Google announced it will now show you some healthcare providers appointment availability and give you the ability to book an appointment directly through Google Search. This currently only works in the US and it seems to be limited to one pilot private, MinuteClinic at CVS, but Google hopes to expand this to additional providers in the future.

Hema Budaraju, the lead of Google Health and Social Impact, said Google Search is rolling out a feature “that shows the appointment availability for healthcare providers so you can easily book an appointment.” “You might see available appointment dates and times for doctors in your area,” Google wrote.

What this looks like. Here is a screenshot of the new “appointments” tab in the local pack that lets you filter to see healthcare providers that offer online booking options. It lets you pick various options for what medical attention you require:

Here is a GIF of it in action:

Which provides are included. Google said it is working with partners including MinuteClinic at CVS and a number of other scheduling solution providers. Google added that it “we hope to expand features, functionality and our network of partners so we can make it easier for people to get the care they need.”

Health in Search. A few months ago, Google enabled the ability to help you find healthcare providers that take your insurance coverage. So this is the next step in Google’s journey to help people with healthcare.

Why we care. Eventually, Google will open up these options to all healthcare providers and when they do, if you or your clients would benefit from this option, you will want to integrate these booking options and also insurance options, as soon as possible.

If you are using a scheduling or booking service for your medical practice, maybe reach out to them for an ETA on when they will be integrating with Google Search. We will keep you posted on this feature as it expands to other providers and solutions.

This can potentially lead to more visits and patients for your healthcare providers.

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Google’s principle of E-A-T — which stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness — is the search engine’s way of determining the value of content on the web.

But, what does it mean for content to reflect expertise, authority, and trustworthiness?

“Expertise, for me, is the amount of knowledge you have in a field,” said Kevin Rowe, founder and CEO of PureLinq, in a recent webinar. “You build more expertise the longer you’ve been in a field.”

“Authority is how other authoritative figures validate you — this is reflected through authoritative links. And trust is [expertise and authority] over time,” he added.

When most marketers consider E-A-T signals, they often focus their efforts on creating high-quality content. And while this is one of the most important factors, these professionals could be missing out on potential ranking signals from authoritative backlinks.

According to Rowe, considering E-A-T when building links to your site — and generating content — is a great way to improve rankings, especially for those in the YMYL (your money, your life) space.

What Google says about E-A-T and YMYL

Google offers marketers a lot of resources for marketers looking to improve their sites’ E-A-T signals, says Rowe. Whether it’s documentation such as the General Guidelines or communication on social platforms such as Twitter, these resources can provide additional context into how the search engine determines site authority, expertise, and trustworthiness.

The information suggests Google relies heavily on the concept of E-A-T when evaluating YMYL content. According to the Guidelines, it’s “possible to have everyday expertise in YMYL topics.” This can be presented in the form of forum posts, articles detailing one’s personal experiences, or any other content that seeks to give searchers advice.

However, despite all of the resources available, Google doesn’t actually offer specific strategies about how to improve E-A-T or even the way its algorithms work in conjunction with it.

“They give a lot of information about how they’d like the search engine to work, but it doesn’t always work that way,” Rowe said. “So, we have to use testing and analysis to understand the cause and effect relationships.”

E-A-T isn’t an update or algorithm; it’s a principle to follow when optimizing your site in general. So, marketers should use Google’s guidelines and documentation to inform their testing and optimization efforts to better adhere to this principle.

How to establish E-A-T with link building and content

While there aren’t straightforward steps from Google for improving E-A-T, marketers can work on enhancing the quality signals for their sites through strategic link building and content creation efforts.

“It’s all about how authoritative your links are and how expert-driven your content is,” said Rowe.

Rowe highlighted three ways marketers could begin sending higher E-A-T signals.

Create subject matter expert content. Write content from a position of expertise. Your pieces should be the go-to resources for readers interested in a given subject. If you’re not an expert in the area, hire someone who can create this content for you.

Message sculpting. Focus on the needs of the audience you’re writing for. People searching for YMYL content want relatable messages that speak to their personal situations, so make sure your writing reflects this.

Identify link building opportunities. Look for reputable, relatable sites and start pitching your content to them. A great resource Rowe recommends is HARO, which connects subject matter experts with journalists who publish content in those areas.

High-quality content and links from authoritative sources are the foundation of E-A-T. Rowe highlighted how these aspects are inextricably intertwined: “Expertise, authority, and trust are about the amount of knowledge and content shared on [and from] your site. It’s about who you are, who’s writing the content, and what other people think about it.”

Watch this webinar presentation at Digital Marketing Depot.

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Google Search has rolled out the “refine this search” and “broaden this search” in the US based English search results, a Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land today. These features were previewed last year at the Search On event last September.

Google did say that while some are noticing the things to know/consider being tested, this is not yet fully live in Google Search yet.

Refine this search. Google spoke about this feature at Search On claiming the “Refine this search” features enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics. You can now see it come up for a number of queries, here is a screenshot I saw on my mobile device for this feature:

Broaden this search. The “Broaden this search” features also enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics, Google said. You can now see it come up for a number of queries, here is a screenshot I saw on my mobile device for this feature:

Things to know/consider. Google told us the things to know and things to consider feature is not live yet in Google Search. Google is indeed testing it, as we pointed out above, but it is not fully live yet.

