We hope you are in good health. Here are some of the major SEO news updates of the week you need.
Search Related Updates and News from Major Search Engines
Google Confirms a New Google Update to Local Search Results
Google confirmed that a local search algorithm upgrade began rolling out at the end of November and ended on December 8. The “rebalancing” of ranking criteria Google considers when providing local search results as part of this update. Although the improvements wouldn’t have been noticeable until the first week of December, this upgrade is officially known as the November 2021 local search update.
Google Faces Internal Problems While Indexing
Google Search Console recently has sent out a slew of emails to publishers alerting them about the redirecting issues. On Monday, however, the official Google Search Central Twitter account informed the search marketing community that the emails may have been sent as a result of an internal indexing problem and that they were looking into it.
Now You Don’t Have to be an Authority to Rank on Google!
Googles Search Advocate John Muller, during a Google Search Central SEO office-hours hangout recorded on December 10, said that it is not necessary for all the websites to become an authority to rank on top of the search results. Brian Harnish entered the webcast to ask Mueller a follow-up query about a Reddit comment about website authority. After posting 30 articles on a topic, Mueller says it’s difficult to call a site authoritative.
Google to Deindex Pages if the Site Goes Down For a Few Days
If your website is unavailable for longer than a few days, Google will begin to deindex your pages from search results. Aakash Singh, an SEO, joined Livestream to ask Mueller how he could minimize the impact on his client’s search rankings while the site is offline for more than a week. During the Google Search Central SEO office-hours hangout on December 10, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller mentioned this.
Googles New Product Review Update in December 2021 Will Probably Roll Out Just Before Christmas!
Googles new December 2021 product reviews update started to roll out this Wednesday. The team said that this update will take about three weeks to fully come out and will most probably will release around December 22 that is just before Christmas. It looks like this new update is going to be very, very big, and tremors have already begun!
Translating Your Queries Being Tested by Bing
Microsoft Bing, after thorough research, has finally started testing a new feature that can translate your search queries! A German-based SEO consultant, Frank Sandtmann, sent a screenshot that allows the user to translate their search queries from English to Germany! He also added that it could be a Glitch, and he is unsure about it.
Google Might Get Over With Mobile-First Indexing Switch by July 2022
As you may be aware, Google has postponed their deadline to convert all sites to mobile-first indexing after repeatedly failing on their deadlines. However, Google’s John Mueller stated in a webcast on Friday that he believes the mobile-first indexing process would be completed by the first part of the year, thus by July 2022?
PPC Related Updates And News
Stock Photos Allowed For Image Extension in Google Ads
Google Ads is loosening its policy on using stock photos when it comes to image extensions, which means you won’t have to go out and find your own images. This is part of a larger update to picture extensions, which involves the ability to show them in desktop advertising. This article contains an overview of all the updates to image extensions and how they can possibly help you and your business.