Google Explains Why Soft 404s Are Bad

Gary Illyes from Google explained two reasons why soft 404 errors are bad. Soft 404s are when a page returns a 200 status okay, but Google thinks that page should return a 404 page not found error. According to Gary, soft 404s are bad because they (1) limit crawl budget and (2) the pages won't likely show up in Google Search.

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Google Posts Reviews Troubleshooting & FAQs For Missing and Remove Reviews

A Google community manager, Alistair D., posted a Reviews troubleshooting and FAQs document in the Google Business Profiles forums. It goes through why reviews go missing, why reviews are removed and how to troubleshoot those issues with the Google Business Profiles tools.

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Google Search Tests Top Quality Store Badge Near Site Name

Google is testing placing the top quality store badge and icon next to the site name area in the Google mobile search results. This brings up that icon from the bottom portion of the snippet to the very top of the snippet.

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Prompt Injection Added To Bing Webmaster Guidelines

Bing added a new guideline to its Bing Webmaster Guidelines named Prompt Injection. A prompt injection is a type of cyberattack against large language models (LLMs). Hackers disguise malicious inputs as legitimate prompts, manipulating generative AI systems (GenAI) into leaking sensitive data, spreading misinformation, or worse, according to IBM.

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Google Search Ranking Volatility Over June 28th & 29th Weekend

On the heels of the completion of the June 2024 spam update this Thursday, June 27th, I am now seeing signs of an unconfirmed Google Search ranking algorithm update and volatility. It seems more heated than the week of this spam update rollout but less weak than you'd see with a Google core update.

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Google Product Studio Expands To More Counties, Adds File Uploads & New Themes

Google Product Studio, which is part of Google Merchant Center Next, now works in the UK, India, and Japan. Google also added file upload support to Product Studio and additional seasonal-themed templates.

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New Google Ads WordPress Conversion Google Tag Code

Google seems to be rolling out new WordPress specific conversion code for Google Ads. This seems like a Google Tag code with easier set up for WordPress sites.

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Google Chrome For Mobile Adds Local Chrome Actions, Search Shortcuts & Trends

Google has announced a number of new search-related features to its mobile version of the Chrome browser. These updates include new local Chrome Actions, new search shortcuts, trending in search suggestions and more.

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Google: Our Search Rankings Can Improve At Scale & System Level

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, said it again, that "there's clearly more we should be doing" with ranking websites that deserve to rank better in Google Search. He clarified that this is not something Google does manually, on a per-site basis. Instead, Google does this at scale by updating its ranking systems and algorithms, he said.

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Google Ads Tests tROAS Insight Box for PMAX & Standard Shopping

Google is testing a new ads insights box and report that shows target ROAS insights for Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns. The report shows if your actual ROAS is within the expected range. The Graph shows weekly ROAS averages, including projected conversions.

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Google News Sources & Google Publisher Center Bug Fixed

We knew Google would stop accepting publications into Google News Publisher Center, but Google also stopped showing news "sources" in Google News, stopped showing a follower count for those sources, and stopped providing access to Publisher Center features to news organizations. This bug was fixed by Google this morning.

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Google Credit Card Search Widget

Google Search now may show you a special search box for your searches related to finding a credit card. If you search for [credit cards], [best credit cards], [visa credit cards], and so on, you will get this new credit card Google Search widget.

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Google Mobile Search Tests More Sitelink Variations

Google is testing a number of sitelink variations within its mobile search results interface. They come in these variations: boxed in, pill-like shaped, some with arrows, some in black, and some in blue.

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Google Sitemaps Docs Updated: Lasmod Date Should Be Last Significant Update

Google has made a small note to the sitemap documentation to add that the lastmod date specified in the sitemap file "should reflect the date and time of the last significant update to the page." This change was made after I covered the topic of Google trusting or not trusting that lastmod field in your sitemap file.

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Google Automated Local Services Ads Lead Credits Coming

Google announced it is rolling out Automated Local Services Ads lead credits next month, which should "credit the same or more leads on average," than the old system. This will replace the manual lead credit methods, and use machine learning to process these credits going forward.

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Google Structured Data Carousel Guidance On How To Markup Multiple Items On Category Pages

Google has added a new bullet point in the structured data carousels (beta) help documentation around how to mark up categories with many items with that structured data. This is based on examples pages such as paginated content or infinite scroll.

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Google: When You Should Fix Pages 404 Status Codes

Google has always said that having pages that serve a 404 status code is normal; most sites have them, and when a page does not exist on your site, and someone tries to access it, a 404 is the proper response. But Gary Illyes from Google is now sharing some cases when you should fix pages returning a 404 status code.

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Local Service Ads Coming To Google Maps On iOS

Google is notifying some advertisers that use Google's Local Service Ads program that soon their ads will be shown on Google Maps. It will start with the iOS version of the Google Maps app and then expand to other platforms and surfaces from there.

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Google Search Bug: Not Indexing or Serving New Content?

Google Search may be having a new indexing or serving (or both) bug where it is now showing new content from sites that are creating new content. Sites like the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, CNN, Forbes, and others are showing very few new pages being indexed in the past hour by Google Search.

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Most Google People Also Ask Responses Are Wikipedia

Surprise, surpise... Wikipedia is the number one source of information that comes up when you click on the people also ask feature within the Google Search results. People also ask is just another variation of a form of featured snippets, so this probably makes sense.

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Google Map Pin Exploit Leads To Local Rankings Drop & Possible Suspension

A few months ago I posted about a possible bug with Google Maps where map pins were being moved around into one location. I later updated the post to suggest it was more of a spam or hack exploit. Yep, spammers are hijacking the location of businesses on Google Maps by moving their map pins, that results in local ranking declines and possible Google Business Profile suspensions.

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Google Search Tests Latest Deals With Deals In Past 24 Hours

Google is testing showing a "latest deals" section in the search results that says "Deals added in the past 24 hours." So Google Search is pulling in fresh new deals that it found within the last day or so for this new search feature.

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Google Search Tests Top-Quality Store and Shop Rating Labels Together

Google is testing placing both the "Top-quality store" and "shop rating" labels or badges on the same page of the search results, for the same search result snippets. Generally, Google Search would show one or the other and not both, but here Google is testing showing both of them.

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Google Local Panels Gains Menu Button

Google seems to be adding a "menu" button to the Google Business Profiles, the local panels, in the web search results. I think Google has tested this one and off over the years, but as Marcin Karwowski noted, it seems to be rolling out now to some businesses.

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New Google AdSense Privacy & Messaging For Users To Opt Out

Google has begun rolling out a new privacy and messaging feature for AdSense ads in some US states. This is to comply with California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah privacy laws. The feature allows the site to communicate to the user about opting out of the sale or sharing of their personal information.

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