Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Thunder, Rain In Delhi Today, Says Forecast, Days After Devastating Storm
Google drops support for job training structured data
Google has dropped support for job training structured data and rich results in Google Search. Google said based on its initial tests, the search company “found that it wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale.”
Not useful. Google posted about this saying “We initially tested this markup with a group of site owners, and ultimately found that it wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale.” Google did not say how large its tests were but just said it did test this in Google Search.
Other job rich results not impacted. Google added that this does not affect any other features that may use Job training markup. Plus, Google said you are welcome to “leave the markup on your site so that search engines can better understand your web page.” Although, I am not sure which other search engines use this this markup.
Why we care. If you were using job training structured data, Google will no longer show them as rich results in Google Search. You may notice click through rate changes on those pages, as the rich results no longer will be displayed in Google Search.
The post Google drops support for job training structured data appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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NP Digital acquires keyword research tool AnswerThePublic
Digital marketing agency NP Digital announced today that it has acquired AnswerThePublic, a popular freemium keyword research tool. Terms of the deal were not revealed.
NP Digital, which was co-founded by marketing influencer and entrepreneur Neil Patel, is also the owner of another popular freemium keyword research tool, UberSuggest.
What this means for AnswerThePublic users. All the tool’s existing features will remain. Users can continue to access the tool via its website or app.
There are a couple of noticeable changes so far, including the addition of “by UberSuggest” under AnswerThePublic’s logo in the main navigation and Patel’s face on a dancing robot’s body on the homepage.
AnswerThePublic has approximately 1 million monthly users and has been a favorite among search marketers for years. NP Digital said it is working on new free features for marketers.
However, the tool hasn’t gotten any significant updates or improvements lately. That’s because the owners weren’t focusing on it (they had another software company).
What it means for UberSuggest users. UberSuggest has approximately 3 million monthly users who will now be able to access the features and data through either platform. Users can soon expect to see new features related to keyword visualizations.
NP Digital said Ubersuggest now spans over 30 billion keywords and 50 trillion backlinks across 249 countries.
Why NP Digital acquired AnswerthePublic. Both platforms leverage the same data sets. But each had its unique features, functions and visualizations.
NP Digital CEO Mike Gullaksen told me: “This platform allows marketers to leverage the data from the largest focus group in the world – Google search users. Being able to mine massive data sets to identify consumer interest around needs and wants is one of the most powerful yet underused strategies for content and search marketers. Layering on top of these data insights allows marketers to both look back and see real-time trends with powerful visualizations and quickly move their content initiatives forward while staying on the pulse of the consumer mindset.”
Why we care. NP Digital says this acquisition will mean more new free capabilities for both platforms – and that you can access these insights from either platform. So both tools will continue to help marketers find inspiration and insights that can help shape SEO and content marketing strategies.
A year of acquisitions. This has been a big year of change in the SEO tools space and we’re not even halfway through 2022. Below are links to coverage of the other big acquisitions we’ve seen so far:
- Jan. 20: Semrush acquires Backlinko
- Feb. 16: Conductor acquires ContentKing
- Feb. 23: BrightEdge acquires Oncrawl
- March 2: Semrush acquires Kompyte
- May 16: Similarweb acquires Rank Ranger (press release)
The post NP Digital acquires keyword research tool AnswerThePublic appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Google Search Console reporting issue with News performance report
Google Search Console’s News performance report had a logging error which may have resulted in displaying a drop in impression and clicks from Google News.
Google said this was just a reporting glitch and it had no real impact on how your site was ranking or serving in Google News.
The notice. Google posted this notice here stating “Because of a logging error, site owners might see a drop in their Google News data during this period. This is just a logging error and not a real drop in Google News performance.”
Timeframe impacted. The timeframe where Google had this logging error was between May 12, 2022 through May 26, 2022.
Why we care. If you have or will provide clients with reporting, keep in mind the News performance report had logging issues for about half of the month of May. Make sure to annotate this logging error and communicate this to your clients and stakeholders.
The post Google Search Console reporting issue with News performance report appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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4 technical SEO issues auditing tools won’t show you
Throughout the history of SEO, people have debated the pros and cons of relying on technical SEO tools. Relying on the hints from auditing tools isn’t the same thing as a true SEO strategy, but we’d be nowhere without them. It’s just not feasible to manually check dozen of issues page per page.
To the benefit of the SEO industry, many new auditing tools have been created in the past decade, and a few of them stand strong as industry leaders. These few technical auditing tools have done us a great service by continuing to improve their capabilities, which has helped us better serve our clients, bosses and other stakeholders.
However, even the best auditing tools cannot find four important technical SEO issues that could potentially damage your SEO efforts:
- Canonical to redirect loop
- Hacked pages
- Identifying JS Links
- Content hidden by JS
Why tools won’t show these
Some of these issues could be detected by tools, but they’re just not common enough to come across their desk. Other issues would be impossible for tools to detect.
As with many cases in SEO, some issues may affect sites differently, and it all depends on the context. That’s why most tools won’t highlight these in summary reports.
Required tools to uncover these issues
Before we dive into the specific issues, there are two specific requirements to help us find these issues.
Your web crawling tool of choice
Even though most tools won’t uncover these issues by default, in most cases, we can make some modifications to help us detect them at scale.
Some tools that you could use include:
- Screaming Frog
- Sitebulb
- OnCrawl
- DeepCrawl
The most important thing we need from these tools is the ability to:
- Crawl the entire website, sitemaps and URL list
- Ability to have custom search/extraction features
Google Search Console
This should be a given, but if you don’t have access, make sure you acquire Google Search Console access for your technical SEO audits. You will need to be able to tap into a few historic reports to help us uncover potential issues.
