Tag Archive for: Google Search

Typos may not matter to Google (but here’s why they still matter)

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Are you afraid typos or grammatical errors in your blogs might be hurting your Google ranking? According to Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, worry no more.

The good news is typos won’t hurt your search rankings. The bad news is they may still hurt you in other ways.

Responding to a Twitter user who believed that errors in content can hurt your Google presence by getting content marked as low quality, Mueller explained that Google doesn’t actually care that much.

“It’s always good to fix known issues with a site, but Google’s not going to count your typsos (sic),” Mueller wrote.

While that might be a relief for many, there is still the obvious issue of how actual people perceive content with typos. People are prone to forgive a mistake here and there, but error-filled or poorly written content is going to be dismissed by most.

Poorly written content comes off as unprofessional and won’t help build your authority like well-edited, well-composed content. So, while you might be able to get away with some typos on Google, it always pays to take the time to edit and revise anything you are going to publish under your company name before the public ever gets to see it.

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Google begins sending notifications about mobile-first indexing

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Google is sending emails to webmasters that are being migrated to the search engine’s new mobile-first index. If your site gets indexed, Google will start choosing the mobile version of your site as the default choice – meaning your site is fast enough and optimized for mobile users.

The search engine first said they would start sending notifications to websites being migrated into the mobile-first index, but the emails have only started being actually seen in the wild over the past few days.

The notifications are coming a bit late, considering Google has confirmed that it began moving websites over to the mobile-first index months ago.

You can see a copy of the email as shared by The SEM Post or read the full text below:

”Mobile-first indexing enabled for <URL>

To owner of <URL>

This means that you may see more traffic in your logs from Googlebot Smartphone. You may also see that snippets in Google Search results are now generated from the mobile version of your content.

Background: Mobile-first indexing means that Googlebot will now use the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking, to better help our (primarily mobile) users find what they’re looking for. Google’s crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have historically used the desktop version of your site’s content, which can cause issues for mobile searchers when the desktop version differs from the mobile version. Our analysis indicates that the mobile and desktop versions of your site are comparable.”

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Page speed to become an official ranking signal for mobile Google searches

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Google has been encouraging webmasters to make their sites as fast as possible for years, but now they’re making it an official ranking requirement.

The company announced this week that it will be launching what it is calling the “Speed Update” in July 2018, which will make page speed an official ranking signal for mobile searches.

Google recommends checking your site’s speed using its PageSpeed report, as well as using tools like LightHouse to measure page speed and improve your loading times.

As Google’s Zhiheng Wang and Doantam Phan wrote in the announcement:

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

While Google says the update will only affect a “small percentage of queries”, it is impossible to tell exactly how many will be impacted. Google handles billions of queries a day, so a small piece of that could still be a substantial number of searches.

This is the first time page speed will be made a ranking factor for mobile searches, but it has been a ranking factor on desktop since 2010. It makes sense to expand this to mobile since there is a wealth of evidence showing that mobile users prioritize loading time when clicking search results. If a page doesn’t load within three-to-five seconds, they are likely to leave the page and find another relevant search result.

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Google to Shut Down Google Site Search By End of Year

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Do you have an on-site search engine to help visitors find the products and content they want? Do you rely on Google’s Site Search service for your search engine? If so, you should begin making plans for a replacement.

Google has confirmed it will be shutting down the Google Site Search product and discontinuing support by the fourth quarter of 2017.

Google Site Search powered internal search engines with Google’s own search technology, charging users based on monthly query volume for the product.

The paid site search product wasn’t Google’s only on-site search product. The company is directing consumers using the company to use either the ad-powered free custom search engine or cloud search product.

In a statement to Search Engine Land, a Google spokesperson said:

We are winding down the Google Site Search product over the next year, but will provide customer and technical support through the duration of license agreements. For GSS users whose contract expires between April 1st and June 30th, 2017, we are providing a free 3-month extension with additional query volume to allow more time for them to implement the necessary changes to their site. GSS customers may also take advantage of our Custom Search Engine solution, an ads-supported model that offers similar functionality. We continue to build out new functionality and invest in new technology that make enterprise search a great experience for our customers. Just recently, we introduced the general availability of Google Cloud Search for G Suite customers.

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Help Your Customers Plan Their Holiday Shopping With Three New Google Features

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Last year, Google gave businesses the ability to list their busiest hours on Google Maps listings so that customers can better plan their shopping during the holiday season. Now, they are taking it a step further.

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Instead of relying on businesses to update their Popular Times listings, Google Maps will use real-time data to predict just how busy a location is right now.

”Whether you’re rushing to pick up a last minute gift or seeking a lively bar for some festive spirit, check Popular Times for a sneak preview of what to expect when you arrive.”

In addition to this new feature, Google is giving more flexibility to stores that operate separate departments with differing business hours. Businesses can now list separate departments and service hours in their Search and Maps listings.

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This new feature could be particularly useful for department stores or retail stores with pharmacy, supermarket, or automotive departments.

Google is also providing shoppers with shopping behavior data like how long people tend to spend in a store so they can make the most of their time during the holiday shopping season. Along with listing your business’s busiest hours, the search engine is also rolling out a feature that lets you tell shoppers how long the average person spends in your store.

All three new features rolled out this morning and should be live on Google Maps and Search for all users.

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Google’s Mobile-First Index Won’t Include AMP Pages

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Google has already begun rolling out its mobile-first index to some users, but there are still a lot of questions about how exactly the search engine’s new separate index actually functions.

