Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Google had another volatile weekend with Google Search rankings bouncing all over the place. A new report shows publishers are getting less traffic from Google Search and other areas but an increase from Google Discover. What is with Google showing srsltid URL parameters in the search results. Google may come out with new ways to handle URL parameters. Google Ads will not pause keywords that are in paused ad groups. And have you heard of Effingo from Google, it is fast, really fast.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Google Search Ranking Volatility August 9th and 10th (No HCU Progress)
Since Friday, August 9th, I have been seeing yet another intense spike in Google Search ranking volatility. This is based on the SEO chatter within the communities and of course, the third-party Google Search rank volatility trackers. And no, we still do not have a new core update officially released by Google but it is coming soon, weeks away…
Report: Google Sending More Discover Traffic But Less Search Traffic To Publishers
Google is sending news publishers a lot less traffic from Google Web Search but also a lot more traffic from Google Discover. A new report conducted by Newzdash analyzing 8.1 billion clicks across hundreds of news publishers using Google Search Console data compared 2023 to 2024 data.
Google Search To Get Better At URL Parameter Handling?
As part of the Search Off The Record podcast from Google on crawling, which we briefly covered on Friday, Gary Illyes from Google said he is investigating ways for Google to handle URL parameters better.
Google Search Listing srsltid URL Parameters From Merchant Center
Over the past couple of weeks, there has been an increase in complaints around Google Search listing URLs with the srsltid URL parameter tagged along to the URL, as the canonical URL in Google Search. In fact, Google matches on hundreds of thousands of these URLs now and does serve them in the search results under that parameter.
Google Won’t Pause Keywords In Paused Campaigns Or Ad Groups
As a reminder, Google Ads has begun pausing low-activity keywords that were created over 13 months ago and have zero impressions over the past 13 months. But that does not mean Google will pause these if they are already part of paused campaigns or ad groups.
