The week between Christmas and New Years is general slow and it was but we did have some Google search ranking jolts and tremors this week. The tremors make sense, as Semrush data showed, December was the most volatile month of the year and this year was the most volatile year of many years with Google Search. Google said it does keep track of its algorithm changes but it is hard to use to pinpoint specific URL changes. Google said most search algorithms work across all languages but not all, like the product reviews update is supposedly only English now but that might change in the future. Google Business profiles now let some business mark products as special to move them to the top. Google will not rank G-rated sex toy companies by their name in organic search but will in Google Ads. Google Search Console’s link report is not a priority for Google. Google Search Console tested an announcement bar. Google said there is no difference in SEO value between nofollow, ugc or sponsored link attributes. Google Ads still has a serving issue for Gmail desktop browser ads. Google Ads is testing excluding placements in smart shopping campaigns. Google Ads is rolling out the asset library directly in Google Ads. SEOs seemed to have mostly taken off for the holidays. John Mueller of Google did not, he worked helping with Google Search questions over the holidays, like he does year after year. Bing has a Santa hat on its videos in search. Google has its new years confetti and new years eve Doodle. I also published a list of the top people we cited over 2021 in our stories – thank you all so so much. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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