We have gathered the latest information from around the world of SEO. The SEO world itself is a tough place to survive, so staying up to date and relevant is essential.
1. Fresh data in Google Search Console’s Performance Report (announced on September 23 2019)
Google Search Console’s Performance report will now show data as old as one day. Prior to this,webmasters and site owners didn’t have access to one day old data in the Google Search Console. This improvement will help all the webmasters to constantly monitor the traffic and website performance at any time of the day or night. It is also helpful to be able to quickly check that your website is responding in a positive way if you have implemented any technical fixes.
You can export the data by clicking the export data icon below the performance report after choosing the dates you want the data report from.
2 . Changes done to reviews showing in the Search Engine Results Page
Google brought in an algorithmic update on September 16 2019 that affects the reviews being displayed in the SERPs. Google has a clear guideline of the type of schemas that can trigger review rich snippets. Only those schema types and their reviews will be displayed.
Also self serving reviews are not going to be displayed for local businesses and organisations. Google My Business will not be affected. This update affects only the organic search results.
Google also has mentioned that webmasters need not bring in any changes to the existing reviews on their website. It is just that Google will not display the reviews not adhering to their structured data guidelines.
Here is the link to Google’s structured data guidelines. Link
3. Two new link attributes in addition to nofollow
On September 10 2019, Google introduced two new link attributes other than the no follow attribute that already exists. They are:
rel = sponsored (any links related to paid ads or sponsorships)
rel = ugc (this is for user generated content as in comments)
The old rel = nofollow can be used for all links except the above ones described. It can also be used for not passing any link credit as it used to be before.
Existing links need not be changed with the new link attributes but Google prefers webmasters follow the above link attributes to be used according to the purpose they are made for. If a user generated content is tagged as a sponsored link by mistake, Google is ok to ignore it. But tagging a sponsor link as a user generated link is not acceptable. A sponsored link has to be mentioned as “sponsored” or “nofollow”.
4.The old search console is gone (September 9 2019)
Google search console has completely been rolled out to the new search console interface. Even if you try going to the old search console, you will now be redirected to the new search console.
Google webmaster team are also working continuously towards the improvement in the Google Search Console.
5. Native lazy loading plugin for WordPress sites
Google has introduced a native lazy loading plugin for wordpress. This plugin allows for optimisation without the help of custom javascript. The plugin just has to be installed and no coding/setting is required. If you do not want to lazy load any image or iframe, you can add a class ‘skip-lazy’ which will prevent the plugin from lazy loading the image/iframe.
To checkout the plugin, click here.
More SEO news, tips and updates coming up every week! Stay tuned…….
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