US English. Google said the “refine this search” and “broaden this search” have rolled out in English in the US Google Search results.

MUM. It is hard to know if Google is powering these features off MUM right now. Danny Sullivan of Google just posted on Twitter that the Things to know feature is not currently using MUM, so it is not clear if these other features are or not. We have followed up with Google to find out if these features use MUM.

As I covered last month, MUM is currently used in only two applications in search thus far.

Google has confirmed that these features do not yet use MUM, but Google did tell us “we anticipate that applying MUM for ’things to know’ will enable us to uncover even deeper insights and help people explore information more easily.”

Why we care. These new search features may lead to searchers finding more ways to discover your site in Google Search. Or it might distract searchers from clicking on your snippet in the search results they are looking at. In any event, Google is constantly trying new search features and staying on top of what went live in Google Search is useful for many search marketers.

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Google has announced that the page experience update for desktop is now done rolling out. This update started to roll out on February 22nd and now, 9-days later, it is now fully rolled out.

Announcement. Here is Google’s announcement about the roll out of this update:

Page experience update for desktop. This update will include all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, outside of the page needing to be mobile-friendly. Google said all of the page experience factors for mobile will be included with the exception of the mobile-friendliness requirement, which is kind of obvious. Here is a chart from Google showing the specific factors:

What is page experience? Google has a detailed developer document on page experience criteria but in short, these metrics aim to understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page: considerations such as whether the page loads quickly, if it’s mobile-friendly, runs on HTTPS, the presence of intrusive ads and if content jumps around as the page loads.

Page experience is made up of several existing Google search ranking factors, including the mobile-friendly update, Page Speed Update, the HTTPS ranking boost, the intrusive interstitials penalty, safe browsing penalty, while refining metrics around speed and usability. These refinements are under what Google calls Core Web Vitals. Please note, Google dropped the safe browsing factor last year from the page experience update.

Search Console tools. Google has released updated page experience reports for desktop a few months ago. You can learn more about that report over here.

Don’t expect drastic changes. Google said with this rollout and this new Google update, do not expect drastic changes. “While this update is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences, page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account… Given this, sites generally should not expect drastic changes,” said Google. We expect the same to be true for the desktop rollout.

Why we care. While I do not believe this page experience update was a significant update, where you probably did not see tons of sites’ rankings drastically change, those working towards improving their page experience have been primarily focused on their mobile pages. This one is focused on desktop and it was a shift that we did expect.

You should annotate your analytics and tools to note the update finished today.

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Google has begun rolling out the page experience update for desktop web pages and desktop search, a Google spokesperson has confirmed with Search Engine Land. This update will slowly roll out over the next several weeks and be completed by the end of March 2022.

Google did tell us that the desktop version of the page experience update would begin this month and now Google has confirmed it has begun rolling out.

Page experience update for desktop. This update will include all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, outside of the page needing to be mobile-friendly. Google said all of the page experience factors for mobile will be included with the exception of the mobile-friendliness requirement, which is kind of obvious. Here is a chart Google designed showing the specific factors:

What is page experience? Google has a detailed developer document on the page experience criteria but in short, these metrics aim to understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page: considerations such as whether the page loads quickly, if it’s mobile-friendly, runs on HTTPS, the presence of intrusive ads and if content jumps around as the page loads.

Page experience is made up of several existing Google search ranking factors, including the mobile-friendly update, Page Speed Update, the HTTPS ranking boost, the intrusive interstitials penalty, safe browsing penalty, while refining metrics around speed and usability. These refinements are under what Google calls Core Web Vitals. Please note, Google dropped the safe browsing factor last year from the page experience update.

Search Console tools. Google has released updated page experience reports for desktop a few months ago. You can learn more about that report over here.

Don’t expect drastic changes. Google said with this rollout and this new Google update, do not expect drastic changes. “While this update is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences, page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account… Given this, sites generally should not expect drastic changes,” said Google. We expect the same to be true for the desktop rollout.

Why we care. While, I do not believe this page experience update will be a significant update where you will see tons of sites see their rankings drastically change, those working towards improving their page experience have been primarily focused on their mobile pages.

I would not expect major ranking shifts from this rollout and in fact, if you do see ranking shifts today or tomorrow, I would highly doubt it is related to this update.

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Now more than ever, customers seek out information about your business online. If you don’t offer the experience your customer is looking for, your reputation may be at stake.

Discover how A&W Restaurants achieved a 25% increase in 5-star reviews on Google in six months and how you can achieve similar results or more.

To learn more on how you can boost your Google reviews, register today for “Your Guide to Scoring Google 5-Star Reviews for Multi-Location Businesses,” presented by Chatmeter.

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JavaScript frameworks have been growing in popularity over the last few years, thanks in no small part to the flexibility they offer. “JavaScript frameworks allow for rapid development. It offers better user experience. It offers better performance and it offers enhanced functionality that traditional frameworks — non-JavaScript ones — sort of lack,” said Nati Elimelech, tech SEO lead at Wix.

