SEO Wash-up Monday 18th June

Google Updates

Google’s algorithm – Rumours has it that there is a possibility that Google algorithm may have an update where you might see a slight shift. Interestingly the hype about it is not as high as a normal Google algorithm update, which means it could either be a limited update or some sort of penalty/ filter impacting a niche set of sites, it could even be some weird bug.

Google image search does not pick up Div tags – John Mueller from Google has mentioned that is it is likely that Google Image search will not pick up image Div tag. The div tag is nothing more than a container unit that compresses other page elements and divides the HTML document into sections. Any web developer will use div elements to group together HTML elements and apply CSS styles to many elements at once. John does suggest that you should test it to be sure. However from what he knows, Google will not pick up images directly in a div tag.

Hotels carousel is added to Google’s local panel – If you follow Google’s hotel search results really closely, you will spot that the search engine giant now shows a similar hotels carousel in the local knowledge panel of the hotel result in Google Maps. This is actually a good idea as there is nothing like going to Google and looking up a specific hotel, but then you are being given alternatives that lead you to book somewhere else.

Improvements made on YouTube likes spam to block paid likes – YouTube have improved their spam filters around fake likes or dislikes. They have rolled out a system update to catch even more spam likes and dislikes across the YouTube platform. A like will only be marked as spam when it’s purchased from a third party service. In doing so, this will automatically be a direct violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service. So if likes or dislikes on your channel are marked as invalid, then you may see fluctuations starting from the 14th of June 2018.

Bing Updates

Bing AMP Viewer & JSON-LD in Bing Webmaster Tools – Microsoft unveiled two new features that are Bing AMP viewer and JSON –LD. Bing AMP viewer will be rolling out this summer and will make AMP-enabled web pages work directly from Bing’s mobile search results.

This works similarly to the way Google returns AMP pages within its mobile search results. The JSON-LD markup has been supported by Bing in March, but now Bing Webmaster Tools will also support debugging such JSON-LD in the tool.

While Bing supports JSON-LD markup, this doesn’t mean they do not support other forms of markup or that they prefer JSON-LD over other methods.