SEO Wash-up Monday 16th July

Google Updates

Google Speed Update – On the 9^th of July, Google began rolling out the Google Speed Update that they first announced earlier this year. Below highlighted are the important points on the mobile speed update;

• Effects only the slowest mobile sites
• Small improvements to your website can make big impacts in speed
• Fast sites that go faster won’t see a ranking improvement

The main focus is that they have started to roll out the Google Speed Update, you may see your mobile traffic change for better or worse. So if you have a slow mobile site and see less traffic from Google and your Search Console shows your ranking changes with mobile, then the update may have effected your site. However, if you see more traffic, this could possibly mean that your competitors are slow, super slow, on mobile.

URL Inspection Tool – As we know, the URL inspection tool in the new Google Search Console was launched recently, it was not available to all as most could not see it because it was rolled out slowly. However, Google have now said that it has been fully rolled out and the URL inspection tool is available for everyone. Users now can start inspecting their URLs by visiting the new Search Console.

Google Search Console – Google have mentioned that they have increased the maximum results of results or rows of data you can get per request from the Google Search Analytics API to 25,000 results. Previously it used to be around 5,000 rows of results per request, so that is a 20,000 row increase. They have improved and added developer documentation on how to get this data from the Google Search Analytics API.

Google Post – Google Posts has rolled out a call now button in Google Posts. This basically lets you add your phone number as a call to action in the Google Post for when your local knowledge panel shows up. The phone number that is used will the one that is shown from your Google My Business profile.

Bing Updates

Open in New Tab button – Bing have been testing a new search results feature where they add an icon as you hover over search ads or organic results. This new icon is an open in new window, it is in the form of a box with an arrow. Although you go to your Bing search settings and enable all search results to open in a new window, this feature is handy for people who do not have it enabled.

Webmasters Tool – Some may have noticed that the Bing Webmaster API has been down for over five days now. However, even though it has been down for that long, there has been no complaints or questions as to why it has been down which is surprising because it was offline for about 5 days.