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.
We are starting to see a blip of life from sites hit by the September helpful content update after the August core update but there is also a ranking bug going on. Google is also starting to show thumbnails for some sites now. Google is testing snippet hover over background colors. Google is testing mentioned in key answers. And John Mueller uploaded an audio based robots.txt file for some reason.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Some Google Helpful Content Update Resurrections With August Core Update
As you know, Google released the August 2024 core update on Thursday and then shortly after confirmed a ranking bug impacting a large number of search results. During that time, we have seen many reports from SEOs and site owners that they are starting to see positive movement for sites hit by the infamous September 2023 helpful content update.
Thumbnails Back In Google Search Result Snippets For Many
For the past several months, many sites have been complaining over and over again that their image thumbnails for their websites were not showing up in the Google Search result snippets. Well, with the release of the August 2024 core update, many small publishers are starting to see their images show up in the search results again.
Google Testing Search Snippet Hover Background Colors
Google is testing adding a dynamic blue colored background highlight color when you hover your mouse cursor over a search result snippet. The whole background just behind that specific search result snippet will change from white, to a highlight blue color.
Google Search Mentioned In Key Answers Box
Google Search has this new feature named “mentioned in key answers.” This shows you which personalities, entities, within Google’s knowledge graph, are mentioned in the search results in Google.
Google’s John Mueller Uploads Audio Robots.txt File
John Mueller from Google did it again with his site and this time uploaded an audio file, in wav format, for his robots.txt file. You can go to it and listen to him read out his robots.txt rules in his own voice. It is a valid robots.txt file but I suspect zero search engines can understand it.
