I am a week late with the monthly Google webmaster report because I was on vacation and these are a pain to put together. But it is important and I wanted to catch you all up on the changes with Google SEO, webmaster, and organic search over the past month.
The big news is obviously the helpful content update from Google that I thought would be massive but after it started to roll out, it proved to be not a huge shakeup at all. I have a ton of stories below just on that topic, so check them out below. We also saw the fourth product reviews update complete and Google say a fifth version will come soon.
Google had some serious issues with Google Search, including an outage, indexing issues and pages dropping out - it was wild. Google launched new featured snippet stuff including callouts, false premise improvements, MUM additions and more. There was also an unconfirmed update earlier in August. And did you know that no search algorithm update focused on links in a long time and that Image Search now uses Google Lens.
Google improved the Search Console errors and thus fixed the validate fix outage. New Search Console video indexing reports are fully live and much more. Plus we had a lot of Google SEO, user interface, local and other topics this past month.
If you missed last month's report, check out the August Google webmaster report here.
Here are the more important stories I pulled out for you all: Google Helpful Content Update:
- New Google Helpful Content Update To Change SEO Much Like Panda Did
- Google Helpful Content Update Is Now Rolling Out
- Google Helpful Content Update Feedback Form
- Google Helpful Content Update Seems Weak & Slow To Roll Out So Far...
- Google Isn't Done Rolling Out The Helpful Content Update
- Poll: Only 20% Noticed Ranking Changes After Google's Helpful Content Update
- Poll: Many SEOs Say The Content They Produce Is Helpful & Not Concerned
- Danny Sullivan: Google Helpful Content Update Is Big But Not A Huge Shake-Up
- Google: Crawl Rate Spikes Not A Sign Of The Helpful Content Update Rollout
- Google Helpful Content Update Movement? Yes But Not Widespread.
- Google Search Is Very Broken Now: Outages, Indexing Issues, Pages Missing & More
- Google Featured Snippet Callouts, False Premises, MUM & More
- Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On Saturday, August 6th - PRU Tremors Or Something Else?
- Google To Launch Fifth Product Reviews Update Just Weeks After The Last Update
- July 2022 Google Product Reviews Update Finished On August 2nd & No One Said Anything
- Are Not Happy With The Last Google Product Reviews Update? Tell Google.
- Google's John Mueller: No Recent Search Algorithms Focused On Links Outside Of Webspam
- Google Image Search Now Uses Google Lens
- Google Can Crawl Site Sections More Frequently & Determine Quality By Section
- Google: Noindex On One URL In An Hreflang Cluster Can Impact All The URLs In That Cluster
- Google Provides Examples Of How To Improve Your Meta Descriptions
- Google: Soft 404s Do Waste Crawl Budget
- Google May Remove Word Count From Search Console News Article Content Errors
- Google: Growth Of Microdata Is Fairly Stagnant
- Google Adds Content Guidelines To Education Q&A Structured Data Docs
- Google Now Supports Pros and Cons Structured Data For Reviews Pages
- Google Learning Video Structured Data Docs Breaks Out educationalLevel
- Google Local Business Structured Data Doesn't Support additionalType; Instead Use An Array
- Google: Adding Video Structured Data Won't Make Your Video More Prominent
- Google: Don't Noindex Pages With Comments, Keep The Good Comments Only
- Google: Quality Raters Guidelines Are Not A Collection Of Ranking Tips
- Google: No SEO Benefit For Either Dynamic Rendering Or Server Side Rendering
- Google: Dynamic Rendering Is A Workaround and Not A Long-Term Solution
- Google Merchant Center Policy For Missing Return/Refund Policy Or Insufficient Contact Info Updated
- Google: What To Do With Old Event Pages
- Google: Sitemap 50,000 Limit Based On Location URLs, Not Alternative URLs
- Google Search Console Validate Fix Now Back
- Google Search Console Video Index Report Now 100% Live
- Google Core Web Vitals Report Adds URL Level Data For Examples URLs
- Google Fixes Search Console Bug Labeling Pages As Indexed When Not Indexed
- Google Search Console Coverage Report New Source & Unsubmitted Pages
- Google Search Console Performance Report For Discover Reporting Issue On July 26
- Google Search Tests Showing All Of The Menu Bar Options
- Google Tests Quick Read & 5 Minute Read Label In Search Results
- Google Search Conversations & Discussion and Forums
- Google Search Tests Explore Brands With & Without Product Images
- Google Search Image Preview Overlay Now Fully Live In Web Search Results
- Google Expanded From Sources Across The Web Feature
- Dual Google People Also Ask Results In Different Languages
- Google Tests Larger Live Stream Box In Search Results
- Google Tests Expandable Maps In Search & Tabs In Map Results (Again)
- Google Tests More New Sitelink Designs
- Google Business Listings Test Photo Overlay Interface In Web Search
- Google Adds "View All Business Profiles" In Web Search Results
- Google Adds Products Section To Business Profile Guidelines
- Google Local Spam Now Includes Duplicate Photos, Posts, Videos, and Logos
- Sub-Reviews: Google Local Reviews By Category & Attribute
- Google Search Browse Places Feature With Swipeable Cards
- Did Google Remove The Maps Review-Gating Policy?
- Google Business Profile Tests Captions On Business Photos
- Google Maps: Your Review Isn't Posted Email
- Google Adds Asian Owned Business Attribute For Business Profiles
- Google Search Timer & Stopwatch Started Ticking Again
- Google Tests New Format For SEO Office Hours - Do You Like It?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