Issue 1: Canonical to redirect loop
A canonical to redirect loop is when a webpage has a canonical tag pointing to a different URL that then redirects to the first URL.
This can be a rare issue, but it’s one that I’ve seen cause serious damage to a large brand’s traffic.
Why this matters
Canonicals provide the preferred URL for Google to index and rank. When Google discovers a canonical URL different from the current page, it may start to crawl the current page less frequently.
This means that Google will start to crawl the webpage that 301 redirects more frequently, sending a type of loop signal to their Googlebot.
While Google allows you to make a redirected page the canonical, having it loop back to the previous page is a confusing signal.
I’ve seen this happen to some large brands. One recently came to me asking to investigate why one of their key pages hasn’t been driving the traffic they were hoping for. They had invested a lot of money into SEO and had a well-optimized page. But this one issue was the sore thumb that stuck out.
How to detect canonical redirect loops
Even though this issue will not appear in any default summary reports in standard auditing tools, it’s quite easy to find.
- Run a standard crawl with your preferred technical SEO auditing tool. Make sure to crawl sitemaps as well as a standard spider crawl.
- Go to your canonical report and export all of the canonicalized URLs. Not the URLs the tool crawled, but what the URL in the canonical tag is.
- Run a new crawl with that URL list and look at the response codes report with this list of canonicals. All response codes should return a status 200 response code.
Issue 2: Hacked pages
Hacked websites for profit is not a new topic. Most seasoned SEOs have come across websites that have been hacked somehow, and the hackers have conducted malicious activities to either cause harm or generate profit for another website.
Some common website hacking that happens in SEO includes:
- Site search manipulation: This occurs when a website’s search pages are indexable. A malicious person then sends a ton of backlinks to their search results page with irrelevant searches. This is common with gambling and pharma search terms.
- 301 redirect manipulation: This happens when someone gains access to the site, creates pages relevant to their business and gets those indexed. Then they 301 redirect them to their own websites.
- Site takedowns: This is the most straightforward attack when a hacker manipulates your code to make your website unusable or at least non-indexable.
There are dozens of types of site hacking that can affect SEO, but what’s important is that you maintain proper site security and conduct daily backups of your website.
Why this matters
The most important reason that hacking is bad for your website is that if Google detects that your website might have malware or is conducting social engineering, you could receive a manual action.
How to detect hacked pages
Luckily, there are many tools out there to not only mitigate hacking threats and attempts but there are also tools to detect if your website gets hacked.
However, most of those tools only look for malware. Many hackers are good at covering their tracks, but there are ways to see if a website has been hacked in the past for financial gain.
Use Google Search Console
- Check manual actions report. This will tell you if there are any current penalties against the site.
- Check the performance report. Look for any big spikes in performance. This can indicate when a change may have happened. Most importantly, check the URL list in the performance report. Hacked URLs can stick out! Many of them have irrelevant topics or may even be written in a different language.
- Check the coverage report. Look for any big changes in each sub-report here.
Check website login accounts
- Take a look at all users to find any unusual accounts.
- If your website has an activity log, check for recent activity.
- Make sure all accounts have 2FA enabled.
Use online scanning tools
Several tools will scan your website for malware, but that may not tell you if your website has been hacked in the past. A more thorough option would be to look at https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and scan all website admin email addresses.
This website will tell you if those emails have been exposed to data breaches. Too many people use the same passwords for everything. It’s common for large organizations to use weak passwords, and your website can be vulnerable.
Issue 3: Identifying JS links
It’s well communicated from Google that they do not follow or crawl internal links generated by JavaScript.
By now, we’d think that our SEO auditing tools should be better at detecting internal links generated by JavaScript. Historically, we’ve had to rely on manually discovering JS links by clicking through websites or looking at link depths on reports.
Why this matters
Googlebot does not crawl JavaScript links on web pages.
How to find JavaScript links at scale
While most SEO auditing tools can’t detect JavaScript links by default, we can make some slight configurations to help us out. Most common technical SEO auditing tools can provide us with custom search tools.
Unfortunately, browsers don’t really display the original code in the DOM, so we can’t just search for “onclick” or anything simple like that. But there are a few common types of code that we can search for. Just make sure to manually verify that these actually are JS links.
- <button>: Most developers use the button tag to trigger JS events. Don’t assume all buttons are JS links, but identifying these could help narrow down the issue.
- data-source: This pulls in a file to use the code to execute an action. It’s commonly used within the JS link and can help narrow down the issues.
- .js: Much like the data-source attribute, some HTML tags will pull in an external JavaScript file to find directions to execute an action.
Issue 4: Content hidden by JavaScript
This is one of the most unfortunate issues websites fall victim to. They have so much fantastic content to share, but they want to consolidate it to display only when a user interacts with it.
In general, it’s best practice to marry good content with good UX, but not if SEO suffers. There’s usually a workaround for issues like this.
Why this matters
Google doesn’t actually click on anything on webpages. So if the content is hidden behind a user action and not present in the DOM, then Google won’t discover it.
How to find content hidden by JavaScript
This can be a bit more tricky and requires a lot more manual review. Much like any technical audit generated from a tool, you need to manually verify all issues that have been found. The tips below must be manually verified.
To verify, all you need to do is check the DOM on the webpage and see if you can find any of the hidden content.
To find hidden content at scale:
- Run a new crawl with custom search: Use the techniques I discussed in finding JS links.
- Check word counts at scale: Look through all pages with low word counts. See if it checks out or if the webpage looks like it should have a larger word count.
Growing beyond the tools
With experience, we learn to use tools as they are: tools.
Tools are not meant to drive our strategy but instead to help us find issues at scale.
As you discover more uncommon issues like these, add them to your audit list and look for them in your future audits.
