SEO Wash-up Monday 16th September

Google Updates

Google penalise domain leasing – The search giant issued a warning about websites that lease out their own subdomains and subfolders in order for other companies to rank their content better on leased domains. If you are doing this then Google will take action by penalizing those sections of sites.

Google Ads tests the advt label – There is a possibility that Google is testing a new ad label. You may see a green outlined ‘advt’ in your search results on Google from the black “ad” text. Although the green ad label has been shown to a limited number of people after it switched to the black ad text label.

Google removes exact size & larger than tools – It seems that Google has removed their exact size and larger than search tools from the image search. Although numerous complaints have been made about this within the Google search forums. Google still need to mention about this feature going away but for now it is getting some coverage from more mainstream blogs.

Google my business insights on Google maps profiles – Google maps now show Google my business insights or a snapshot of it, which is directly on your Google maps profile. They have rolled this out so that you can check how often your profile’s been viewed through your business profile on Google maps. Furthermore, you can use profile view insights to track how popular your business is with current and potential customers.

Google Ads rolls out a new feature for smart bidding – The search giant has rolled out a new feature for smart bidding. This new feature gives you more control over seasonality adjustments. In order to provide more control in these situations, it seems that you can now apply seasonality adjustments for search and display campaigns.

Bing Updates

Bing webmaster tools allows you to verify your website using Google search console – It may seem strange at first but Bing webmaster tools actual have a beta option that allows you to import your websites from Google search console. So, although they are competitors, the two search engines are working alongside each other to get more webmasters to verify their websites in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Bing places allows you to import your Google my business listings – As mentioned, Bing webmaster tools allows you to import your Google search console listings. It seems that now you can also import your Google my business listings into Bing places. So, if you login to Bing places, you will see an option where you can sync with Google My Business. With this, you can keep your business information updated by syncing it with your Google my business account.