The Featured Snippet is the official SEO newsletter of Performics and is dedicated to keeping you up to date with the latest SEO industry news, trends, and events—all in an easy-to-read, summed-up format. See below for the latest version of The Featured Snippet:
In the May 2021 issue of The Featured Snippet:
Google held their annual Google I/O developer conference in May 2021. Check out below for a round up of what you missed at the virtual developer conference:
MUM (Multitask Unified Model)
Google previewed a new product called Multitask Unified Model (MUM). This newly developed AI improves Google Search by being able to understand more complex queries. MUM is built on Transformer, neural network architecture—similar to BERT but much more powerful. MUM can provide a more comprehensive understanding as it is designed to understand 75 different languages and complete multiple tasks at once. MUM is not available yet. For more information on MUM, check out Google’s MUM product announcement.
LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)
Google previewed LaMDA, which is a new language model that helps understand open-ended conversation without repeating information. LaMDA is trained on dialogue and is also built on Transformer. LaMDA is in its early stages with no rollout dates yet. For more information, check out Google’s LaMDA announcement.
Page Experience Update Coming to Desktop
Google announced that the Page Experience Update, which will roll out on mobile in June 2021, will then also roll out on desktop. Google has not provided a specific timeline for the desktop rollout.
HTTP/2 Crawling Update
Google shared that over half of all URLs with HTTP/2 are now being crawled.
New Video Structured Data Types
Google announced two new video structured data types: clip markup and seek markup. Clip markup is a manual way to tell Google about video timestamps. Seek markup is a way to tell Google to automatically identify video timestamps. Seek markup is not yet available.
Google Shopping Graph
Google announced its Shopping Graph, an AI-enhanced model, that collects a product’s information across the web and showcases it in a singular place. The Shopping Graph pulls in websites, prices, reviews, videos, and retailer product data. For more information, check out Google’s Shopping product update.
Google Maps Update
Google Maps will now highlight relevant businesses based on different times of the day. The map update is more tailored to the specific user with also rolling out new routing options, a live view, and an alert on busy locations. For more information, check out Google’s Google Maps product update.
“About this result” SERP Feature
The “About this result” feature provides users with additional information on a website within search results. Users will be able to preview a description, when the website was first indexed, and be notified if the connection is secure. This update is starting to roll out globally for English result queries. For more information, check out Google’s advanced search result update.
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SEOs noticed significant organic traffic and ranking changes on May 19, 2021, and shared updates in the WebmasterWorld forum. Google has not confirmed a search ranking update.
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Schema.org announced the launch of its own structured data testing tool on May 11, 2021. The schema markup validator tool was migrated from Structured Data Testing Tool following Google’s backlash on deprecating the tool. The testing tool has been enhanced to check if JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata are being used properly to convey the desired meaning. Google will focus on testing Google only support structured data schema through Rich Results, while Schema.org will provide a broader check on a variety of structured data types. Schema.org’s structured data testing tool is in beta and can be used at validator.schema.org.
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