The post 4 technical SEO issues auditing tools won’t show you appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Monday, May 30, 2022
Child Dead, Mother Unconscious In Thane Hotel Room, Father Missing: Report
Arvind Kejriwal Must Sack Arrested Delhi Minister, Demand BJP, Congress
At Least 57 Injured After Two Buses Collide In Kerala's Kollam: Police
3 Nigerian Nationals Arrested For Cheating Over 1,000 People: Delhi Cops
In Delhi, Hail And Strong Winds Hit Flights; Cars Shaking On Roads
Ink Attack On Farmer Leader In Bengaluru, Then All Hell Breaks Loose
Prime Accused In Assam Police Station Attack Dies In Accident: Cops
Sunday, May 29, 2022
"Personal Vendetta": Delhi College Principal On Legal Notice By Officer
Rs 700 Crore GST Fraud Unearthed In Madhya Pradesh, 5 Arrested
Man Accused Of Raping Stepdaughter Thrashed By Public, Dies: Delhi Police
Gold Worth Rs 1 Crore, Hidden In Clothes-Press, Seized At Jaipur Airport
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Man Came To Delhi To Invite Relatives To Son's Wedding, Found Dead: Cops
6 Arrested For Banner Barring Entry Of BJP Workers In UP Police Station
Man Uses Delhi Police Chief's Picture To Threaten Lawyer On WhatsApp
Delhi Transport Commissioner Rides State Bus, Chief Minister Reacts
Friday, May 27, 2022
Gyanvapi Mosque Panel Urges Court To Not Allow Filming Visuals In Public
Mathura Case: Application Filed For Status Quo On Mosque Premises
Kerala: 18 More Arrested For Hate Slogans At Popular Front Of India Rally
Why Quality Test Only In Delhi: Water Body's Swipe At Centre
Delhi's Maximum Temperature At 39.3 Degrees, A Notch Below Normal
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Will Work As "Local Guardian", Says Vinai Saxena, New Delhi Lt Governor
Kolkata Model Found Dead At Home 2 Days After Model-Friend's Death
15 Injured As Bus Falls Into Gorge, Passengers Claim Driver's Negligence
Social Media Star Who Committed Thefts To Fund Lavish Lifestyle Arrested
2 Floors Of Delhi Building Collapse After Blast Due To LPG Leak
Delhi's Maximum Temperature At 36.7 Degrees, 4 Notches Below Normal
9 ways to become an SEO problem-solver
SEO is a big thing. Yes, it is made up of a lot of small things. Some connected, some not.
We’d all love to stay on track, on plan and have everything go smoothly.
But the reality is that, at some point, something won’t perform as expected or a resource won’t come through.
That’s why, to some degree, SEO is based on problem-solving as a whole.
We have to be ready for those situations and know what to do because SEO roadblocks and challenges are inevitable.
Some SEOs are great strategists, others great implementers. Few excel at both. Everyone has different strengths and levels of idea generation, strategy development and tactical implementation disciplines.
With so many stakeholders and variables involved in SEO, what does it takes to be a successful SEO problem-solver? Here are nine ways to become an SEO problem-solver.
1. Understand your stakeholders (all of them)
SEO success (fair or not) is often judged by non-SEOs and, at the same time, can be held back or negatively impacted by others as well.
Problem-solving gets easier when you already know the expectations, identify possible roadblocks in advance and have a full context. Whether it is company politics, differing levels of understanding of SEO subject matter, or wildly different expectations for performance and timing, you need to know all the players and assess what challenges might be ahead.
The more you can manage the stakeholder mix and expectations, the easier it will be to troubleshoot issues or to go down the right path when they happen. And yes, that’s a “when,” not an “if.” I’m not being snarky, but nothing ever goes according to plan.
2. Set up roles and communication plans
Beyond the full set of stakeholders, there are distinct people who you work with. That may include people on your team, within your agency, within your department and/or other functions whether agency-side or client-side.
You will need others to be successful unless you have the skills and roles beyond SEO of writer, designer, developer and approver.
Establish clear roles and responsibilities. Know who your go-to people are for the different functions you need. Learn their processes and sync them up with yours.
Understand lead times and turnaround times. Make sure they know that unplanned requests and things will happen.
Make it crystal clear what you know you need and what you might need, and how timing and responsiveness will impact SEO performance. Build allies and include them in your problem-solving and troubleshooting process and work to gain as much agility with resources that you can.
3. Maintain baselines and goals
You want to have as much objectivity and cause and effect as you can in any SEO effort.
There are so many misunderstood and gray areas that, without baselines and goals of where the effort is going, you can get way off track with resources, why something isn’t going according to plan, and more.
There are often many ways to accomplish your goals. We can get lost down a rabbit hole on a technical issue if we can’t tie it back to a baseline or impact on a goal.
We also can take a step back and reprioritize our efforts when we receive resistance or a roadblock if we find out that a dev update to resolve a technical issue might take six months.
4. Leverage your strategy and plan
First, I hope you have a defined strategy and plan. If you don’t have it or your baselines and goals (noted above), take a step back and work on this. Otherwise, it is hard to be proactive and lead in the SEO effort as you’ll always chase down issues.
With your strategy and plan, you can further build on the objective aspects of the campaign or cause that your baselines and goals help with.
As I noted in the intro, SEOs can be great at big picture strategy, some at detailed implementation, and many have a range of experience and favorite parts (technical vs. content, etc.).
Unification around a strategy and plan will allow you to know how hard to push for a specific fix versus moving on to bigger impact items. However, it allows you to adjust expectations. If the content writer or approval process is booked for months out, you can raise the red flag about how that will cause a change in the plan and expected timing and what that might do to push results further out.
Using your plan and any changes that come to manage expectations will help you get resources or engage others who can help you.
