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In this episode, we discuss a possible update March 11-12, huge featured snippet changes, knowledge graph updates, Google on user-generated content, pagination best practices and so much more!

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The following topics are covered in the premium version of this episode:

• March 11-13 was likely another significant unannounced Google update
• Are Google Knowledge Graph updates connected to algorithm updates?
• Google discusses user-generated content
• A discussion about pagination and best practices
• How to improve your site’s internal linking with a variety of tools
• Recommended advice for handling unplanned outages
• If you are often outranked by scraper sites, this could be why
• Google Maps has added some new features
• These posts are being reported
• Mike King’s free tool for determining content disparities between desktop and mobile
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

Huge featured snippet changes could have been responsible for some recent algo turbulence

Mozcast reported that there was a significant drop in the number of featured snippets Google was displaying starting on February 19, 2021. The good news is that the number of featured snippets seems to have recovered to normal levels as of March 11, 2021.

As we noted in our list of known and suspected algorithm updates, February 20 (one day following the drop in featured snippets,) was a date that we labelled as a significant but unannounced update. After seeing this featured snippet data, we wondered if perhaps what we thought was a quality update was actually just the result of these featured snippet changes.

In some cases, this is true. Glenn Gabe shared some examples of sites that saw a reduction in traffic coincidental with a loss in featured snippets between February 19 and March 11, 2021.

More on the return of featured snippets. It sure looks like a near-full return for sites that were impacted in February (where Google removed featured snippets from the SERPs for head terms). Check out the trending for FS overall, & then for sites impacted when filtering by FS's: pic.twitter.com/flXQwGXRlO

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 14, 2021

Mordy Obertstein noted cases where featured snippets were lost and then the same URLs had them return.

Def. seems like the same URLs got restored. Kinda implies what @rustybrick was saying about it being a "bug" (I prefer "unintended consequence). pic.twitter.com/eGIxRyoAaA

— Mordy Oberstein (@MordyOberstein) March 15, 2021

We do have several clients that show the same pattern – losses starting February 19 that have started to recover starting on March 11. Many of them have not returned to previous levels however. Some sites with significant February 19-20 losses have not made any recovery yet:

The above site did not see a loss in featured snippets at this time. They actually increased the number of featured snippets they are ranking in over the last few months. Something else is responsible for this site’s losses.

We believe that Google is indeed testing something with featured snippets, which is not unusual. Lily Ray saw that some of her clients who had lost featured snippets on February 19 had them return as part of a double featured snippet on March 11. However, the next day, these had returned to single featured snippets.

The lost Featured Snippets are not only back, it looks like they are back with a vengeance. Seeing more double snippets now too.

Below is the total Featured Snippet share of voice for a health/medical client:

(see full thread for a few examples of the before & after change) https://t.co/tom6JEiGjK pic.twitter.com/W6PuzkNbsM

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) March 15, 2021

If your traffic has taken a downturn at some point in the last few months, it will be challenging to say exactly what the problem is. We do believe Google is actively tweaking the featured snippet algorithm, but this is just one of many significant changes that we have noted over the last few months.

You can go here to see our list of known and suspected algorithm updates of note.

Changes made to the Google Search Console rich results report

It looks like Google made some changes this week to the GSC rich results report. You can find details of these changes here.

Core Web Vital scores could be impacted by third-party browser extensions

Third party browser extensions can impact your CWV scores negatively. Since it’s a metric based on user experience, it can affect your CWV scores. This is something unfortunately you may not have control over but it’s worth it to keep it in mind when analyzing your scores. 

Real-world user-experience is just that: it’s subject to experienced slowness introduced by tight system resources, network variance, extensions…anything that might impact one of the metrics negatively.

— Addy Osmani (@addyosmani) March 10, 2021

We actually have something to report this week! It looks like there was a huge update Wednesday March 10th that carried into Thursday and resolved by Friday according to Brightlocal’s RankFlux tool.

Barry noted the spike as well and says he’s never seen the tool with a reading that high. It is always possible that it is a Google bug that is causing this, so it’s best to stay calm and see what happens. In this case, everything is back low and all areas were impacted, not one specifically. 

A very large Google local search ranking update seems to have touched down yesterday – this seems big, the @brightlocal tool has never been this high https://t.co/6PALumOXYe pic.twitter.com/KCINqcykuc

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 11, 2021

At MHC, we are no longer doing in-depth investigation of local updates. If you were affected, we would recommend reaching out in the Local Search Forum.

