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 February 2022 issue of The Featured Snippet:
Google has begun rolling out the Page Experience Update for desktop web pages and desktop search as of February 22nd. This update will slowly roll out over the next several weeks and be completed by the end of March 2022. Last year, Google began rolling out the Page Experience Update for mobile. The below table shows the ranking signals for the Page Experience update (desktop vs. mobile):
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Google announced the launch of the URL Inspection Tool API last month. Screaming Frog, the popular SEO crawler tool, integrated the URL Inspection Tool API into the tool in February. This allows SEOs to easily access the URL Inspection Tool API directly through Screaming Frog. The official announcement from Screaming Frog is below:
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Bing News PubHub was launched as part of the Bing Webmaster Tools to help Bing news publishers deliver more efficient content to Microsoft Start users. Through PubHub, publishers can reach Microsoft Bing users with new and diverse content, which helps them attract a powerful audience and better results. The official announcement from Microsoft Bing is below:
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Google Chrome launched a new feature called Journeys which makes it easier for users to find topics they searched for at a previous time. This desktop feature organizes URLs by topic or intent with Chrome’s History section. The Journeys feature is optional and can be turned off at any time. Google also announced that Journeys is rolling out to Chrome in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese and Turkish.
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Search Console in Search Results Now Integrated with Domain Properties
Google is now including site performance at the top of search results. This will only show for users that are logged into their Google account and own the website property within Search Console. Depending on the search, your site’s clicks, impressions, and average position for that search query may appear. The below screenshot shows what now may populate in search results (via Google Help Center documentation):
The official announcement from Google is below:
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More Messages Coming to Search Console
Search Console users will now receive all Search Console related messages within the messages panel following Google’s recent migration. The official announcement from Google is below:
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Crawl Stats Report Missing Data
Google Search Console is missing data for February 8, impacting the overall report. This reporting issue has not been confirmed by Google, but it is a widespread issue and is most likely a bug in the report.
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Performance Report Data Loss
Google reported a data logging issue in Google Search Console that affected Google Search, Google Discover, and Google News performance reporting. The issue occurred between February 1-February 3. The below screenshot shows what you may be seeing within Google Search Console (via Search Engine Roundtable):
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Google has added new Web Story performance tools to Google Analytics and Google Data Studio to help users track a story’s performance. Creators can now track how many users read at least a portion of your story, how long it took them, how many stories they viewed, and how many reached the final story. A dashboard template is also available within Data Studio.
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Google released how they uses a number of different AI systems to optimize its search engine, including RankBrain, neural matching, BERT, and most recently MUM. RankBrain, introduced in 2015, has helped provide a meaning between words and concepts. Neural matching, introduced in 2018, helps determine the relationship between search queries and pages. In 2019, BERT was introduced to understand how words have different meanings and intents based on their order, and MUM (or Mutlitask Unified Model) can both understand and generate language.
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In the Google Maps interface, Google has added an “updates from customers” section to Google Business Profiles. This shows some of the recent reviews from Google Local Guides on the Google Maps interface. The below screenshot shows an example of what users may see within Google Maps (via Search Engine Roundtable):
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