Each week the Croud SEO team collate the latest news from relevant sources around the web so you don’t have to. Read through the top SEO news stories for this week below and follow us on Twitter or sign up to our newsletter.
Yoast SEO 11.2 lets webmasters tailor their schema output
15/05/2019
Yoast SEO has added further support for structured data by allowing webmasters to add their own pieces of Schema into Yoast’s graph, this allows greater flexibility in what information is provided to search engines and helps customise how listings are presented in the SERPs.
There’s an easier way to plan and organize your trips—here’s how
14/05/2019
Google announced that it will be updating its desktop navigation to consolidate all its travel planning features into one area, as was updated on mobile last year. This puts Trips, Flights, Hotels and Packages all in one location allowing easier navigation between them. It also includes the Explore feature which includes photos, articles and video about a location e.g. “things to do” style posts.
The new evergreen Googlebot
07/05/2019
Google’s web crawler has been updated to run the latest Chromium rendering engine which will allow it to more easily crawl modern websites and features that modern browsers can access, this includes ES6 and newer JS features.
I/O announcements have some applauding and others shaking their fists
13/05/2019
Google made a number of announcements at I/O; the chief among them was the Googlebot update, however Assistant will deliver results up to 10 times faster and Search will support FAQ and How-to structured data were also announced. SEL discusses these changes and how they may impact search marketing.
2019 online shopping habits and retailer strategies
10/05/2019
According to a report by Episerver, based on a survey of over 4.5k shoppers from 8 countries, the number of consumers searching for items with voice-assistance devices has increased 83% year on year, though only 17% have made a voice purchase; 43% said this was down to lack of security features and 35% down to lack of images. The report also found that 63% of respondents clicked on a social media ad with 33% going on to make a direct purchase as a result.
Steven Levy: Google Search Results Overrates Freshness As A Ranking Signal
14/05/2019
Google has responded to accusations by Steven Levy that it places too much weighting on content freshness, Google responded by saying it’s something they’re working on improving and to use the “before:” and “after:” commands to narrow down the date range if looking for older content.
SEOs: Here Is What Is Coming To Google Image Search That Matter
10/05/2019
SER highlights what SEOs need to know regarding updates to Google Image Search, this includes support for high resolution images via a markup so they’re served in search , AMP and Google Discover, ability to swipe up and view where the image is located (though this will require AMP) and support for 3D images (also using a markup).
