Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google announced a new core update yesterday and so far and early on, this one seems very big. Google also may be showing fewer featured snippets as of a week ago. Google updated its review guidelines to prohibit incentivizing people to remove negative reviews. Google consolidated its A/B testing help content. Google said it will never penalize you for not having H1 tags.
Google Review Guidelines Now Prohibit Incentivizing Removal Of Negative Reviews Google has updated its Google Maps contributor guidelines, specifically disallowing a business to incentivize those who leave negative reviews to remove those reviews. Previously, the guidelines only prohibited incentivizing leaving positive reviews.
Report: Google Showing Fewer Featured Snippets, But I Am Not Sure… According to both RankRanger and Semrush, Google is showing fewer featured snippets in the search results since Thursday, September 8th. Personally, I am not seeing this when I search but this is what these two tracking tools are showing.
Google: We Will Never Penalize You For Not Having H1 Attributes Google’s John Mueller said something he normally does not say, the word “never.” He said Google will never penalize a site for not having an H1. John said this on Reddit, adding that it is good practice and low effort to have H1s but you won’t be penalized for not having them on your site.
Google Consolidates A/B Testing SEO Impact In Search Help Documentation Just like with Google’s consolidation of preventing spam on your site, Google did the same with its blog post on how to minimize A/B testing impact in Google Search. Google has repurposed that old blog post into an official help document in the Google Search developer docs.
Bonsai Plant At Google Office Every tech firm needs to have Bonsai trees and plants, it is the joke about tech firms. So here is one at the Google office in New York City. At least one sitting on someone’s desk there.
