SEO Wash-up Monday 19th August

Google Updates

Google removes references to PageRank & 200 Signals from disavow help document –
A while ago the disavow backlinks help document in Google’s help centre mentioned PageRank and how this is one of 200 signals it uses for rankings. The help document has been updated in the past several months and removed both those references.

Google Ads editor & keyword planner adds new features – Google Ads has rolled out upgrades to both their Google Ads Editor and Keyword Planner tool. With Google Ads Editor being now at version 1.1 and has various new features. Below are a few features the search giant added to their Google Ads Editor:

• Dark mode – You have the option to switch the UI appearance in Google Ads Editor from a light colour palette to one with darker background colours and lighter foreground colours.
• IP addresses – You can now create a new campaign to import, download and upload to make changes to the IP addresses. Within settings, you can enter IP addresses to exclude them from seeing their ads.
• Exact search – This feature provides you with more specific search results when filtering campaigns or ad groups in Google Ads Editor.

The keyword planner tool now can show the most relevant keyword ideas based on your original keyword. Also, you will have the option to broaden your search by adding recommended words to your original keyword. Below are other features to give you more control over what keyword ideas show:

• Website filtering – You can filter keyword ideas to only show keywords most closely related to your business.
• Brand exclusions – You can exclude keyword ideas that include brand terms.

Google My Business edit hotel services & amenities – You can the services and amenities within the Hotel attributes section of your Google My Business account. Although they have been having a few issues with the hotel edits, which might have been related to this upgrade.

The search giant has a help document on how to update this information for hotels. However, this is not available on the mobile app and can only edit this information from the desktop browser.

Google tests infinite scroll search results – The search giant is at it again with testing infinite search results. You may have seen that on the first page of Google’s search shows page two results and more.