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In short: Google’s clearly become so confident in RankBrain’s mysterious capabilities that it’s now used to help with every query that the search engine handles, more than two trillion per year.

Having said that, Google has said that RankBrain also is used as an actual ranking signal, repeating that yesterday at our SMX Advanced show.For the SEO and search marketers worried about what they should do now that RankBrain has ramped up, the answer remains the same: nothing, but focus on great content. Even people at Google don’t quite understand how RankBrain does what it does, we’ve been told. Honest. But it’s ultimately designed to reward great content. So focus on that, which has always been the case with SEO, and you’re on the right track.

On December 14, 2014, Google announced the shutdown of Freebase -- Wikidata's strongest competitor. As they did, Google also provided powerful support by migrating all of Freebase's data over to Wikidata

Along with structured data, Wikipedia, and a handful of others, Wikidata is a go-to source for building this information

Do not use multiple accounts to edit the same Wikidata listing.

If you have multiple locations for the same business, Google will often show the one with the highest relevance and filter others.

In some cases, the filter causes listings to be completely removed from the Local Finder results unless you zoom in

if your listing is too similar (based on criteria above) to a listing that outranks you, it will cause your listing to rank much lower because Google is trying to “diversify” the search results. 

Here are the new controls:"nosnippet"This is an existing option to specify that you don't want any textual snippet shown for this page.  "max-snippet:[number]"New! Specify a maximum text-length, in characters, of a snippet for your page. "max-video-preview:[number]"New! Specify a maximum duration in seconds of an animated video preview. "max-image-preview:[setting]"New! Specify a maximum size of image preview to be shown for images on this page, using either "none", "standard", or "large".You can use this as standalone meta tags or combine them, so you can use something like this:There is also a new data-nosnippet HTML attribute for this that looks like this:We've seen samples of Google not showing anything but the URL in search, we assumed it was a bug. But probably it was Google testing this. Google did send out emails to publishers who would be impacted by this French law.Anyway, you should see the new snippet controls and French change starting Friday and as it rolls out through next week.

Publicly-facing departments that operate as distinct entities should have their own page. The exact name of each department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments. Typically such departments have a separate customer entrance and should each have distinct categories.

Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended

Google can also detect category information from your website and from mentions about your business throughout the web.

Does Google even know what is a guest post and what is not? That is what Will Critchlow of Search Pilot and Brainlabs asked on Twitter. He said, “It’s also ridiculous because there is literally no way to tell from the outside whether a writer is an employee, a contractor, a freelancer, or a contributor (e.g. my status when I write for Moz.”As a matter of note; we nofollow links from our contributors here on Search Engine Land. In fact, even the links on my bio are nofollowed, and I am a daily writer here on staff at Search Engine Land.But it works. Many SEOs say that links in guest blog posts still work. It still works in that Google still somehow counts those links and they help you rank better in Google. Of course, it is almost impossible to test this to be true, since there are so many variables when it comes to ranking in Google search. But some believe it works.

The place labels shown on Google Maps are determined algorithmically based on a large number of factors”.  Google only populates place labels for some businesses because, stylistically, there simply isn’t room for them all.  As you zoom in on Google Maps, different labels will start to appear that weren’t there originally.

According to our study, more listings (percentage-wise) that had labels also had websites on them. 

The listings that had place labels with no zooming had an average of 6,455 reviews whereas the average number of reviews for listings without place labels was 21.

Google may or may not use the Core Web Vitals metrics from pages not within Google's indexed, pages you may explicitly block from indexing, as part of its overall calculation for the upcoming Google Page Experience Update. John Mueller of Google said he believes this to be the case but is not 100% sure.

allows anyone logged into a Google account to thumbs-up any review they like

Google doesn’t prevent anyone from hitting the button, including owners of the business being reviewed.

60 percent of the brands had earned at least one like somewhere in their review corpus.

the company says this is not an enhanced version of Google support – although many may be tempted to see it that way. Support, Google says, is intended for troubleshooting around discrete problems, such as reinstatement or merger of duplicate listings.

The program cannot be used for real-time GMB verification.

anywhere from between 60% to 70% of SMBs don’t work with marketing agencies and are trying to manage digital marketing in house.

Consider offering a “Google only” entry-level service as one of your services

Then use the metrics that are available to prove its worth to your clients. Show them significant KPIs improvements as a rationale for upgrading to your higher-end services.

Consider selling reviews as a service beyond just asking for reviews.

Google made a change to how title tags are shown for sites sometime around August 17th/18th in 2021

Overall, there has been a decline in the length of title tags (according to Rank Ranger) within Google’s search results on both mobile and desktop. This however doesn’t appear to be a result of a pixel limit change.

In some instances, the new title has been taken from header tags, internal links, image alt text, or even made up completely by Google.

Released on Sept. 12, it took two full weeks to roll out. And it came three days after the helpful content update finished rolling out on Sept. 9. Rollout complete. According to Google’s search ranking update page, “The rollout was complete as of September 26, 2022.” The page seems to have been updated about an hour ago. September 2022 Core Update impact. Based on data from tracking tools, the September 2022 core update hit fast, but was less impactful than previous updates. While there was some rank volatility, the consensus was that it was weaker than past Google core updates.

There are two types of knowledge panels: local panels and branded/personal panels. Google calls both of these knowledge panels, but the process of verifying them is totally different. For the local panels, verification was already possible through Google My Business.

For the branded and personal panels, it is much harder to obtain such a knowledge panel.

Google will decide whether or not to show a knowledge panel. Relevance, distance, and the prominence of the business are all important aspects for Google in determining if it’ll show knowledge panels.

Content is automatically eligible to appear in Discover if it is indexed by Google and meets Discover's content policies. No special tags or structured data are required.

Monitor your performance on Discover

Google recently added an extra “E” to the search quality standards of E-A-T to ensure content is helpful and relevant. The extra “E” stands for “experience” and precedes the original E-A-T concept – expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. 

The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab compiled 10 guidelines for building web credibility based on three-year research with over 4,500 participants. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. Show that there’s a real organization behind your site. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. Make it easy to contact you. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). Make your site easy to use – and useful. Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently). Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. – Stanford Web Credibility Research If the above doesn’t scream, “Be a human, care about your users and your website experience,” I don’t know what does.

Experience is especially important in a digital world moving toward generative AI content

June 21, 2010 Google Share of Searches Hits 72 Percent in May 2010  Share tweetmeme_source = 'sewatch'; tweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly'; Experian Hitwise today announced that Google accounted for 72.17 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending May 29, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 14.43 percent, 9.23 percent and 2.14 percent, respectively.