bing has been doing this with their search result previews for some time now. And Google has had this for image search result previews….

No one should be surprised to hear that I am reporting on some intense Google search ranking volatility starting this Friday, December 22nd, through the weekend, with things seeming to calm down today, Sunday, December 24th. Did Google push an algorithm update or tweak before the holiday break? Who knows, but there are signals of…

Here is a look at the Google Cloud sign on the Google Chicago office. We’ve seen plenty of photos from within the Google Chicago office, but here it is from the outside. I found this on Instagram. This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and…

Google Ads has this advertiser verification program and now advertisers can use their DBAs (“doing business as”) or trade names for that verification. Google said these names are accepted if the legal documents also state the names and in many legal documents, it does ask for DBAs to be listed. Google wrote yesterday afternoon, “In…

Bing is showing a box in its search results for “Local businesses for Christmas.” This box shows Christmas-related stores, such as groceries, bakeries, etc, that are open now. I suspect this is useful in that there are many people looking for stores that might help them prepare for the holiday. I personally do not see…

Microsoft is currently on a holiday lockdown for Bing, Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat. Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO, Advertising and Web Services at Microsoft, wrote on X, “Holiday lockdown doesn’t help (we reduce production changes at this period, because so many people are on vacation).” This is not uncommon, most companies do not want…

Gary Illyes from Google explained how Google Search may or may not handle special characters within Google Search. He explained this in the latest Google SEO office hours at the 16:10 mark. Gary was asked, “How does Google handle special characters like the superscript e in search results.” For example, a Latin letter E with…

Kwanzaa is coming up next week and Google has launched its Kwanzaa decorations for its search results. Just like Google did with Christmas decorations and Chanukah decorations. Search for Kwanzaa to see the decorations in Google Search. Here is a screenshot: Happy holidays all! Forum discussion at X.

Gary Illyes said some search engines can be confused by seeing double slashes in a URL. Previously, Google suggested not to use double slashes in your URLs but here Gary is saying that technically pages load with double slashes but with some search engines may have issues crawling URLs with double slashes. Gary explained this…

When Google first launched its Search Generative Experience, it labeled the “end” date of the program as December 2023 for US users and February 2024 for India and other countries. Well, now that end date was removed from the Google Search Labs interface. Here is what it looked like before: Here is what it looks…