SEO Wash-up Monday 10th June

Google Updates

Google tests new beta versions of chromium on GoogleBot – It seems like they have been testing features that do not work in Chrome 74, but work in Chrome 75. Although Chrome 75 is not out yet for end users, it actually is being testing in beta. A spokesman from Google mentions that this is to be expected in order to keep GoogleBot evergreen going forward.

Google AdSense Ads have not been displaying – You may have noticed widespread complaints over the past couple days or so from the Google AdSense community due to the fact that their ads are not appearing on publisher web sites. Within the AdSense forum there are many threads in help forums with this issue, but one big one that sums it all up. It seems there are hundreds of complaints about this but with it being Memorial Day weekend, no one from Google has really responded to the issue.

Google will penalise Favicons in search – The search giant rolled out their new mobile search design that shows favicons in the search snippets. It seems that some users have started to take advantage of that intentionally while others just had favicons against Google’s favicon webmaster guidelines. So now Google has begun to penalise websites with favicons that were against Google’s guidelines.

Below are some of the favicons guidelines if you think you have missed them:

• The favicon file and the home page both must be crawlable by Google

• The favicon should be a visual representation of your website’s brand to help identify your website when users scan through search results

• The favicon should be a multiple of 48px square

• The favicon URL should be stable

• Any favicon that it seems inappropriate Google will replace it with a default icon

Mobile search video box shows large & small video thumbnails – It seems that Google is showing a video box within the mobile search results, which highlights a large video at the top with two smaller video thumbnails below that video. Whereas on a desktop you will see three videos lined up and the same size but on mobile Google will be giving one more prominence.

Google 3D Objects with AR support in search – The 3D images in Google search results is now available to searchers. You can simply just open your browser on mobile search, then type in shark for example or other supported 3D objects then click on the view in 3D button for that object to see it.