Google limits robots.txt support to four fields, clarifying its stance on unsupported directives. Google only supports four specific robots.txt fields. Unsupported directives in robots.txt will be ignored. Consider auditing your robots.txt files in light of this update. Source link
Google is introducing AI-organized search results pages in the United States. The new feature, set to launch this week, returns a full page of multi-format results personalized for the searcher. Google’s announcement states: “This week, we’re rolling out search results pages organized with AI in the U.S. — beginning with recipes and meal inspiration on … Read more
Google announces AI-driven updates to Search and Lens, expanding visual and audio capabilities while introducing ads in AI-generated results. Google adds AI-powered video and voice features to Lens. Circle to Search expands with song identification on Android. Google introduces ads in AI Overviews for U.S. users. Source link
Google has announced an update to its Search Central documentation, introducing support for certification markup in product structured data. This change will take full effect in April and aims to provide more comprehensive and globally relevant product information. New Certification Markup For Merchant Listings Google has added Certification markup support for merchant listings in its … Read more
Google rolled out a new Core Web Vitals tool called CrUX Vis that shows you hidden patterns in performance scores and offers guidance on what to improve. The data is sourced from the CrUX dataset which is based on actual user experiences on the URLs and websites that are analyzed and explored in the new … Read more
In a recent update to its Search Central documentation, Google has officially relegated the ‘noarchive’ rule to a historical reference section. The new text in Google’s help document reads: “The noarchive rule is no longer used by Google Search to control whether a cached link is shown in search results, as the cached link feature … Read more
Mastering effective ad copy is crucial for achieving success with Google Ads. Yet, the PPC landscape can make it challenging to discern which optimization techniques truly yield results. Although various perspectives exist on optimizing ads, few are substantiated by comprehensive data. A recent study from Optmyzr attempted to address this. The goal isn’t to promote … Read more
Google updates guidance on Product markup, advising ecommerce sites to prioritize HTML implementation and use JavaScript cautiously. Google recommends including Product markup in initial HTML for best results. JavaScript-generated markup can lead to less frequent and reliable crawls. E-commerce sites using JavaScript for product data should ensure servers can handle increased traffic. Source link
Google has announced updates to Search Console, introducing sticky filters across Performance reports and streamlining navigation within the tool. Search Console Performance report filters are now sticky! 🥳 From now on, filters set in one of the three Performance reports (Search results, Discover or Google News) will remain applied when navigating between them. Also, you’ll … Read more
Google’s Lighthouse doesn’t use the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric in its standard tests, despite INP being one of the Core Web Vitals. Barry Pollard, Web Performance Developer Advocate on Google Chrome, explained the reasoning behind this and offered insights into measuring INP. Lighthouse Measures Page Loads, Not Interactions Lighthouse measures a simple page … Read more
New data from BrightEdge shows significant changes to Google AI Overviews, prioritizing topic-specific sites and a stronger focus on ecommerce ahead of the year-end shopping season. Google Core Update And AIO An interesting insight from the data is that there is more overlap between AIO and Google’s organic search results, that there is more agreement … Read more
Google’s John Mueller clarified the longstanding confusion about whether it’s appropriate to use a noindex rule and a canonical tag on the same page. A 2021 statement suggested that using both might ‘maybe’ work, but his latest statement provides a more detailed and definitive answer. Noindex Rule And Rel=Canonical An HTML element is like a … Read more
Google updated their spam documentation, adding a new definition of site reputation abuse as the largest single change, followed by additional information about manual action consequences. The remaining updates are a content refresh aimed at making the documentation easier to understand and more concise. Understanding these changes can provide ideas for how to update your … Read more
Google removed their documentation for the cache: search operator because it no longer works. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows the documentation was live as of September 17, 2024. The URL now redirects to a changelog notice announcing its removal. It was announced on March 2024 by Google SearchLiaison via X (formerly Twitter) that the … Read more
For some years now (ever since Google Merchant Center was introduced in 2010), ecommerce advertisers have been working with product feeds. It’s historically been a complex and often fragile process, but thanks to the introduction of Google Merchant Center Next, we have some new tools at our fingertips. Here’s a look at how things are … Read more
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about image alt text and SEO, offering a comprehensive explanation of why alt text is important and why using AI for automatically creating alt text may be inadequate. Alt Text The person asking the question wanted to know whether alt text was still relevant for search optimization. … Read more
Google constantly evaluates and updates its algorithms. There can be hundreds or even thousands of individual changes per year. Google does confirm some of the major updates, such as site reputation abuse, the March 2024 core update, and the November 2023 reviews update. But, often, Google will not officially confirm an update, and these are … Read more
Earlier this year, Google introduced new AI features into its Google Ads platform to help streamline work for many advertisers. One of those new features comes in the form of AI video enhancements. This is no surprise since video makes up over 65% of all internet traffic. Read on to learn more about the AI … Read more