One such question got a surprising answer yesterday during the Google State of Search conference, as Maile Ohye told the audience that Google won’t index the AMP version of your page in the mobile search index – even when you don’t have a mobile-friendly alternative.

Google’s Gary Illyes also confirmed the news on Twitter after the conference:

That means if you’ve been using AMP pages as an alternative to making your website mobile-friendly, the search engine will skip over indexing your AMP pages in the mobile-friendly search index. Instead, it will by default choose to index the desktop version within its older index.

There is a way to force Google to index your AMP pages in this situation using a rel alternate attribute, but otherwise Google’s index will default to your desktop versions of pages.

This is particularly surprising because Google has pushed AMP as the ultimate way to deliver content to mobile users quickly and without losing ad revenue. But, in this case it seems the streamlined design of AMP pages leaves something to be desired. It may be the lack of site navigation options is what made Google decide to favor desktop over AMP in their index.

This change will most likely only affect a very small number of websites, but it is an odd choice for the search engine. The vast majority of websites who have adopted AMP also maintain a mobile version of their site.

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Google Officially Starts Experimenting With “Mobile-First” Index

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As announced last month, Google is officially making its first step towards the launch of mobile-first indexing with the test of its mobile-first search index.

The company confirmed the testing has officially started via its company blog:

“Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results. Of course, while our index will be built from mobile documents, we’re going to continue to build a great search experience for all users, whether they come from mobile or desktop devices.”

This means in the future Google will increasingly prioritize crawling the mobile versions of a site’s content, rather than treating desktop as the “main” version of your site.

The company also gave some quick tips to help you make the most of this change as it is happening:

  • If you have a responsive site with identical content across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.
  • If you have a site where the primary content and markup is not identical across mobile and desktop, you should consider making some changes to your site.
  • Make sure to serve structured markup for both the desktop and mobile version.
  • Google recommends using the Structured Data Testing Tool to verify the equivalence of structured markup across desktop and mobile by typing the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing the output.
  • When adding structured data to a mobile site, avoid adding large amounts of markup that isn’t relevant to the specific information content of each document.
  • Use the robots.txt testing tool to verify that your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot.
  • Sites do not have to make changes to their canonical links.
  • If you are a site owner who has only verified their desktop site in Search Console, please add and verify your mobile version.
  • If you only have a desktop site, Google will continue to index your desktop site just fine.
  • If you are building a mobile version of your site, do not launch it until it’s ready. Google says: “a functional desktop-oriented site can be better than a broken or incomplete mobile version of the site.”
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Google Is Launching An Entirely Separate Mobile Search Index

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Google is making a huge change to their search engine that could have huge implications for the future of search.

Until now, Google has maintained a single search index, which cataloged the entire web for Google’s algorithm to sort through. However, that will be changing soon as Google’s Gary Illyes announced the search engine would be releasing a separate mobile search index.

The new mobile index will become Google’s “primary” index that it uses to deliver the majority of search results. At the same time, the company will continue to maintain a separate desktop search index which will be slightly less up-to-date.

The announcement came last week during a keynote address at Pubcon from Gary Illyes, webmaster trend analyst with Google. While Illyes later confirmed to Search Engine Land the rollout of the new index would be coming within “months,” he was otherwise short on details of how the mobile index will work.

It is also unclear in which circumstances Google will use which search index or just how behind the desktop index is. What is clear is that Google sees mobile as the future of search despite still seeing significant desktop usage.

Most likely, the new index means Google will be switching from a system which selectively pulls information from the single index for mobile results to a new system which uses the separate index for queries coming from mobile devices.

More information is likely to come in the near future, but for now, all we know is Google is gearing up for big changes to further prioritize mobile searchers.

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Google+ Accounts Are No Longer Needed To Leave Reviews On Google

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Google Authorship

In a move that should please many online businesses, Google is making it easier to leave reviews on the platform. Finally, users can leave reviews without a Google+ account.

To clarify, while you don’t need a Google+ account, you do still need a regular old Google account. The change was first spotted by Conrad O’Connell from Serptests.com.

The difference seems small, but in this case, semantics is everything. By not requiring a Google+ account, Google is opening the door to a considerable number of reviews. Considering review counts and overall rating are top ranking signals for local search, this also means it will be easier to improve your local rankings with reviews.

This doesn’t mean you will have to do with an enormous amount of anonymous or troll reviews either. The first and last name of the reviewer will still be shown, so you shouldn’t have to worry about being flooded with one-star reviews by nameless accounts.

At the same time, Google also fixed a well-known bug which would keep reviews from being submitted from a mobile device for businesses without another pre-existing review.

Reputation is everything for local businesses, and these changes make it easier than ever for your customers to spread the gospel of your quality service or products.

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Infographic Shows How Search Works at Google in 2016

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Google is always changing. Over just the past few years, the way search works has changed radically – moving to a more user-based model and mobile-first mindset.

This shift in attitudes has changed how the world’s most famous search engine works down to its very foundation, with the intent of moving away from a system that started with information and aimed to connect it with its audience. Instead, Google has made it its philosophy to start with the user and aim to provide the best search results for them.

SEOBook recently shared an infographic to visualize how Google’s search engine works in 2016. It shows that in SEO and Google Search, you can’t rely on the same methods from 2013 to keep your business growing online today.

You can see the infographic below. If you can’t see the small text, a larger version is available at SEOBook.

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