Greetings from Orange Carrot, your trusted partner in navigating the digital landscape! We’re here to share some exciting updates from Google’s July 2023 episode of Google Search News, hosted by John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google.
Let’s dive into the key takeaways that can help shape your digital strategy.
Core Web Vitals: The Heartbeat of Your Website
Google has provided further clarity on the role of Core Web Vitals in their content ranking system. Interestingly, Google is phasing out mobile friendliness as a ranking factor, given the widespread adoption of mobile-friendly designs.
Consequently, the mobile usability report and the mobile-friendly testing tool will be removed from Search Console by year-end.
In a significant development, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will be integrated into Core Web Vitals, replacing First Input Delay (FID) by March 2024. Data on INP is already available in Google Search Console, offering you ample time to adjust.
However, as Mueller rightly points out, a stellar page experience goes beyond Core Web Vitals. At Orange Carrot, we couldn’t agree more and always advocate for a comprehensive approach to SEO.
News Websites: Your Guide to Success
Google has extended its guidance and best practices to news websites, following their initiative for e-commerce platforms last year.
They’ve released instructional videos on SEO best practices for news sites and optimal use of Search Console for these platforms.
Generative AI: The Future of Search
Google’s newly launched Search Labs is a sandbox for testing new products and ideas. One of its intriguing features is the Search Generative Experience (SGE), which leverages generative AI to enrich search results with more information and context. Although these systems are in their infancy, the strides made so far are promising.
Search Console: New Features and Updates
The Search Console has seen a flurry of updates. The rich results test now supports code editing, streamlining the process of testing markup fixes. Even without Google Analytics, users can now access Search Console Insights.
The video indexing report has been enhanced to provide more granular data on video indexing issues. Plus, Google has wrapped up another season of Search Console training on YouTube.
Community Spotlight
Mueller highlighted several insightful community contributions. Lily Ray explored the preparation for AI features in search engines. Jes Scholz penned a comprehensive article on website crawling, underlining its critical role in SEO.
Bryan Casey sparked a debate on whether less content could lead to more SEO success, based on IBM’s marketing content reduction.
Additional Updates
Google has updated its documentation with details about a new generic crawler, reorganized information about Google crawlers, and listed the IP addresses used by them. The spam report has been revamped, and Google has modified its treatment of the .ai top-level domain in Search.
In conclusion, Google’s continuous innovation and improvements provide a dynamic environment for digital strategists and webmasters. As always, Google encourages feedback and comments on these updates.
Here at Orange Carrot, we’re excited to help you leverage these insights to drive your digital success.
For a more in-depth understanding, feel free to watch the complete video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXxqVdFAexk
