May 22 Google update was big, despite Google’s being mum about it; Wednesday’s daily brief
Core web vitals ranking tidbits and less data in Search Console
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Good morning, Marketers, Corporate moved me to the Wednesday slot for the newsletter – to cheer you up on hump day. ????????????
In my newsletter on Friday, I covered how busy Google was this month with pushing out unconfirmed Google Search algorithm updates. Well, guess what, this past weekend? On May 22nd, Google had one of its biggest and most volatile unconfirmed updates in a while.
I asked Google about it, but I did not hear back from them. (Surprise, surprise.) The weird part is that with the May 22nd update, although the tracking tools were mostly all “off the charts,” the chatter within the SEO industry was not. SEOs were not talking about ranking changes in forums or on social media much. Makes you scratch your head as to what really happened on May 22nd.
(And no, this is not related to MUM. It is not live yet.)
Anyway, if you noticed big changes on May 22nd, you are not alone. If Google does confirm it, we will let you know.
Barry Schwartz,
SEO chatter listener
Google is removing data from Search Console’s performance report
The other day Google gave us practice problem filters in the Google Search Console performance report, and today Google said it will be removing the generic rich results filter. Truth is, it makes sense. Google is already reporting on almost all of the specific rich result types, so removing the generic version may remove confusion around this reporting.
Google said it is removing this filter because it has breakout filters and reports for most individual rich results, such as event rich results, how to rich results and others. This does not impact rankings or traffic to your site. It is just a reporting change.
When is it going away? August 1st Google will remove it from the Search Console interface and from the Search Console API.
LinkedIn introduces Event Ads and “boosted” posts
LinkedIn’s latest ad products are designed to simplify post promotion and drive event registrations.
Brands can now promote their posts directly from their LinkedIn page using the “Boost” button, which creates a campaign in an ad account associated with the page. This enables marketers to broadcast their post to a wider audience without having to learn any new marketing tools, which can be especially useful for businesses that are short on resources or just looking to promote a one-time event or product launch.
Event Ads is a new format that appears in the LinkedIn feed and highlights details like date, time, how to register and whether mutual connections have expressed interest in attending. Alongside Event Ads, the platform is also launching an Event Analytics tool to enable advertisers to see attendee/visitor engagement with their Event posts, total number of attendees, unique event visits, attendees’ top job functions and viewer count at the peak of a live stream.
Not everything is on mobile-first indexing at Google yet
Despite Google already moving the deadline for all sites being migrated to mobile-first indexing from September 2020 to March 2021, Google is still not 100% indexing from a mobile-first POV. Yes, this process began over 4.5 years ago, and Google still has a number of sites that have not been migrated yet.
“It looks like the team is still working through some issues with some sites, so it’s all a bit behind,” John Mueller of Google said on Twitter. This was when he was asked why Google Search Console is still showing a site as desktop indexing and not mobile indexing.
So how much longer? Your guess is as good as mine, but even when Google missed the March 2021 deadline, we thought it would be completed by the end of May. I guess not.
Some core web vital tidbits for ya
Just last week we reported that sometime in the future the page experience update will be applied to your desktop pages as well. But how well do you need to do with your scores in the core web vitals reports to see any ranking benefit, even if that ranking benefit is a tiny “tie breaker” benefit?
Well, Google won’t say, Google won’t tell us the math behind how the ranking benefit works and how far you need to take your core web vital scores. John Mueller of Google said on Twitter “Whether “2 red + 1 green = 3 yellow” is not something we plan on documenting/announcing. It’s like if “1 word in title + 1 in body = 2 keywords in h1″: chances are, there are tiny differences, but they’re not by definition, stable, nor documented.”
But one additional tidbit is that if you redirect page A to a new page B, Google will pass page A’s core web vital scores for ranking purposes to Page B, at least for the short term.
Typical Google not to share their secret algorithm details with us, SEOs.
Off-topic blog posting, punctuation links and Google Ads political policies.
Unrelated blog posts. John Mueller of Google said that if you build blog posts that are unrelated to your company, that it is a “wasted opportunity.” Google will likely begin to confuse the context of your site and those links might drive traffic to your site that does not convert. Instead, build content on your site related to your site’s topic area.
Google Ads political policy update. Google made a change to its Google Ads political policy specific to state and local election ads in New Jersey and Nevada. Now Ads related to ballot measures and candidates for state elections in New Jersey and Nevada will be permitted but for local elections it will remain prohibited.
Punctuation links. Here is a new question I never heard from an SEO, does adding punctuation after a link hurt your SEO and rankings in Google? John Mueller said no, we don’t give any special consideration to punctuation after a link. Not sure where that myth came from but I found it interesting.
We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.
- Black market in Google reviews means you can’t believe everything you read – CBC News
- Google is releasing Fuchsia OS, starting w/ 1st-gen Nest Hub – 9to5Google
- Google: JSON-LD Doesn’t Give You An SEO Benefit Over Other Markup Formats – Search Engine Roundtable
- Quick Reference Guide to Common Google SERP Features – BruceClay
- The Query Builder Blog Series: Part 8 – Conclusion – Google Ads Developer Blog
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