Industry News

Today is day 10 of the Google March 2024 core update rollout and Google March 2024 spam update. We believe we saw the core update touch down on March 8th and 9th and some possible recoveries or fluctuations on March 12th. Now I see more signs of Google search ranking volatility likely related to the core and spam updates today.

Google seems to be testing a like, thumbs-up, button on image search results. The thumbs-up icon is near the share and save button and below the image, description and visit button.

Google Merchant Center has added new themed templates to the Product Studio. The new theme was for St. Patrick's Day, which is coming up this Sunday. But Google will soon add Easter, Spring, and Mother's Day themed templates to the Product Studio as well.

Have you seen the "dishes nearby" carousel in the mobile Google Search results? I am not 100% sure if it is new, but I don't think I've covered it before. But Google will show dishes served by nearby restaurants in a carousel interface.

Google is placing trending icons on some of the people also search for people in the knowledge panel. We've seen various forms of this and I don't think this is specifically new, but I don't think I covered this specific example.

This is about content marketing but Fio’s post What is strategy—explained with a useful puzzle metaphor is very relevant to product people as well:

At its core, that’s what strategy is: taking a problem, discovering what makes it hard, and finding the right way(s) to solve it. The concept is super obvious when applied to a puzzle: you intuitively know that picking random pieces from the pile and expecting them to slot right into place is not a sensible approach…

…and yet, that’s often...

This is a bit of a meta post, especially if you’re reading this as an email as opposed to via RSS or the web… but bear with me please!

Justin Duke is one of my favorite internet people—ever since I met him while I was working on Postmark and we tried to convince him to switch his email provider for Buttondown. I now use Buttondown to run my little RSS-to-Email newsletter (yes, via Postmark!), and it was such a joy to chat with a fellow Open Web Enthusiast last week about owning your...

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

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been informed of a number of local user interface changes to the Google local panels in the search results. Here are some of those changes, not including what I already covered here.

Google has posted an FAQ on what to do if you received a pure spam manual action. This was posted by Ryan T. from Google who titled his post in the Google Webmaster Help forums as Received a 'Pure Spam' Manual Action Notice? See What It Means for Your Site and How to Address It.