Malte Ubl, a Software Engineer at Google, reminded us that coming next month, Google will be releasing the desktop version of the page experience update. He posted this on Twitter as a reminder:
Page experience ranking in Google Search based on Core Web Vitals on Desktop (Laptop/Tablets/the 523.94 remaining actual Desktop computers) is going out next month. Metric threshold are the same as on mobile. https://t.co/oVFF0W2Zihhttps://t.co/KKBIEi6v0Z
Google told us this was coming this past November and it should go live next month. The rollout will take a couple months, it will start in February 2022 and finish rolling out by the end of March 2022. 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.
Same thresholds. As a reminder, the same metric thresholds will work for desktop. So what the thresholds were for mobile, will be the same for desktop. The original blog post said “the same three Core Web Vitals metrics: LCP, FID, and CLS, and their associated thresholds will apply for desktop ranking.” Malte Ubl reconfirmed this in his tweet saying “metric threshold are the same as on mobile.”
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.
Search Console tools any day now. Google will be updating the Google Search Console tools and reports to help site owners prepare for this update. “We are also planning to help site owners understand how their desktop pages are performing with regards to page experience using a Search Console report which will launch before desktop becomes a ranking signal,” Google said. So expect these new tools and reports to be released any day now.
Mobile vs desktop. Which factors is will be included in this desktop version? Google said all of them with the exception of the mobile friendliness requirement, which is kind of obvious. Here is a chart Google designed showing the specific factors:
Why we care. As I said last time, 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. Now, that you have your mobile pages ready for this update, you can shift focus towards your desktop pages.
The new reports are not out yet, but I hope they will be out shortly.
Google has launched a “Shops” section in the mobile search results, a company spokesperson has confirmed to Search Engine Land. The Shops section shows three retailers (but can be expanded to show up to ten) based on their organic search rankings and is available on mobile devices for select shopping-related queries in the U.S.
The Shops section in the mobile search results. Image: Khushal Bherwani.
Tip of the hat to Khushal Bherwani for bringing this to our attention.
Google’s statement. “We recently launched Shops, a new module available on mobile devices for select US-English shopping-related queries,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land, “We launched this to help present more seller options to users on Search. This feature currently shows 3 shops and users can then expand to see up to 10 merchants depending on availability. The selection of results shown and their order are based on organic search ranking.”
Another milestone for Google’s organic shopping efforts. Over the last two years, Google has expanded its shopping-related results from being a paid product to also offering plenty of visibility opportunities organically, beginning with the introduction of free product listings in April 2020.
The company has also introduced a “deals” section in the search results and launched Shopping integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce and GoDaddy, among other e-commerce platforms.
Why we care. The Shops section is another area in the search results where retailers might potentially appear, which can increase awareness for their brands and drive traffic. However, since the Shops section is based on organic search ranking, retailers who don’t already rank well may not be able to reap its benefits.
As Google continues to add support for organic shopping features, it only becomes more important for merchants to ensure their sites are optimized both for traditional search results and shopping-related features.
Non-shopping results may also appear in the same results page as the Shops section (in the case of the screenshot above, there is a listing for a tutorial on how to fix a broken bike chain). The addition of more shopping features may potentially push non-shopping-related results further down the page, which can affect clickthroughs.
From an industry perspective, Google’s buildout of organic e-commerce features supporting both users and merchants speaks to the rise of digital commerce and its role in the company’s strategy.
In November, Google’s Caio Barros posted a notice in the help forums that there was “a problem” in Google Search Console’s user interface where “Full Users” see their status as “Delegated Owners” within the settings ownership verification section of Search Console. Well, Caio Barros confirmed this is now fixed, a couple months later.
The issue. The issue was that when you went to the ownership verification section in your Search Console settings, you would see your status as “Delegated Owner.” But you would not be able to see the “Users and Permissions” option on your account. That means you were likely a Full User and not a Delegated Owner, but Search Console didn’t show that.
Now resolved. This issue is now resolved, Caio Barros wrote yesterday “this issue should be fixed now.” He said “if you are a Full user but don’t have ownership (i.e., don’t have permission to add and remove users), you’ll see a message like this,” which says you are “not a verified owner.” Caio said this new message makes it super clear and unambiguous.
Now, if you really are an owner and wish to delegate ownership to another user, you can now go directly into the user management settings in Search Console and set the user permission to “Owner.” Then the user will see their ownership verification asdelegated owner. They are still not a verified owner, but can manage users and permissions,” Caio explained.
Why we care. If you were running into this confusing permission issue in Google Search Console over the past few months, you can now go back in and adjust those settings. If not, then carry on with your normal daily SEO tasks.
The Google Search ecosystem is constantly evolving. It introduces many algorithm updates every year, ranging from changes targeting specific search elements to broad core updates.
“Google periodically adjusts what types of information it deems to be most important, which can sometimes have a big effect on which results are shown on the web,” said Crystal Carter, senior digital strategist at Optix Solutions, during her session at SMX Next.
Many marketers believe Google primarily relies on websites when creating and deploying each succeeding batch of algorithm updates. But, to improve searchers’ experiences, it actually focuses more on entities — a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable, according to Google.
“Websites are important to Google, but that’s not the only way that it organizes information,” she said. “This is important for thinking about why and how Google makes updates.”
Image: Crystal Carter
The information landscape is always growing, says Carter, and Google uses a variety of sources to present the most relevant results: “Google’s algorithms are taking into account where the search is made, where the information is coming from when the search is made and when the information was written. They also look at how the person is searching, whether they’re on their phone or their smartwatch or their smart refrigerator, as well as who wrote the content.”
“When we look at their algorithm updates, they’re essentially trying to direct people to highly accessible information from the best sources,” she added.
What happens during Google algorithm updates
Many Google algorithm updates address specific issues relating to an industry or SERP feature. These are usually easy to spot.
“When there’s a targeted update, which is my term and not Google’s, you’re likely to see changes to SERP features,” Carter said.
Carter calls these updates “targeted” because they usually focus on updating specific features of the SERP, such as how results are displayed and which sites are preferred for queries.
Image: Crystal Carter
“If you look up a COVID testing site, you’ll see some of the targeted work that it’s [Google] done around that SERP,” she provided as an example of a “targeted” update, “It’s curated the results so that you’re seeing information from the government rather than seeing commercial results, and the maps that it’s showing are specifically targeted at medical elements.”
Core updates, on the other hand, are algorithm changes that alter how Google indexes and ranks sites broadly. These usually occur less frequently, but their impact can be enormous.
“Generally speaking, you might see changes to the types of domains which show in the SERPs,” Carter said. “You may see a sudden increase or decrease in domain visibility or a sudden increase or decrease in traffic across the domain.”
“So, rather than one page suddenly falling in rank, you might see a lot of pages change or increase in rank,” she added.
Identifying what type of algorithm update place took place is the first step in responding to ranking fluctuations. This allows marketers to plan a strategy that best addresses the issue.
How marketers should respond to updates
How you respond to a Google update not only depends on what type of change occurred but also on how it affected your online properties as well.
“If you’re on the winning end of this, it’s all smiles,” said Carter. “This is a good sign that you are on the right track with regards to the quality of your information, the demonstrable credibility of your website, and that Google thinks that you have good technical accessibility.”
“Doing well on Google algorithm updates gives you the opportunity to build and compound your SEO capabilities over time,” she added.
Image: Crystal Carter
Yet when things don’t go as planned with these updates, brands often find themselves scrambling for solutions. This is when it helps to pinpoint the root cause, which can take many forms.
“One of the reasons is that the criteria for your vertical may have changed,” Carter said, referencing a former client who was negatively affected by Google’s update to medical-related results: “They were a reputable, fantastic medical business, and they were selling a test server health test. Then there was a change in the SERP — Google decommercialized this service. For that particular query, they were prioritizing people like the Mayo Clinic, the World Health Organization and the CDC.”
“When Google does that, you have to take a strategic approach to your SEO, which is different from your standard competitive keyword research,” she added.
Although verticals can change often, there’s also a good chance the SERP visibility drop was caused by a problem with your own properties.
