Refresh Your SEO knowledge and learn new things from Google I/O 2021.

I watched the SEO sessions online at Google I/O 2021. This part of Google I/O is especially useful for SEOs who want to update and refresh their knowledge and learn new things. Honestly, I really learned a lot of new techniques and I want to share SEO takeaways in this blog post.

SEO Takeaways From Google I/O 2021

• What’s New in Search
• Preparing for Page Experience Signals
• What’s New in Web Vitals
• The Business Impact of Core Web Vitals

• Fetching in the SEO language is called crawling.
• Crawling is similar to how developers use widget or URL to request the page.
• After the page has been crawled and rendered to process any JavaScript, the results are then parsed.
• Parsing in the SEO language is called indexing.
• Headings and other texts from the DOM are extracted and stored as tokens for an index of URLs.
• Search engines use various machine-readable elements to interpret the content on the page and to decide whether to store the page in the index or skip it.
• Structured data are one of these elements that provide additional information about the page and its content.
• In order for Google to understand the links, they should be well-formed HTML elements and point at reasonable and fetchable URLs.
• With the processing, Google also looks for links to new pages (both internal and external)

Updates in Crawling (HTTP/2)

HTTP/2 is the next major version of HTTP (the protocol used for transferring data on the internet).

• HTTP/2 crawling allows Google to request more URLs with a similar load on the server.
• The decision to crawl with HTTP/2 is based on whether the server supports it and whether Google systems determine there’s a possible efficiency gain.
• Website owners do not need to do anything other than enabling HTTPS and HTTP/2 support on their web server.
• Over half of all URLs are now crawled with HTTP/2. Thanks to stream multiplexing and header compression, the number of connections and the bandwidth have both gone down significantly.

Structured Data

When it comes to machine-readable information on a page, Google primarily relies on structured data embedded in the HTML pages.

• JSON-LD has become the most popular way to provide structured data.
• All of Google’s modern search specific metadata can be provided through JSON-LD and the schema.org vocabulary.

Preparing for Page Experience Signals

Page Experience Pillars

Google Search has always considered user experience as part of ranking.

• Mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal (2014)
• HTTPS (2014)

Page Experience has four pillars of user experience:

• Loading (how fast or slow the resources of the page are downloaded and displayed on the user’s browser)
• User Annoyance (some of the webpage behavior that may get in the way of a user accomplishing a task)
• Security & Privacy (how safe, secure, and privacy-friendly a web page is)
• Accessibility (whether the site is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities). *15% of users worldwide have some form of disability.

These four pillars provide a structure of how you should think about the page experience for your site.

Core Web Vitals (update to CLS)

LCP, FID, and CLS are Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics that apply to all the web pages and should be measured by all site owners and will be surfaced across all the Google tools. Core Web Vitals are a robust set of threshold guidance that map to user expectations.

Each Core Web Vitals metric:

• represents a distinct facet of user experience
• is measurable in the field
• reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome

Page Experience Ranking Coming to Desktop

Page experience is critical to all users regardless of the device they are using. Updated guidance, documentation, and tools will be provided.

What’s New in Web Vitals

Web Vitals are metrics for web pages with a focus on user experience. They measure problems that frustrate users like poor performance or content shifting around.

• Core Web Vitals is a subset of Web Vitals considered most important to focus on.
• Core Web Vitals apply to all web pages and are surfaced across all Google tools.
• They are measurable in the field so you can get a ground truth of what real users see.
• They focus on the critical user-centric outcome (a small set of metrics).

Business Impact of Core Web Vitals

Here some nice screenshots I thought I would share with you. It’s about how different people look at Core Web Vitals.

Catch up on what you missed or re-watch your favorites on demand at Google I/O 2021.

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Google Announced Multitask Unified Model at Google IO

Google announced its next big change in how it understands queries and language on the web – they are calling it MUM – Multitask Unified Model. This is not live yet but Google wanted to share a bit about it. Google said this “new technology Google is exploring internally to better understand language & make it easier to get helpful responses to complex Search needs.”

Google said it is like BERT in that it built on a Transformer architecture but it is 1,000 times more powerful. MUM not only understands language, Google said but it also generates language. Google said MUM is “trained across 75 different languages and many different tasks at once, allowing it to develop a more comprehensive understanding of information and world knowledge than previous models. And MUM is multimodal, so it understands information across text and images and, in the future, can expand to more modalities like video and audio.”

