Month: September 2019

SEO MARKET UPDATES: SEPTEMBER 2019

Posted on by Zack Cornick

Join Fusion’s SEO team as they round up last month’s major industry updates.

BROAD CORE ALGORITHM UPDATE

Google announced that they were releasing a broad core algorithm update on 24th September.

Although broad core algorithm updates have no specific focus and are released in order provide a more general improvement in search results, Google have suggested “focusing on ensuring you’re offering the best content you can” as “that’s what our algorithms seek to reward.” Google have also recommended that sites continue to consult the search quality rater guidelines in order to view Google’s ideology on what a qualities a site should possess in order to rank well within search. Google have also recommended the following resources in order to help understand the search quality rater guidelines:

GOOGLE UPDATES NO FOLLOW & INTRODUCES SPONSORED AND UGC TAGS

Google have updated the guidance on how they will treat nofollow tags, alongside introducing 2 new tags to be used in specific circumstances:

rel=”nofollow”: Use this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.

rel=”sponsored”: Use the sponsored attribute to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements.

rel=”ugc”: UGC stands for User Generated Content, and the ugc attribute value is recommended for links within user generated content, such as comments and forum posts.

For further information on these changes and the impact they have made, please see our Google Updates Nofollow Links blog.

FRESHER DATA IS INTRODUCED TO GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE

Following an announcement on 23rd September 2019, users will now have access to more recent data within Google Search Console.

Previously, users were required to wait a couple of days for data within Search Console to become available, meaning that site performance from over the weekend would become available around Wednesday. With the implementation of fresher data users will now have access to information from as soon as the previous day, which will then be processed and replaced with the final data within the same time period as usual (around a couple of days).

GOOGLE INTRODUCES AUTO DNS VERIFICATION FOR SEARCH CONSOLE

Following their release of domain groups in Google Search Console allowing users to views combined data driven by their whole domain, Google have released auto DNS verification in order to make it easier for users to verify their domain.

By clicking on “add property” from the property selector from the drop down sidebar, then choosing the “Domain” option, users will now be met with a step-by-step guide from Google. This will guide users through the steps of verifying their domain.

GOOGLE OFFICIALLY RETIRES THE OLD SEARCH CONSOLE

After releasing the new Google Search Console back at the start of 2018, Google have gradually migrated across functionality from the old Search Console to the new version, alongside new exclusive tools. The time has now come for us to say goodbye to the old Search Console, as Google closed accessibility on 9th September 2019.

Although the old Search Console has been closed, Google are still allowing access to the below legacy tools that are yet to receive a replacement on the new Google Search Console interface:

  • Remove URLs tool
  • Crawl Stats
  • Robots.txt Tester
  • URL Parameters Tool
  • International Targeting
  • Data Highlighter tool
  • Messages report
  • Crawl rate settings
  • Email preferences
  • Web tools

GOOGLE UPDATE USE OF REVIEW RICH RESULTS

Google have been looking into how review schema is currently being used by webmasters, finding many invalid and misleading implementations of this structured data. Google have made some algorithmic updates in order to improve the helpfulness of review markup, and have also limited the display of rich review results to only the following schema types:

Review markup that is applied to any schema that is not included within the above list will be ignored by Google.

GOOGLE ADDS OPTIONS FOR SITES TO PREVIEW CONTENT ON GOOGLE SEARCH

With structured data and featured snippets consistently increasing in importance within search, Google have expanded functionality for webmasters to inform them how they would like pages to be displayed within rich results. These include the following:

Using robots meta tags

The robots meta tag is added to an HTML page’s <head>, or specified via the x-robots-tag HTTP header. The robots meta tags addressing the preview content for a page are:

  • “nosnippet”
    This is an existing option to specify that you don’t want any textual snippet shown for this page.
  • “max-snippet:[number]”
    New! Specify a maximum text-length, in characters, of a snippet for your page.
  • “max-video-preview:[number]”
    New! Specify a maximum duration in seconds of an animated video preview.
  • “max-image-preview:[setting]”
    New! Specify a maximum size of image preview to be shown for images on this page, using either “none”, “standard”, or “large”.

They can be combined, for example:

<meta name=”robots” content=”max-snippet:50, max-image-preview:large”>

Using the new data-nosnippet HTML attribute

A new way to help limit which part of a page is eligible to be shown as a snippet is the “data-nosnippet” HTML attribute on span, div, and section elements. With this, you can prevent that part of an HTML page from being shown within the textual snippet on the page.

