This week you’ll see some recent information on (hopefully the end of) the Google indexing problems they have been experiences lately. There have also been a few little Google search page changes rolling out, as well as some powerful tools for SEOs.
Google Hotel Pricing Charts Moved To SERP
An expanded and interactive hotel pricing chart has been moved to the SERP. More information will show in here than before, allowing users to find closer to what they’re looking for straight from the SERP.
Human Error Likely To Be Cause Of April 2019 Google Outages
According to two anonymous sources, the April outages were likely caused by human error. They also outline a few more details in what was actually happening behind the scenes.
New Sites Will Be Indexed Using Mobile-First Starting July 1st
The default state is switching to mobile-first indexing, meaning that new sites that start to index in Google will be using mobile-first indexing. Older sites are not subject to this, and will be switched over when they’re ready, as is currently the case.
Small Change To Video Box On Mobile
The mobile video box has changed slightly to highlight one of the video results sitting on top of the others in a larger thumbnail. The desktop version remains unchanged, three thumbnails side by side.
Google Updates The “How-To” Structured Data Guidelines
A change-up of the guideline document for “How-To” structured data was released by Google. The goal is to clear things up for SEOs that choose to use the data on their page.
Seeing Possible Signs Of A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update
Many SEOs felt a strange fluctuation in their rankings recently, could this be the early sings of an algorithm update?
Google’s working pretty hard on favicons right now. These little icons help users distinguish results with a small logo or other image to identify a site quicker. There have been many reactions, positive and negative, going around about all this, and this article outlines many of them.
Google Says All The Indexing Issues Are Finally Resolved
Finally, an end point to the mess of indexing bugs Google has been experiencing lately. They say that any issues you may still have in your Search Console are totally unrelated to the indexing bugs and should be treated as usual.
3D Objects With AR Support Now Live In Google Search
A little bit ago, Google announced that they were bringing 3D models and AR to Google search, and it’s finally rolling out. Search any of the supported objects, scroll down, and you should see a 3D model sitting there. Click around and you can see it via AR! This feature hasn’t released globally yet, unfortunately.
John Mueller Creating New “SEO Snippet” Videos
Ask your SEO questions on Twitter and you might get an SEO Snippets video made on it. This new video series covers an array of SEO questions in nice and short videos.
Google Local Pack Ad Label Changed To Be More Subtle
The ad label that appears on advertisements within the local pack has been changed to be a bold, black text “Ad”. This blends in quite subtly with the rest of the results, perhaps tricking inattentive users to click on it more often.
Google Maps Listings Have A New “Popular Dishes” Section
Restaurants and related business with now have a section showing off their popular dishes, and the ability to click through to reviews mentioning those dishes. The section is automatically generated by an algorithm that will look through reviews and come up with the content.
Instagram Engagement Growing, Facebook Falling
And Snapchat is running steady. Projections see that Facebook use will drop down one minute to 37 minutes average usage time, while Instagram looks like it will increase by one minute a year for the next couple years.
Instragram Testing Order Sticker
Shopping from Instragram stories has existed for a while, and now we see an “order” sticker popping up. It’s not exactly clear yet how this sticker will function exactly, but it’s an interesting addition.
Yoast SEO Updates To 11.3, Structured Data & Other Changes
New changes to Yoast’s schema tools, and starting with WordPress 5.3, Yoast will stop supporting WordPress 5.2 and below.
Overriding GeoLocation In Google Chrome’s DevTools
A new feature among Chrome’s DevTools have shown up, one that lets you select a GeoLocation to appear from. This is quite useful for testing website content that changes based on a user’s location, among other things.
Image Thumbnails Showing In Chrome’s Omnibox Search Suggestions
New to desktop version of Chrome, image thumbnails are appearing in the Omnibox’s search suggestions.
Web Workers Can Be Crawled By GoogleBot
Content produced by web workers can be crawled by GoogleBot, as long as the content is not delayed at all. If a web worker was to immediately fill your page with content, it would be crawlable, but if it has any kind of delayed function to it, that delayed content will not be crawled.
Avoiding Partial Rendering Issues With Service Workers
Service workers are useful in making sure content on your site get displayed properly, especially when you have a lot of content to load, even if it loads slowly. This article will help you properly set it up so that you have less rendering issues, as well as some other information to consider.