“You might have missed something, and this often happens with in-house teams because you’re busy,” Carter said. “You might have missed a particular directive or instruction or rule, or a new element from Google. It might be that you need to play catch up.”
When your site is hit by a core update, it’s important to stay focused on best practices. Carter says this will future-proof your properties for the next round of changes.
“Don’t argue with the algorithm and don’t expect improvements until the next update,” she said. “Sometimes people want to throw everything at it. But generally speaking, the core of the core algorithm updates are around the domain, so Google makes it a quality assessment of your approach to SEO.”
Image: Crystal Carter
What to expect from future changes
Successful marketing strategies don’t simply identify and respond to algorithm changes — they’re able to expect the trends shaping future updates. And from what many SEOs can tell, Google seems to be leaning more into AI modeling.
“Google introduced MUM [Multitask Unified Model] — the latest powerful AI tool and it helps it [Google] understand the information in a way that it’s not been able to do so before,” said Carter. “Not only does it process natural language, but it does so in 75 languages, and it’s also able to process text and also images and it’s also going to set up to be able to grow to process video and audio as well, so Google is already future-proofing this AI tool.”
“What we’re likely to see in the short term is more AI-powered large-scale updates,” she added.
Image: Crystal Carter
The more Google leans into these models, the more marketers will need to stay on top of their online assets. And that means keeping them in tip-top shape — all the time. It’s the best way to prepare for whatever comes next.
“If you’re thinking about how to prepare for it,” Carter said, “I would say it’s worth making sure that your site is healthy all the time. Make sure that you have good, quality content rolling out in a consistent manner.”
Google has made a change to the rich result reports for product structured data on December 28, 2021. This rich results report is viewable in Google Search Console and the change may result in the number of product entities and issues being different from previous days.
What changed. Google said the search company “changed the way that it evaluates and reports errors in Product structured data.” Google did not specify any more details than that.
The impact of the change. As a result of that change, Google said “you may see changes in the number of Product entities and issues reported for your property, as well as a change in severity of some issues from errors to warnings.”
Google will annotated the report so that if you see a decrease or increase in these numbers, it might be related to the change Google made on its reporting end and nothing you changed on your end. Again, it might just be a reporting change and the Google search results have not changed.
Why we care. If you notice changes in the product rich results report in Google Search Console, do not panic, it is a confirmed change on Google’s end. If you didn’t make any changes to your site around this date, there is even less reason to be concerned.
You should still review all the errors, issues and warnings Google specified in this report and resolve those issues going forward.
Google is testing a new announcement bar or tab at the top of the Google Search Console interface. The bar does not yet seem to function properly but has three levels of announcements depending on the urgency of the information.
Types of announcements. Google Search Console shows these three types of announcements bars:
Informational announcement
Minor issue announcement
Major issue announcement
What it looks like. Here is a screen shot of what it currently looks like, although, clicking on them currently does not do anything:
Why we care. It seems Google will be able to use this to communicate issues with Google Search directly to site owners. Again, this is not fully functioning right now but I suspect it is rolling out soon.
From an SEO perspective, 2021 can be summed up as stressful — not just because of several algorithmic updates throughout the year but also possibly because of the timing of some of those updates. With the COVID vaccine rollout, some businesses began returning to normal, but then the Delta and Omicron variant threw everything for a loop — was it just too much to handle for some?
It may have been a bit too much to handle for Google as well: The search engine launched Page Experience update late, never hit its deadline for the mobile-first indexing this year and seemed to rush out two late. big algorithmic updates towards the end of the year.
Google’s June, July and November core updates rocked the SEO industry
June 2021 core update. Google took a while to release its first core update of the year, the June 2021 core update, which began rolling out on June 2, 2021. That update finished rolling out about ten days after it started, on June 12, 2021. This core update seemed to have been a slow rollout that had a bunch of mixed results based on the data given to us by several data providers.
Image: Semrush.
July 2021 core update. Shortly after the June core update, Google released the July 2021 core update on July 1, 2021 — this was kind of like part two of the previous June core update. This update took about 12 days to roll out, completing on July 12, 2021. Unlike the June core update, the July core update was fast to roll out according to the data providers.