Here is the example:

In the example above, Google said MUM can surface insights based on its deep knowledge of the world, it could highlight that while both mountains are roughly the same elevation, fall is the rainy season on Mt. Fuji so you might need a waterproof jacket. MUM could also surface helpful subtopics for deeper exploration — like the top-rated gear or best training exercises — with pointers to helpful articles, videos and images from across the web.

It is also really good with languages and understanding information across types. Google said “MUM-powered features and improvements to our products in the coming months and years.”

You can learn more at the Google blog.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

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Google Product Reviews Algorithm Update

Page Experience Report with More Actionable Insights

Last Year, Google announced the “page experience update” which will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience report combines Core Web Vitals signals with the existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.

Google said that “this update is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences, page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account.” 

What is Page Experience?

The Page Experience report offers valuable metrics, such as the percentage of URLs with good page experience, and search impressions over time, enabling you to quickly evaluate performance. You can also dig into the components of page experience signal to gain additional insights on opportunities for improvement.

In addition to launching the Page Experience Report, Google also updated the Search Performance Report to allow you to filter pages with good page experience, which helps you keep track of how these pages compared to other pages on the same site.

As part of this latest update, Google is expanding the usage of non-AMP content to power the core experience on news.google.com and in the Google News mobile apps. If you’re an AMP publisher, then follow the AMP page experience guide that offers tailored advice on how to make your AMP pages perform at their best.

According To Google: 

“Our mission is to help users find the most relevant and quality sites on the web. The goal with these updates is to highlight the best experiences and ensure that users can find the information they’re looking for.”

You can expect this update will begin to roll out in mid-June. The search giant will continue to test other ways to help identify content with a great page experience, and we’ll keep you updated when there is more to share.

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Google Product Reviews Algorithm Update

Link To Your Highlighted Text

Last year Google launched a browser extension called Link to Text Fragment. Now, Google is introducing a new feature in Chrome 90 Browser that will allow users to create a link to a section of a website that they’ve highlighted. This latest Google Chrome 90 feature is still rolling out to users and works just as the browser extension did.

According to a blog post from Google product manager Kayce Hawkins: Visit a web page, highlight the text you want to create a link to, right-click, and select “copy link to highlight.” A URL ending in a pound sign (#) is generated, which you can then share with others. When they open the link, they’ll be sent to the specific highlighted section instead of the beginning of the page.

With “Copy Link to Highlight”, you can share a URL for selected text highlighted for the recipient.

New Google Chrome 90 PDF Features

Google also added more features to make working with PDFs better: document properties, two-page view, and an updated top toolbar, which puts the most important PDF actions (zoom, jump to page, save, print, and more) within a single click. These new Google Chrome 90 features are rolling out now.

Last but not least, Google is also going to soon launch tab freezing for collapsed groups. This means when groups are collapsed (and tabs are hidden), the tabs inside use less memory and CPU, making your computer quicker. And right now, I have 11 groups collapsed with 64 tabs inside, so that’s awesome. This feature is coming soon to beta.

Google said the “copy link to highlight” feature is already available on desktop and Android devices for some users. The Google Chrome 90 feature is “coming soon” to iOS, the company added.

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Google Product Reviews Algorithm Update

Google Search Console Introducing REGEX Filter and Revamped Comparison Mode

Google Search Console launching two new features including regular expression (regex) filters and a revamped comparison mode that will help to improve the efficiency of analyzing data in the performance reports.

Now, webmasters and site owners can use Search Console to filter data by regular expression (regex), as well as utilize a revamped comparison mode that supports more than one metric. 

Find out more about these new features and how they can assist with data analysis in the Search Console Performance Reports.

REGEX Filters

Search Console Performance Reports now support REGEX (regular expressions) filters for page URLs and user queries. This will help you create the more complex query and page-based filters and answer more questions that interest them. Google explains how the addition of regex support allows site owners to capture more query data:

“For instance, let’s say your company is called ‘cats and dogs’ but is sometimes also abbreviated as ‘cats & dogs’ or even ‘c&d’. You can use a regex filter to capture all of your branded queries by defining the regex filter: cats and dogs|cats & dogs|c&d.”

