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 January 2022 issue of The Featured Snippet:
WordPress Launches IndexNow Plugin
Microsoft Bing launched an IndexNow plugin for WordPress that allows users to automatically share URLs with search engines. This process provides a signal to Bing and Google about new or removed content. The release shows Microsoft Bing’s effort to make IndexNow more readily available. The official announcement from the Microsoft Bing team is below:
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Yandex, Microsoft Bing Will Co-Share Submitted URLs
The original intent behind IndexNow was to co-share submitted URLs across multiple search engines. As of January 13, IndexNow can now co-share URLs submitted and is now specifically sharing URLs submitted to Microsoft Bing or Yandex with the other search engine. Google is also exploring implementing IndexNow.
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On January 21, Google introduced a new robots tag called indexifembedded. The new tag suggests to Google to index embedded content within iFrame or other similar HTML tags. The tag is beneficial to use when the actual page is set to noindex. Currently, only Google supports the indexifembedded tag. The official announcement from Google is below:
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On Monday, January 31, Google launched its new Search Console URL Inspection API. The new API creates opportunities to mix Search Console data with third parties like Screaming Frog. Google also released API developer documentation to assist users with implementation. The official announcement from Google is below:
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On January 17, Google launched a new page experience report for desktop in Google Search Console. According to Google, the update is designed to prepare SEOs and website managers with an overall status of how well the desktop version is performing inlight of the upcoming page experience update for desktop. This includes a general rating on the amount of “good” URLs, impressions on those “good” URLs along with Core Web Vitals and HTTPS. Google first launched the page experience report in April 2021 before the launch of the page experience update (covered in the April 2021 issue of The Featured Snippet). The official announcement from Google is below:
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Shops is a new module available on mobile devices for certain US-select queries within Google mobile search results. This feature currently shows three shops, and users can then expand to see up to ten merchants depending on availability. The selection of results and their order are based on organic search ranking. An example of the “Shops” section is shown below (via Search Engine Land).
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On January 18, Yoast announced that Yoast SEO is now available for Shopify site owners. The app for Shopify users is at a cost per 30 days. The app provides general guidance on which areas of the site need SEO improvements.
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DuckDuckGo shared that they exceeded 100 billion searches. DuckDuckGo continues to grow on a daily basis, and its privacy-focused model continues to gain popularity. The official announcement from DuckDuckGo is below:
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