Daily Search Forum Recap: February 17, 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.

It has been weirdly calm with the Google search rankings over the past few weeks but we are now seeing possible signs of an upcoming Google update. Google is testing placing the site name twice in the search result snippet, well – kind of. Google launched a new business calls API for you to integrate into your CRM. Google is processing those manual actions for Google Discover and Google News pretty quickly. Google has a few weird user interface bugs, although they are not all Google’s fault. Google said again that 15% of all its queries are new.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Is Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Coming Soon?

Over the past couple of weeks, the Google search rankings have been pretty stable and calm. It actually has been unusually calm that some SEOs are getting nervous. I recently saw some super early signs of an update brewing. Is this the calm before the storm?

Google Quickly Processing Discover & Google News Manual Actions

A couple of weeks ago we reported that Google was sending out its first batch of manual actions (Google penalties) to news publications for Google News and Google Discover policy violations. Well, I am happy to report that Google is processing and even removing some of those manual actions already.

Google Business Profiles New Business Calls API

Google has launched a new API to retrieve call history data from your Google Business Profiles, you know, when people click call this business from Google Search and Google Maps. They named it the “My Business Business Calls API” – shouldn’t it be named the “Google Business Profiles Business Calls API” instead?

Not New: 15% Of Search Queries On Google Are Still New

Here is a not new piece of data, 15% of the searches Google sees each day are new. Google shared this stat, again, on Twitter the other day saying “Fun fact: 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before.”

Some Recent Weird Google Search Interface Bugs

Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen a few recent complaints about weird interface bugs in Google Search. To be honest, I know some of these are browser extension related and thus not a Google bug, but an extension changing the Google Search interface. But I found them interesting and wanted to share them – in case you see them yourself.

Google Tests Double Site Name & URL In Search Snippets

Google is testing showing the site name and URL twice in the search result snippets in Google mobile search. So not only do you see the name of the site or the URL with the favcion from the site, but you are also seeing it doubled up with the site name on top of it, with the URL and the favicon.

Dooglers First Day At Google

Here is a photo I found on Instagram taken from the main Google headquarters in Mountain View, California – the GooglePlex. It is of a dog, a Doogler, its first day at the Google office.

Other Great Search Threads:

How would Google rank the following domains: web-design.com, web.design, web-design.net? Assume people google “web design”., Reddit

Google is doing more testing of the Suggested Clips feature on the back of a string of tests from Dec 2021. Here’s 2 different new variations that show the suggested clip text at the top left of the video & also on the marke, Brodie Clark on Twitter

Google Plans to Build a Privacy Sandbox on Android, WebmasterWorld

If a site wants it included in a snippet, but doesn’t show it on the page, that seems like a loss for the site. Attracting users who won’t find what they’re looking for seems like a recipe for getting users, John Mueller on Twitter

If you do a search for Passover the Google pagination bar on desktop and mobile is made up of the Seder plate, Barry Schwartz on Twitter

Performance Max campaigns are the hot new thing. They will replace Smart Shopping in 2022, so we need to pay attention to what’s changing. We’ve been doing a lot of testing in the last few months and it’s been quite a ri, Dennis Moons on Twitter

This would be ignored anyway, as the href leads to the current page. Unless, of course, that isn’t the exact code that Googlebot actually sees., Martin Splitt on Twitter

If you’re passionate about Web Performance, and you want to help developers around the world improve, my team on Chrome is hiring! ⚡ Please reach out if you’re interested or if you know someone who would be great. US/Eu, Phil Walton on Twitter

That’s up to you 🙂 – URLs can work with non-latin characters too. Sometimes 3rd party tools struggle with non-latin characters, but for search any valid URL is fine. (Personally, I’d just avoid spaces in URLs for p, John Mueller on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

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