Interactive Online

Google announced the deprecation of the crawl rate limiter legacy tool within Google Search Console, with January 8, 2024, set as the date for its removal. This feature is considered obsolete due to Google's enhanced crawling logic and other available tools for publishers. The crawl rate limiter is a tool within the legacy version of Google Search Console that allows communication to Google to crawl a website less frequently. However, it is not recommended by Google unless there are server load issues specifically caused by Googlebot's crawling activity. The tool is still accessible until its removal. The reason for removing the tool is that it had a slower effect and was rarely utilized by site owners. Google will set the minimum crawling speed at a lower rate comparable to the old crawl rate limits, effectively continuing to honor the settings previously established by site owners for low search interest and to prevent the site's bandwidth from wasting. If site owner...

Google Search now supports discussion forum and profile page structured data, allowing the search results to display "first-person perspectives from social media platforms, forums, and other communities." Additionally, Google has added new Search Console reports to support those who have added structured data to their pages. The new profile page structured data and markup is designed for any site where creators, whether individuals or organizations, share first-hand perspectives. This markup will help Google highlight the creator’s name or social handle, profile photo, follower count, or the popularity of their content in the search results. This information is also available in the Perspectives and Discussions and Forums search result features. The new discussion forum structured data and markup are intended for any forum-style site where people collectively share first-hand perspectives. Google has updated its Q&A markup, aligning it to the new discussion forum guide...

Google Search has expanded its support for organizational information within its search results. The Organization markup now includes new fields such as name, address, contact information, and various business identifiers in addition to the original support for logo and URL structured data fields. This update was announced by Irina Tuduce and Alex Jansen, Google Shopping software engineers. The updated developer documentation for Organization structured data now includes fields for name, alternate name, legal name, description, sameas, address fields, phone, email, number of employees, founding date, DUNS, NAICS, tax ID, and other ID numbers. The existing logo and URL fields are still available, with the logo documentation being merged into the new organization documentation. Google has stated that this markup can be utilized in search knowledge panels and other visual elements in Google Search, helping searchers find an organization's details more easily. Additionally, Google ...

Google has announced new rich result and structured data support for its Google Search results with the addition of vacation rental rich results. This means websites that feature vacation rentals can now add this markup to their listings to enhance their visibility on Google Search. The vacation rental rich results allow website owners to add markup to their pages, providing Google with the necessary data to determine if the vacation listings should appear in search results. This can include location, pricing, images, reviews, ratings, and more. Google has provided an illustration of the rich results in Google Search to give an example of what this looks like. In addition to the rich results, Google has also posted technical structured data documentation explaining how to implement this markup on listing pages. By adding structured data to vacation rental listing pages, website owners can provide users with more information directly in search results, including the name, descriptio...

Google has officially sunset the Mobile Usability report, the Mobile-Friendly Test tool, and the Mobile-Friendly Test API on December 4th, 2023, as previously announced in April of the same year. In a tweet, Google thanked website owners for their collaboration in improving the web through these tools. Google stated that while mobile usability continues to be a crucial factor for success in Google Search, it believes that there are now various other resources available for evaluating mobile usability, such as Lighthouse from Chrome, which have emerged over the nearly ten years since the initial launch of these tools. The access to these tools has been removed, and users attempting to find the Search Console mobile usability report within Search Console will no longer be able to do so. The mobile-friendly testing tool has been redirected to Lighthouse, and the API will no longer be providing results. This announcement is significant for website owners and SEO professionals who have...

Google has announced new rich result and structured data support for its Google Search results with the addition of vacation rental rich results. This means websites that feature vacation rentals can now add this markup to their listings to enhance their visibility on Google Search. The vacation rental rich results allow website owners to add markup to their pages, providing Google with the necessary data to determine if the vacation listings should appear in search results. This can include location, pricing, images, reviews, ratings, and more. Google has provided an illustration of the rich results in Google Search to give an example of what this looks like. In addition to the rich results, Google has also posted technical structured data documentation explaining how to implement this markup on listing pages. By adding structured data to vacation rental listing pages, website owners can provide users with more information directly in search results, including the name, descriptio...

Google has officially sunset the Mobile Usability report, the Mobile-Friendly Test tool, and the Mobile-Friendly Test API on December 4th, 2023, as previously announced in April of the same year. In a tweet, Google thanked website owners for their collaboration in improving the web through these tools. Google stated that while mobile usability continues to be a crucial factor for success in Google Search, it believes that there are now various other resources available for evaluating mobile usability, such as Lighthouse from Chrome, which have emerged over the nearly ten years since the initial launch of these tools. The access to these tools has been removed, and users attempting to find the Search Console mobile usability report within Search Console will no longer be able to do so. The mobile-friendly testing tool has been redirected to Lighthouse, and the API will no longer be providing results. This announcement is significant for website owners and SEO professionals who have...

Google has recently introduced new reporting in the performance reports of Google Search Console for learning video rich results. These reports are accessible under the search appearance section of the performance report, specifically for websites that have learning video structured data. The report displays learning video rich results and also provides users with a sample screenshot of what the report looks like. These learning video rich results were supported by Google back in June 2022 and are described as videos that offer educational content with learning-specific information and structured data. This includes information about the concepts and skills covered in the video. Google has also recently added support for learning video rich results and has included a sample screenshot to illustrate what these rich results look like, although they have yet to be seen in the wild. Google specifies that learning video results will appear in English in all regions where Google Search i...

Google has made a significant update to Google Search Console by releasing a new robots.txt report. This report provides important information about the robots.txt file, including the last time it was crawled by Google, any warnings or errors encountered, and the ability to request a recrawl of the file for emergency situations. This report is accessible under settings in Google Search Console and offers valuable insights for site owners. Additionally, Google also announced that relevant information about robots.txt will now be available within the Page indexing report in Search Console. This integration will provide users with a more comprehensive understanding of their robots.txt file and how it impacts indexing and crawling. Accompanying the release of the new robots.txt report, Google has decided to sunset the robots.txt tester. This move suggests that Google is consolidating its tools and focusing on providing more integrated and detailed reports for webmasters. For further a...

Google has added new markup and structured data support for new vehicle listings, designed to help car dealerships get more exposure for their listings. “Vehicle listings on Google allows car dealerships to show their for-sale inventory on Google Search and other Google surfaces,” Google announced. This comes with new reports and debugging tools within Google Search Console. Vehicle listing structured data. Google’s structured data help documentation added a new section for vehicle listing (car) structured data. Google provides two ways for... Read Full Article | Article Summary