5. Go off-script and be agile
Even with the best plan and all the resources you could want at your disposal, things often play out in different ways that we project or anticipate. Sure, we work through all of the title and meta description tags and they are “perfectly” optimized. Yet we might find that there are issues that remain with duplicate tags or how they are being indexed.
- Should we check off the box and move on?
- Should we do another round of optimization?
- Should we start doing other things in the plan in parallel?
- Do we need to get a developer or copywriter involved?
Again, things don’t always go according to plan. Sometimes we have to double down in certain areas.
Finding the right balance of adjusting the plan and being agile while you go versus sticking to the plan is probably the most important troubleshooting or problem-solving ability that an SEO can have.
6. Develop technical skills and/or resources
Knowing the “what” and “why” of an SEO issue is powerful. This is a step beyond being able to rely on tools or performance issues as indicators that something is not performing according to expectations.
If you can dig into the XML sitemap, robots.txt, HTML code or other related factors yourself to get to the root of the problem, you can get deeper into problem-solving directly.
At a minimum level, you need to be able to quarterback a situation by bringing your resources together. However, with the ability to solve issues yourself or speak the same language and be highly prescriptive and direct with your resources, you’ll have a better chance of getting a resolution to your satisfaction and hopefully quicker.
7. Have content backup plans
One of the top reasons plans and performance get off track: not getting the quality and volume of content needed.
I don’t know many SEOs who still are writing or making content edits. In most cases, SEOs rely on a client, another resource, or a partner responsible for writing and producing content. In some industries, this is also shaped by legal and compliance requirements.
Content resources can get booked up even if you have a content calendar and needs established.
- What happens when your content resource is unavailable or gets off track from the initial plan?
- Do you have backup resources?
- Do you go deeper into technical and off-page optimization to compensate?
It is one thing to be a problem-solver when content isn’t performing. It is another when you can’t get the content you need.
8. Be patient, but don’t wait
Be a team player and respectful of your partners and resources you collaborate with.
Pushing too much and/or not being tactful won’t help your cause. Give some grace and have patience, but also don’t wait.
If you’re stuck on content (per the section above), or a dev edit, or a technical update or on any specific resources beyond your control, find ways to move things around in the plan.
You can always prioritize link building, tag updates, or some other type of audit or update to keep things moving forward.
It might take some creativity, but don’t sit idle while waiting on others. Keep moving something forward.
9. See roadblocks as opportunities
My tone has probably been pretty strong because there will be challenges, roadblocks and things to troubleshoot. That’s the nature of SEO and the web in general.
A problem-solver mentality is important.
Accepting this reality and being positive in the face of adversity, being a realist and getting others on board with this reality are critical.
SEO is hard for everyone. We’re trying to be the best possible with our website and strategy.
If it were easy, everyone would be good at it, and we’d have a different set of problems.
The post 9 ways to become an SEO problem-solver appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Party On Wheels: 12-Year-Old Boy Celebrates Birthday On Board Noida Metro
More FAQ rich results being displayed in Google Search
Google Search seems to be displaying more FAQ rich results in its search results over the past few days. Both RankRanger’s tracking tool and some SEOs are noticing this increase in the number of times a site is showing FAQ rich results.
What are rich result FAQs. Web pages that have a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that contain a list of questions and answers pertaining to a particular topic can markup the questions and answers with FAQ structured data. Google may then show those FAQs in the search results snippets as illustrated below:
More showing. Google is now showing these FAQ rich results five percentage points more often according to RankRanger, who happened to be recently acquired by Similarweb. Here is the data chart showing the uplift:
SEOs like Brodie Clark and Glenn Gabe noticed the increase too on clients they have access to:
Two links. As a reminder, Google recently limited the number of links you can see within an FAQ rich result to two links. A couple years ago, Google also tightened the guidelines around using FAQ schema on your site.
Why we care. With more FAQ results showing up in Google Search, it may benefit your site if you gained those rich results but at the same time, if your competitor now shows up for these rich results, then it might have the opposite affect. Rich results generally lead to a higher click through rate from the Google search results snippet to the publisher’s site but not always. In this case, if the searcher gets his or her answer from the FAQ rich result, they made not end up clicking over to your site.
So test, test and test to see if you want these FAQ rich results for your site.
The post More FAQ rich results being displayed in Google Search appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Another Cloudy Day In Delhi, No Heatwave Forecast For A Week
Webinar: Benchmark your social media performance for a competitive edge
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Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Man Arrested For Rape, Cheating Woman Of Rs 70 Lakh In Faridabad
Temperature Drops In Delhi, Partly Cloudy Sky Predicted For Tomorrow
4 elements of good content, according to Google research
Good content, above all, is all about the story.
That’s according to new research from Google and Talk Shoppe, a research agency. Google wanted to find out how viewers determine the quality of content.
Why we care. While the findings of Google’s research are geared toward visual content (specifically: YouTube), the broad lessons can be applied to any type of content you create.
Good content has four elements:
1. Relevant. People want content relevant to their interests. But they also want content that is created by approachable and relatable creators.
- Key stat: 80% of people are more open to advertising or branded content when the content is relevant to them.
2. Intellectual. People want content that introduces them to new things. This includes brands.
What types of content? It could be an educational series, a how-to or a product review.
- Key stat: 88% of people said YouTube helped expand their perspectives or ways of thinking.
Is this statistic in conflict with the first stat? Yes, at least partially. But the use of the word “intellectual” may be the issue.
Many people seek out content that reinforces things they already believe, regardless of the level of “intellect.” That’s why over the past decade there have been so many concerns around filter bubbles and what engagement-driven algorithms recommend to us.
3. Sensorial. Good storytelling is all about the details. For video specifically, people said “unique storytelling or production” can be more stimulating than “cinematic quality.”
