September 17, 2020 - COVID Week 28

It’s about six months even in the ongoing COVID crisis and we’re starting to see numbers crawl upwards in central and western Canada again. Transmission appears out of control in the United States though some states appear to have a handle on it. It was a busy week in search with a lot of items to cover. Google has shown such volatility various forecasting tools are constantly suggesting a Google Update is underway. Jim and Dave talk about the idea this is just the way Google is supposed to operate after a major update takes place. Jim is of the opinion Google is sorting things out as its engineers make a larger number of tweeks to the algorithms than they normally do as affects of the previous core-updates are understood. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-volatility-continues-30128.htmlA few housekeeping news itemsAffiliate links are mostly treated as nofollows https://www.seroundtable.com/google-affiliate-links-nofollow-links-30124.htmlManual penalties have long term consequences. Don’t expect to clean your way back into Google’s good graces quickly if your history says you’re likely to mess about again. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-expect-same-rankings-after-manual-action-recovery/380948/Webmasters should view Core Vitals as reported in Google Search Console as low hanging fruit in their bids to build better and more useful websites. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-speed-is-complex-to-measure-30123.html The Crawl Anomaly report in Google Search Console’s Page Performance metrics will be replaced by something that might actually be useful for webmasters. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-remove-crawl-anomaly-data-30117.htmlWinston Burton has written what Dave refers to as “the best primer on machine learning” at Search Engine Journal. It’s on the SEO Required Reading list. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/machine-learning-seo/208415/Lastly, Adam Reimer has written a document on how to deal with temperamental SEOs on your staff. We love Adam but we also love being that temperamental SEO. It’s a good piece but... side-eye or something. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/work-with-seo-guru/373894/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy