Join Fusion’s SEO team as they round up last month’s major industry updates.
Google Revert Chrome 80
Cookie Updates
In light of
COVID-19, Google have temporarily rolled back the use of SameSite cookie
labeling. SameSite cookie labeling was introduced as part of the Chrome 80
release, which took place at the start of February, for more information on
this, please see our SEO
market updates for January 2020 blog post.
Google will provide further updates on the implementation on SameSite cookie labeling via a dedicated Chromium updates page.
Google Warns Users When
Search Results Are Poor
Google have
released an update for Google Search and will now display a warning for users
when they believe that the results are not to their standards.
Although Google consistently look to improve search results, with the improved language understanding of its BERT algorithm, or the daily updates on improving search rankings, Google have recognized that there are still occasions they don’t have the available information for some searches.
Previously,
Google would either display low quality search results, with no warning, or
display no search results.
For searches that would previously display low quality search results, Google will now display a warning to users that it has not been able to find any great matches for the user’s search query.
The warning will also direct users to Google’s search tips page, which provides information on how to fully utilize the search functionality of Google.
Google Now Track Fewer
Pages Within Google Search Console
Google have
announced
that they are currently tracking fewer pages within Google Search Console in
order to improve the performance of the reporting. This will have an effect on
the following reports:
AMP
Mobile Usability
Page Speed
Rich Results
Due to the changes made, Google have informed that users should expect to see a decrease in the number of items and pages tracked in these reports.
AMP’s New Protocol
AMP have
released a new
secure protocol in order to resolve the issues of users having to
wait for server-side paywall process, mainly for users logging in or paying to
view content.
The new protocol will move this process away from server-side to client-side. Moving premium content to this protocol will significantly reduce loading time associated with waiting to be verified, whilst providing the same amount of encryption.
Check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with us today.
In short, an SSL certificate is a digital authentication certificate which provides a site with HTTPS encryption. This certificate is then used to verify the legitimacy of a website and will allow that website to display to its users that it is trustworthy, as well as providing those same users with HTTPS-level encryption, further protecting non-sensitive information, names, passwords and banking details.
The benefits of HTTPS level encryption include:
Providing security for users from man-in-the-middle attacks and protecting the user’s data, in line with GDPR
Increase in organic rankings, based on additional trust signals
Displaying a padlock next to the site’s URL as a visual clue to users informing them that encryption is active on the site
How does an SSL certificate benefit SEO?
With search engines pushing towards a more secure web, websites with HTTPS level encryption (as opposed to HTTP) can see positive effects when it comes to rankings.
Many browsers are also displaying warnings to users when they visit a site without HTTPS encryption, such as Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome displaying these warnings:
Sites will also receive warnings if any resources used on the site are not HTTPS encrypted, this is called mixed content warning. A few months ago we released a post detailing how Google Chrome has cracked down on mixed content, along with how this should be treated. Resources that have been targeted by Google Chrome include:
JavaScript and CSS
iFrames
Audio, video, and image files
Ensuring all these resources are served using HTTPS encryption will safeguard the site from being negatively impacted by “insecure site” warnings.
If an SSL certificate fails or is invalid, browsers such as Google Chrome will display a warning that the user’s connection is not private. This warning is much more severe than the “mixed content” warning and will need to be resolved as soon as possible.
How to get an SSL certificate?
For most sites, SSL certificates are provided as part of a web hosting subscription, such as SiteGround, BlueHost and Host Gator. Although these SSL certificates will usually be low-level, domain validated SSL certificates, suitable for sites that don’t receive a high amount of traffic and require minimal encryption.
All types of SSL certificates can be purchases from dedicated service providers, such as Comodo SSL Store or Digicert or domain registrars, such as NameCheap and GoDaddy.
There are many types of SSL certificates that will be suitable in different scenarios and can be split into 3 main types:
Domain Validated
Certificates (DV)
Perfect for SMEs and offers minimal encryption, these are also the cheapest certificates that don’t require verification of the site owner’s information. Domain validated certificates provide just enough encryption for browsers to display the HTTPS padlock within the address bar.
Organisation Validated
Certificates (OV)
A tier up from domain validated certificates, organisation validated certificates provide an extra level of trustworthiness and involves a manual investigation to take place on the information of the organisation applying for the SSL certificate. This certificate is ideal for sites that use customer login information (excluding payment specific information).
Extended Certificates (EV)
These offer the highest level of encryption and also require the highest level of validation. Extended certificates are recommended for sites that require sensitive customer information, such as payment card information for ecommerce sites.
Each of these certificates will provide sites with a padlock within the address bar, however will provide users with a varied amount of security for users.
How much is an SSL certificate?
Prices for SSL certificates can vary depending on level of encryption, level of verification and added benefits provided as part of the service. Splitting prices into the 3 types mentioned in the “How to get an SSL certificate?” segment, these can fit into the following price margins (pricing is approximate):
SSL Certificate Type
Price Point
Approximate Cost
Domain Validated (DV)
£
£5-£150/yr
Organisation Validated (OV)
££
£15-£1,000/yr
Extended Certificate (EV)
£££
£50-£2,300/yr
What is the recommended validity length of an SSL certificate?
With a bill being passed on 1st March 2018 reducing the maximum validity length of DV and OV SSL certificates from 39 months to 825 days (around 27 months), EV SSL certificates are already limited to a maximum lifetime of 27 months, and 13 months for validity information. So, what is the recommended length of a SSL certificate’s validity across browsers? And is it better to have a longer or shorter validity time?
To answer the latter question, a shorter validity time on an SSL certificate can be seen to provide a higher amount of security as authenticity checks will need to be performed more often.
In regards to the recommended validity length of an SSL certificate, Apple have placed themselves at the front of this conversation by announcing that as of 1st September 2020, they will be setting a hard trust limit of 398 days, as opposed to the current acceptable duration of 825 days. This means that any certificates issued after this date for longer than 398 days will not be trusted by Apple products. Google have also been seen to show some interest in shortening their trust limit to around one year, although nothing has been passed as of yet.
With trust limits currently sat at 825 days across all browsers until 1st September 2020, any certificates purchased before this date can be valid for up the full 825 days and be trusted across all browsers. For certificates purchased after 1st September 2020, we would recommend ensuring that validity lengths are kept under 398 days, in order to keep within Apple’s (and all other browsers) trust limit.
If you found this useful then please check out our other blog posts, and if you’re interested in finding out more about how we can help with your organic rankings, get in touch with us today.
In a further push to make websites take loading speeds seriously, Google have announced a new range of plans to help pre-warn users on how quickly or slowly a site may load.
“We think the web can do better and want to help users understand when a site may load slowly, while rewarding sites delivering fast experiences.” – Addy Osmani, Ben Greenstein and Bryan McQuade from the Chrome team
The plans include the rollout of warning messages within load screens on slower websites, alongside a new green progress bar for sites with faster load times, both seen in the examples below:
Rather than implement strict criteria for what is and isn’t a fast site immediately, Google plan to gradually increase this over time. Google’s long-term goal is to clearly badge sites that load quickly or slowly for users, with further plans to expand the badging of sites to cover a range of signals beyond just site speed.
Google recommend using the following resources to help identify areas where improvements to site speed can be made:
These additional resources will be able to provide valuable insights on page speed performance, and can be used alongside Google’s own resources.
Check out our latest SEO and Social Media market updates for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with us today.
BERT, or the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, is the new search algorithm released by Google. BERT is a natural language processor (NLP) that is capable of providing Google with further understanding behind the intention of a search query, rather than relying solely on key terms within the query in order to understand user intention.
This new algorithm is going to allow Google to do a much better job of finding useful information for search queries, particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query.
Looking at the below examples, we can see how BERT is able to understand more complex, content driven search terms, in order to provide more relevant search results.
BERT is currently live for search terms using the English language and Google will be looking to apply this to other languages in the future.Google have labelled BERT as “representing the biggest leap forward in the past five year, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of search”. This no understatement from Google, as BERT will work alongside RankBrain and is expected to affect 10% of all search terms, along with affecting structured snippets.
As BERT is a deep learning NLP algorithm that is designed to process and learn how language is used, the only way to optimise content for this is to ensure that content is relevant, informative, useful and most importantly, written for humans.
Google has announced that they will be cracking down on page resources in order to ensure that https pages can only load https sub-resources. This change is going to be gradually enforced in different steps throughout the next few updates of their browser, from Chrome 79 to Chrome 81 (We are currently on Chrome 77).
These steps will be implemented as below:
In Chrome 79, releasing to a stable channel in December 2019, Google will introduce a new setting to unblock mixed content on specific sites. This setting will apply to mixed scripts, iframes, and other types of content that Chrome currently blocks by default. Users can toggle this setting by clicking the lock icon on any https:// page and clicking Site Settings. This will replace the shield icon that shows up at the right side of the omnibox for unblocking mixed content in previous versions of desktop Chrome.
In Chrome 80, mixed audio and video resources will be auto-upgraded to https://, and Chrome will block them by default if they fail to load over https://. Chrome 80 will be released to early release channels in January 2020. Users can unblock affected audio and video resources with the setting described above.
Also in Chrome 80, mixed images will still be allowed to load, but they will cause Chrome to show a “Not Secure” chip in the omnibox. We anticipate that this is a clearer security UI for users and that it will motivate websites to migrate their images to HTTPS. Developers can use the upgrade-insecure-requests or block-all-mixed-content Content Security Policy directives to avoid this warning.