- Key stat: 94% of people said good content tells a good story.
- Another key stat: 92% of them say good content is produced with thought and effort.
What it means: content doesn’t have to be perfect. But your content should always be authentic, be useful/helpful, have a purpose and tell a story.
4. Emotional. Most people want a content experience – something that makes them feel something – or even multiple emotions (though it failed to specify whether positive or negative emotions made a difference).
Bonus: if you can achieve this with your content, this can help create a deeper connection with your audience. In other words, content that wins peoples’ hearts should translate to greater loyalty.
- Key stat: 85% of people said good content makes them feel something emotionally.
The full story. You can view the research, which was created as a visual story, on Think With Google.
So is that all that makes content good? No. In fact, it really depends on who you ask.
For this research, Google asked content consumers.
But ask someone on the SEO/marketing/creator side, typically metrics determine whether something is “good.”
In other words, all that matters is how the content performed. Was your content consumed or ignored?
To figure that out, we look at things like:
- Number of pageviews
- Time on page
- Number of links
- Organic visibility / ranking
- Organic traffic
- Click-through rate
- Engagement (comments, shares)
- Bounce rate
- Lead generation / task completion (e.g., add to cart, subscribe, content download, book an appointment)
But we all know that not every piece of content succeeds. Most content won’t do huge numbers. You probably can think of “good” content you’ve created that failed to do great numbers.
Does that mean the content isn’t good? No. It just means the content failed.
Need help creating good content? Check out these resources:
- Why good content costs serious money
- What is quality content?
- Content & search engine success factors
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Fashion Designer Jumps To Death From 14th Floor Of Building In Gurgaon
Google Ads bug inflating some cost-per-click (CPCs) for non-US campaigns
Google Ads has a bug of some sorts impacting some a “subset of non-US campaigns” where cost-per-click amounts are incorrectly inflated, the company posted.
The notice. Google posted this notice about 30 minutes ago:
We’re aware of a problem with Google Ads affecting a significant subset of users. We will provide an update by May 25, 2022, 1:00 AM UTC detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. We’re aware that a subset of non-US campaigns are affected by a technical issue causing cost-per-click (CPC) to be incorrectly inflated. We are working to resolve this issue.
Seeing inflated costs. If you are seeing inflated CPCs and costs on your non-US campaigns, do not worry, Google is aware and working on a fix.
It is not clear if this is a reporting issue or an issue impacting your budgets. Either way, you should ask for refunds after we learn more about the underlining issues.
Fix coming. Google has not posted an estimated time for when this will be resolved but Google will provide and update within the next 12 hours or so.
Why we care. If you are running campaigns outside of the US and you notice CPC inflation, you are not alone. Google is aware and will fix the issue – so no need to panic. Stay tuned as we provide more updates as they come in.
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Monday, May 23, 2022
Watch: Cable Cars Sway In Heavy Wind, 30 Devotees Stuck For Half An Hour
Webinar: Overcome third-party data challenges for CX success
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Scientist With IT Ministry Jumps Off From Building In Delhi, Dies: Police
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Is Google Search showing fewer sitelinks
Google Search seems to be showing fewer sitelinks in the search results. Google would show as many as six sitelinks per search result snippet, now Google seems to be showing a maximum of four sitelinks and often just two sitelinks.
What are sitelinks. Sitelinks are links from the same domain that are clustered together under a web result. Google Search said it “analyzes the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for” in the search results.
What changed. Google seems to have changed to a vertical format for large sitelinks and is only showing up to 4 sitelinks. Even the example from Google’s very own help documentation shows six sitelinks.
Screenshots. Here are screenshots showing how a search for [tesla] is showing four sitelinks:
A year or so ago, the same search displayed six sitelinks:
My site has always showed at least four sitelinks, now I see it showing only two:
If you search for rustybrick with a space, [rusty brick], Google does show four:
Why we care. Fewer sitelinks may lead to less of a chance to get clicked on from the Google Search results. That may lead to less site traffic from Google search and ultimately lead to less revenue.
We have emailed Google to confirm this was changed and to learn more about why it has changed.
Hat tip to this Reddit thread for spotting this.
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Sunday, May 22, 2022
Nagpur Girl Kills Self After Argument With Parents, Sister Drinks Phenyl
Rajasthan Woman Raped Twice On Promises Of Lift, 2 Arrested
Delhi Gets Unified Municipal Corporation After A Decade
Angered By Brother's Absence At Mother's Funeral, Aunt Attacks Nephew
8,000 Banned Cough Syrup Bottles Seized In Maharashtra's Thane, 2 Arrested
Saturday, May 21, 2022
Fire Breaks Out At Furniture Godown In Delhi's Bhalswa
3 Cattle Smugglers Arrested After Exchange Of Fire In Ghaziabad: Police
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Friday, May 20, 2022
Telangana Increases Upper Age Limit For Police, Fire Service Recruitments
Google search results spam for ‘Bill Slawski obituary’ shows the dark side of SEO
We reported yesterday the sad news that Bill Slawski has died.
It’s less than 24 hours later and no actual obituary has been published (either by a news site or funeral home). Yet, Google’s search results are littered with spammy results.
Look at what is ranking on a Google search right now for [bill slawski obituary]:
This is a horror, especially for anybody seeking trustworthy information on Slawski.
To me, this SERP looks like Google, before the Panda Update, for certain queries where content farms reigned. That’s the easiest way to describe it.
A ton of low-quality websites have created thin content with the sole purpose of optimizing it to rank whenever someone searches for an obituary for Bill Slawski. And they are monetizing whatever traffic they get through display ads.
What’s worse – there are many of these types of sites. And these sites have one thing in common: the content reads like it was either automatically generated or written (poorly) by people whose first language is not English.
