When writing this preface, Taiwan has been +0 for two consecutive days, very proud! However, the United States is still in dire straits, and companies regardless of size have been hit to a considerable extent. It is also obvious that SEO has slowed down. Almost all official updates are related to the epidemic, so the content of this issue is not so practical in the long run, but it is still organized to let everyone know what is happening in the field of SEO. Enjoy!
- Featured snippets may appear in positions other than the first position
- Google releases a series of videos for the 1st Webmaster Conference in 2019
- Bing gives webmasters more control over content in snippets
- Google Merchant Response Review Function Reply
- Google launches SEO success case analysis
- Google starts supporting SpecialAnnouncement tags
- Chrome withdraws SameSite Cookies update
- Good article sharing: Explore the algorithm behind featured snippets
- Fun Fact – Baidu received official attention for spreading articles with sensational headlines
- Fun fact – Googler can see the real PageRank of the website
- Google webmaster Q&A – Mar 31
- Official Document: Generating Structured Data with JavaScript
- Official Video: How to use the URL removal tool in GSC
Featured snippets may appear in positions other than the first position
Some netizens have noticed that featured snippets (FS) appear in positions other than the first position. In the past, featured snippets would only appear at the top of the search results, so they were often called "position 0". Web pages that appeared in FS would also appear in the general results below. Now these two generally accepted rules are no longer absolute.
Through the data of SEMrush, we can also see that this trend is indeed rising.
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link:Image source 1 / Image source 2 / Featured snippets no longer appear in general results
Google releases a series of videos for the 1st Webmaster Conference in 2019
In November 2019, Google held a Google Webmaster Conference Product Summit at its headquarters. A total of eight videos from this seminar were recently uploaded to YouTube for everyone to watch for free.
This event invites all webmasters and SEOs to participate. It should be the largest public SEO event ever held by Google. Last year, Digital Engine also introduced this event on Facebook and shared notes from participants.
link:playlist / digital engine introduction / Jackie Chu notes / Barry Schwartz notes
Bing gives webmasters more control over content in snippets
Bing has opened the following three robots meta tags, allowing webmasters to have more control over the style of web pages that appear in Bing search results:
- max-snippet:[number]— Limit the length of text that appears
- max-image-preview:[value] — Limit the size at which images appear
- max-video-preview:[number]— Limit the length of the video (in seconds)
It is worth mentioning that Google also started supporting these tags last year.
link:Bing Announcement / Google Announcement
Google Merchant Response Review Function Reply
Last issue of e-newslettermentioned that some functions of Google merchants are not supported during the epidemic. Among them, basic functions such as "Comments", "Respond to Comments", "Q&A", etc., have been discovered by netizens and started to be used. Official documents have also been updated to say that they will be gradually opened according to country and merchant type.
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Google launches SEO success case analysis
Google's Webmaster team published the first analysis article on SEO success cases. It said that the purpose is to promote the value of SEO and prevent SEO's contributions from being wasted, and then "Help convince the boss’s boss of the importance of investing in SE". This case is about how Saramin, a Korean job search website, solved the Crawl Errors of the website and added Structured Data, which resulted in an increase in natural traffic.
The launch of successful cases made the SEO community sigh, because Google's past position was not to say which specific website did a good job in SEO, or which SEO agency was particularly strong. The article said that there will be more successful cases to share in the future. The author is very much looking forward to it, because in Taiwan's industrial environment, bosses seem to be generally concerned about the value that SEO can bring.
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link:Google: Showcasing the value of SEO
Google starts supporting SpecialAnnouncement tags
Last issue of e-newslettermentioned that Bing supports SpecialAnnouncement, a newly launched tag in Schema 7.0, and Google also quickly announced its support. Although it is mainly used by public agencies or medical institutions, Danny Sullivan mentioned that any website can use this tag as long as it has relevant announcements.
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The picture below is an illustration of this markup in search results. In addition to Schema Markup, webmasters can also submit this data through Google Search Console. What
link:Google Announcement / Developer Documentation / GSC submission tool
Chrome withdraws SameSite Cookies update
Due to the global epidemic, Chrome has decided to temporarily withdraw the SameSite policy for third-party cookies. This policy was introduced in Chrome 80.The third issue of e-newsletterhas introduced it. It is worth noting thatSafariis not so kind, and will still block third-party cookies from version 13.1 onwards.
Good article sharing: Explore the algorithm behind featured snippets
This is a podcast by a well-known SEO - Jason Barnard, interviewing Bing's Ali Alvi. Ali leads the Q&A Team at Bing, and Bing’s Q&A is equivalent to Google’s Featured Snippets. The interview is in English, the host's conversation is quite interesting, and Ali's answers are also full of rich information.
It is quite interesting to hear directly from the official figures of Google or Bing how they explain how search engines operate. Because SEO is a topic that can easily be interpreted by various companies, the official voice becomes very important.
Jason has recently done a series of interviews with Bing employees. He also has a column in Search Engine Journal, which is highly recommended to read.
link:Jason interviews Ali / Learn how Bing’s search results work
Fun Fact - Baidu received official attention for spreading articles with sensational headlines
This is a piece of news I came across by chance. Baidu was interviewed by the Cyberspace Administration of China for disseminating a large amount of vulgar and vulgar information and publishing too many "clickbait" articles.
link:official announcement / China Times News
Fun fact - Googler can see the real PageRank of the website
PageRank is an indicator used by Google to calculate the weight of a website. It used to be a public information, and there was even a Chrome plug-in that could directly display it. However, this information has since stopped being updated. Many SEOs also believe that PageRank is dead and Google no longer supports it...etc., but in fact Google just hides this information and does not disclose it to the public.
In a recent Twitter post, Gary Illyes specifically said that John Mueller and he could still read the PageRank of the website if necessary!
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Google webmaster Q&A – Mar 31
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: The ranking of
- web pages may be different between desktop and mobile versions.
- Google can see the content in the accordion
- The unsupported Schema does not directly affect the appearance of the search results of the web page, but it allows Google to better understand the website.
- Due to the recent epidemic, the re-examination of the website will be slightly delayed.
link:3/31 Q&A notes
Official Document: Generating Structured Data with JavaScript
Google’s developer guide released a new article "Use JavaScript to generate Structured Data" guide explains how to install Structured Data on web pages through Google Tag Manager or your own JS files.
This article caused some discussion in the SEO circle. It is generally believed that if you have the ability to install these tags directly in HTML, you should not perform such actions through JavaScript.
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Official Video: How to use the URL removal tool in GSC
This SEO novice video is explained by Daniel Waisberg on how to use the "URL Removal" tool in Google Search Console. This tool contains three main functions -"Temporarily removed", "Old content"、"SafeSearch Filter"。
One of the things that few people know is that in addition to reporting URLs submitted by yourself, URLs submitted by others will also be reported in outdated content, so you can see whether anyone intentionally or unintentionally reports your webpage as outdated content.
The author has just moved to a new home, and many things have not been packed yet. However, after chatting with fellow editors in the past few weeks, I learned that this kind of e-newsletter is really helpful to people, and it gave me a lot of motivation, so I still spent some time to finish this article. I hope you all like it and continue to support!