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This month was a big one for algorithm updates! In addition to the much-anticipated Page Experience update beginning its rollout, Google announced two core updates, one in early June and one in early July. There was also a separate spam update released on June 23rd and June 28th.  

In other Google news, John Mueller reiterated that quality changes can take several months to be reprocessed and evaluated, and Google released additional documentation around Google News sources as AMP no longer is required for Top Stories carousel or Google News inclusion. Google search data also got a refresh, with the new Search Console Insights feature, combining Google Analytics and GSC data to offer insights into how audiences discover websites’ content.

In tech and tools updates, the acquisition of Moz by email marketing provider iContact generated quite the buzz, while Shopify announced that they are now making it possible for site owners to edit their site’s robots.txt file. 

Read on for our top stories and roundup of what else is new in search this month:

[Read more…] about June 2021: This Month in Search

This month–which included Google’s annual I/O conference–saw a lot of focus (unsurprisingly) on the upcoming Page Experience update, with new announcements and also clarifications about how the update will affect rankings boosts in general and desktop pages specifically. We also saw a relaunch of the Structured Data Testing Tool via Schema.org. 

In other Google news, we’ve seen indicators of a few unconfirmed algorithm updates shaking things up, along with some of our favorite SEO tools beginning to roll out Core Web Vitals features and integrations. 

Read on for our top stories and roundup of what else is new in search this month:

[Read more…] about May 2021: This Month in Search

The big search news in April is that Google is postponing the Page Experience update – this will now be a slow rollout starting in mid-June. But that’s not all that happened this month! We also saw an (as yet unconfirmed) web and local search algorithm update, an explanation that pages need to pass quality checks for indexing, some changes in SERP features and–in other headlines–the Daily Mail is suing Google because they lost organic rankings.

In this roundup you’ll also find us sharing technical tips and tool features to help make your workflow easier, plus a couple Tight Ship hot takes on current industry topics like Rand’s Zero-Click study and the role of Googlebot Desktop in ongoing URL discovery.

Read on for our monthly news and insights roundup for April:

[Read more…] about April 2021: This Month in Search

The big search news in March has been all about Google’s planned rollout of the move to mobile-only indexing. But that’s not all that happened this month! We also saw an (as yet unconfirmed) Local search algorithm update, an explanation of Google’s “serving index” from Gary Ilyes, and an announcement that major SEO tool provider SEMRush is going public.

In this roundup you’ll also find us sharing technical tips and tool features to help make your workflow easier, plus our favorite recent insights and research from others in the industry, including an experiment from SearchPilot testing the impact of removing numbers from title tags. And here at Tight Ship HQ we’ve also been discussing Mike King’s prediction that Mobile-Only Indexing will cause “the biggest SEO shake up of 2021”. 

Read on for our monthly news and insights roundup for March:

[Read more…] about March 2021: This Month in Search

Most of the search industry news we saw in February was related to Google updating SERP features and appearance. From the official launch of the “about this result” feature, to autoplaying video previews and a new swipe through functionality for Google Product Search, we continue to see Google testing and rolling out new SERP enhancements as well as updates to GSC functionality (and the occasional bug). 

It’s not just about the Google news, though — we’re also sharing some of our favorite tools and technical tips to help make your workflow easier. We’ve included our favorite recent insights and research from others in the industry, including the launch of Tom Critchlow’s new SEO MBA email newsletter. And here at Tight Ship, we’ve been discussing John Mueller’s comments about using a 503 when temporarily removing site functionality, and diving into the debate swirling in response to AJ Kohn’s recent blog post (controversially titled “The Comforting Mirage of SEO A/B Testing”). 

Here’s our monthly news and insights roundup for February:

[Read more…] about February 2021: This Month in Search