Let’s look at some of the sites so you can understand how gross this all is:
1. AReal News
The content is pure garbage. Look at this paragraph:
“He was hale and hearty until he suffered a broken leg which caused his death. Before his death, he suffered a Brian clot, due to which he was admitted to the hospital. This information was shared on Twitter. This did not affect his ability to think and write. He was only facing issues with waking properly. He was very much active on Twitter before his death.”
Aside from the obvious content problem, this site looks like it should be in clear violation of Google’s page layout algorithm (aka Top Heavy). Before you even get to the content, you get nothing but ads, ads, ads.
And searching for [obituary site:arealnews.com] reveals this isn’t a one-off. It’s a strategy:
2. OnTrend
Some of the garbage content:
“No doubt, he was surrounded by his wife and children when he took his last breath peacefully. The further insights of Bill’s partner are inaccessible at this time. We are keeping an eye on this topic.”
3. CowdyCactus
If this isn’t outright search spam, it’s certainly about as low-quality content as you can publish before reaching that threshold:
“Twitter mourns the lack of lifetime of web site positioning skilled Bill Slawski at age 61. However, his clarification for lack of life has remained secret. What occurred?“
In fact, when I turned my ad blocker off to take that screen capture, it was infested with so many ads and redirects to spam I could no longer even view the site. Hopefully, my computer didn’t get a virus.
4. CmaTrends
Before we look at this example, make sure you check out this site’s homepage title tag: “CmaTrends « We SELL Entertainment Periodt!”
And the opening of their “article”:
“Bill Slawski, the author of Search Engine Land, died at the age of 61, #Bill #Slawski #author #Search #Engine #Land #died #age Welcome to O L A S M E D I A TV N E W S, This is what we have for you today:”
I could cite more examples, but you get the point.
Google’s new information problem. The quality of this search result is bad. But it goes beyond just Slawski.
This is a known issue. For certain new search queries, often there isn’t enough content on the web for Google to rank. So you get a bunch of content that, otherwise, has no reason to have any visibility.
Sometimes you also see this after a broad core algorithm update. Suddenly, Google starts surfacing iffy content from suspect sources – as if they hit a sort of reset button. Typically, Google eventually figures it out and more appropriate content returns to where it should be (though not always).
The profits of death. Aside from the clearly bogus “news” sites, there are a couple of spammy obituary websites in there – deathobits.com and death-obituary.com. Both are also loaded up with display ads. Including Google ads.
Yet this is not a new problem. And it goes far beyond Slawski. In fact, some brands are even helping fund this low-quality content.
Marketing Brew published a report in November detailing how spammy sites rip off obituaries and actually end up being monetized by ads from major brands (e.g., Nike, Nordstrom, Zola, Burt’s Bees). Google told Marketing Brew it has:
“strict policies that explicitly prohibit Google–served ads from running on sites that use disruptive advertising formats, including pages with more ads than publisher content. We also prohibit ads from running alongside content that’s been copied from other sites. When we find pages or sites that violate these policies we take appropriate enforcement action.”
I’ve reached out to Google to comment on this story. I will update if/when I receive a response.
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Man, Woman Jump Off 22nd Floor Of Noida Flat, Die: Cops
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Telangana Student Made To Walk Over Burning Coal By 'Exorcist': Cops
Domestic Help, Thrashed By Delhi Couple, Found In Pool Of Urine: Report
Man Stabs Wife To Death In Broad Daylight In UP: Police
New mobile Google ad experiment puts favicon in-line with display URL
Google has confirmed that the search company is experimenting with a new Google Ads label display, this was after this has been spotted in the wild by some in the industry. The test includes different verbiage like “advertisement” and “sponsored” above mobile search ads, instead of just saying “Ads.” In many cases, the site’s favicon is featured directly to the left of the ad domain & display URL.
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot from Brodie Clark of a few variations:
Google confirmed. A Google spokesperson confirmed the test saying “This is part of a series of experiments to help users more easily identify the brand or advertiser associated with the Search ads they may see for a given query. We are always testing news ways to improve the experience for users on the search results page, but we don’t have anything specific to announce right now.”
A more organic feel? Google has consistently evolved the visual display of ads over the past 15 years. Ads have graduated from a heavy blue background to today’s smaller bolded “Ad” text typically found to the left of the domain:
One can argue that this new test has ads taking yet another step towards replicating an organic result. In this view, the ad/sponsored/advertisement text is removed from the right side of the ad and moved above the site and domain. Replacing that label in some cases in now a favicon that is appearing to the left of the domain/display URL, much like a mobile organic result:
The combination of the removal of the ‘ad’ notification horizontally next to the ad along with the favicon may well drive more clicks for those thinking they are clicking on an organic listing.
Why we care: If this experiment goes mainstream, both PPCers and SEOs could see a slight change in click-through rates. While the Google spokesperson isn’t wrong that users may more “easily identify the brand or advertiser associated with the Search ads” it is possible that they may less easily identify ads. With the Favicon on the left of the results, webmasters may notice increased CTR on ads, and less clicks on organic listings.
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Google launches video health tools to help publisher monetization
Maximizing the return on video inventory is a problem likely to be found at the top of most publishers’ lists. Help is on the way for those using Ad Manager thanks to new video specific tools from Google.
The new features are part of the Programmatic Video Health Tools and real-time video reporting, both with goals of using automation to surface insights and information quickly.
Programmatic video signals
This card will create views that show performance across the various video platforms being used.
Some elements that are automatically reported on include: app/web domain, viewability and audience information. Users will also be able to see the impact of each on revenue.
According to Google “publishers with high programmatic inventory signal coverage see an average 25% revenue uplift compared to inventory with low programmatic inventory signal coverage.”
