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.
The big list of 2019 Google search algorithm updates
18/12/2019
SEL released a review of the big updates from 2019 to the Google search algorithm and their impact on the SERPs. This covers core updates as well as BERT, alongside some other unconfirmed updates which impacted the searches results.
Google Search Console Coverage report improves accuracy on indexed pages
18/12/2019
Google posted on Twitter that as of the 15th December, the Index Coverage report is more accurate – this means that some pages that appeared to not be indexed, according to the report, are in fact indexed.
Discover Performance reports in Google Search Console just got fresher data
17/12/2019
Google announced that its Discover Performance reports have been improved in terms of accuracy, allowing users to view data that’s less than a day old. This allows a more up to date view of the performance of content within the Discover feed for publishers.
Google now showing ‘request quotes’ button above local pack on mobile
17/12/2019
Google appears to be testing the use of ‘request quotes’ above the local pack on mobile. This further highlights Google’s efforts to change GMB to a more transactional platform.
Windows search bar: The one stop for answers, now with Bing Visual Search
16/12/2019
Microsoft has announced that it is bringing visual search to the Windows search bar – this makes the process far smoother for Windows users to perform an image search and may improve how they find new products.
Google Search COnsole Discover reporting bugs
16/12/2019
Google has acknowledged a bug within its Performance reports in Search Console that affected traffic from the Google Discover feed between 8th and 13th December 2019. This may have affected impressions and clicks during the period, but has been fixed as of the 14th.
Top eight SEO trends for 2020
12/12/2019
SEW rounds up the top eight SEO trends to watch out for in 2020; this includes voice search and people searching how the speak, featured snippets continuing to dominate, more marketers leveraging influencers for SEO, BERT continuing to impact the SERPs, people wanting digital experiences, video becoming king of content, content length determining search rankings and mobile search continuing to take over.
The beginner’s guide to semantic search: examples and tools
16/12/2019
SEW released a guide to semantic search which covers a number of aspects, including: why semantic search is important for Google and other search engines, understanding semantic mapping, and understanding semantic coding and markups.