For example:

<p><span data-nosnippet>Harry Houdini</span> is undoubtedly the most famous magician ever to live.</p>

These new implementations will provide site owners with the power to limit the amount and type of content in the structured data.

IPAD TRAFFIC IS CHANGING WITHIN GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Due to updates within iPad OS, Apple have changed the user agent for the iPad, meaning iPad traffic will appear as desktop traffic. With Apple currently in control of 72% of the tablet market share worldwide, site owners should expect to see a reduction in tablet traffic and an increase in desktop traffic, with a specific increase in Safari users. This change took place in September 2019.

Google Updates Nofollow Links

Posted on by Helen Hargreave

It will come as no surprise that when Google updated its 14 year nofollow link attribute value on 10th September it caused quite the stir in the world of SEO.

This update sees an extension to the well-recognised nofollow tag, broken down by Google as follows:

rel=”sponsored”: Use the sponsored attribute to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements.

rel=”ugc”: UGC stands for User Generated Content, and the ugc attribute value is recommended for links within user generated content, such as comments and forum posts.

rel=”nofollow”: Use this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.

Historically, the nofollow tag was initially introduced by Google to help prevent comment spam, latterly this update is regarded as a way for website owners to tell Google to ignore the link. In other words, the link wouldn’t be crawled and it wouldn’t be used as an indication to help improve rankings. It therefore became a common way for websites to still acknowledge guest blog posts, partnered or sponsored content without losing any of their site equity.

What’s changed and why does this matter?

However in the new update this view of ‘nofollow’ tags and the introduction of two new tags ‘sponsored’ and ‘ugc’ Google seems to have changed its mind stating:

“All the link attributes — sponsored, UGC and nofollow — are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. We’ll use these hints — along with other signals — as a way to better understand how to appropriately analyze and use links within our systems.”

The idea that it could be a ‘hint’ is great news for websites looking to earn links and increase their backlink portfolio, what was once a redundant link is now being used as a ‘hint’ for ranking.

Google has made it clear that websites don’t need to update old nofollow tags to follow the new structure but instead this can be introduced by websites who want to be more granular in their link tags.

Furthermore, as of March 2020 Google has also suggested they may begin using this collection of nofollow, sponsored and ugc link attributes for crawling and indexing.

Moz have produced a simple analysis of this change which helps demonstrate before, now and how this will change again from March 2020.

If you have any questions about the impact of linkbuilding our door is always open…

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Important Advice for Your Cookie Policy in 2019

Posted on by Craig Broadbent

The ICO recently updated its advice on cookie use, primarily moving from implied user acceptance basis to explicit opt-in for “non-essential” cookies, under which analytics and marketing cookies fall. This obviously has deep implications for the tracking efforts of online businesses. This post will look at what the updated advice says, and what steps businesses should take.

The new guidance is set by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) – a full guide is available at the ICO website and can be downloaded as a PDF for reference.

What are the key takeaways from the new advice?

  • You must tell users about all cookies used and what they do

Whilst PECR doesn’t definitively outline the “clear and comprehensive” information you should give about the cookies you use, it should generally cover the cookies used, why they will be used, what is being placed on the user’s device, and ease of rejection.

  • Consent must be explicitly given

In the recent past, it has been acceptable to have user consent of cookies implied by continued use of a website or app. Implied consent is no longer compliant – users must freely give explicit consent.

  • Necessary cookies are exempt, but analytics cookies aren’t deemed necessary

“Strictly necessary” cookies are those which ensure a website or app can remain functional, such as cookies used to administer a shopping cart. The guidelines are quite clear that analytics and tracking cookies aren’t considered “strictly necessary”, and require explicit user consent.

  • Revoking consent should be as simple as giving consent

Whatever mechanism is provided for the user to provide their consent should be easily accessible to revoke this consent at any time.

  • “Cookie walls” are not considered freely given consent

A cookie wall refers to the act of blocking usage of a website or app if the user doesn’t consent to cookie policy. This is against the guidelines, as consent must be given “freely” – a cookie wall is considered enforced consent.

  • New guidance sits alongside GDPR

PECR compliance needs to be considered before GDPR compliance – GDPR compliance is then applied to any cookies that deal with personally identifiable data.

