The Week In Search & SEO Ending June 5, 2020

No surprise, it was a big week in search with some amazing announcements from Bing, Google rolling out some featured snippet adjustments, damage control on the part of SEMrush and a lot more. [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title="Top Global Search News" style="fancy" class="greenfaq" icon="chevron-circle" open="yes"] Google Can Use Historic Data For Ranking Your Site In Search John Mueller of Google confirmed on Friday's webmaster hangout video that Google does and can use historic or legacy data about your web site for ranking purposes. He gave a few examples of how Google uses it; your links over time, the adult SafeSearch filter and some of Google's quality algorithms. Bing Webmaster Tools New Site Scan Feature Finds SEO Issues There is a new feature that was just released in the new version of Bing Webmaster Tools, it is called Site Scan. Site Scan is a site audit tool which crawls your site and checks for common technical SEO issues. SEMRush Drops Paid Guest Blogging Service After Google Policy Scrutiny Google said selling paid links on blogs is against its webmaster guidelines and that Google can take action against those using the service.  SEMrush, a very popular SEO toolset, came under scrutiny in the SEO industry this week when its content marketplace added guest blogging services that highlighted natural links as a benefit to the service. This ultimately resulted in SEMrush dropping the service from its website. Google Launches Featured Snippet to Web Page Content Jighlight Feature Google has changed the way they link to featured snippets. When you click a featured snippet result you may now be taken to the point on the page that the snippet it drawn from, and the snippet text is highlighted. Google Tests Blue Snippet Headers Google appears to be testing new blue headers on the top snippet on mobile results.  [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title="Top Local Search News" style="fancy" class="greenfaq" icon="chevron-circle"] Google My Business Offers More Flexibility with Business Hours Google My Business has launched a new feature to give local businesses more flexibility with their business hours that reflect ways they’re adapting for social distancing as they start to reopen. You can now set up “more hours” in Google My Business with special times for seniors, pickup, kitchen, and more. You can even set these hours by day of the week and multiple times per day. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title="Top PPC News" style="fancy" class="greenfaq" icon="chevron-circle"]

Diagnose Google Ads’ Performance Changes Faster With Explanations

Google has added explanation for metric changes when comparing data ranges for campaigns with manual or Enhanced CPC bidding strategies. Google Keyword Planner Adds Refine Keywords Google has now added the ability to refine keywords directly within the Google Keyword Planner Tool. Google added this to help "make it easier for you to find keyword ideas that fit with your new and existing campaigns, you can now refine keywords in Keyword Planner." [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title="Top Social Media News" style="fancy" class="greenfaq" icon="chevron-circle"] Google Tests Showing Web Pages in YouTube Search Results Google is testing displaying organic listings for web pages in YouTube’s search results. Google has been spotted showing links to web pages when people search for topics on YouTube. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title="Internet Marketing-Related Tech" style="fancy" class="greenfaq" icon="chevron-circle"] Google Adds an Anxiety Disorder Self-Assessment to Search Results Google is now providing a clinically-validated self assessment questionnaire in search results to people who look up information about anxiety. [/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion]