Daily Search Forum Recap: January 9, 2024 -

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 says author bylines do not help you rank better. Google spoke about the Japanese keyword hack and what you need to know. Google’s perspective filter is dominated by Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, a study shows. Google Search Console crawl rate setting is now gone. Google is shutting down websites made with Google Business Profiles, without long term redirects. Google product structured data supports suggestedAge property. There is this weird bug with zip code searches in Google showing products.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google: Author Bylines Don’t Help You Rank Better; Google Doesn’t Check Credentials

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, in response to another SEO hit piece by The Verge said that author bylines and bios do not help a site or piece of content rank better. Sullivan also added Google also does not check out the credentials for ranking purposes.

Google On The Japanese Keyword Hack

Google’s John Mueller posted a comment on Reddit describing what is often referred to as the “Japanese keyword hack,” he said. It is an automated process that looks for vulnerabilities in your CMS to inject content on your website.

Report: Google Perspectives Dominated By Twitter, YouTube & Reddit

John Shehata posted some data he gathered through his NewzDash service regarding the Google Perspectives search feature. He shared some interesting data, probably nothing that will shock you, but Twitter, YouTube and Reddit are the primary sites featured in the Perspectives filter.

Google Shutting Down Google Business Profiles Websites – Redirects Only A Few Months

Google announced it is shutting down Websites made with Google Business Profiles. They will stop working on March 1, 2024 and will only redirect to your Google Business Profile listing until June 10, 2024. After that, anyone who tries to go to that listing will get a dead page.

Google Product Structured Data Also Now Supports suggestedAge Property

Google officially supports the suggestedAge property as an alternative to suggestedMaxAge and suggestedMinAge within its product structured data. Google says they added this support to make it more flexible for people to specify age ranges for a product.

Google Search Console Crawl Rate Setting Is Officially Gone

Google has finally done away with the crawl rate setting within the legacy Google Search Console. It now redirects to the blog post about the feature going away.

Google Search Bug Returns Products For Zip Code Searches

If you search Google for some zip codes, Google may return some products from its shopping graph. One example, spotted by Adam Di Frisco, is to search for [orange county zip code] and you get that zip code listing but it also shows product thumbnails that you can click on to by that product.

Google Waterfall Staircase In Mountain View

Here is a photo from the new Google Mountain View, California office area of a staircase with water dripping down them. It is like a waterfall staircase of sorts. Here is another shot of it I found on Instagram.