Webcology – July 29, 2021

We have another sad announcement to start the show with this week. Erik Stafford, the witty and well loved Creative Director at aimClear passed away last night. He had a heart attack two months short of his 48th birthday. If you grew up in Chicago in the 80s and 90s, you might have known him as the guerilla street artist, GEAR. Eric was a frequent writer and conference speaker. He was a father of two children and passed way too young. Erik D. Stafford, rest in peace, you’re going to be missed.

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https://searchengineland.com/googles-universal-search-results-bid-for-placement-and-may-be-influenced-by-clicks-350858?utm_source=webcology
https://searchengineland.com/googles-universal-search-results-bid-for-placement-and-may-be-influenced-by-clicks-350858?utm_source=webcology
Yo Dawg, I hear you like search engines so Google built a search engine full of search engines that all flow to a master search engines to figure out which result set is more relevant than the others. But, uhhh, what would ya tell me if I told you it was influenced by clicks?
Gary Illyes’ on how Google compiles results by having elements of search “bid” for placement against each other. Barry explains it well in today’s SEL.
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Google Link Spam Update ran on Monday
https://www.seroundtable.com/quiet-google-link-spam-update-31836.html
From jim hedger to Everyone: 02:06 PM
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Nofollows are universal signals in places you’d think a nofollow should go. You don’t need to specify why. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-switch-rel-nofollow-to-rel-sponsored-31830.html
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https://www.seroundtable.com/edge-of-google-quality-threshold-31832.html
The Quality Threshold Cliff – Falling off but reappearing through manual submission is apparently a clue that you’re about to fall off. Confused?
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Google Page Experience – This update replaced what was the Google speed update. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-page-experience-update-replaced-speed-update-31817.html
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Both Google and Facebook will require staff to be fully vaccinated before returning to work at all US offices. Google has also pushed back its reopening to October. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/28/1021798222/google-mandates-vaccines-for-workers-pushes-back-return-to-office-date
Other firms like Microsoft have not made vaccines mandatory for employees but all are strongly recommending staff get vaccinated before returning to work.