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Table of Contents
  1. Intro
  2. SNYCU Podcast
  3. Not a premium subscriber? You're missing out!
  4. News about Google’s Algorithms
  5. MHC Announcements
  6. Google Announcements
  7. SEO Tips
  8. Other Interesting News
  9. Local SEO - Google Announcements
  10. SEO Tools
  11. Recommended Reading
  12. Jobs
  13. Want More?
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SNYCU Ep. 241 (June 30, 2022) - Light

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In this episode, we discuss possible SERP tremors June 24th & 27th, clarifications to the Crawl Stats report documentation, hyphens vs underscores in URLs, and plenty more SEO tips and news from all over the industry!

Missed our last episode? Check it out here.

 

SNYCU Podcast

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Ask Marie an SEO Question

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

  • Marie’s exclusive thoughts and insights this week.
  • Updated documentation on Googlebot crawling & indexing
  • Is content not visible on-page is no longer less important?
  • Near-duplicate content with canonicals could still confuse Google
  • Common SEO errors by eCommerce stores (and how to avoid them!)
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
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News about Google’s Algorithms

There has been a lot of chatter this week regarding some movement in the SERPs at a pretty large scale around June 23rd, and then again on June 27th.

Barry is reporting a lot of volatility in the weather tools, along with some major chatter in the webmaster world forums. He noted another big spike on June 27th.

Glenn Gabe is reporting similar changes in the visibility of sites he monitors.

This includes sites getting hit between June 20 – 23rd. 

At MHC, we have not seen much significant movement across our client base. We will keep an eye on things and report back if something changes.

 

MHC Announcements

New jobs sponsored by SEOjobs.com!

 

Are you looking for a new SEO job? SEOjobs.com is a job board curated by real SEOs for SEOs. Over the next few weeks, our friends at SEOjobs.com will be sharing the hottest SEO job listings of the week for our jobs section. Be sure to also sign up for the weekly job listing email only available at SEOjobs.com.

 

Google Announcements

Google adds clarifications to the Crawl Stats report documentation

There are new changes to the Crawl Stats Report document! The main changes include:

  • Clarification on what a “recent” robots.txt consists of. In this case, a robots.txt less than 24 hours old.
  • A new note about what happens when the robots.txt 404s. 
  • A 12-hour – 30-day breakdown of what happens exactly in each step.
  • Clarification on if the homepage is available, Google will crawl with no restraints.

This information comes from a tweet from Brodie. He gives a side-by-side screenshot for comparison and you can see the full details there.

 

Chrome 103 has begun rolling out (plus comment on HTTP 103 Early Hints)

Chrome updates have become a monthly event that isn’t always groundbreaking enough to report on, but we thought this was an interesting note about the use of machine learning within the browser with Chrome 103: “Machine learning will help Chrome predict when a user is unlikely to opt-in to notifications from a website. It will then block those annoying prompts for you.”

We can easily override the decision Chrome makes for us when it blocks the notification, but with the ubiquity of notification prompts around the web and how easy it is to accidentally accept them, this is a welcome development from the Chrome team.

Also, as part of the release, the support for 103 Early Hints HTTP Response Code will fractionally speed up the pre-fetching of linked pages, and Chrome has also added the ability to remove the Discover feed from the new tab page in Android.

 

SEO Tips

Data glitches in GSC could be the result of prolonged verification loss

If you’ve worked in SEO for any length of time, you’ve likely seen or heard of this happening to someone by now. John kindly suggests that a lapse in GSC verification is the likely culprit. Once things are reinstated though, you’ll be missing that window of data since they won’t back-fill.

 

Your Content Security Policy could be blocking your GA4 tracking in the EU

Best to check your email on the off chance that you missed it! Robin mentions that he’s received several inquiries over the last week where companies are either missing data due to email going unnoticed or struggling with GA4 due to hiccups in the tracking. 

For those of you interested, his blog post covers why this is a problem, how to test if it’s an issue, and covers a solution to fixing this. 

 

Hyphens over underscores in URLs!

Gary Illyes recently said (again) that Google prefers hyphens in URLs over underscores as separators because it’s more difficult for Google to segment underscores.

Gary continued to say that Google uses parts of the URL to understand what the page is about and underscores just make that more difficult to do.

If you currently have URLs with underscores as separators instead of hyphens, Glenn Gabe stressed on Twitter that you should NOT go and change your URLs to use hyphens. That would be considered a URL migration and can certainly cause issues. Overall, the risk is likely not worth it!

In case you missed it, Google Search Central has documentation on creating simple URL structures that covered an array of situations.

 

Barry Adams touches on common issues detected on news publishing websites

News SEO expert, Barry Adams, highlights a series of missteps that commonly impact publishers. 

Two items that stand out to our team are the mishandling of pagination due to load more or infinite scroll (oftentimes this can be an uncrawlable setup) and a lack of E-A-T information related to authors and media standards.

Check out the above thread for more great insight!

 

Other Interesting News

Google News gets a fresh look

Last week, Google announced a new look for Google News that will include a redesigned, more customizable Google News experience for desktop. User feedback has prompted them to showcase important content that’s featured in Top stories, Local news (a filter has also been added to allow multiple locations) and personalized picks sections along the top of the page.

There’s a little bit more information added to the Google post, including the next item (below) that may surprise some of you!

 

Google News returns to Spain!

After nearly 8 years since being shut down in Spain, Google News is making a comeback with a redesign and fact-check features. The return is happening now after Spain has adopted the EU’s copyright directive, which allows platforms (such as Google) to show content snippets without requesting the permission of the original publisher. 

Google News redesign comes with a new section for “Fact check” content that gives users the ability to learn more context about that piece of content. 

 

Italy has become the third country to ban Google Analytics

After Austria and France, Italy became the third country to ban Google Analytics after an intensive investigation by Garante (the Italian Data Protection Authority) agreed with other European privacy authorities that Google Analytics breaches GDPR. The main issue stems from the fact that Google is based in the U.S. and the transfer of Personal Data to the U.S. when using Google Analytics. Google being an electronic communication service provider is obligated to disclose that personal data to U.S. intelligence agencies if requested. This process was declared unlawful as it breaks GDPR. GDPR was introduced in 2018 to protect E.U. citizens and their personal data and the fact that Google is obligated to give that data away if requested means that the E.U. can no longer guarantee the privacy of their citizens.

 

Local SEO - Google Announcements

“Deals” tab appears on GBP on mobile 

Google is now displaying a “deals” tab in local business listings. From what we can tell these deals are being pulled from the offers feature in Google Business Profiles. While we aren’t sure if this is new or not this could be another avenue for you to leverage your offerings in the SERPs.

 

SEO Tools

Chrome extension to search from anywhere

We spotted Aleyda Solis sharing this really helpful Chrome extension from Advanced Web Ranking that can be used to search Google from any location in the world. It can use GPS coordinates to get street-level searches, and you are also able to change languages and device types between desktop and mobile.

 

Recommended Reading

Almost Half of GSC Clicks Go to Hidden Terms – A Study by Ahrefs – Patrick Stox
https://ahrefs.com/blog/gsc-hidden-terms-study/ 
June 24, 2022

A must read article! If you would like to know how to access the missing data and/or have an idea of how much data could be missing from your report, check out Patrick’s article. 

 

Jobs (Sponsored by SEOjobs.com)

Looking for a new SEO job? SEOjobs.com is a job board curated by real SEOs for SEOs. Take a look at five of the hottest SEO job listing this week (below) and sign up for the weekly job listing email only available at SEOjobs.com.

Want More?

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:

  • Marie’s exclusive thoughts
  • Updated documentation on Googlebot crawling & indexing
  • Is content not visible on-page is no longer less important?
  • Near-duplicate content with canonicals could still confuse Google
  • Common SEO errors by eCommerce stores (and how to avoid them!)
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
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