The week in search and social involved changes to SERP layouts, changes to both Google and Bing search docs, changes in how Facebook ranks articles, and more.
Google Tests Trending Icon In Search Suggestions On Desktop Four years ago, Google began testing trending icons and results in the Google search suggestions on mobile. Some searchers really disliked it and Google enabled an opt out method for it. But it seems recently Google now began testing the same thing on desktop. Bing updates its Webmaster Guidelines These new Bing guidelines discuss the fundamental principles behind how Bing crawls, indexes and ranks content – make sure to review them. Usage of voice has plateaued — for now While there’s been steady growth in the use of voice and virtual assistants since Siri was introduced more than a decade ago, the market hasn’t been transformed. Smart speakers are even a better case-in-point: widely adopted, they’ve failed to become the revolutionary product many had expected. Now survey data from Perficient Digital suggests voice may have hit a plateau of sorts. This is the fourth year the agency has asked over 1,000 U.S. adults about their use of voice, voice search and virtual assistants. Last year, the survey found voice was second only to the mobile browser as the “first choice” entry point for mobile search (with all answers combined, it ranked fourth). Google Local Panels Tests Images In Story View Google is testing a new way of displaying the images in a Google local business knowledge panel listing. Google is using the stories view, where it plays the image like a slideshow story book. Google Updates The How Google Search Works Doc Google has made several changes to the how Google search works document within its help center. The changes include how Google crawls both desktop and mobile, it has a new section on JavaScript, it talks about your CSS, scripts and image files and has a new section on what is a document – plus more.
