We hope you are in good health. Here are some of the major SEO news updates of the week you need to know:
Search Related Updates And News From Major Search Engines
Google Launches Product Reviews Update
The update launches on yesterday and only applies to English language reviews for now. Why did Google decide to focus on product reviews? According to Google Search Central, “testing, experimenting, and review processes” reveal that “people appreciate product reviews that share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.”
Google Announces Improvements to the Google Search Console Performance Reports
They introduce two improvements that will make the reports more useful: regular expression (regex) filters and a revamped comparison mode. The improvements include support for regular expressions within the filters of the performance reports, and also, the comparison mode has improved its data filtering.
Google Clarifies Phone numbers Are Not Allowed In GMB Posts
Joy Hawkins posts on Twitter, “Google clarifies phone numbers are not allowed in Google My Business posts.” Google post a new content policy in its Google Posts help documents that specifically disallow businesses to add contact numbers in their Google Post content. Google adds, “Instead; you can attach a “Call now” button to your post that uses your verified Business Profile phone number.”
Google People Also Search For With Local Business Maps
Google now show in the “people also search for” query refinement feature local business listings and map results. Valentin says, “People also search for” suggesting maps locations.” Then Dominik Schwarz responds that he spotted local results in the people also ask within the autocomplete – which we have seen already.
Google Local Search Trends With Global Pandemic “COVID-19”
Google shares a blog post named the latest local shopping trends; local is now digital. In this post, Google shares many trends the company tracked with local searches in 2020 due to COVID-19. Searches for “local” + “business (es)” have increased by more than 80% year over year, including searches like “local businesses near me” and “support local businesses.”
Google: No Option Available To Reduce Your Google Rankings In A Specific Country
A site owner on Reddit questions how he can remove his site from Google Search in a specific country. John Mueller says there is no way of doing that “you can’t reduce your rankings in one country in Google.” John also adds, “you could set geotargeting to a different country, but that’s not certain to reduce the rankings in Indonesia,” plus, John says, “if it did, it would affect all other countries.”
Google Search Console Adds Regular Expressions & More Data Filters
Google launches regex support in the performance report filters. Google says it adds regular expressions or regex, which is an advanced way of doing complex filtering and find/replace techniques. This will help you create a more complex query and pages based filters and answer more questions that interest them.
PPC Related Updates And News
Microsoft Ads Announces Various New Features
Microsoft Ads’ announces the global release of API support for Google Import. Microsoft’s Google Import enables API users to sync Google Ads campaigns to Microsoft Ads. This opens up a variety and opportunities for automation and customization solutions.
Google Updates Roll Out For Merchant Center Product Data Specifications
Google announces, “Every year, we make changes to the Merchant Center product data specification to create a better experience for people who are searching for products online. This year’s updates focus on improving the quality of product information across free listings and shopping ads.” Some of the changes, like Google, may suspend e-commerce sites that change prices on the checkout page.
