The article also covers various stories from the Search Engine Roundtable, including Google's algorithmic volatility on January 5th and 6th, a potential local ranking algorithm update on January 4th, and Google's plans to deal with search spam. It also mentions the disappearance of Google's FAQ-rich results from the search results, and Google's clarification that search result snippets are primarily generated from page content. Other topics include Google's stance on using Google Analytics data for ranking, and a photo of Google's future Dublin office.
Key takeaways:
- There were indications of an unconfirmed Google search ranking update and a possible local search ranking algorithm update on January 4th.
- Google clarified that its search snippets are primarily generated based on content from the page and it does not use Google Analytics data for ranking, even if it is in Search Console.
- Google is working on spam algorithm updates to target the new spam seen in the search results and has dropped the FAQ rich results again.
- There were several other updates and news from the search industry, including Google's future Dublin office, search engine specific robots meta tags, and the latest jobs in search marketing.