Google updated their guidance with five changes on how to debug ranking drops. The new version contains over 400 more words that address small and large ranking drops. There’s room to quibble about some of the changes but overall the revised version is a step up from what it replaced. Change# 1: Downplays Fixing Traffic … Read more
Google updated their Googlebot and crawler documentation to add a range of IPs for bots triggered by users of Google products. The names of the feeds switched which is important for publishers who are whitelisting Google controlled IP addresses. The change will be useful for publishers who want to block scrapers who are using Google’s … Read more
Google revised their documentation on Favicons in order to add definitions in response to user questions received about favicons and what to use. The updated version of the documentation is significantly better because it explains the difference between the legacy form of favicon and the latest version of it. Favicon A favicon is a visual … Read more
Google updated the structured data documentation for the Structured Data Carousels (beta) that show rich results for qualifying topics. The new documentation clarifies specific requirements and makes it more explicit that the rich results features are limited to a single geographic area. Structured Data Carousels (beta) Carousels Structured Data (beta) enables web publishers that aggregate … Read more
Google updated their rel canonical documentation in order to clarify how Google handles the extraction of rel canonical annotations. The clarification is not meant to indicate a change in how Google handles rel=canonical annotations but rather to make it explicitly clear how Google processes them. Canonical Link Relation – RFC 5988 Google’s documentation has always … Read more
Google recently updated the documentation of its Google-Extended web crawler user agent, reflecting changes in product naming and clarifying the impact on search, which may be a concern for those who choose to block the crawler. The updated documentation offers clearer guidance on controlling content access for use in AI model training. Google-Extended User Agent … Read more
When I’m doing something that involves multiple steps, you can be sure I want to remember it. Sometimes my brain can’t be trusted with that, so process documentation is the answer. Whether you’re completing recurring tasks or creating a new program, process documentation can help you formalize your business endeavors. In fact, creating documentation helps … Read more
Google updated the list of their official crawlers by adding the name and information for a relatively unknown crawler that publishers have been seeing now and then but no documentation for it previously existed. Although Google added official documentation for this crawler the information provided seems to encourage more clarification. Special Case Crawlers Google has … Read more
Google has published new documentation for the GA4 Data Redaction feature that prevents accidentally sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google. This makes it easier to conform to privacy laws and Google’s own policies. Notable about the feature is that it will be turned on by default for new properties that are added to GA4 … Read more
Google updated their documentation for Google Discover to clarify why websites may lose traffic from Discover. Google Discover Discover is a personalized feed of content on topics related to user interests. These topics may be chosen from a search history. Perhaps because of that, Discover is officially a feature of Google Search. So, for example, … Read more
Google has fixed a typo in their crawler documentation that inadvertently misidentified one of their crawlers. In general, this is a minor issue but it’s a major issue for SEOs and publishers who depend on the documentation to set firewall rules. Failure to notate the correct data could cause a website to inadvertently block a … Read more
In the fast-paced world of web development, choosing the right frameworks and technologies is essential to create efficient and powerful web applications. Yii2, a high-performance PHP framework, offers a robust and feature-rich environment for developers. Node.js, on the other hand, is a popular JavaScript runtime known for its ability to build scalable and real-time websites. … Read more
Google updated their Search Central Documentation to on verifying Googlebot, adding documentation about user-triggered bot visits, information that was missing from previous Googlebot documentation, which has created confusion for many years, with some publishers blocking the IP ranges of the legitimate visits. Newly Updated Bot Documentation Google added a new documentation that categorizes the three … Read more
Google updated the developers documentation for the product structured data to add requirements that will make a site eligible to display product return policies in the in the merchant listing experiences. Merchant Listing Experiences The update applies to a set of rich results that are exclusive to merchants that’s called the merchant listing experiences. Examples … Read more
