SEO Wash-up Monday 19th November

Google Updates

Google local panel adds ‘see other locations’ link – The search giants have added a link in some of the local knowledge panels, this includes the hotel ones that say “see other locations.” When it comes to viewing a specific location, the ‘other locations link’ lets you click a link to see different places from the same or similar brand.

Google page speed insights report revamped with Lighthouse Data – Google has just rolled out a redesign for their page speed insights tool. Google’s new design shows a lot more graphical reporting, the speed score uses lab data analysed by Lighthouse and Google is showing a lot more detail. In the release notes it says that the v5 of page speed Insights API was released in November this year.

So therefore it now uses Lighthouse as its analysis engine and incorporates field data provided by the Chrome User Experience Report. The v5 of the API will now provide Chrome User Experience Report data and all of the Lighthouse audits. The previous versions of the PSI API will be deprecated in six months.

Google hotel highlight icons tests triggering overlays – On the Google hotel search results, you may realise that Google are doing tests that triggers overlays on top of the listing. By doing this, when you click on a highlight icon, it shows you more details and you can swap to see more highlights or X out of the highlight view all together.

Google tests moving magnifying glass in related searches – It has been said that the search giants is testing to move the magnifying glass from the right side of the related searches box to the left side of that related searches box.

Google tests bold URLs and breadcrumbs in search result snippets – A spokesman from the snippets team meeting at Google says that they are testing bolding the URL and breadcrumbs in the search result snippets. Google is always testing this type of stuff, although sometimes they bold the words you search for in the snippet, the description, title and URL but just to bold the URL and/or breadcrumb section seems odd.

Google tests multifaceted featured snippets in desktop results – Google has said that they are experimenting with showing multifaceted featured snippets on desktop search, the  multifaceted featured snippets was rolled out for mobile search a while back.

Google search console tests new domain property – Rumour has it that Google is working on a new concept for property sets within the new Google Search Console. On Twitter, Tristram de Silva shared a screen shot that explains a “domain property includes all protocols, subdomains, and paths for the specific domain. This is an experimental property; we hope you like it.”