The past month in terms of Google search, SEO and webmaster related topics can be summed up into two primary categories. First is the massive number of bugs and the second is about new features and tools. Let's start with the bugs; we saw pages dropping from the Google index and it took them a few weeks to fully fix when you count in the 16-day Search Console data loss. Google had bugs with picking the correct canonical as well, also an issue with indexing Google News content, cache date issues, problems with both recipe markup and mobile friendly issues and so much more. It is because of all these bugs, it was hard to tell if there were any large algorithm updates - I am thinking there may have been one around April 26th.
Google added some new features and took away others - such as dropping the sort by date but adding before: and after: search operators. Google Search Console added a number of new reports such as new enhancement reports and unparsable markup reports, a new Google Discover report, AMP Stories filters, Android app filters and more. Heck, they even went Star Wars on us this weekend.
Google might be able to better crawl complex JS soon and change how they index robots.txt content. Let's not forget Google launching support for your URLs with AMP pages. Finally, Eric Schdmit stepped down after 18 years of service.
There is a lot and a lot more - including the typical ongoing chatter in the WebmasterWorld thread. Here is a recap for the past month sorted by importance and category:
Google Algorithm Updates:
- Google Algorithm Update Tools Going Off - Is It A False Alarm?
- Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Around April 26th?
- Google Search Algorithms Are Designed To Be Granular But Older Updates Were More Broad
- Google Is Dropping Pages Out Of The Search Index; A Bug?
- Google's Index Bug With Pages Being De-Indexed Is Almost Fixed
- Was 4% Of Google's Index Removed With The Indexing Bug?
- Google: Some Other Google Bugs May Be Related To The De-Indexing Bug
- Google: We Fully Fixed The Google De-Indexing Bug
- Google Search Bug Selecting Unrelated Canonical URLs & Indexing Issues
- Google Fixing Another Indexing Bug With Google News
- Google Cache Date Is Old; Google Says Don't Worry About It
- Google Recipe Rich Results & Mobile Friendly Bugs Reported
- Google Drops Sort By Date But Adds before: & after: Search Commands
- Google's Indexing Bug Spreads Like A Virus To Coverage Report, URL Inspection Tool & More
- Google Search Console Lost Data From April 9 to April 25th
- Google Search Console's Lost Data Directly Related To Indexing Bug
- Google: Search Console Backlink Report Only Report Not Fully Fixed Yet
- Google Search Console Reports Finally Up To Date
- Now Google Search Console Manual Actions Are Buggy
- Google Search Console Manual Actions Now Back After Disappearing
- Google Search Console Adds Three New Reports
- New Google Search Console Discover Report
- Google Search Console Performance Report AMP Stories Search Appearance Filter
- Google Search Console Performance Report Gets Android App Filter
- Google Search Console Change Of Address Tool Not Working
- Google Search Console Performance Report Now Consolidated To Canonical
- Google: No Plans Yet On Migrating Disavow Link Tool
- Google Search Console URL Parameters Tool May Change
- Google Search Console Star Wars Mode For Star Wars Day
- Google Tests A More Modern Rendering Engine For GoogleBot
- When Google Says I Don't Know, They Might Know.
- Google Posts Reminder On How Structured Data Can Richen Search Results
- Google: You Cannot Isolate Specific Ranking Factor Successes
- Google: Mobile-First Indexing Is Still On Track & Making Good Progress
- Google: Sitemap Dates vs Web Page Dates
- Google Really Wants You To Use Remote Job Markup For Job Schema
- Google Launches Video Series On SEO Myth-Busting
- Google: AJAX/XHR Calls Can Impact Crawl Budget
- Google Might Change How NoIndex In Robots.txt Works
- Submit Questions Around JavaScript SEO For Google
- Google Uploads Last JavaScript SEO Video: Dynamic Rendering For JavaScript Sites
- Google: Use Site Command For Checking Individual URLs
- Navigation Removal Trick Impacting Google Rankings Algorithm?
- Google SEO Tips On Vue.js
- Google: More Crawling Doesn't Mean Things Are Better (i.e. Rankings)
- 5 Months Later Google Has Not Fixed A Googlebot Search Exploit
- A New Google Useragent google-Read-Aloud?
- Google Wants Feedback On Dynamic Rendering Success
- Google Can See Disavow Links Between Canonical URLs
- Google: If It's Not Obvious Which Links Hurt You Then It's Not Hurting Or Helping
- Google: Nofollow Link Attribute Is Working Fairly Well
- Google: No, You Can't Force Someone To Link To You Legally
- Google My Business Explores Charging Fees?
- Google My Business: POI Establishment Category
- Google Maps Business Reviews Vanishing After Suspension Removal
- Google Home & Assistant Listings May Need Google Guaranteed Label
- Google Posts Supports Highlighting Customer Testimonials & Reviews
- Google My Business Rolling Out Short Names & URLs
- Google Tests More Graphical Google My Business Dashboard
- Google AMP Now Can Support Real Publisher URLs
- Google Discover Is The -1 Screen Or Position -1
- AMP Stories Thumbnails In Google Search Results Snippets
- Google Images, Featured Snippets & Videos More Often In Web Search Results
- Q&A On Google Video Screenshots
- Google Search Snippets With Image Collage Carousel
- Google Showing Previously Fetched Results - Update Button
- Live: Google Sitelinks Images
For last month's recap, see over here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