November 2021 core update. Then several months later, Google hit us with the November 2021 core update, that started right before the big holiday shopping season on November 17, 2021. That update rolled out through Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday and completed on November 30, 2021, 13 days after it started. The November core update hit hard and quickly according to the data but many SEOs felt blindsided by the timing of that update.
well, they did do one around this time last year as well but at least it was after black friday https://t.co/VYypG5bHpj
Google’s April and December product reviews updates were new to SEOs
Not only did we have three core updates in 2021, we also had two product reviews updates. The product reviews update was a new kind of update, focused on content written around products and making sure Google only ranked the best and most useful product reviews in the search results.
April 2021 product reviews update. Google’s first product reviews update touched down on April 8, 2021. Google made a point to tell us this is not a core update and only impacted English content, but much of the same recovery advice reflected that of a core update. Google effectively finished rolling out that update on April 22, 2021, but there may have been some edge case tremors later, so it took approximately two weeks to rollout. That update was a big update but not as big as a typical core update, said the data providers.
December 2021 product reviews update. If the first product reviews update in April wasn’t enough, Google ran a second product reviews update named the December 2021 product reviews update that started on December 1, 2021. That update took about three weeks to rollout, and completed just days before the Christmas holiday, on around December 21, 2021.
Image: RankRanger.
The update felt bigger than the April product reviews update, according to the data providers. Of course, timing a product reviews update three weeks before Christmas might also put Google into the category of being out of touch with the e-commerce ecosystem.
Google’s spam and link spam updates provided some transparency for SEOs
Google also released a few spam related search algorithms updates, which Google was upfront and transparent about in terms of timing but, for obvious reasons, didn’t give too much technical detail on.
June 23, 2021 spam update. Google released a spam update on June 23, 2021, which began and finished on the same day. It was a 24-hour update target spam efforts in Google Search.
June 28, 2021 spam update. Then the following week, Google released part two, the June 28 spam update. That update also started and finished on the same day, a 24-hour roll out.
July 2021 link spam update. The following month, Google released a July link spam update that started on July 26, 2021. Google said that rollout would be done in about two weeks but it was completed after about four-weeks, two weeks longer than expected. The rollout finished on August 24, 2021 and target spammy links that tried to manipulate the Google search results.
Google’s page experience update was a bit delayed but went live
Google postponed the launch of the page experience update by a couple of months, but it did go live on June 15, 2021. That rollout took a long time — it rolled out for a few months and finished rolling out around September 2, 2021. As a reminder, you should not have seen huge ranking changes in Google Search for this release. This was a slow rollout and Google originally advised not to expect drastic changes.
Image: Google.
Google did say that next year, in February 2022, the page experience update will be brought to desktop search.
Google’s local update in November
Not to be outdone by the web search algorithmic updates, Google also confirmed after the rollout was complete that it performed a local search update in late November. That update started on November 30, 2021, and ran through December 8, 2021.
Image: Joy Hawkins
This update seemed to focus on proximity factors and was code-named the Vicinity Update by the local SEO community.
MUM, passage ranking and subtopics
Passage ranking. Google spoke about passage ranking in 2020 but it wasn’t until February 2021 where Google actually started to use passage ranking. Passage ranking is a way of Google ranking specific passages from a web page in search; it is not a visual update to the search results but a ranking update.
MUM. Google also showcased MUM, Multitask Unified Model, which is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT.
Examples of search results for vaccines, powered by Google’s MUM. Image: Google.
It was first used this year for understanding the hundreds of variations of COVID vaccine names. Google has lots of ambitious plans for MUM in Google Search and beyond and has already expanded its use cases later in 2021.
Sub-topics. Google launched another AI-based ranking system named sub-topics rankings in November 2020. But Google didn’t tell us it went live until 2021 came around.
Mobile-first indexing delayed again
Google’s mobile-first indexing initiative, which started in 2016, was delayed again and scheduled to be completed in March 2021. Google decided to do away with the deadline this year and said this will get done when it gets done. So, if your site has not moved over yet to mobile-first indexing yet, hopefully sometime in 2022 it will be but Google won’t be giving us any more timelines on this initiative.
