SEO e-Newsletter Issue 16 – 2020.09.01~2020.09.15

Google images with "Authorization" tag

inThe third issue of e-newslettermentioned this update. In the image search results, Google will add a label in the lower left corner of the image to tell everyone whether the landing page is a product, recipe, or whether the image requires authorization (licensable).

Google determines that the authorization information of images comes from two places: "Structured Data" and "IPTC Image Information". The image owner can use these two methods to add information such as copyright and licensing terms.

link:official announcement / Developer Guide / GSC file

Bing search results plus "live carousel"

If you search for "Game + Live" on Bing, you will have the opportunity to see the search results of new game carousels. The current data sources include Twitch and Youtube.

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link:SER report

Google Ads provides fewer search terms

Google decided in early September that it would provide fewer search terms in search ads. If a search term has a low number of searches, it will be excluded from this report.

Google’s explanation was that it was due to privacy considerations, but this update still caused dissatisfaction among many people. After all, advertisers spent money but could not see where the money was spent (which search terms).Seer Interactive, a foreign company, made aPreliminary statistics, if the advertiser spends 100,000 yuan, he will probably only be able to see the search terms for which 71,000 yuan was spent.。

Some foreign netizens initiated a change.orgjoint signature activity, I hope Google can withdraw this update, you may wish to sign it.

Although this is news from SEM, it is closely related to SEO, because occasionally SEO can use this data to check whether there are any missed keywords. But Google’s considerations are not unreasonable from a privacy perspective. If a consumer searches for a unique, weird word, clicks on an ad, and then converts, the advertiser will know what the weird word is.

In addition, some netizens shared a piece of code on SEL, as long as you copy and paste it into the Scripts in Google Ads, you will receive a link to Google Sheets and make the following graphs and tables to easily see the impact on your ad account.

Bing Webmaster Tools add two new features

are "robots.txt testing tool" and "URL detection tool" respectively.

robots.txt test tool- It is similar to the one in GSC. The difference is that Bing Webmaster Tools will help you view the four versions of robots.txt: http/https and www/non-www. Although under normal circumstances these four files should be redirected to the same place, even if not, the content inside should be the same.

URL Inspection Tool- Similar to GSC, it will inform the webmaster of the time when the web page was discovered, the status of crawling and inclusion, and the selected canonical URL. In addition, it also provides a simple SEO check.

link:robots.txt Announcement / URL Inspection Announcement

[Research] How often does Google modify Meta Description?

Meta Description may not necessarily be displayed on the search results according to the webmaster's intention. Google will decide what content to put in the SERP web page description based on the user's search terms and understanding of the web page.

Two recent foreign SEO companiesPortentandAhrefspublished (updated) two studies respectively to see what proportion of the meta description of the search results has been modified. The result ofresearch is: in the search results on the first page, about 60~70% of the web pages have their meta description modified.. This is discussed in more depth in both studies and is recommended reading.

Chrome v85 may impact organic traffic in GA

After reading this explanation, I actually don’t quite understand it.Chrome’s recent changes to the referrer policy Why doesaffect GA record organic traffic (please leave a message to clarify!). I personally guess that the impact is not big. You may wish to observe it recently. But one thing that is certain is that the detailed version information of the server will not be visible.

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link:official announcement

[Case Analysis] Entity Carousel appearing at the top of SERP

I haven’t read this kind of special case analysis for a long time, and I recommend it to everyone.

The school in the case "Stamford American International School" is an international school in Singapore. In the past, when users searched for "international school singapore", the school would appear in the Entity Carousel at the top of the search results. But after a certain update, the school lost this position. Of course, this is a very valuable search term. This change greatly affected the school's various performances.

The Wordlift team that was asked for help began to approach the problem from various angles, and later discovered that the organization had more than one Machine-Readable Entity IDs (MIDs), representing the same organization and had two Entities (entities), and one of them was an old Google business file that had been marked as permanently closed. After the problem is discovered, there is a series of repair processes.

I personally think this is a very interesting case. The concepts in it are rarely discussed in the Chinese SEO field. I hope sharing this can let everyone know what SEO can do besides writing content.

Official article x2: How Google delivers trustworthy information

Danny Sullivan posted on Google Blogan articleexplains the mechanism of Google search, how to help users find information, and how to ensure the trustworthiness of information.

Another article The author ofis Pandu Nayak (VP of Google Search). The content also talks about Google’s efforts in information reliability, but more specifically mentions several measures, “an internal organization that monitors various emergencies that occur in the world and reports them immediately.Intelligence Desk”, “Cooperate with the government, Wikipedia and other organizations to strengthen the information accuracy of Knowledge Graph”, “Fact checking and Full Coverage to ensure that news has a comprehensive perspective”...etc.

There have never been fewer voices questioning the unfairness of Google’s search results, and the U.S. election is just around the corner. These two announcements may feel like they need to be vaccinated first, but the content inside is worth reading. I personally think that what Google is doing is quite great!

Official video:.jobDoes a top-level domain help a website rank for the word "job"?

Won't.

Webmasters should not choose domain names or top-level domains for SEO reasons. If you really want to approach it from an SEO perspective, choose a domain name that will be used for a long time and will not be changed easily!

Official Video: The Importance of HTTPS

John Mueller explains what HTTPS is, how it affects the security of the website, what to pay attention to when moving the website from HTTP to HTTPS, and common problems. John divides this transformation into six stages:

1. Set up HTTPS: Install credentials for the website
2. Authenticate HTTPS in GSC: Certified HTTPS website, or certified domain resources
3. Check check check again: Are there any mixed content issues? Are internal links, sitemaps, canonical...etc. updated to HTTPS?
4. Forward: Convert HTTP URL 301 to HTTPS
5. Observe changes through GSC: Especially the index coverage report
6. Set up HSTS(Optional): Further tell the browser that your website uses HTTPS, so you don’t have to try to request HTTP resources again.

If your understanding of HTTPS is only "it means security, and adding it is good for SEO", then it is recommended to watch this video to have a more comprehensive understanding of HTTPS!

MythBusters Series: Content SEO

「Is more content on a website better?」、「Does having a blog on a website have a positive impact on the SEO of the entire website?」、「How many words does an article need?」、「How does Google determine duplicate content?"...Wait a minute, Martin answered these questions in this episode of Mythbusters, and I recommend everyone to watch it.

John and Martin’s speech at SEOday

SEOday is an online Spanish SEO discussion, which includes speeches (in English) from John and Martin, discussing recent hot SEO topics, including "action first index」、「Core Web Vitals」、「Web Stories」、「structured data」、「Google Discover"...etc.

link:Video link