Page 63 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

Update: December 25, 2020

We still saw no relevant movement after optimizing the GMB listing features, which tells us most
"on-site" GMB content is not a major relevant signal. We also speculate that this is more of a
"prominence" signal, which is why having a 100% complete profile vs not is more beneficial.

We haven't seen any major changes in rankings or recovering rankings for our test that included
removing the GMB description. So we know there is a correlation, but we’re still unsure as to
what the correlation is. More testing is required.

Emoji Tests

How Does Google Understand Emojis in Headings & URLs?

Test Setup:

We wanted to get a better idea of how Google is treating emojis. The first thing we did was test a
made-up keyword ("kinqwemks") while using emojis in the meta title and H1 of the website. Here
is a screenshot of what our H1 looked like:

Test Results: May 29, 2020

When searching for our term "kinqwemks", the emojis were properly displayed in the URL,
because we put the Emojis in the H1. Google apparently has no problem with listing your emojis
in the URL. BUT, when we look at the Title in the SERPs, they stripped away all of the emojis
except for one. See below:

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