Scott Services: Daily Search Forum Recap: August 17, 2020

Monday, 17 August 2020

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.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

August 15th – Another Possible Big Google Search Algorithm & Ranking Update

Super rare that I come on, on a Saturday night, and write something here. But I turned up the computer after Shabbat ended and I see the SEO community is buzzing in a big way about some significant changes to the Google search results today. This is not as big as that bug from last Monday but it does seem very big.

Google Search Console Insights Is Live For Some

Google has announced a new Google Search Console Insights BETA tool for publishers. We told you this was in the works a couple of months ago and now Google officially confirmed it. Google said “today we’re starting to roll out a new experience to beta testers: Search Console Insights. It’s a way to provide content creators with the data they need to make informed decisions and improve their content.”

Vlog #80: Patrick Stox – Heavy On Technical SEO with a Touch Of Humor

Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) is now the Product Advisor, Technical SEO, & Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs. Prior to that he was at IBM, he worked there for four years. This was my last interview at SMX West, so I was a bit loopy…

Google: Header Tags Are Not Magical Pixie Dust That Make Your Site Rank Better

Over the weekend there has been a lot of chatter about headers and their importance for ranking in Google search. It may have been that what John Mueller said in a recent video hangout was taken a bit out of context (trust me, I know, I have done this too). John Mueller of Google clarified on Twitter afterwards on header tags “they’re useful for understanding the context of content (text & images), but they’re not magical pixie dust that will make your site rank better.”

Google: We Do Not Want Machine Translated Content In The Index

There has been a ton of chatter in the SEO industry around GPT-3, Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text and its use for translating content that Google might want to consume. Google does not want to consume it, Google does not want you to use GPT-3 to translate your content and be fed it for indexing.

Google: XML Sitemap Do Not Help With User Experience

Pascal Birchler, a Developer Programs Engineer at Google and works closely on WordPress related tasks, used this ð¤… facepalming emoji after quoting this on Twitter “a good-looking XML sitemap will bring a better user experience.”

Google Australia Notice – The Way Aussies Use Google Is At Risk

Australians who go to Google are seeing a notice, a pop up, on Google Search that reads “The way Aussies use Google is at risk.” It adds “your search experience will be hurt by new regulation” and then asks the user to dismiss the alert or learn more.

A Private Google Office 5 Months Into COVID-19

We’ve seen some Googlers say they have ventured back into the Google office. Some to retrieve stuff and some had to go back to maintain things. Here is a photo of a private office at Google Dublin af