This year’s MozCon was a journey into the future of our industry, set against the stunning backdrop of our brand new venue, Seattle Convention Center’s Summit building. Whether in-person or via livestream, more than 1,000 people gathered for two days of insights and tactical presentations from industry leaders and to connect with fellow attendees.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…
This is just a programming note that I will be 100% offline starting Sunday night (September 24th) through Monday night (September 25th) for Yom Kippur. I am not scheduling any stories on Yom Kippur…
Google’s John Mueller said it is very unlikely that the search company will roll back the last Google update, the September 2023 Google helpful content update. The update is currently rolling out, first touching down on September 14th, and has really wreaked havoc for some SEOs.
Google has been downplaying the importance of links in its ranking algorithm for the past couple of years now. But last Thursday, at PubCon, Gary Illyes from the Google Search team said he wouldn’t even put links into the top three ranking signals Google Search uses.
At the Microsoft AI event on last Thursday, I had a sit down with Kya Sainsbury-Carter, the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Advertising, who told me that clicks on ads within Bing Chat are higher than clicks on ads in traditional search. 1.8X higher to be exact and with shopping ads, specifically in Bing Chat, it is 11% higher.
Gary Illyes from the Google Search team said at PubCon that comments sections on websites can be a good thing. This messaging is on target with what Google has said about comments sections in the past, assuming the comments are useful and not filled with spam – they can be a good thing.
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that removing content doesn’t make the rest of your content rank higher. He said, “keep in mind that removing content doesn’t make the rest rank higher.”
Google posted on Twitter “we recommend not adding meaningful content or symbols using ::before or ::after CSS pseudo-elements.” Google said such content “might not be used for indexing your pages.”