Tom Williams is back with another batch of news from the world of SEO. Find out more about updated webmaster guidelines from Bing, new integration of Search Console and Google Analytics, and why government websites are seeing increases in visibility.
Another week has flown by, which means it’s time for me to take you through the most recent news within the SEO industry. In this weeks’ news I discuss everything from GoogleBot adding products to shopping cart all the way through to inside information on a new integration of Google Search Console and Google Analytics!
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that a Google crawler has been adding products to websites shopping carts! Google got in touch with The Wall Street Journal to inform them that systems were being implemented in order to ensure pricing on product pages matched the shopping cart once a product had been added.
This is the official statement provided to Search Engine Land:
“We use automated systems to ensure consumers are getting accurate pricing information from our merchants.”
This means that for owners of eCommerce sites, abandoned cart metrics may be inflated artificially. However, Google is looking to provide clarity on exactly how these systems work with websites in order to avoid any confusion.
Everyone at Bing has been hard at work over the past year in order to update the Webmaster Guidelines, and they have finally made this updated version live.
The previous version was from 8 years ago in 2012 but they have now completely re-vamped. Christi Olson (Head of Evangelism at Bing) posted this update on twitter last week:
Christi was asked whether Bing also supports the new link attributes rel=sponsored/ugc, and her response was as follows:
“We have received some questions about rel=sponsored/ugc. We have been, and are continuing to, monitor it as a signal. Right now, it's not as strong or important as a signal – but that can change based on adoption and usage.”
Bing have delved into more detail within their Webmaster Guidelines on how they rank content and web pages, which is definitely worth a read!
In last week’s SEO News Roundup, we covered the news of a Google Algorithm update that happened on June 23rd, where many of the tracking tools saw big spikes.
Just over a week later, we are now seeing quite a few people suggesting that this update had a bigger impact on Governmental websites. It is important to point out that it wasn’t just these types of sites that were impacted; other industries saw fluctuations during this update as well.
When filtering the SEMRush Sensor (a tool that monitors the level of fluctuations happening within the search results) to show only the governmental sector, the spike on June 23rd, along with other spikes around it, actually increases slightly:
It could be possible that Google is giving them a boost during the pandemic to ensure they are visible, and so that users can get the information they need.
Have you seen ranking movements during the last few weeks? Let us know by tweeting us @clickthrough.
Last week, we mentioned that Google were soon going to launch new integrated reports between Google Analytics and Search Console.
Well, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable has some more detailed inside information on what these reports could include! He’s unable to share screenshots but has provided the detail:
It would be great to hear your thoughts on this, so please feel free to tweet me @tommy_iv.
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