Other Google algorithm changes, updates, tweaks or topics
It has been a busy year. Google confirmed in 2020 that it released over 4,500 changes to search. I suspect that number will be higher for the 2021 year.
Google also released a predator update, as I like to call it, that demoted libelous content within its search results.
The company also released an image search update in February that reduced duplicate images in its image search results.
Google’s title tag changes caused a stir in the SEO industry. The company confirmed after the change went live that it made changes to the title snippet and what Google uses to show the title snippet. It also explained why it made the changes and a month or so later, made some tweaks to that title snippet algorithm.
Image: Semrush.
Finally, data has shown that the Google search results were more volatile this year than all previous years. SEOs have been working hard with all these changes and there has been more awareness around work-life balance in this space.
I’d expect more to come in 2022, so hopefully, this crazy busy 2021 prepared you for it.
Catch up on the biggest PPC news of the year or zoom out to see how 2020 unfolded for the SEO industry:
In 2021, SEOs faced a flurry of Google updates (including the highly anticipated yet possibly-overhyped Page Experience update), new search results page features like continuous scrolling and countless other updates that could potentially affect visibility for their brands — all while operating amid the second year of the COVID pandemic.
From core updates and title change fiascos to improved shopping options and new ways of tracking data, this year was full of surprises. Here’s our look back at the most impactful SEO news, tactics and tools of 2021.
Core updates. Google released three major core updates — one in June, one in July and one in November. The first caused a lot of search volatility, with tools like MozCast reaching a temperature of 107.3°F on June 3. The July update continued this spike until it all died down around July 12.
On November 17, Google announced a third, somewhat surprising core update, just days before the Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to many tracking tools, this update had higher volatility than June and July’s. Due to the speedy rollout and widespread ranking shifts, many SEOs rightfully wondered why Google chose this time of year to release such a large update.
Page title rewrites. Of all the algorithm updates from this past year, the changes to Google’s page title rewrites in the search engine results pages (SERPs) were the most controversial. Marketers began noticing significant changes to their SERP titles around mid-August.
Examples of Search Engine Land titles that were changed by Google. Image: Brodie Clark.
Following a slew of feedback claiming huge decreases in result quality, Google rolled back some of these updates later in September. But many sites still experienced major ramifications in the following months, including our own properties.
Spam updates. Google released a number of major spam updates throughout the year. The first set rolled out on June 23 and June 28, although there wasn’t much of a noticeable impact on rankings.
The second update, released on July 28, targeted link spam. Rather than penalizing sites with bad links, Google stated that it focused on ignoring those signals.
The final spam update rolled out in November. Google didn’t offer much detail on this update, but search volatility skyrocketed following the release.
Product reviews updates. This year, Google launched two updates to help combat spam and/or thin product reviews. The first update was released in April and the follow-up came in December. Both of these were designed to prioritize reviews with in-depth research, including “content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well.”
Passage indexing. Google introduced passage indexing, an algorithm tweak that ranks segmented pieces of content on a page, to the SERPs in early February. Google now displays these passages as featured snippets and links users to that particular part of the page.
Example of Google’s passage ranking from a specific part of a page.
The year in SEO news
The SERP. Google added an “about this result” box to the SERP in February, giving searchers more information about their results. It expanded this feature in July.
“About this result” display in SERPs. Image: Google.
In a similar fashion, Microsoft Bing launched Page Insights in November, which features a lightbulb icon next to each search result that gives searchers more details about them.
Google added free listings to its Hotel search in March. Later, in December, it allowed hotels to use Google Posts in a limited manner to extend their local reach.
Google also rolled out continuous scroll on mobile search in October, which seemed like it would encourage more clicks on results past page one. SEOs are still measuring what impact this change has had on CTR.
Continuous scroll on Google mobile search. Image: Google.
In November, the search company added features designed to give more visibility to local news content.
