Industry News

Google has released a new algorithm update the search company is naming the Google June 2024 Spam Update. This update does not have anything new specific changes that we are aware of, like some previous updates. Google just wrote, "Today we released the June 2024 spam update. It may take up to 1 week to complete, and we'll post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is done."

For the past several months, generally around the helpful content update in September and the various core updates we had over the past several months, there have been complaints with image thumbnails for some sites not appearing in the Google Search result listings. Google responded again to the issue, saying it is not a technical thing for most sites but rather a quality issue.

Ashwarya, the Community Manager for Google Search, posted a bunch of resources around Google Safe Search. He wrote, "We are going to help you out in every way possible. Here are a few articles to get you started on Safe Search."

Google is testing a floating search bar in the Google Discover results. So when you load up the Google home page on your mobile device and scroll through some Discover stories, the search bar sticks to the stop and floats over the stories.

Google is notifying some advertisers that use Google's Local Service Ads program that soon their ads will be shown on Google Maps. It will start with the iOS version of the Google Maps app and then expand to other platforms and surfaces from there.

Google Search may be having a new indexing or serving (or both) bug where it is now showing new content from sites that are creating new content. Sites like the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, CNN, Forbes, and others are showing very few new pages being indexed in the past hour by Google Search.

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...

In the Google Merchant Center structured data documentation, it says that you should add structured data to the HTML source and that it "can't be generated after a page has been loaded using JavaScript." This does not mean Google cannot process the structured data on the page if generated using JavaScript, but rather that it makes it harder for Google to do so.

Surprise, surpise... Wikipedia is the number one source of information that comes up when you click on the people also ask feature within the Google Search results. People also ask is just another variation of a form of featured snippets, so this probably makes sense.

A few months ago I posted about a possible bug with Google Maps where map pins were being moved around into one location. I later updated the post to suggest it was more of a spam or hack exploit. Yep, spammers are hijacking the location of businesses on Google Maps by moving their map pins, that results in local ranking declines and possible Google Business Profile suspensions.