Daily Search Forum Recap: March 7, 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 handed out tons of penalties and manual actions after releasing those new spam policies. Most SEOs don’t think this Google update will make a big difference in search quality. Google spoke about how it deals with reliable information. Google updated its recipe rich results report in Search Console. Google Maps is hiding view counts on reviews. Google AdSense for Search for sites now requires new verification.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Unleashes Manual Actions Galore After Search Spam Policy Updates

Google has unleashed tons of manual actions, search ranking penalties you can see within Google Search Console, after it released its search spam policy updates on Tuesday. The manual actions seemed to mostly have been distributed yesterday, Wednesday, March 6th, a day after Google announced the new spam policy changes.

~80% Feel Google’s March Core & Spam Updates Won’t Reduce Low-Quality Search Results

I ran a poll asking my X/Twitter followers if they think the new Google March core and spam updates will reduce unhelpful content from showing up in the search results by 40%? About 80% of the 1,XXX votes said no, they don’t think it will reduce the low-quality, unhelpful content from showing up in the Google search results.

Does Google Search Know What Is Reliable Information

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, was asked does Google currently validate/verify if information or data within content, is accurate, correct, true or even “commonly accepted”. In which Sullivan replied it isn’t a simple yes/no response, Google Search wants to rank content people like, and people like content that has reliable information.

Google Search Console Recipe Rich Results Report Updated

Google has updated the recipe rich results report within Google Search Console. Google also cleaned up some of its recipe structured data documentation. You may see an increase in warnings for your Recipe items related to the reporting update.

Google Maps Hides Views Counts On New Reviews

Google is no longer showing the number of views a review gets on Google Maps. You will be able to see the older reviews view-counts for now but the new reviews are not showing those counts.

New Site Level Approvals For AdSense for Search (AFS) Sites

Google is getting serious with where their ads show since all the bad PR and now Google AdSense is requiring new site-level approval process for AdSense for Search (AFS) sites. This started on March 4, 2024, but Google didn’t announce it until yesterday afternoon.

Massive Stackable Blocks At The Google Office

Here is a photo from the Google office in Mountain View, California. You can see they have this lobby area that has this massive stackable blocks. I assume they used some sort of small crane to get these all stacked up like this?