SEO Wash-up Monday 21st January

Google Updates

Google URL inspection tool adds HTTP response, resources, JS logs & screenshots – Google mentioned that there is an update to the URL Inspection Tool within Google Search Console. It adds the ability to see the page’s HTTP response, page resources, JavaScript logs and a rendered screenshot of the page. This is a really useful update that gives webmasters and SEOs more insight into the page itself and how Google sees it.

Google URL inspection tool doesn’t handle redirect HTTP response code – Google revealed a few useful new features in the URL inspection tool. One of those features was to show the HTTP response code of a URL. Although it doesn’t show redirect HTTP response codes and you can also confirm it by trying the tool on URLs you know are using a 301 redirect.

Google will discontinue some old search console features – A spokesman from Google has confirmed in a webmaster hangout that Google does plan to close down, discontinue, not port, every single feature from the old Search Console to the new Search Console. This may have not been fully clear as it has been implied back in February that all features would be ported from the old to the new Search Console and not all but some might be discontinued.

One example of what will be going away is the crawl errors section because it is not useful. The search giants might also take away the reports that third-party tools have and are redundant to what Google offers but this is not 100% clear.

Google rolls out your related activity card – Google has been testing a feature to show searchers a card of past searches and site visits based on those searches back in September 2018, and later that month they said that it would be coming. Now, they have rolled out what they are calling “your related activity” cards in the mobile search results.

They aim for this to help searchers pick up where you left off on search as you will find links to pages you’ve visited in the past along with searches you’ve done. However if you want to mark a page to read or reference later, you can touch and hold the link to quickly add items on your activity card to a collection.

ind out more about what is happening at Google.

Google webmaster blog removes comments feature – A spokesman from Google has said on the Google Webmaster Blog that they have disabled the ability to post or view comments on that blog. They say that most of the comments ended up being off-topic or just spammy. Which lead the search giants to drop the comments feature completely versus spend the time moderating them.