On the Microsoft side, Bing Search gained a new interface to make its results more appealing, including an infographic-like search panel and expandable search carousels. It also introduced “Make Every feature Binary” (MEB), a new algorithm model designed to help improve search relevance. And in October, the company released IndexNow, a cross-search engine collaboration with Yandex to set a protocol that would index any new content instantly.
COVID-related updates. As many marketers know, the pandemic has spurred on more interest in SEO as businesses search for new ways to connect with customers. This interest in SEO has remained high over the past year, but there were a number of additional trends. These included an increase in searches for local businesses and pandemic-focused topics.
In April Google announced that additional COVID-related travel advisory information would be shown in Google Search to assist with trip planning. It also expanded its Explore section for its travel site.
In December, Google began rolling out a search feature that lets users see if a doctor or healthcare facility takes their insurance — no doubt spurred on by the increased number of COVID cases worsened by holiday gatherings and the Omicron variant.
Yelp introduced “Proof of vaccination required” and “Staff fully vaccinated” profile attributes. It also added a health and safety measures community feedback feature to help consumers learn more about local businesses’ health and safety compliance. And, to help prevent customer confusion, it added a virtual restaurant attribute.
SEO documentation. Google published updates to its search documentation throughout the past year, though some of those changes weren’t officially announced.
The company quietly published new manual actions targeting News and Discover penalties in February. In June, Google offered an SEO guide to address HTTP status codes, network issues and DNS errors. And in October, it refreshed its search quality guidelines to expand on the concepts of YMYL content and lowest-quality content.
Microsft also published a list of Bingbot IP addresses in November to better alert users when it was crawling their sites.
Diversity and inclusion. In response to the growing amount of hateful rhetoric and attacks against people of color, women, and other minority groups, industry leaders — both search professionals and brands — made pushes for change.
Google announced in February that it would be changing its policies toward diversity research, following its questionable firing of AI ethicist Timnit Gebru. Due to criticism of how the situation played out, the company said it would tie business goals more closely to inclusivity and diversity — and change how it handles employee exits.
In April, Yelp rolled out an Asian-owned business profile attribute in response to the recent rise in anti-Asian violence and xenophobia. Later, in May, the company introduced an LGBTQ-owned attribute option to celebrate pride month.
Third Door Media (the parent company of Search Engine Land and SMX) held the second annual Search Engine Land Award for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing. The previous winner, Areej AbuAli, served as a judge, with Rejoice Ojiaku and hasOptimization earning the accolade in 2021.
Rejoice Ojiaku, winner of the Award for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing
We also put together a list of inclusive marketing resources to help marketers highlight their brand values. Besides being the right thing to do, becoming a more inclusive organization has been shown to be better for your brand.
Image and YouTube. In February, Google provided documentation on image SEO best practices. The advice was focused primarily on ranking well in Google Images, but marketers can apply many of the suggestions to image ranking in general.
YouTube, seeking to assist creators with their reach, added video chapter previews and auto-translate captions. And in December, it launched a new feature that automatically linked to places mentioned in videos, giving users even more context.
Structured data. In May, Schema.org launched its schema markup validator tool in response to Google deprecating its structured data tool. It’s for more “general purpose” use than Google’s Rich Results tool.
In August, Google updated its Article structured data help document to reflect changes to its author properties. It added an author URL property to more easily identify authors of articles.
Industry and legal news. After postponing the mobile-first indexing deadline — first moving it from September 2020 to March 2021 — Google decided to leave the deadline open-ended. It said that there are still many sites not ready to shift over due to unexpected challenges they’re facing.
Mozilla tested Bing as the default search engine for 1% of Firefox users, leading many SEOs to reconsider the importance of optimization for non-Google search engines.
DuckDuckGo pushed past 100 million searches in a single day on January 11, showing how important private search experiences are to a growing number of users. And in December, the company announced that it’s working on a desktop browser, further signaling their support for greater privacy in search.
The battle for data privacy continued throughout 2021 with additional legal actions brought against Google. On March 12, a California judge ruled that Google must face a lawsuit claiming it tracks users in Incognito mode. In response, Google released a court filing saying that it makes clear that “Incognito” does not mean “invisible.” And in November, Google managed to win a dismissal of the U.K. Top Court’s data privacy suit relating to iPhone users.