In Chrome 81, mixed images will be auto-upgraded to https://, and Chrome will block them by default if they fail to load over https://. Chrome 81 will be released to early release channels in February 2020.
Ensuring that all resources are migrated to https can be done within a CDN, web host or content management system. We would recommend focusing on migrating these in the order that they will be blocked within Google Chrome:
Scripts, iFrames will be targeted in December 2019
Audio, video and images will be targeted in January 2020
This is important because any non-secure resource could be blocked by Chrome – including images, videos, audio, JavaSript/CSS files, and even tracking pixels and scripts, both internally and externally hosted.
Chrome is still the leading browser across all devices and is currently standing at 63.72%, with the closest competitor being Safari, at 16.34% market share. It’s plausible that other browsers could follow suit and also block mixed content.
We would recommend that all resources are migrated to https as soon as possible, as this will remove the risk of users not being able to correctly view your site and will also ensure that your content is not blocked by Google in January 2020 when they remove the option to unblock resources.
Join Fusion’s SEO team as they round up last month’s major industry updates.
GOOGLE’S DE-INDEXING ISSUES
At the
start of April, Google was found to have had with de-indexing pages for many
sites, with both Moz’s
and
SEMRush’s Google ranking trackers picking up on a change in page
rankings across the web.
We're aware of indexing issues that impacted some sites beginning on Friday. We believe the issues are mostly resolved and don't require any special efforts on the part of site owners. We'll provide another update when the issues are considered fully resolved.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 7, 2019
Google also
seemed to have an issue with fully resolving this. After confirming on 10th
April that this issue was fully resolved, many users still reported having
issues with getting their pages indexed again. We have since received notification
from Google that these issues have now been resolved.
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE ADDS ANDROID APP TO SEARCH APPEARANCE FILTERS
On 8th
April Google announced, via their Webmasters Twitter account, that users
with an Android app associated with a website will now have the ability to
filter the app’s performance within the performance report, via the search
appearance filter.
Activating
this filter will display the clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for
the sites Android app.
NEW GOOGLE DISCOVER PERFORMANCE REPORTS
Google
Discover was
released in September 2018, as an upgrade of Google Feed.
Google Discover delivers relevant content to a user based on their interest and
browsing habits, including articles and video, along with featured snippets of
information from different sites.
Within Google
Search Console, a new performance report is now available, showing
how sites perform within Discover. This is only available to for properties
that have reached a threshold number of Discover impressions in the past 16
months.
This
performance report will allow users to view Discover performance within the
same format as the current search report, including filters and dimensions such
as country and page.
CREATE CUSTOM SHORT URLS IN GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Google My Business users now have the ability to
create a short name and URL
for their business profile. Short URLs will be in the format of “g.page/[yourcustomname]”,
and will make it easier to customers to access a business’ profile directly.
GOOGLE MAY RELEASE PAID FEATURES FOR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Google My
Business users started receiving questionnaires from Google this month, asking
how much they would pay for services are already provided for free within Google
My Business, such as business listings. The questionnaires also provided a list
of packages that may become available for users to purchase in the future,
asking users which one they would prefer.
Google also
provided a list of the features within the packages they think could enhance a
business’ presence, which may be added as paid services in the future. These
include:
Promoted map pin: Show up prominently on Google Maps
when a customer is looking at a map where your business in located
“Book” button on your Business
Profile: Get an
extra button on your business profile titles “book”. Google shows customers
your availability (synced with your calendar system if you have one). Customers
can either confirm a booking or request a timeslot.
Promote your “book” button: Get a “book” button on the
Google.com search results, in addition to your Business Profile.
Verified reviews: Google verifies your reviews and
shows an indication to consumers that your reviews are verified to help build
trust in your business.
Remove ads from your Business
Profile: Ads from
other businesses will not appear on your Business Profile.
Verified Licenses: Google verifies your trade licenses
and displays your verified licenses on your Business Profile.
Request quote: Get a “request quote” button on your
Business Profile. Customers will enter details about their job. Requests come
to you as a message in the Google My Business app.
Automated message responses: Answer some frequently asked
questions (hours, services offered) so Google can respond automatically to
customers on your behalf.
Automated response for reviews: Create messages so Google can
automatically respond on your behalf to customers who leave a review.
Call reports and recordings: Get access to reports and recordings
for all of your calls from Google My Business. This lets you evaluate quality
and volume.
Google search results placement: Show up in a section near the top of
the list on the Google.com search results.
Google customer support: Google’s customer support team helps
you troubleshoot and get the most from your ad and Business Profile.
Offers: Promote a special offer or discount on your
Business Profile.
Google Guarantee: Get a badge of trust on your
Business Profile. If a customer isn’t satisfied, Google will give them their
money back.
