The Week In Search & SEO Ending May 15, 2020

The Week In Search & SEO: May 15, 2020

It was another bid week in search and social, with Facebook acquisitions, SERP layout adjustments, new GMB features and more.

Top Global Search News

Google Tests Boxes With Shadows For Search Result Snippets

Google Tests Boxes With Shadows For Search Result Snippets

Google is currently Testing a new search engine results interface. It now shows each link with their snippet text in its own box with a shadow border around it.

Top Local Search News

Google Drops Your Website & Phone Number Button When Marked As Temporarily Closed
If you mark your business as Temporarily Closed on Google My Business, Google will remove the Call, Directions, Save and the Website buttons from your GMB listing while you are closed.

Google My Business Listings Can Link to Gift Card & Donation Pages

Google My Business Listings Can Link to Gift Card & Donation Pages

Businesses can now add an option for customers to donate or purchase a gift card to their business on GMB.

Google My Business Reviews Backfilling Now After Reviews Halted For COVID-19
Google suspended displaying new business reviews in Google Local/Google My Business in March and now Google seems to be showing new reviews and backfilling old reviews that were submitted between now and then.

Top PPC News

Google tests ‘Curbside Pickup’ badge for Local Shopping Ads

Now you can view a Curbside Pickup label on products on the Google Shopping ad at the top of a search result. This shows potential customers which businesses are offering curbside pickup for that specific product they searched for.

Google Deindexing Your Site? It Might Be Related To Quality Issues
Google’s John Mueller said in a video hangout from May 1st, that often when he looks into SEOs or publishers complaining about Google de-indexing issues, often the issue is with Google not finding enough quality on the pages it has deindexed. John said in these cases, Google no longer wants to index the pages because they do not meet the quality benchmark.

Top Social Media News

YouTube Launches 4 New Features For Video Creators

YouTube Launches 4 New Features For Video Creators

YouTube video creators are getting access to new features that will allow them to provide a better experience for viewers.

Internet Marketing-Related Tech

WordPress Google Sitemaps Integration Getting Closer

Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that WordPress might get native sitemap support! He shared this tweet from Pascal Birchler, a Google engineer, who said “we’re making great progress towards a merge proposal for WordPress 5.5.” This is in regards to getting the XML Sitemaps feature plugin for WordPress built into WordPress 5.5 as a default.”

Google Site Kit WordPress Plugin Vulnerability
There was a critical vulnerability discovered in Google’s Site Kit WordPress plugin and subsequently patched. The vulnerability allowed an attacker to escalate site privileges and attack a victims search visibility, alter site maps and more.

Amazon Posts: A Feed-Based Shopping Experience on Amazon

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Amazon Posts is rolling out of beta and into your feeds, and for now at least, sellers and marketers can add this to their arsenal for free.

Best Opinion Pieces

Sorry, nothing in this section this week.