Industry News

As part of the topic of clustering and canonicalization with Google Search today, Allan Scott from Google explained what he called "marauding black holes" in Google Search. Where Google's clustering takes in some error pages and they end up in this black hole of sorts in Google Search.

Did you know that Google uses around 40 different signals to perform canonicalization in Google Search? This not only includes numerous type of redirects, the rel canonical attribute but also things like x-default, sitemaps, links, PageRank and other signals.

Google's John Mueller explained the difference between clustering and canonicalization within Google Search. He said, "Clustering is basically taking the pages that we think are the same. And then canonicalization is, from those pages, which one is the best one."

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Google announced a new set of Google Ads policies for dating and companionship that will go into effect on March 4, 2025. Along with the new policy, advertisers will be required to be certified by Google before they can advertise dating and/or companionship-related ads through Google Ads.

Google Search has a new button at the bottom of the search results that shows you if the results are personalized or not and a way to turn off personalization. Google can say the "Results are personalized - Try without personalization" and clicking on that would then flip to Google showing "Results are not personalized."

Google Ads is testing new offers for agencies and advertisers, trying to find impactful incentives for agencies who sign up new advertisers in Google Ads. This information comes from Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, after responding to complaints that agencies incentives are not good enough compared to incentives Google Ads offers advertisers directly.

As Google continues to test its shopping / e-commerce card format, Google is now testing replacing the "popular stores" section with a "Where to buy" section. I mean, it seems super similar to the other format, but who knows...

Google is testing "view all" buttons in the Google Search results, maybe shopping oriented results, next to search result listings that lead to shopping category landing pages. The view all button is at the right side of the snippet, and when clicked, takes you to the category landing page on the e-commerce site.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...