VAST errors
The Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) errors insight cart will help with error reporting on lost ad requests. This automated view will surface the number of errors on inventory caused by improper settings or broken creative.
These can also be sorted to find errors that are having the highest impact on revenue.
Video performance alerts
Publishers will also have the ability to configure custom alerts based on requirements most important to them. This tool, Video Performance Alerts, can create a customized email based around campaign metrics and dimensions. The Video Performance Alerts feature is currently in beta.
Real time video reporting
Lastly a final tool, real-time video reporting, will help users resolve problems sooner.
This is for those serving ads on YouTube via Ad Manager and will give them the ability to test ad delivery and view ad requests, key values and details on the winning line items.
Why we care: Publishers that run video ads through Ad Manager have more tools to help identify and fix issues with their campaigns. These tools bring automation to your troubleshooting and should help save publishers time and revenue.
The post Google launches video health tools to help publisher monetization appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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SEO pioneer and expert Bill Slawski passes away
We have just learned the shocking news that Bill Slawski, an SEO expert, educator and pioneer, has died.
Slawski was the Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital, a digital marketing agency. His company just shared the news of his passing on Twitter, moments ago.
About Bill Slawski
Slawski was doing SEO before Google. Heck, before SEO was even called SEO.
He started his career when it was simply known as internet marketing and web promotion, in 1996. He provided consulting services to help make websites easier to find online, easier to use, and increase conversions and revenue.
Throughout his career, Slawski worked on all types of sites – nonprofits, Fortune 500, educational institutions, e-commerce, professional services, consumer goods, B2B and more.
SEO by the Sea
For many in our industry, Slawski was probably best-known for his blogging about Google patents and algorithms at SEO by the Sea. He started the SEO by the Sea blog in June 2005.
Contributions to the search community
They were many.
Aside from writing on his own blog, Slawski contributed articles at many search publications. He was a contributing author here at Search Engine Land from December 2006 to July 2008. You can read Slawski’s articles here.
‘Our teacher, our professor, our mentor’
That is how Search Engine Land’s own Barry Schwartz described Slawski in 2020.
After Slawski suffered a stroke, Schwartz created a tribute site: billslawski.com. Schwartz asked SEOs for stories about how Slawski had helped them in their career. And they sure delivered.
The site is filled with hundreds of stories and memories, published on a near-daily basis, from Dec. 15, 2020 until May 10, 2021.
Community reaction
We are all still in shock and processing this devastating loss.
News quickly spread of Slawski’s passing on Twitter. Here’s just a small sampling of reactions from SEOs, upon learning of Slawski’s death.
So, so sad.
— Matt McGee (@mattmcgee) May 19, 2022He was such a smart and generous man. A true legend in SEO. We'll all miss him tremendously.
This story is developing. Check back for more updates shortly.
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New Yelp feature: Request a Call
Yelp has added a new Request a Call feature to help service businesses more easily connect with potential clients. Users can specify a preferred call-back time. It’s then up to businesses to either confirm or ask for a different time.
How Request a Call works. People who land on your Yelp business page can click on a Request a call button. They must then select a service they want from you, then enter their phone number and preferred call time. This time could be super specific or a larger time window.
When someone requests a call from your business, you will get a message in your Yelp for Business inbox, asking them to call the potential customer at the requested time window. Businesses then have three response options:
- Confirm call time. You will be prompted to specify a date and time you will call the customer (e.g., “I will call you this Friday at 1:30 p.m.”)
- Reschedule/unavailable. You can suggest a different call time to the customer.
- Need more information. You can ask the customer for whatever additional information you need before confirming the call.
Businesses won’t be able to call a user on their actual phone number. That’s because, for privacy, Yelp creates a masked, temporary phone number. There is also an authentication PIN (personal identification number).
Now available. Request a Call is now available to Yelp business pages that have opted into receiving leads via Request a Quote. Support for iOS and Android will come later.
Built upon Request a Quote. Yelp noted the “why” behind this feature was in part due to the success of its Request a Quote feature, which launched in 2016, was updated in 2020 and has gained wider adoption in the past year, according to Yelp. Two stats of note:
- In the first quarter of 2022 Request a Quote requests were more than 30% above 2019 levels.
- There was a 10% increase in total projects started on Yelp’s website.
Why we care. It can be difficult for people to reach local service businesses. Missed phone calls are lost leads. Hopefully the new Request a Call will help local service providers more easily connect with consumers and convert qualified leads into customers.
From the customer side, I’ve experienced the never-ending game of phone tag, most recently trying to contact landscapers and plumbers in my area. It’s annoying leaving messages and waiting, hoping you don’t miss that call if or when they finally do call back.
New search filters. Yelp also has introduced job-specific filters for more than 80 categories (e.g., landscaping, pest control, massage, auto repair, real estate agents, salons, junk removal). So when users search for a plumber, for example, they can choose from unique filters for specific types of jobs or repairs (e.g., installations, sewers, faucets).
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Everything you should know about evaluating your competitor’s backlink profile
Competitive backlink research is one of the first steps in either building your own link-building strategy or figuring out what it takes to achieve your competitors’ organic rankings.
Links are certainly not the only ranking signal, but they are still one of the most powerful factors (if not the most powerful one).
When selecting your competitors to analyze you will likely choose those that rank particularly well for your target queries, which makes sense because you want to know what has worked for them.
There’s one important thing to keep in mind here: It’s generally best to select your peers (sites directly in your vertical or niche). In other words, stay away from large websites that play within a variety of verticals but happen to rank above you (big box stores, Wikipedia, etc.).
There’s not much you can learn from Amazon’s backlink profile, for example, apart from the fact that being a web giant is working well for them.
Likewise, there’s less to learn from your oldest competitors apart from starting early (and earning all those age and trust signals over time) is certainly a good idea.
Instead, look for sites that have seen a recent growth in rankings to zero in on tactics working well for them. These are the types of sites you can best learn from, and this is what will make your competitive research actionable, i.e. help you build and implement your own strategy.
Once you have 2-4 competitors to analyze, make sure you rule out all the red flags you want to avoid first. In other words, start with what you don’t want to do. Filter those lower-quality and often risky links out to be able to find the best links common amongst the peers within your industry.
Step 1: Filter out red flags
When it comes to link building, too much of any questionable tactic can be detrimental but let’s get a bit more specific. Look for the following red flags:
Exact match anchor text
Are you seeing a lot of backlinks that repeat the same (or almost the same) anchor text over and over again? This is always a sign of poor and outdated link building that may get (or may have gotten) your competitors into trouble.
Very often when you see a backlink profile that is full of obviously SEO-driven links, you may also notice that the site lost visibility at some point: look for dips in organic visibility that may have happened over the years using Semrush or your favorite SEO toolset.
You cannot access their disavow file, so chances are they have gradually revived their rankings by urging Google to discount those low-quality links. But if those links haven’t caused them to lose rankings yet, chances are it will eventually happen.
It doesn’t have to be a manual penalty though: Google may be already discounting those links, so they have zero impact on their organic visibility at this point.
In either case, these are not the types of links you’d want to be after.
Outdated link building tactics
There are still quite a few outdated link-building patterns found in lots of backlink profiles out there.
These include:
- Directory links
- Links from blog networks
- Article directory links
- Content syndication (Press releases or other)
- Low-quality guest posting links
Look out for links from websites that invite one to submit an article or “sponsor content” on them. Keep an eye on thin content that was obviously created for the sake of linking to your competitor. More importantly, try and see obvious patterns behind those backlinks: The same link building tactic appearing over and over throughout a backlink profile.
These links are probably also discounted by Google; none of these link types are worth your effort or investment.
Step 2: Learn from their success
Now that you know what to stay away from focus on what you can learn from your competitor’s backlink profile.
If you choose your competitors wisely based on organic visibility, there will likely be more to learn than to avoid. After all, if those sites rank well, Google obviously likes their backlink profile, or at least they are doing something right.
So, what can you learn from your competitors’ backlink profiles?
1. Your competitors’ content marketing tactics
Which content seems to work for your competitors in terms of link generation? What’s their most linked content? Have they managed to get any of their content assets viral or picked up by notable web publications? Can yours do better?
Obviously, you don’t know what happens behind the scenes of them achieving those links, but it is usually obvious when a particular content asset did extraordinarily well for generating solid backlinks.
It is usually easy to identify content that went viral and generated hundreds of links or a resource page that got cited by highly trusted websites like universities and government organizations.
Can you recreate those types of assets for your website and bring them up to date or make them better?
It is also a good idea to identify your competitor’s high-ranking content. Content that ranks on top of Google tends to bring in links naturally as bloggers and journalists use Google to find sources. Getting your articles to rank is also a link acquisition tactic bringing organic link equity on a continuous basis without you having to actively build those links through traditional outreach.
- Find your competitors’ articles that rank high for searchable keywords.
- Check backlinks of those articles to identify if that works for them.
- Try and claim those rankings by creating much better content.
Keep an eye on higher-level tactics that bring your competitors rankings and links. What type of content is delivering topical links? Oftentimes these would be:
- Glossaries and knowledge bases;
- In-depth how-to content;
- Statistical studies and survey results (these tend to be the most powerful), etc.
2. Your competitors’ outreach tactics
Who are your competitors reaching out to when trying to build links?
It is usually easy to tell by the type of links they are getting:
- Links from news outlets come as a result of journalistic outreach
- Trusted links from educators (college professors, teachers, etc.) require targeted trust-bait content and outreach
- Links from blogs are built through blogger outreach (and often creation of viral assets, like free tools and infographics)
Which of those links seem to dominate your competitors’ backlink profile? Knowing the answer will inspire your own link acquisition strategy and help you make more informed decisions.
3. Your competitors’ influencer marketing tactics
Who are your competitors’ content amplifiers? In other words, who are those people (authors, niche experts, etc.) behind those links your competitors are getting?
Influencer marketing is a great way to generate backlinks on many levels:
- Lots of niche influencers have sites and blogs they can use to link from
- Influencers (if you choose them wisely) can drive organic links by simply sharing your content or mentioning it in their newsletters.
- You may be able to actively engage with influencers within your niche via interviews, podcasts, Q&As, etc.
Sometimes, influencer-based tactics are hard to track in your competitors’ backlink profiles. It is often hard to correlate a sudden surge of backlinks to your competitor’s site without knowing the root cause of the spike.
This is where well-organized social media research and listening can help your competitive backlink analysis. Search Twitter and Instagram for your competitors’ brand names to see who is talking about them and what kind of an audience is involved in listening to those messages. Tools like Keyhole (a social media analytics platform) and Milled (a newsletter archive) can help you distinguish those sources of influence and match them with your competitor’s backlink profile.
Conclusion
Competitive backlink research is often enlightening if you know what to look for.
It is no use in trying to go after each and every one of their good links, though. Instead, take a higher-level approach: What is it they are doing to generate links and how can I do the same but better?
Trying to be as good as your competitor means there’s no reason for Google to rank your site higher. You need to always strive to do better: Better content, better outreach, better promotion tools. There’s often a lot of “heavy lifting” internally to get this right, and many companies choose to hire a better link-building company in order to do it right. Whichever direction you go, staying on top of your competitor’s backlinks (and your own!) will help you earn and maintain top rankings as time goes on.
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