September has been and gone and we are now well into the cooler temperature of October as Autumn certainly sets in, thankfully it’s not been as chilly in the world of SEO!

Here’s the latest news from the world of SEO & Google during September 2020 – and there’s no sign of a core algorithm update…yet!

September 2nd : Google: No concept of toxic domains

It appears Google now, since Penguin 4.0, ignores bad links to your website, has “no concept of toxic domains” .

John Mueller was asked on Twitter about a tool that reported a site had toxic backlinks to which he replied:
“We don’t have a concept of toxic domains. It’s fine to use tools to work on your site, but you should understand what the tool does, interpret the output, and not just blindly follow along”.

September 3rd : Change to Google my business?

John Lavapie has shown a screenshot on Twitter of a business with an icon showing 20 years in business.

It’s not known how ling this has been there, but we are trialling if it is due to the “Date opened” option available beneath the “info” section in Google Business as seen below:
google my business change
Image Copyright Google.

September 15th: John Mueller: Page speed can be “complex & sometimes confusing”

The source of all things SEO and search, John Mueller, recently posted on Twitter that search can be “complex & sometimes confusing”

There are a number of tools to use to test your page speed, not excluding Google Page insights or GTMetrix, which often present varied results.

Core Web Vitals seem to be key when it comes to page speed, so be sure to understand what Core web vitals are and optimise around them and of course, engaging content.

September 25th: Google testing “People also searched for”

A tweet which includes a screenshot shows the “people also search for” appearing when users actually type a query into the search box.

It’s an interesting development and could improve usability when searching on Twitter, but it doesn’t appear to of been rolled out just yet and still in the testing phase.

We’ve been unable to replicate this, but you can see the screenshot here on Twitter.