3 min
OMG you guys. You guys. We have actual news this week! News! I can barely believe it. It’s not all news, sure, some of it is more of the “huh, that’s neat” variety, but still you guys! News!
Google News
- Sites Not Ready For Mobile-First Index Are Not Being Ported Over Yet – Apparently at PubCon, Google’s Gary Illyes said that sites which aren’t ready for the mobile-first index just won’t be moved over yet. This is likely their kinda-subtle way of telling y’all to get your crap together and get your sites ready. 😉
- Google Bringing More Structured Data To Search Results – Remember a little while back when I reported that Google wanted to get away from structured data? Well, in an odd turn, Google’s Gary Illyes admitted that Google will be bringing more structured data-based features to the SERPs. This apparently will include jobs, recipes, and other stuff.
- Google Sees Featured Snippets As Useful Yet Volatile – More from PubCon, Google’s Gary Illyes talked about featured snippets a bit, which was really fascinating. Basically they’re under continually active development, and right now that’s having a lot of people use them to try and gain rankings and visibility. While Illyes sees a bright future for featured snippets, he feels their active development makes them super volatile right now.
- Google Still Tweaks Both Panda & Penguin – Ah, Panda and Penguin, remember those adorable algorithm updates? Now that they’ve gone essentially real-time, one wonders how much work is still done on them. Apparently, according to (again) Gary Illyes, the folks at Google still tweak both algorithms every so often, which is one of the many, many, many changes they make every day.
Other News
- New Mozilla Browser, Quantum, Switches From Yahoo To Google For Its Search – After several years of defaulting to Yahoo for its search capabilities, Mozilla’s new — and highly touted — browser, Quantum, is now using Google. You can still use Yahoo if you really want to, but c’mon, are ya?
- Facebook Local Launches, Sets Its Sights On Yelp & Foursquare – After a tepid launch that didn’t get Facebook the attention it wished as a Calendar competitor, they’ve relaunched Events as Local. Facebook Local is an app that lets folks search for restaurants, gyms, and all sorts of local businesses to get info, ratings, and more … just like Yelp and Foursquare. I’ve yet to try it, but it certainly sounds nifty.