To use the new regex filter, create a query or page filter, select the dropdown menu, and select Custom. For further assistance with creating regex filters, visit the help center page.

Previously, Search Console didn’t support more complex cases, such as a query containing one out of a few optional strings. But now, users could filter queries and page URLs according to three patterns: containing a string, not containing a string, and exactly matching a string.

Revamped Comparison Mode

Site owners use the comparison mode in Search Console to answer comparison-based questions. Until now, the table wouldn’t contain a comparison column with a relative difference in percentage if more than one metric was selected.

The revamped comparison mode now supports cases where more than one metric is selected. An improvement to the interface nearly doubles the area available for the data table, making it easier to view results side-by-side.

While comparison mode now allows more than one metric to be compared, only one filter at a time can be applied to those metrics. In addition, the comparison mode now supports the new regex filter for queries and pages.

These updates to Search Console are now available to all site owners.

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Google Product Reviews Algorithm Update

Google Product Reviews Algorithm is designed to better reward such content.

Today Google launched a search ranking algorithm update which is designed to reward product reviews with well-researched, in-depth content over brief product summaries. Keep in mind that this new Google Google Product Reviews Update is not a core algorithm update that affects all search results. This update only targets product reviews and currently applies to English-language search results.

According to the given statement:

“Google Search is always working to show the most useful and helpful information possible, through testing, experimenting, and review processes. From this, we know people appreciate product reviews that share in-depth research, rather than thin content. That’s why we’re improving our ranking systems, which we call the product reviews update, that’s designed to better reward such content.”

If your website is not product-based and does not have any product reviews then you don’t need to worry about with regard to this Google Product Reviews update. But if your site has product reviews, so maybe you can see the fluctuations in daily traffic and rankings.

If you observe any sudden drop or rise in search traffic at or after April 8, so it is possible that a site was impacted by the product reviews update. Regardless of any changes in traffic, site owners should add an annotation to Google Analytics and other monitoring tools to indicate the product reviews update went live today.

What If Google Product Reviews Algorithm Update Impact Your Website?

The product reviews update focuses on providing users with content that offers insightful analysis and original research. With this update, Google Search aims to prioritize product reviews written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well. Site owners who believe they’ve been impacted by this Google Product Reviews Algorithm Update should look into provided guidelines on creating better content.

Try to review the content objectively and ask if your site’s product reviews:

• Express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?
• Show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?
• Provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?
• Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?
• Cover comparable products to consider, or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances?
• Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product, based on research into it?
• Describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision?
• Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas? For example, a car review might determine that fuel economy, safety, and handling are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas.
• Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?

It seems like Google will pay close attention to whether a review offers information that goes beyond what the manufacturer provides. In other words, don’t go to a product page and rewrite what’s already on the web. We’ll likely learn more about this Google Product Reviews Algorithm Update over time as it continues to roll out.

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Manage Your Goold Ads Campaign with New Interface

Google Begin Testing FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) in Chrome

Google announced it has begun testing FLoC, Federated Learning of Cohorts, in Chrome. Specifically, the FLoC origin trial in Chrome 89 will work on websites that don’t opt-out of it. Google said that the initial testing of FLoC is taking place with a small percentage of users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, and the U.S. Google also said that it will expand to other regions as the trial expands globally.

What is FLoC?

FLoC is a method for browsers to enable interest-based advertising. It works by gathering data about a user’s browsing habits and then clustering groups of users with similar interests into cohorts. The algorithm used to develop those cohorts may look at the URLs of sites that the user visited and the content of those pages, among other factors, according to the FLoC proposal on GitHub. Information about the cohort is then shared for advertising purposes.

According to Google statement “a new piece of web technology – Federated Learning of Cohorts – will start to roll out as a developer origin trial in Chrome. Keeping in mind the importance of “and,” FLoC is a new approach to interest-based advertising that both improves privacy and gives publishers a tool they need for viable advertising business models. Federated Learning of Cohorts is still in development and we expect it to evolve based on input from the web community and learnings from this initial trial.”

Google has announced that it expects to start testing Federated Learning of Cohorts-based cohorts with advertisers beginning in Q2 of this year. There are more details on how this works over here.

