Good morning search marketers, what a great community this is.
I've heard from many of you as the news of changes to close variants for phrase match and broad match modifier settles in. It's great to get so many perspectives on the ways these changes are likely to affect your businesses — from small to local to enterprise. Please keep the thoughts coming, gmarvin@thirddoormedia.com. We're also looking to get some more answers around the keyword selection preferences change Google announced with this update and will be reporting more on that.
Tad Miller, VP of marketing at Marketing Mojo, had a good question on Twitter about negative keywords: Do close variants apply to all the negative match types the same way or are they still "normal"? The answer: "Negative keywords won't match to close variants or other expansions," Google states (in red no less) on its help page. In other words, negative keyword lists are the only places exact match lives on.
In SEO news, Google revealed it launched a new algorithm to help keep results like featured snippets relevant back in February. Announced Thursday by Google VP of Search Pandu Nayak, the new search algorithm helps Google serve timely information when appropriate. "As part of our ongoing efforts to make Search work better for you, a new algorithm update improves our systems' understanding of what information remains useful over time and what becomes out-of-date more quickly." This can be particularly useful for featured snippets, Nayak said.
Google also came out with a list of questions to evaluate your content efforts if your site has been negatively affected by a core search update. There are still no quick fixes, but the questions could help you gain a clearer perspective on where you can focus your attention.
Read on for a Pro Tip on getting customers to submit photos for your business listing and more.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
@ginnymarvin