Google’s run-ins with policy hit issues across the board. In October, the tech giant faced allegations from 17 state attorneys claiming it throttled non-AMP ads to give AMP a boost. This, along with Google’s decision to remove the AMP requirement from Top Stories, led many publishers to reconsider using the format.
Google was also fined €500 million ($589 million) by the French Competition Authority for failing to comply with negotiations with news outlets. Later, it lost a key appeal against the EU’s €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion) fine against the company from 2017, which found that Google broke an antitrust law in how it promoted its search engine regarding shopping.
In December, the company came under investigation for alleged harassment and discrimination against Black female workers. The report said the regulator began looking into the company’s practices after formal complaints.
Google Search Console (GSC). In April, Google released a pilot tool in Search Console that allowed users to report indexing issues; it was fully rolled out in August. Google also added practice problem rich results data, providing more insights for education content publishers. We also saw an upgrade to the AMP debugging section, which now links users to the AMP page experience guide.
To improve accessibility and user experience, Google introduced a new design for Search Console in November (shown below).
Google Search Console’s new design.
On December 14, the Review Snippets rich results report was updated, reducing the number of review objects; namely, the top-level schema.org/Rating objects.
Google Analytics 4. Google announced changes to Google Analytics 4 that included integration with Search Console, new machine learning models and data-driven attribution features. Interestingly, the language in this update suggests that the company may be considering sunsetting Universal Analytics in the not-too-distant future.
Google also unveiled a new version of Analytics 360, the company’s suite of products designed for enterprise-level companies, using Analytics 4 as its foundation.
Bing Webmaster Tools. Microsoft released its Bing content submission API to all users. Unlike its URL submission API, this version lets users submit content, images and HTML to the index as well.
Google Question Hub. In January, Google opened up its Question Hub for US-based publishers — it’s been available to users in India, Indonesia and Nigeria since 2018. The tool “enables creators to create richer content by leveraging unanswered questions,” according to Google.
Retail and e-commerce
In April, Google began enforcing its policy requiring merchants to show the actual price of items throughout the entire checkout phase. The company also updated Google Merchant Center’s product data specification requirements to encourage optimized Google Shopping ads and organic listings.
Google Shopping and WooCommerce partnered together in June to help retailers show their listings across Google. The search engine also released an e-commerce SEO guide to help improve retail sites’ search visibility. These updates reflected the changing landscape of retail due to COVID-19.
In an effort to put more offers in front of users, Google added a “Deals” feed to the Shopping tab and Merchant Center. It also began showing retailers when their items were eligible for badges. And, in order to show relative visibility and other metrics, Google provided Merchant Center users with a relative visibility report.
Google Merchant Center’s competitive visibility report. Image: Google.
In November, Bing Shopping introduced customer-focused tabs to help shoppers find what they were looking for in one place. This update also made it easier for retailers to list their products. And later in December, Microsoft Bing launched the Ethical Shopping hub in the UK, which helps users shop for eco-friendly and fair-trade fashion items.
Microsoft also announced a partnership with Shopify to integrate Bing Shopping with the retail platform, which rolled out in December.
Local
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). Early in the year, Google released a tool to help businesses better manage reviews, enabling business owners to monitor the status of reviews they’ve flagged.
On November 4, Google announced it would be renaming Google My Business to Google Business Profile. Along with this update, the company released new features that would give marketers and business owners more control over their accounts, which include:
Claiming and verifying Google Business Profiles directly in Google Search and Google Maps;
Call history launching in the U.S. and Canada;
Messaging directly from Google Search; and
Message read receipts being controlled within Search and Maps.
Maps. The importance of local maps has only increased throughout the past year. We saw a deeper integration between these and local business profiles across the board.
Google Maps started showing price ranges for U.S. restaurants, adding to a rollout of new features focused on expanding indoor business directories, which included airports, malls and transit stations.
Microsoft Bing introduced a new feature that allows users to search local stores. It’s designed to enable searchers to check store stock, helping them choose whether to buy online and pick up in-store.
Bing’s local store search feature in action.
