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

Google Responds to “Misleading” Zero-Click Study

A study published by Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro (data courtesy of SimilarWeb) shows that 65% of Google searches from January to December 2020 ended up without the user clicking through to another web property from search results.

Google felt the need to respond, writing in a blog post “this claim relies on flawed methodology that misunderstands how people use search”. They then went on to provide “important context about this misleading claim” in order to “set the record straight”. In short, this context included the following:

• People reformulate their queries. Meaning users often refine their query with a new search. This initial query would inadvertently be considered as zero-click.
• People look for quick facts. For example, searches for information on weather forecast, sports results, currency conversions and more, which all show directly on the results page.
• People connect with a business directly. This refers to consumers accessing business information from the search results, which often does not require a traditional click. Including searches for opening hours, contact information, reservations or directions.
• People navigate directly to apps. Some searches lead users directly to apps, rather than clicking through to a site. For example, searches for a TV program, where the user can follow a direct link to open a streaming app from the results page.

Despite this context, it is worth noting that there is an upwards trend in ‘zero-click’ searches when comparing to similar studies from previous years.

New Practice Problems and Math Solver Structured Data

Google have released new structured data markup which allows sites to display practice problems and math solver pages within Google Search as rich results.

Here’s an example of what practice problems looks like in mobile SERPs:

Whereas math solver should display like this:

Google’s reasoning for this new introduction was “Practice content and math assistance have been some of the most requested information from learners. Practice material helps users gauge their mastery of a concept while a solver provides explanations to help a user get unstuck while doing math problems”.

This is now live, so sites with eligible content can start to implement these new schemas.

Google Adds More Detail To CWV & Page Experience FAQs

Google have expanded their Core Web Vitals & Page Experience FAQs, announcing in a Twitter post that “We are back with more answers to the questions we received”. A lot more detail has been added, a couple of key points include:

“Our systems will continue to prioritize pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar. A good page experience doesn’t override having great, relevant content”. However, in a situation where multiple pages of similar quality and content go head to head, Google says that those with a superior page experience may perform better than those without.

“With the upcoming change to Top Stories carousel, all web pages irrespective of their page experience status or Core Web Vitals score are eligible for Top Stories carousel”. Meaning a news page won’t need to meet all the Core Web Vitals requirements to be eligible for the Top Stories carousel.

New Resources For Video SEO

Google released two new resources to help site owners optimise their videos for Google Search. Firstly, a new ‘Search Central Lightning Talk’ covers the video best practices for Google Search & Discover, outlining five key tips for video optimisation.

Google also updated their Video best practices guide which provides clarification on the correct steps to be taken to help Google find, index, and understand a video.

SharedArrayBuffer Notification Explained

On 15^th March Google sent out a notice to site owners through Search Console stating ‘New requirements for SharedArrayBuffers’, which caused lots of confusion.

Google promptly published a blog post to provide clarification on this. Explaining that site owners received this message because the JavaScript on their site was detected to be using the SharedArrayBuffer object. They then defined SharredArrayBuffer as “a JavaScript object to share a memory space across threads on a website. It was used by websites before the vulnerability called Spectre was found. However, because Spectre was a CPU level vulnerability and it’s unlikely to be fixed in the foreseeable future, browsers decided to disable the SharedArrayBuffer object”.

The blog post provides two options to help find the SharedArrayBuffer object usage on your site. It then recommends the following actions to be taken:

• Decide if the usage in necessary.
• Fix the issue by either removing the functionality, or by enabling cross-origin isolation.

YouTube testing removal of public dislike counts on videos

YouTube is trying to reduce the impact of negative behaviours on the platform by experimenting with the removal of public dislike counts on videos posted by creators.

The decision to remove the public dislike counts on videos was made with the aim to address concerns around targeted dislike campaigns and how they negatively impact the creator and user well-being.

https://twitter.com/YouTube/status/1376942486594150405

Users will still be able to like and dislike videos, and these numbers would still count towards video ranking in the platform. But, just like the Instagram’s removal of public likes experiment, creators will be able to see their full dislike counts in YouTube Studio. 

YouTube is hoping that the removal can help in taking away negative stigma around certain types of content and make creators feel more comfortable in sharing such content.

Facebook working on a ‘kids version’ of Instagram

With Messenger Kids being a success and having 7 million monthly users in 70 countries, Facebook is now looking at creating a kids version of Instagram.

The current Instagram policy does not allow people under the age of 13 to create an account, however many kids still attempt to join the app by adding a fake date of birth and are exposed to potential dangers from predators.

To tackle these issues, Instagram has recently launched new restrictions that will protect youngsters, such as adults not being able to message kids that aren’t following them.

However, the best way to avoid youngsters being exposed to the platform is to build a separate kids version. Instagram’s chief Adam Mosseri says:

“Part of the solution is to create a version of Instagram for young people or kids where parents have transparency or control.”

Some suggest that creating a separate version of the app may increase bullying and abuse amongst younger audiences. But by restricting who can use the app and giving parents oversight this risk can be reduced. 

Instagram is still in the planning stage on this one, so more information will be available once there is a clarification on strategy.

Instagram story drafts to be launched

Instagram story drafts have been a highly requested feature and the app will finally be launching them.

They’re great in providing users with the flexibility in how and when they want to use stories. You will soon be able to create stories, save them to your draft and post them whenever you want.

Options to save stories and downloading them to your device already exist via a third party. However, they’re not convenient within users’ creation flow, so having these features within Instagram itself will facilitate user’s creative creation process.

https://twitter.com/instagram/status/1374474601711898626

Just like a normal story, users will be able to use Instagram’s full feature set in the draft creation process and view them as they’ll appear to users.

This update will also be extremely beneficial for brands that have always wanted to schedule stories updates to be posted when their audiences are most active.

Twitter will be launching ‘Communities’

Similar to Facebook Groups, Twitter will soon be launching ‘Communities’. This new option will enable Twitter users to share their tweets within selected groups of users instead of sharing them with all their followers. 

This option is great for those who want to talk about a variety of different topics without boring their audience with updates they are not interested in. They can now simply create communities that have similar interests and share relevant information, which will also increase engagement as people will be getting information on topics they like.

These community pages would be joinable and be close knit with only members being able to share tweets. This would provide users with private engagement options and create closer communities within the platform.

 

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