Daily Search Forum Recap: March 18, 2022

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.

Google won’t be making Google Analytics 4 a search ranking boost. Google said migrating a domain to a new domain, when the original domain has quality issues, will result in the new domain having quality issues in Google Search. Google may bring back SMS messaging in Google Business Profiles. Google is testing “on these lists” in the local panels. Google launched full panel movie reviews. Plus, I posted the weekly search video recap on YouTube and your favorite podcast player.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

  • Quality: Site With Quality Issues Switched Domains, Saw Temporary Google Ranking Boost & Dropped Again
    On last Friday’s hangout with Google’s John Mueller, Ankit Dalal, an SEO, asked about a site he is working on and what the issue it has with rankings. In short, the site was not ranking well, so they migrated the site to a new domain and the rankings climbed for a three-day period, then after that, the rankings went back down to where the original domain was ranking.
  • Google: Google Analytics 4 Won’t Be A Search Ranking Boost
    Sometimes when Google wants to encourage site owners to take action, they might give us a ranking boost for implementing it. They did it for HTTPS, mobile friendly design, page experience and many more. But when it comes to encouraging folks to switching to Google Analytics 4, Google’s John Mueller said there won’t be any ranking boost in doing so.
  • SMS Messaging Support Returns To Google Business Profiles?
    When Google first launched messaging within Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business), it was done through SMS, text messaging. Then Google removed the SMS portion and just added it to both the mobile app and the web interface. Now, Google might be bringing it back as SMS messaging.
  • Google Tests On These Lists In Local Listing
    Google seems to be testing a feature in a local listing for a venue that says which lists, if any, these venues are on. Often you see websites that have lists of topics like, ten best places to take your kids in a specific location and things like that. Well, now those might show up in the local panel under a section named “on these lists.”
  • Google Search Movie Reviews Panel Goes Full Width
    Rajan Patel, the VP of Engineering at Google, confirmed with me that Google has rolled out full width movie reviews. So when you search for a movie name and add on “review” to your query, Google will show a full width review panel in web search.
  • Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Algorithm Weirdness, Google Analytics 3 Going Away, Google Local Review Bugs & More
    This week, I covered a possible Google update that ticked off a week ago, but it was weird, the tools didn’t pick up on it. Google announced it is sunsetting Google Analytics Universal Analytics in 2023 and you will need to start using Google Analytics 4…
  • New Mysterious Google Product Found On Swag
    Satyajeet Salgar, Director, Product Management at YouTube and Google, shared a photo of a new piece of swag that was on his desk at Google. He said he is not sure what this logo is but it is a new pro

Other Great Search Threads:

  • I don’t know. I suspect you can find anecdotes either way there, but it’s not by design. It’s not that we’d say “do X in title, Y in h1, and Z in h2” — we try to work with the pages as they come. Anecdotes can st, John Mueller on Twitter
  • I’m not a fan of forced migrations (you know who else needs to migrate to GA4? Search Console)… sometimes the product team needs to make tough decisions. It’s annoying, but a part of the cost of, John Mueller on Twitter
  • Just another reminder that if you publish how-to content, spend the extra 10 minutes & add how-to markup. You can’t beat the SERP treatment w/a carousel of images for each step that link directly to that step in your post. On, Glenn Gabe on Twitter
  • Thoughts on this test? Favicons ranging in different sizing on mobile (note the change for @sengineland) + repeating the domain name, including a variation using bolding. Variation #2 was first spotted last month, but looks like, Brodie Clark on Twitter
  • After 16 years, you’ve probably seen ups & downs, plus updates that you didn’t consider to be “up” dates. Things change, and sometimes they don’t change in the way you want them to change., John Mueller on Twitter
  • Today’s ridiculous crawling issue. Yandex and Bing both spidering tons of URLs with random ved= parameters. Not sure where these are originating. Anyone else seeing this kind of behavior?, Joost de Valk on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Feedback:

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