🔍 February fluctuations continue | TechTarget's algo woes

Feb 14, 2020

Good morning search marketers, a reversal of fortunes?

Some SEOs have noticed rankings swinging back after what appears to have been a Google search update (or series of updates) last weekend. Google has simply said, "We do updates all the time." If you're seeing swings, you're certainly not alone. Meanwhile, TechTarget said it was hit by Google algorithm changes in November. (Google said it made a series of smaller updates at the time.) The company reported a 25% drop in organic traffic from Google in November in its quarterly earnings statement Wednesday. Barry Schwartz spoke with them yesterday about what they're seeing and testing.

Well, that didn't last long. Keyword stuffing alarms went off after GMB added advice to include relevant keywords in business descriptions. Local SEO expert Joy Hawkins says she quickly advised Google to remove the short-lived help page language (it was removed sometime early yesterday) that said keywords in descriptions can help improve local search visibility. Her testing has shown no correlation between GMB descriptions and rankings in the three-pack.

In ads news, Google announced a big shakeup to its Google Partner program for agencies with requirement changes that will take effect starting in June. In short: the spend minimum is doubling; a lot more people at your agency might need to get Google Ads certifications; Google will use your manager account optimization score to evaluate performance.

On that last point, I'm not sure how much of a change this really is. Yes, Google is using its own ML-generated recommendations, all of which may not actually be in the best interest of your clients. But Google already evaluates client accounts, and it seems likely the criteria it's been looking at won't be dramatically different come June. Using the optimization score might just be a more transparent way of doing things. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this: gmarvin@thirddoormedia.com or @ginnymarvin.

Read on for your daily Pro Tip on using Python to analyze server logs for SEO and more.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-in-Chief

Pro Tip

Leverage Python and Google Cloud to analyze server log data

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Search Shorts

SEO explained (very quickly)

Google video on SEO. Google has posted a 3-minute video named SEO Explained, it goes through on page SEO, multimedia SEO, black hat SEO and how to use Search Console and more.

Shorter URLs. Google's John Mueller says shorter URLs are not magical, they do not do anything special. Check out his response about this on Twitter.

Estimated salary structured data. Google changed the name of Occupation structured data to Estimated salary structured data. It is just a name change, and no other changes were made, said Lizzi Harvey from Google.

Free search marketing training in San Jose

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