SEO e-Newsletter Issue 5 – 2020.03.16~2020.03.31

"Top Questions Answered" - Celebrity Video Q&A on SERP

Google Cameo is a product still under testing. It mainly allows some celebrities or public figures to answer various questions from fans through video and audio. For example, when you search "Who inspired Kevin Durant to play basketball?", there will be a video of KD himself answering.

Now when searching for some fruits, foods, and vegetables, the Knowledge Panel on the right will start to show some related audio and video Q&A. For example, the search term in the screenshot below is "Brussels Sprout", and there is a "Top Questions Answered" section on the right, which contains videos of chefs answering common questions about this ingredient.

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link:Google Cameo Report / Kevin Durant’s Cameo Video

Safari fully blocks third-party cookies

Starting from Safari 13.1, Safari will "fully" block third-party cookies. The official announcement specifically mentioned a previous article by Tom Anthony, describing how websites can use simple Javascript to check whether users are logged in to Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. This trick will also be invalid after this update.

Tom Anthony is an SEO that the author admires very much. I have listened to his speeches many times and also worked on digital engines. Introduced byAnother one of his deeds!

link:WebKit Announcement / Tom Anthony Article / SEL report

Bing launches URL/content submission API

Bing has launched these two APIs, allowing webmasters to immediately submit these changes to Bing when a new webpage is launched or the webpage content is changed, without having to wait for Bingbot to crawl and index it. Both APIs were in closed beta before, but now the URL Submission API is open to everyone.

The upper limit of the URL submission API is 10,000 URLs per day, and 3XX or 4XX URLs can be submitted to let Bing know about changes on the website.

JSON request sample:
POST /webmaster/api.svc/json/SubmitUrlbatch?​apikey=REDACTED HTTP/1.1​
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8​
Host: ssl.bing.com​
{
“siteUrl”:“http://yoursite.com",​
“urlList”:[
“http://yoursite.com/url1”,
“http://yoursite.com/url2”,
“http://yoursite.com/url3”
]
}

link:Bing URL/Content Submission API website

Schema.org 7.0 released

Schema 7.0 version has launched several markers and updates related to Wuhan pneumonia, such as "SpecialAnnouncement" for use by schools or other important institutions; "CovidTestingFacility" to mark testing sites; and "eventAttendanceMode" to indicate whether the event venue is online or offline.

link:Schema.org official announcement / Search Engine Land Report

Google official article: Structured data of "events" - postponement, cancellation and online events

This article talks about how to handle the Schema Markup of the event if the event must be canceled or postponed due to the epidemic. In addition, as the event gradually moves online, Google has also begun to support the "VirtualLocation" attribute just launched in 7.0.

Google has also made a lot of updates to the Developer Guide for Event structured data. Webmasters who use this tag should pay special attention to it.

link:official blog / "Activity" structured data update

Bing official article: SpecialAnnouncement structured data

This newly launched Schema syntax was adopted by Bing first. It is mainly used by organizations related to the epidemic for the following four situations. Bing’s official documents also have very detailed markup guidelines:

• Changes in services - such as school closures, changes in business hours....etc.
• official epidemic data
• Epidemic Testing Agency
• Travel Ban

link:official blog / SpecialAnnouncement Marking Guide

Google Search Developer Guide Recent Updates page

Google Search’s developer documentation is often updated. For example, starting from early March,Structured data of "Product"must have at least one of the three attributes "review", "aggregateRating", or "offers", otherwise the tag will be invalid.

There are so many of these updates that they often allow outdated information to circulate. Therefore, Google has launched a page that allows everyone to track which parts of the document have been modified at any time, which is quite practical!

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link:Recent updates to Google Search files

Two minor updates to GSC - GSC information in email settings and search results

This update allows users to - (1.) Choose whether to see the GSC information they manage in search results, and (2.) Choose whether to receive notifications of specific emails.

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link:official announcement

Google My Business policy adjustments during the epidemic

Many local businesses must temporarily close due to the impact of the epidemic, and Google has also made the following policy adjustments to cope with this phenomenon.

1.) allows merchants to mark themselves as "temporarily closed"- In the past, only Google customer service could add this mark to merchants, but now stores are allowed to mark it themselves.

2.) Confirm and update business hours through conversational robot (Duplex)- This is pretty cool. If you don’t know Duplex yet, you can listen to the following voice.

3.) Comments and Q&A, business information editing, and new business verification are temporarily suspended.- Concentrate investment in health-related merchant information and suspend other lower-priority services.

link:Google Merchant Policy Adjustments / Merchant Temporary Closing Policy

Google webmaster Q&A – Mar 17 & Mar 20

Google Webmaster Hangout is an official Q&A event held from time to time. DeepCrawl helps organize the content each time, and it is also a regular source of information for the author. Here are a few interesting highlights:

• In the long run, Google will ignore links on noindex pages🔗
• It is not recommended to rely on third-party cookies for content on the website🔗
• Google won't monitor sites that have been penalized for violating our terms more closely🔗
• How to use Google’s tools to detect non-public pages🔗
• My new blog was ranked very well when it was first launched, but it dropped after a day or two. What happened?🔗

link:3/17 Q&A notes / 3/20 Q&A notes

Google spreadsheets can finally be sorted and filtered by color

This simple but practical function has been missed on Google Sheets for so long, and now it can be completed without relying on plug-ins.

link:official announcement

Google official article: How to pause your Internet career

This Google article is mainly to tell merchants what to do if they have to suspend their online business due to pneumonia, or if they need to restrict specific functions/products on their website. In addition to the blog article, there is also a developer guide that explains the technical implementation details.

It may be hard to imagine, but many companies have to suspend their business due to the epidemic. Some bosses are considering whether to temporarily close the entire website. Such doubts were seen by Google on the forum, so this article was written.

link:official blog / Developer Guide

Official Video: Index Coverage Status Report

This SEO novice video features Daniel Waisberg explaining how to use the "Index Coverage Status Report" in Google Search Console to observe the status of pages in the website being crawled and included by Google; the problems encountered in the process, and how to troubleshoot errors.

link:official video / GSC file

Official Video - How to modify information on Google Business

This is the 11th episode of Google’s official SEO Beginner Series. It talks about how local merchants (Google My Business) should declare ownership of business information, maintain the accuracy of the above information, and how to use it to interact with customers and attract new customers.

Official Video - JavaScript Problems for SEOs

The official Q&A of this episode invited Martin Splitt to help answer SEO questions about JavaScript. There are five questions in total, which are basically related to caching, prerendering, and JS rewriting website content. Interested readers can watch this short six-minute video.