Notes from the Google Webmaster Hangout on the 28th of May 2019.
Automated Image Recognition is Expected to be Used For Reviewing Favicons
When reviewing if favicons are following guidelines, John expects algorithmic automated image recognition will be used to identify if a favicon is not following the guidelines and will then filter it out. Once it sees the favicon has been changed and is following the guidelines it should then be picked up again.
Visitors From The Discover Feed Are Expected to be Attributed as Organic Search Traffic
While not currently unified, John believes that in the long run visitors arriving to a site from the discover feed will be attributed as visitors from organic search results. This is due to the discover feed being identified as another search service.
Resource Loading Errors Within Mobile Friendly Test and GSC Don’t Reflect Indexing Errors
Within the Mobile Friendly Test and Inspect URL Tool, Google fetches all of the page content and embedded URLs including images, fonts and JavaScript, which can sometimes cause timeout issues. However, this shouldn’t affect the indexing of the content for search results due to caching and the use of older versions of files.
Crawl Budget is Related to Every URL Fetched From the Server
In general, crawl budget is related to every URL that Google fetches from the server, so if there are mutiple embedded URLs that are needed to render a page and these all need to be fetched, they are all included in the overall crawl budget.
Google Will Pick One Primary Type of Structured Data To Display
If there are different structured data scripts on a page, Google is unable to display more than one type in search results so will only select one. John recommends defining the type you care about the most to focus on implementing.
The Indexing Issue From Last Week Has Been Resolved
The indexing issue seen last week related to Google having issues indexing new content has now been resolved. If sites are still experiencing issues with the indexing of their content this won’t be related to the previous issue.
There Are No SEO Benefits For Translated URLs
As long as Google is able to see unique URLs for each language, it is not a requirement for each word within the URL to be translated. While it can be positive for user experience, it doesn’t provide any SEO benefits.
Googlebot No Longer Needs to Convert Hashbang URLs into Escaped Fragments
Googlebot no longer converts hashbang URLs into escaped fragments as it is able to render and index them directly rather than using the pre-rendered version specified with the escaped fragment. Therefore, John would recommend moving to something that’s URL-based rather than hashtag-based.
Ensure all Key Content is Available if You Are Streaming Content
If a site is streaming content progressively to a page, John would recommend ensuring all key content is available immediately due to the method used to render content. Any additional content which is useful for users but not critical to be indexed can then be streamed progressively.
For more insights from Google, check out our recap from Google I/O 2019 with all of the key takeaways for SEOs
