Posted 19.06.2018
By Lucy Bradley
In the middle of May, there were reports of fluctuations in search results. This was on the 17th May, and then on the 24th there was further movements. All of this is unconfirmed by Google but if you’ve noticed any strange ups and downs, you’re not the only site.
Wether you have a shared robot.txt across multiple domains and are getting alarming Google Search Console errors, or you were looking to do this but have read about potential SEO implications and held off, Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that having shared robots.txt across multiple domains is fine and should work for search. John wrote “It sounds like you have a shared robots.txt file across domains? That shouldn’t be a problem, we might show those cross-domain URLs as errors in Search Console, but if they’re on all domains, that should work regardless.” So if you’re robot.txt file is set up this way, the Google Search Console errors might have worried you before but as long as you understand the set up and the output, it can be another one of those errors you can ignore with a clear conscience. Those who had their lightbulb moment crushed, can finally go ahead and implement that structure.
As we’re well aware, voice search is on the rise – but it turns out its local businesses that really need to start putting thought into their local search strategy. BrightLocal reported that 75% of smart speaker owners perform searches for local businesses on a weekly basis, and 53% undertake these searches daily. What does this mean for local businesses? Optimise your content for that all-important position 0 and target it at voice searches where applicable to really rein in on this traffic.
Machine learning in the world of content is on the rise. The ability to process large amounts of data in seconds, makes more traditional A/B Testing look dated and improves efficiency. It also provides a faster feedback loop, makes keyword research easier, makes content more personalised, predict trends much sooner and much more.
Google is actually helping us out in the mysterious world of SEO for once! A couple of weeks ago we mentioned how they’ve added an SEO audit into its Lighthouse extension. Well, now they’ve made significant improvements to Search Console, and have revamped their SEO guide! Not only this, but they’ve hired a new public search liaison – sharing some insights on how Google search works. We can’t wait to find out more.
I don’t know about you, but having to pull multiple reports and importing them into gsheets, as per a number of clients requests can be a bit of a ball-ache. It’s rewarding but incredibly time consuming. Google Data Studio was our closest solution to this, however the platform is still quite limited in functionality, for example, being able to export the dashboards in a range of file formats, which is always useful if you need to incorporate them into other documents. Well, it just so happens that Google has launched an Adwords add-on, which will now allow you to add data to reports and dashboards without the hassle of different windows, tabs and file exports.
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