Who’s doing well?

Predictably, the ICO are showcasing best practise with a large pop-up, clearly outlining the difference between necessary and analytics cookies, and providing an opt-in for analytics cookies. The “C” icon at the bottom left follows the user throughout the site and can be clicked to open the pop-up to change policy acceptance at any time.

The pop-out interface used by the ICO is a plugin provided by https://www.civicuk.com/cookie-control, which is customisable to cover marketing and social sharing cookies in addition to analytics, as shown on their own website.

Cookiebot is used by some of our clients thanks to its simple WordPress plugin. Their plugin can be seen in action at Cookiebot.com and shows the explanatory detail required alongside opt-in tick boxes. Clicking “Show details” gives the detail of exactly which cookies are used, and what for.

Are you at risk?

One of the debates now is whether these new guidelines will be enforced, or even if they are enforceable – the ICO advice for non-compliance is quite woolly in terms of who could be penalised and what the punishment could be. Whilst the above examples show us what good might look like, we are seeing relatively little uptake in the wider world – either because organisations are accepting the risk, or because the relatively low key announcement has been missed by many.

This article isn’t exhaustive and shouldn’t be used as the basis of a compliance policy. Our advice would be to absorb the full guidelines from the ICO and take legal advice on the next steps to take.

SEO MARKET UPDATE: AUGUST 2019

Posted on by Zack Cornick

Join Fusion’s SEO team as they round up last month’s major industry updates

GOOGLE’S NEW ALGORITHM UPDATE FOCUSES ON FINDING FRESH CONTENT

At the start of the month, Google’s Vice President of Search, Pandu Nayak, released a blog detailing the focuses of a Google algorithm update that was released in February 2019.

As shown above, the main focus of this update is to ensure that featured snippets contain fresh, helpful information.

Although the outcome of this update is very positive for data accuracy within many featured snippets, this also means that we will expect to see much more movement with information that is featured within these snippets with Google prioritising fresher content.

GOOGLE EXPERIENCED FURTHER INDEXING ISSUES

Early this month, Google experienced some issues that meant newly published pages where prevented from being indexed.

The indexing issues are similar to the ones that took place in May 2019, in which users saw a delay in some pages performances that were published during these issues, due to these being indexed late. This mostly affected news publications, as articles didn’t make it onto Google search, news or discover whilst issues persisted.

Along with this issue, Google also experienced issues with the URL inspection tool within Google Search Console. These issues have since been resolved.

GOOGLE UPDATE TESTING TOOLS ALLOW GOOGLEBOT EVERGREEN RENDERING

Google announced that most of their testing tools now support the evergreen Chromium renderer. This is has now been implemented within the following tools:

This update will allow these tools to render JavaScript and will continue to update along with Chromium.

In the above image, we can see that within the mobile testing tool, this is now able to render ES6+, Web Components and 1,000+ new web platform features.

PLAYABLE PODCASTS ARE NOW AVAILABLE IN GOOGLE SEARCH

During the Google I/O event in May 2019, Google released the news that podcasts are now available in Google search (more information on this in our May 2019 blog). This month, Google have announced that podcasts will now be playable within desktop and mobile search results.

Google have also implemented a “podcast series” table within the result page which holds many of the top podcast series relating to the search query.

LESS THAN HALF OF GOOGLE SEARCHES RESULT IN A CLICK

SparkToro released a study on how people interact with Google search results in 2019. This study found that June 2019 was the first month to see zero click searches accounted for 50.33% of 40 million+ searches within the United States, this is the first time that zero click searches have surpassed 50%.

The study also shows how zero click searches have seen a gradual increase since 2016.

The increase in zero click searches is due to the increase in featured snippets within Google search results providing information relevant enough for users to never feel the need to enter a website.

Although an increase in zero click searches means a drop in all website traffic for Google search channels, such as Organic and Paid, due to most zero click searches being more informational, this increase will affect top of the funnel traffic much more than any traffic further down the funnel for businesses.

GOOGLE SPOTTED HIGHLIGHTING TEXT ON SITES

Users have spotted Google highlighting text on a website after clicking through to the site from a featured snippet.

The text that is highlighted is dependent on the text that is displayed within the snippet. The page will also automatically scroll to the highlighted text.