Later in November and early December, Google rolled out an update to how it ranked the local search pack and map pack results. Termed the “Vicinity Update,” the change drastically impacted local rankings across industries.
Local SEO tools. Google Business Profile Product Experts worked together to help users find unique listing identifiers. Using a Chrome extension called GatherUp, they showed profile managers how to find their business’s unique CID number, which is useful to know when listings are merged or duplicated.
To help local businesses expand their reach, Yelp rolled out Custom Location Targeting, budget recommendations and other helpful local features. It also introduced custom search filters, themed ads and Project Cost Guides to support service businesses.
Looking forward to 2022
With so many algorithm and platform updates taking place this past year, many SEOs will be anxious to look at their data. Just remember: many of these updates are broad, and the most important thing for you to do is to keep your clients updated on Google’s changes.
Many brands are responding to user demand for greater accessibility and increased privacy, so be sure your websites and other properties are compliant and support all kinds of users.
Finally, we’re still a long way off from the end of the pandemic, so focus on answering your audience’s most pressing queries and making things as convenient for them as possible. Showing customers your brand’s values is more important than ever.
Google has confirmed that the December 2021 product reviews update is now finished rolling out. This update has officially completed rolling out a few days before Christmas.
The announcement. “The Google product review update is fully rolled out. Thank you!” Google’s Alan Kent wrote on Twitter.
The Google product review update is fully rolled out. Thank you!
December 2021 product reviews update. As a reminder, the December 2021 product reviews update started to roll out at about 12:30pm ET on December 1, 2021. This update took 20 days to roll out after it was announced. So this update started on December 1, 2021 and lasted through December December 21, 2021.
When and what was felt. Based on early data, this update was not a small update. It was bigger than the April 2021 product reviews update but also seemed to continue to remain pretty volatile throughout the whole rollout. The community chatter and tracking tools were all at pretty high levels consistently for the past few weeks.
Why we care. If your website offers product review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline or stay the same?
Long term, you are going to want to ensure that going forward, that you put a lot more detail and effort into your product review content so that it is unique and stands out from the competition on the web.
More on the December 2021 products reviews update
The SEO community. The December 2021 product reviews update, like I said above, was likely felt more than the April version. I was able to cover the community reaction in one blog post on the Search Engine Roundtable. It includes some of the early chatter, ranking charts and social shares from some SEOs. In short, if your site was hit by this update, you probably felt it in a very big way.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by this product reviews update. We posted that advice in our original story over here. In addition, Google provided two new best practices around this update, one saying to provide more multimedia around your product reviews and the second is to provide links to multiple sellers, not just one. Google posted these two items:
Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
Google product reviews update. The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content that is above and beyond much of the templated information you see on the web. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.
Google is not directly punishing lower quality product reviews that have “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” However, if you provide such content and find your rankings demoted because other content is promoted above yours, it will definitely feel like a penalty. Technically, according to Google, this is not a penalty against your content, Google is just rewarding sites with more insightful review content with rankings above yours.
Technically, this update should only impact product review content and not other types of content.
Last Thursday, many SEOs noticed that Google Search Console was inaccessible. Google confirmed the issue saying “We’re aware of an issue with Search Console that prevents some users from using the service. We’re working on fixing it and we’ll post an update when the issue is resolved.” The issue was not impacting all users, but it did impact many users.
The issue is now officially resolved, five days after it was first confirmed. Google posted in an update “The issue is now resolved. Thanks for the patience.”
The notices. Here are the two posts on Twitter from Google on this issue:
The issue is now resolved. Thanks for the patience. ^gi
Resolved earlier. I believe this was mostly resolved earlier, like within 48-hours of the issue, but Google probably fully restored access five-days later. It is not clear what the issue was exactly but it seemed to me it was around server capacity and resources for the Search Console tools. Again, that is not confirmed but the errors displayed conveyed a 429 Apache error which means “Too Many Requests response status code indicates the user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time (“rate limiting”).”
Why we care. If you were having issues with accessing Google Search Console, those issues should now be fully resolved. Some of you may already be off on your holiday break, so I guess any reporting you need to run can wait until you return.
