Did you know that sometimes those bot protection services will serve Google and other search engines noindex directives? Google’s John Mueller said this on X, saying, “Sometimes there’s bot-protection (or a login, interstitial, etc) triggering that has a noindex on it.” He also added that it would be better for them to serve 503 server […]
Did you know that Google Search checks about four billion host names each and every day for robots.txt purposes? Gary Illyes said in the December Search Off The Record podcast “we have about four billion host names that we check every single day for robots.txt.” He said this at the 20:31 mark in the video. […]
Google released only nine confirmed search ranking algorithm updates this year. Don’t worry, there were a lot more unconfirmed Google search ranking updates this year that we covered and it was a very volatile year, in general. I made a quick graphic documenting those updates in a timeline fashion over 2023 (I am sure many […]
Here are some really tasty looking holiday cookies that were at the Google New York City office, the Pier 57 location. I found these on Instagram some time go. Happy holidays! This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
As we approach the end of the year, it just seems Google is getting more and more volatile with its search results. Google also confirmed that “openness” as a local ranking signal was strengthened. On Thursday morning, Google had delayed indexing issues for some sites, but Google confirmed it hours later. Google’s Danny Sullivan collects […]