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Google Ads New Summary Views User Interface

Manage Your Goold Ads Campaign with New Interface

Navigating Google Ads isn’t always easy, especially if you’re a new advertiser or a small business. To make it easier for you to manage your campaigns, Google Ads announced a new summary view interface with the goal of making “it easier for you to manage your campaigns.” The new views include the performance at a glance, performance custom recommendations, quickly create and edit campaigns, and a quick way to manage your keywords.

The summary view shows you a simplified version of your account. You’ll see all the campaigns you’ve created, as a list of cards. Each card gives you a quick view of your ads, performance, and status. The Summary view can be helpful if you have a smaller number of campaigns.

To access additional features under “Tools & settings” click the switch view icon found within the user interface.

Here are screenshots of the Google Ads summary view:

View performance at a glance, this GIF shows campaign card expanding and showing performance at a glance:

 Improve performance with custom recommendations. This example custom recommendation “Expand your reach with Google search partners.” 

Create and edit campaigns in the summary view:

Manage keywords in one place:

Google Added New Association Functionality To Search Console

Associate Your Site With Google To Unlock More Functionality

Today, Google announced that Search Console has an enhanced Association Page which you see within the settings menu. This New Association Page is created to build a connection between a Search Console property, and some other entity or property in another Google service: for example, between a Search Console property and a Google Analytics account, a YouTube channel, or a Chrome Web Store account.

If you want to associate your Search Console property with another Google service then you need to connect with Google’s New Association Page to unlock more functionality for your site.

Google Association Page Supports Following Property Types:

• Google Analytics Property: You can view your Search Console data, such as organic search queries, in your Google Analytics property. Starting today, you can also link Search Console domain properties to Google Analytics and get better coverage of your organic search results. We recommend using this option as it can help you get a more complete picture in the Search Console reports in Google Analytics.
  Google Ads Account: View the paid and organic report in Google Ads.
• YouTube Channel: Link your videos to your associated website.
• Play Console App: Use App Indexing.
• Actions Console Project: Verify your brand and enable cross-platform functionality.
• Chrome Web Store Account: Publish apps and extensions to the Chrome Web Store on behalf of your site.

For questions or comments on the new Associations page, you can visit Search Central help forums and share your experiences.

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Responsive Search Ads Now The Default in Google Ads

Increase Conversions By Using Responsive Search Ads

Today, Google officially announced that Responsive Search Ads (RSA) will become the default ad type for Search campaigns in Google Ads, but the expanded text ads can also be created. Google said that due to COVID-19, search queries like “takeout restaurants” have grown over 5000%, and meanwhile searches for “online learning” have grown over 400%2 in the last year.

What Are Responsive Search Ads?

Responsive Search Ads are Google’s newest, largest, and most flexible search ad format. Unlike traditional search ads, where you write your headlines and descriptions together to create 1 static ad text, when writing a Responsive Search Ad you can write up to 15 different headlines and up to 4 different descriptions. Collectively, those headlines and descriptions can be arranged in 43,680 different permutations, which means the ad testing possibilities are nearly endless!

RSAs allow advertisers to input multiple headlines and ad copy variations, and Google Ads uses machine learning to determine which variations to use based on what queries people are searching for. The variations are tested to determine which combinations perform best. The Ad strength score lets search marketers understand how to improve their RSAs for better performance.

Google recommends that advertisers not using RSAs currently consider the following best practices:

• Use Ad strength when writing your headlines and descriptions to understand the effectiveness of your ads.
  Take advantage of location insertion and countdown customizers to show ads that are relevant and meaningful to your customers.
• Use Smart Bidding and broad match keywords with responsive search ads to help optimize the performance of your ads while maximizing your reach.
• Review cross-campaign asset reporting to understand which creative assets resonate most with your customers.

How Responsive Search Ads Works?

The more headlines and descriptions you enter, the more opportunities Google has to serve ads that more closely match your potential customers’ search queries, which can improve your ad performance. After you enter headlines and descriptions, the RSAs assembles the text into multiple ad combinations in a way that avoids redundancy, different from expanded text ads.

Next, in any given ad, a maximum of 3 headlines and 2 descriptions will be selected to show in different combinations and orders. Over time, Google Ads will test the most promising ad combinations, and learn which combinations are the most relevant for different queries.

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SEO vs SEM: What’s the Difference and Why Should You Care