Kara from Google announced in the Google My Business Help forums that they’ve updated how reviews work for hotels within the desktop search results. “We’ve updated how Reviews look for hotels on Desktop Google Maps. Now, Desktop Google Maps displays reviews from both Google users and third-party providers (from TrustYou),” she said

Google’s John Mueller addressed a long time topic of interest in the SEO industry around does Google have specialized ranking algorithms for different industries, niches, categories and so on or not.

The folks at RankRanger came out with a study around Google’s featured snippets that shows that on average a featured snippet from a specific site will only be swapped out with a different site but it is rare for it to be swapped out to a third site. Even more, the dominant URL will show 77% of the time, as opposed to the second URL.

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…

Google announced it is expanding Merchant Center capabilities to all online retailers allowing them to directly provide up-to-date product information. The post Google is Letting All Online Retailers Upload Product Data to Search Results by @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal

I am so so so tired of covering this topic, we’ve covered it for well over a dozen years and I just covered it a week or so ago. Google doesn’t use CTR, click through data, to rank their search results

Google’s John Mueller advises SEOs not to implement structured data using Google Tag Manager. The post Google Advises Against Using Tag Manager to Implement Structured Data by @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

This week, we covered both a possible Google search and Bing search algorithm update. Bing said only a few people at Bing really understand how core ranking works there…

Google is rolling out three new features for responsive display ads that are designed to improve functionality and reporting capabilities. The post Google Introduces 3 New Features for Responsive Display Ads by @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

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