Daily Search Forum Recap: July 1, 2024

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.

After the Google June spam update completed, we had even more Google Search ranking volatility over the weekend. Bing has a new Bing Webmaster Guideline for prompt injection. Some are seeing small increases for sites hit by the Google helpful content update. Google explained why soft 404s are bad. Google Maps added troubleshooting and FAQs for missing and removing reviews. Google Search is testing a top quality store badge near the site name.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Search Ranking Volatility Over June 28th & 29th Weekend

On the heels of the completion of the June 2024 spam update this Thursday, June 27th, I am now seeing signs of an unconfirmed Google Search ranking algorithm update and volatility. It seems more heated than the week of this spam update rollout but less weak than you’d see with a Google core update.

Some Sites Hit By Google Helpful Content Update Seeing Small Lifts

There are reports that some sites hit by the Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update are seeing small, somewhat tiny, lifts over the past week or so. Again, based on what we’ve been tracking, we have yet to see any recoveries but we are all hopeful we will see significant recoveries for some of those sites with the next core update.

Prompt Injection Added To Bing Webmaster Guidelines

Bing added a new guideline to its Bing Webmaster Guidelines named Prompt Injection. A prompt injection is a type of cyberattack against large language models (LLMs). Hackers disguise malicious inputs as legitimate prompts, manipulating generative AI systems (GenAI) into leaking sensitive data, spreading misinformation, or worse, according to IBM.

Google Explains Why Soft 404s Are Bad

Gary Illyes from Google explained two reasons why soft 404 errors are bad. Soft 404s are when a page returns a 200 status okay, but Google thinks that page should return a 404 page not found error. According to Gary, soft 404s are bad because they (1) limit crawl budget and (2) the pages won’t likely show up in Google Search.

Google Posts Reviews Troubleshooting & FAQs For Missing and Remove Reviews

A Google community manager, Alistair D., posted a Reviews troubleshooting and FAQs document in the Google Business Profiles forums. It goes through why reviews go missing, why reviews are removed and how to troubleshoot those issues with the Google Business Profiles tools.

Google Search Tests Top Quality Store Badge Near Site Name

Google is testing placing the top quality store badge and icon next to the site name area in the Google mobile search results. This brings up that icon from the bottom portion of the snippet to the very top of the snippet.

Mechanical Bull Riding At Google

Google had an employee appreciation day event of some sort and here is a photo of one Googler riding a mechanical bull. I posted the embed of the video he posted on Instagram of the event.

Other Great Search Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

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