Get leads from competitor profiles: When a customer messages a business
that offers the same service as you, Google will show your business to the
customer so they can message you too. This will help you get more leads from
Google.
Video on your Business Profile: Shows a video of your choice on your
Business Profile to help customers learn more about your business.
Instant quote: Respond to customer quote requests
with an automatic quote. You can customise the quote based on the details on
the job.
Background check: Google performs a background check
on your business, and shows this to consumers to build trust in your business.
Verified bookings: Google automatically tracks the
bookings you’ve received from Google calls and messages, and shows this number
to customers.
Featured review: Choose a review to display at the
top on your Business Profile.
This is an
extremely extensive list of features that Google is considering providing to
paid users, with many features that will provide a large benefit to a listings
local search presence.
GOOGLE DATA STUDIO UPDATES
Google Data Studio rolled out many new features over
the past month, including:
Recent
weeks also saw the implementation of chart drill-down,
allowing users to define hierarchies within Cartesian charts, and allow these
charts to be switched between hierarchies on view mode, such as switching from
an annual view, to a monthly view, to a daily view.
Within the
above chart, users can see sessions by month, by right clicking on the chart or
using the charts component heading, users will have the ability to drill up
(view sessions by year), or drill down (view sessions by day). Users will also
be able to apply a sort to these results.
Google confirmed via the Google SearchLiaison Twitter account that a broad algorithm update went out in the month of April:
On Monday, we released a broad core algorithm update, as we routinely do throughout the year. For background and advice about these, see our tweet from last month: https://t.co/uPlEdSu6xp
This follows on from another broad update that went in last month. Google followed up this tweet by saying that there is no way to fix pages that may have lost performance from this update, but to instead keep on building good content.
The fluctuations from the update in search results lasted more than 10 days, appearing to begin on 17 April. Because this was a core update, it was not given an identifiable name and does not appear to target anything in particular.
Google replaces pagination with a “More results” button on mobile
Google have launched a change to their pagination on iOS and Android devices. Next and previous buttons have been replaced with a single “More results” button.
Instead of taking the user to a new page, the new feature loads the next set of results directly below the current set. When ads are loaded, these get inserted where the top of the next page would previously have been.
There have been mixed reactions to this change. Some SEOs said that this new functionality gives a poor user experience, while others said that it could make it more likely that users will make it to the second set of results than previously.
Google My Business adds lists of services
Google My Business has added a new feature within the management interface that allows some listing owners to create a list of their services for each map listing.
This was announced in mid-April on the Google My Business Help forums. It is available in addition to the food menu editor that is available for restaurants.
The service menu can be created and edited from the Google My Business dashboard. The menu must be created in sections and items can contain a name, price and description.
Google’s fact check schema markup, introduced during the 2016 US elections, is now out in core search and News results.
Google said: “When you conduct a search on Google that returns an authoritative result containing fact checks for one or more public claims, you will see that information clearly on the search results page.”
Any publisher can include the relevant markup on the page but Google will only display it for what it deems to be “authoritative” sources.
Google Test “Suggested Clip” for Video
A new Google feature was seen this month involving the video featured snippets.
For how-to queries, Google may suggest a portion of a video, recognising which section of the video contains the answer to the question. Clicking on the link takes you to the appropriate timestamp.
This feature cannot be replicated consistently, suggesting it is just a test.
Style Ideas and Similar Items in Image Search
Google image search results on mobile and in the Android app now display “similar items” for relevant searches.
Similar items will be displayed for a few types of products that contain Product schema markup on site. This currently only applies handbags, sunglasses and shoes, but the list will be expanding soon.
There is also an upcoming Style Ideas panel which will show similar products for certain clothing searches.
Google Owl Promotes Authoritative Content
A new Google update named Project Owl is designed to promote content with more authority.
This will be specifically beneficial around queries that could show offensive or misleading pages.
This also goes hand in hand with new feedback forms implemented for autocomplete and featured snippets.
“Best” Filter in Maps Pack
Google is beginning to filter the map results for local queries containing the words “best”, “outstanding”, “great”, etc.
When one of these searches is conducted, the 3 map locations are filtered to show only those with a 4-star rating.
This now makes reviews an even more important part of physical business’ local strategy.
15% of Google searches are unique
According to an announcement from Google, 15% of searches conducted by users daily are new and have never been searched before.
Google says that collectively it handles over 2 trillion searches per year in statistics released by them.
This reaffirmation comes after their announcement to provide more legitimate sources with Project Owl.
Google maps reminds you where you parked
Google Maps on Android and iOS can now remind you where you park your car when you set it manually upon arrival at a destination.
On adding the reminder, it is also possible to include a note and a reminder when your meter is close to running out.
Maps on iOS is already capable of automatically setting a parking location when disconnecting from USB audio or bluetooth in a new location.
