SEO Wash-up Monday 15th April

Google Updates

Google image search tests preview screen – Google has once again started to test a new user interface for the image search preview image window. Although this is similar to the previous tests, this one takes the right hand window look and keeps the black background interface versus the white background interface.

Google says the Speed Update resulted in a faster Web – Google has said that the results of launching a new algorithmic ranking factor, which is the Speed Update has resulted in an overall faster web. They also mention that they have observed improvements on many pages across the web in terms of speed of slower sites. Below are some of the metrics:

• Slow websites got about 15-20% faster – Google looked at the slowest web sites on the web, and have said that on average those websites got 15 to 20% faster. Google also mentions that for the slowest one-third of traffic, they saw user-centric performance metrics improve by 15% to 20% in 2018.
• Faster web globally overall – They observed improvements across the whole web ecosystem, on a per country basis that more than 95% of countries had improved speeds.
• Less abandonment rates from search – One of the metrics Google saw that reduced by 20% was people going to search, clicking on a website from the result page and then coming back to the search results because the site they clicked on loaded slow.
• Pagespeed insights tool is being used – The pagespeed insights tool was run on over a billion URLs with feedback for over 200 million unique URLs. They also mention that last year, the developers ran over a billion pagespeed insights audits to identify performance optimization opportunities for over 200 million unique URLs.

Google tests graphical Google my business dashboard – The search giant is testing a new dashboard for the Google My Business section. In the new dashboard, it shows a larger cover images and photos that you can change for your business.

Google expands audience reviews to music – As you may have seen the audience reviews in the Google search results panel for TV and movies, well now this has expanded to music too.

Google assistant results includes ads with new updated design – Google has been testing the search ads in Google Assistant since February, but now the search ads in Google assistant has officially been rolled out. Google has said that they have updated the design for the Google assistant search results on android. Google also has mentioned that the Google assistant results can have ads such as search ads. So when your ad is relevant, these results may include your existing ads that you would see on search today.

Google has dropped sort by date and adds before: & after: search commands – The search giant has launched a new feature that they are beta testing called ‘before: & after:’ search commands. The previous feature allowed users to filter their web searches by dates, which they had for a while but dropped from mobile, though it is still on desktop. Now with the new feature they rolled out, the new before: and after: search operator allows you do this and discontinued the sort by date feature in search.