Now 2018 has said goodbye! We thought it would be a good time to look back at the most read stories to come out of the World in Search for 2018!<\/p>\n
\n
As of July 2018, page speed will be implemented as a ranking signal in mobile search results. Google has stated that only pages that provide a very poor page speed, and as such a poor user experience, will be affected.<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s Zhiheng Wang and Doantam Phan had this to say.<\/p>\n
The \u201cSpeed Update,\u201d as we\u2019re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.<\/p>\n
Source: Month In Search for January-2018<\/a><\/p>\n Google has dropped its support for the news meta keywords tag. Google introduced the new meta keywords tag specifically for news publishers back in 2012 and quietly stopped supporting it months ago but google did not announce this change, so publishers using the news meta keywords tag will not help Google understand their news content since Google will ignore it the same way they ignore the standard meta keywords tag.<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for February – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n Google has been testing their New Mobile First index for over a year now and this month they have now officially launched it. So they have now started indexing sites to follow their new mobile-first index. The main areas they are focusing on are:<\/p>\n Responsive web design for screens of all sizes This new way to index as been coming for some time now, and all of our sites here at Verve have been designed for this new way of thinking. We are keeping a keen eye on SERP ranking and will be monitoring them over the next few months for any change.<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for March – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n Google has opened up with more statistics for \u2018google\u2019s autocomplete search\u2019 function for desktop and mobile, showing the benefits of the function by saying it saves users \u201cover 200 years of typing time per day\u201d by reducing typing by around 25 percent.<\/p>\n When this function was first rolled out it was hit with some controversy as some of the predictions lead people to accuse the company of being racist or leaning a certain way politically. This has moved the company to work hard in removing certain search terms, by offering people the ability to \u2018report inappropriate predictions\u2019<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for April – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n So General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) If like me you have been receiving a lot of emails asking you to stay in touch, the reason why are the new regulations that came into force this month giving people more control of their details. Below is a brief overview of GDPR.<\/p>\n So what is GDPR? When did it come into force? How does this affect you? If like me you just have a full inbox from businesses asking me if they can still use my details, this is a good opportunity to filter the companies and organisations you would like to keep in touch with. So as we are in May I would treat it like having a good spring clean.<\/p>\n View more information about <\/a>General Data Protection Regulation here<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for May – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n This week I saw a Poll (Link) on twitter asking which social network was driving the most social traffic to their websites. The results were:<\/p>\n Facebook \u2013 62% This isn\u2019t too surprising, considering how big Facebook has become, with over 2.2 billion monthly active users, but just remember these results were across many industries and sectors. So you will still need to give a lot of thought to where your target audience are socialising and how you want to communicate with them.<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for June – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n Schema markup is data about data.. Before you switch off, if you are a website owner who cares about search engine racking, and to whether people can find you on the internet, the Event Structured data is something you need to consider for your site.<\/p>\n So what is Event Structured Data? Location This month Google went a step further with a new Schema markup \u2013 Speakable specification. This new event mark up, named speakable, enables publishers to mark up sections of a news article that are most relevant to be read aloud by the Google Assistant, including devices like Google Home. This new structured event mark up will be an important factor for driving traffic to your site especially for websites that give reference or information.<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for July – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n Google announced it will soon be adding a separate line within Google Analytics (GA) to show traffic from Image searches. As a result, you might notice a drop in referral data, that\u2019s because traffic from image search will be reclassified as coming from \u2018google images instead.\u2019<\/p>\n Google recently confirmed that there is no adverse effect if you use a single image multiple time throughout your site! Apart from being really boring! Still nice of Google to clear this one up.<\/p>\n In Googles latest search blog they released data about image searches! saying on average 63% of these searches turn into website traffic. This is mainly eCommerce traffic for people looking for products who prefer a visual reference than doing website searches. I was surprised when I read how high image search was as I see a lot of website images are not fully optimised. So If you have an image heavy website I recommend you run an image audit on your site as soon as you can to check your images are properly optimised, If you have concerns get in touch with me here at Verve and I\u2019ll run a quick audit for you.<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for August – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n This month Google told us \u201cToday we mark an important milestone in the Search Console\u2019s history: we are graduating the new Search Console out of beta!\u201d Another piece of software which has officially come out of there beta testing program this month is Google\u2019s Data Studio. Data studio which is a part of Google\u2019s Marketing tools, is a free data reporting tool that brings Google data together to help generate reports. Data studio also announced this month a better integration with non Google data related programs such as social media.<\/p>\n Source: Month In Search for September – 2018<\/a><\/p>\n Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source library that provides a slimmed down mobile version of your Website or an individual web page for mobile users, which makes load times near instantaneous. In their latest update, the AMP team have added a lot more features, which will help developers create equivalent AMP pages that more closely resemble the original web page.<\/p>\n Input Masking Video Player Enhancements Video Docking Sticky Ads Page speeds are a big ranking factor for search engines, to set up AMP pages on your website does take a bit of work to simulate the look and feel of the original, but your speed performance can be dramatically enhanced and in some case speed up your site by over 60%.<\/p>\n If you are interested in incorporating AMP on your site, let me know as we can build you an AMP homepage and report on the kind of speed increases you would receive.<\/p>\nDropped support for meta news keywords tag<\/h2>\n
Officially launching the mobile-first indexing<\/h2>\n
\nMobile content is the same as the desktop version
\nQuick download times<\/p>\nGoogle saves 200 years of typing every day!<\/h2>\n
General Data Protection Regulation!<\/h2>\n
\nThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is designed to give everyday citizens more power over their personal data.<\/p>\n
\nOrganisations that did not comply by 25th May 2018 could face tough legal and financial penalties.<\/p>\n
\nIf you are a company or organisation who is using others personal data, you must show you are adhering to these new regulations. Read more about GDPR<\/p>\nWhich Social Network is Driving the Most Traffic<\/h2>\n
\nTwitter \u2013 22%
\nLinkedin \u2013 10%
\nPinterest \u2013 6%<\/p>\nNew chatty schema markup \u2013 Speakable<\/h2>\n
\nEvent structured data communicates information about an event. It is commonly communicated with a script called, JSON. This is a list of the most important data to include in Schema.org Structured Data:<\/p>\n
\nAddress
\nName of event
\nStart and end time of events
\nDescription of events
\nImages
\nLearn more about Schema Event Structure here<\/p>\nGoogle Image Search updates<\/h2>\n
Image \u2013 Analytics<\/h4>\n
Image \u2013 Crawls<\/h4>\n
Image \u2013 Searches<\/h4>\n
No more Google Beta!<\/h2>\n
Search console<\/h4>\n
\nIs this good news\u2026hrr no! Don\u2019t get me wrong some of the new features we have been talking about while Google console was in the beta stage of development have been welcomed, but we are still waiting for some of the functionally of the older console to either be moved to the new console or improved upon like the new performance tool! Moan over\u2026 sorry about that!<\/p>\nData studio<\/h4>\n
AMP \u2013 New features<\/h2>\n
\nThis feature will soon help users fill out forms by automatically adding formatting characters such as spaces.<\/p>\n
\nThe AMP video player is being enhanced with new features including adding mute and unmute buttons and the ability to play videos on loop.<\/p>\n
\nThis is a great feature which allows users to watch a video as they scroll through your webpage. A video will appear at the top when a user first lands on the page. As they scroll down the page the video will \u201cdock\u201d itself in the bottom corner of the page.<\/p>\n
\nAMP pages will soon have support for sticky ads in the desktop with a fixed position on the left or right rail of the page<\/p>\n