“So, it’s no surprise that very large websites or complex UIs with complex logic and features usually tend to use JavaScript frameworks nowadays,” he added.

At SMX Next, Elimelech provided an overview of how JavaScript works for client-side, server-side and dynamic rendering, and shared insights for auditing gained from implementing JavaScript on over 200 million websites.

Client-side vs. Server-side rendering

Different rendering methods are suitable for different purposes. Elimelech advocated on behalf of dynamic rendering as a means to satisfy search engine bots and users alike, but first, it’s necessary to understand how client-side and server-side rendering work.

Client-side rendering

When a user clicks on a link, their browser sends requests to the server that site is hosted on. 

“When we’re talking about JavaScript frameworks, that server responds with something that’s a bit different than what we’re used to,” Elimelech said.

“It responds with a skeleton HTML — just the basic HTML, but with a lot of JavaScript. Basically, what it does is tell my browser to run the JavaScript itself to get all the important HTML,” he said, adding that the user’s browser then produces the rendered HTML (the final HTML that is used to construct the page the way that we actually see it). This process is known as client-side rendering.

“It’s very much like assembling your own furniture because basically the server tells the browser, ‘Hey, these are all the pieces, these are the instructions, construct the page. I trust you.’ And that means that all of the hard lifting is moved to the browser instead of the server,” Elimelech said.

Client-side rendering can be great for users, but there are cases in which a client doesn’t execute JavaScript, which means it won’t get the full content of your page. One such example may be search engine crawlers; although Googlebot can now see more of your content than ever before, there are still limitations.

Server-side rendering

For clients that don’t execute JavaScript, server-side rendering can be used.

“Server-side rendering is when all of that JavaScript is executed on the server-side. All of the resources are required on the server-side and your browser and the search engine bot do not need to execute JavaScript to get the fully rendered HTML,” Elimelech explained. This means that server-side rendering can be faster and less resource-intensive for browsers.

“Server-side rendering is like providing your guests with an actual chair they can sit it on instead of having to assemble it,” he said, continuing his previous analogy. “And, when you do server-side rendering, you basically make your HTML visible to all kinds of bots, all kinds of clients . . . It doesn’t matter what the JavaScript capabilities are, it can see the final important rendered HTML,” he added.

Dynamic rendering

Dynamic rendering represents “the best of both worlds,” Elimelech said. Dynamic rendering means “switching between client-side rendered and pre-rendered content for specific user agents,” according to Google. 

Below is a simplified diagram explaining how dynamic rendering works for different user agents (users and bots).

​​”So there’s a request to URL, but this time we check: Do we know this user agent? Is this a known bot? Is it Google? Is it Bing? Is it Semrush? Is it something we know of? If it’s not, we assume it’s a user and then we do client-side rendering,” Elimelech said. 

In that case, the user’s browser runs the JavaScript to get the rendered HTML, but still benefits from the advantages of client-side rendering, which often includes a perceived boost in speed.

On the other hand, if the client is a bot, then server-side rendering is used to serve the fully rendered HTML. “So, it sees everything that needs to be seen,” Elimelech said.

This represents the “best of both worlds” because site owners are still able to serve their content regardless of the client’s JavaScript capabilities. And, because there are two flows, site owners can optimize each to better serve users or bots without impacting the other.

But, dynamic rendering isn’t perfect

There are, however, complications associated with dynamic rendering. “We have two flows to maintain, two sets of logics, caching, other complex systems; so it’s more complex when you have two systems instead of one,” Elimelech said, noting that site owners must also maintain a list of user agents in order to identify bots.

Some might worry that serving search engine bots something different than what you’re showing users can be considered cloaking.

“Dynamic rendering is actually a preferred and recommended solution by Google because what Google cares about is if the important stuff is the same [between the two versions],” Elimelech said, adding that, “The ‘important stuff’ is things we care about as SEOs: the content, the headings, the meta tags, internal links, navigational links, the robots, the title, the canonical, structured data markup, content, images — everything that has to do with how a bot would react to the page . . . it’s important to keep identical and when you keep those identical, especially the content and especially the meta tags, Google has no issue with that.”

Since it’s necessary to maintain parity between what you’re serving bots and what you’re serving users, it’s also necessary to audit for issues that might break that parity.

To audit for potential problems, Elimelech recommends Screaming Frog or a similar tool that allows you to compare two crawls. “So, what we like to do is crawl a website as Googlebot (or another search engine user agent) and crawl it as a user and make sure there aren’t any differences,” he said. Comparing the appropriate elements between the two crawls can help you identify potential issues.

Elimelech also mentioned the following methods to screen for issues:

• Visual inspection by switching the user agent in the browser and/or turning off JavaScript to see if anything changes between the versions.
• Google Search Console can be used to see what kind of HTML is returned to Google and how it can render it.
• Testing tools, such as Google’s mobile-friendly test, the rich results test and Schema.org’s schema markup validator tool (formerly the structured data testing tool).

“Remember, JavaScript frameworks aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “Chances are you’re going to meet one of them soon, so you better be prepared to handle them.”

Watch the full SMX Next presentation here (free registration required).

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