The Week in Search is a weekly column produced by the Studio team to keep marketing professionals and ecommerce merchants up to date on changes in the search industry, and provide valuable context on what it all means. If you have questions or think we missed something, email us directly.

Bing Says it Makes Algorithm Updates All the Time

This week, SEO pros started documenting changes in Bing search rankings for their clients (Hellman’s mayo Twitter account even got in on the action). In typical form, Barry Schwartz reached out to someone from Bing and got an interesting response:

Studio Takeaway: Yay Bing! Since we started this column, Bing has been making gradual and effective improvements to their search algorithm. Dubut’s response sounds oddly similar to Google’s boilerplate algorithm response. Hopefully, Bing will start to announce search algorithm changes going forward.

Google Gives You Tips on How to Hire an SEO

Ever wanted to know how to hire an SEO properly? Now Google gives you advice on what to look for, how to avoid bad SEOers, and what you should expect when you work with a professional SEO expert.

Studio Takeaway: Happy to say that Grow With Studio’s SEO team checks all of the boxes here. If you’re reading this and need SEO help, get in touch with us and see how we can help.

Google Announces that All Site Will Be Moved to Mobile Indexing

SERoundtable recently covered reports of Google sending site owners error reports for mobile indexing, hinting at the fact that there may be a big mobile-first change on the way. Here’s an example of the user notifications Google has been sending:

Studio Takeaway: We’ve said it a million times before: if you’re not already on a mobile-responsive site/template/theme/CMS, it is time to get one. This is going to future proof your online business.

Peeking Behind the Curtain: Google Algorithm Changes Take Time

Recently, Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, recently pulled back the curtain to let search expert know that changes to Google’s algorithms take time.

After being notified of a specific Google search-related issue, Sullivan pointed it out to the internal engineers at Google. He was then asked for an ETA on a fix and responded with this:

“There’s not going to be an immediate change. If you see a shift, it’s probably that the algorithm is shifting between the two naturally. The feedback collected will be used to see if we can improve longer term across a broad set like this.”

Studio Takeaway: Sometimes you get an image in your head of a Google employee sitting in front of a screen, seeing an issue, and immediately adding a line of code to fix the issue. The real case is quite the opposite. Google’s search algorithm is a finely tuned machine and it sounds like the folks at Google treat it as such. Here’s more from Sullivan:


Other Interesting Links

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