Potential bug seen within Google My Business

What a week for local SEO. A weird bug appears to be showing in GMB where it asks you to add a logo… despite already having one. Joy replied saying this is indeed a bug and may not be resolved until the end of the year. 

YOU OK @GoogleMyBiz HUN? I already have a logo in GMB – look – you labelled it 'logo' 🧐🤔 pic.twitter.com/Nr1xAwdknp

— Claire Carlile🕊️ 🌊 🥑 🦥 (@clairecarlile) March 16, 2021

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Subdomain vs. Subfolder, Is One Better Than the Other for SEO? – Patrick Stox
https://ahrefs.com/blog/subdomain-vs-subfolder/
March 9, 2021 

Patrick Stox from Ahrefs revisits the age old SEO discussion, subdomain vs. subfolder. Over the years, a number of studies have come out showing gains and losses when migrating to a new subdomain structure or vice versa. Patrick walks us through a number of ways that these types of studies can be flawed and/or biased.

Why Mobile-Only Indexing Will Cause The Biggest SEO Shake Up Of 2021 – Mike King
https://ipullrank.com/why-mobile-only-indexing-will-cause-the-biggest-seo-shake-up-of-2021
March 11, 2021 

Fuelled by his contributions to the year’s Web Almanac (you may recall this mega ‘state of the web report’ done annually), Mike’s most compelling insight came from the discrepancies between internal links on mobile vs. desktop pages.

He discussed his SEO tool Parito (mentioned above in SEO Tools) that is able to help you diagnose content parity issues as seen by your source code.

The proportion of mobile searches is more than you think – What you need to know – Johannes Beus
https://www.sistrix.com/blog/the-proportion-of-mobile-searches-is-more-than-you-think-what-you-need-to-know/
March 9, 2021 

In this article, Johannes Beus deep dives into why we should pay more attention to the difference between mobile phone and desktop searches. One of the biggest findings is how different the user behaviour is on the two devices (desktop and mobile). You’ll want to tune into this one. Interesting for sure!

Debugging layout shifts – Katie Hempenius
https://web.dev/debugging-layout-shifts/
March 11, 2021 

The DevTools debugger for layout shifts is handy, but as Katie Hempenius outlines in this guide at web.dev, the Layout Instability API it is built on provides more flexibility and the ability to collect more information if you’re inclined to run the script yourself. For specific guidance, Katie’s article is quite technical but extremely thorough and detailed.

What I Found After Experimenting with Google Discover for Two Months – Mordy Oberstein
https://moz.com/blog/google-discover-experiment
March 10, 2021 

Mordy Oberstein spent two months trying to understand how Google’s Discover Feed works, and wrote about it in this super interesting Moz article. Essentially, for two months, five days a week, Mordy tried as many things as possible with his search behaviour to try and influence what showed up in his Discover Feed.

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— Dan Leibson (@DanLeibson) March 10, 2021

I'm hiring for a technical SEO lead at The Motley Fool! Let me know if you know someone who would be a good fit! https://t.co/eRgegWPWLs

— Alli Berry (@AlliBerry3) March 10, 2021

still looking for a Sr. SEO strategist in Atlanta and an SEO strategist in Detroit to join our team at @WeAreRazorfish Lots of other roles too. If you're interested send ME a resume: ryan.jones at razorfish dot comhttps://t.co/9zgs08UA5Z

— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) March 10, 2021

Make a smart decision and apply for this Tech SEO role @DeepCrawl https://t.co/sIrROlfYsy — if I actually was on the job market I’d work with @BermanHale and her team in a heartbeat.

— Dan Shure (@dan_shure) March 15, 2021

Premium members also get the following:

It’s well worth the $18 per month!

The following topics are covered in the premium version of this episode:

• March 11-13 was likely another significant unannounced Google update
• Are Google Knowledge Graph updates connected to algorithm updates?
• Google discusses user-generated content
• A discussion about pagination and best practices
• How to improve your site’s internal linking with a variety of tools
• Recommended advice for handling unplanned outages
• If you are often outranked by scraper sites, this could be why
• Google Maps has added some new features
• These posts are being reported
• Mike King’s free tool for determining content disparities between desktop and mobile
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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– Paul Macnamara – Offers SEO Consulting at PaulMacnamara.com