SEO Wash-up Monday 2nd March

Google

Google drops a website’s normal snippet when featured snippet is displayed – Back in 2019, around November you may have seen that Google had been testing the removal of the normal snippet from the Google search results when Google shows a featured snippet for that site/URL.

It seems that after many tests, they have launched it and no longer show a featured snippet and at the same time the same URL in the main web search results. A spokesman from Google has confirmed this on social media mentioning that if a webpage listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, they no longer repeat the listing in the search results.

Google dataset search is out of beta with new features – They have said the Dataset Search that was launched back 2018 as beta is now finally out of beta. As it is now out of beta, they have added some new features. With the new features, it can probably be used for good research when developing rich content and might also send traffic to your site if you implement the correct datasets schema mark-up.

The new features include filtering the results based on the types of dataset that you want, for example tables, images, text or more. You can also filter the results based on whether the dataset is available for free from the provider. Google will show you a map if the dataset is about a geographic area. This can be used on mobile and it has mobile-friendly support.

Google launches profile icon to local knowledge panel – They have mentioned this a while back but now the search giant seems to have rolled out the profile icon. The profile icons for your local knowledge panel is now showing up on many local knowledge panels. Although they have been testing this for about a year now, it should be live for most businesses.

Google tests desktop results without favicons – Users have seen that Google is testing the old Google desktop search interface. If you can remember, the old interface before they launched those favicons and black ad labels for the snippets.

So it seems that they are testing to show the old interface to some searchers and it may not even be a bug. It is just like when they pushed out on mobile last year, some users have seen the green ad label and old interface stick around.

Google may move right side featured snippet to top position – Google may move any right side of the Google search results page feature snippets from that position to the top position. So until this change actually happens, they will be removing the deduplication of the right side featured snippets in the main search results snippet. Although this should have happened by now, but it may just be still in the process of being rolled out, as some users will still be seeing the deduplication happening for right side featured snippets.