June 2022: What's New In SEO?

Invisible Content is Not Less Important

Google again clarified that content that is not visible on page load, is not considered less important.

It needs to be in the HTML or the immediate JavaScript but it doesn't have to be visible - so your content in sliders, accordions and tabs is considered equal to the rest of your content.

Google Says Content Not Visible On Page Is No Longer Less Important

In the recent Search Off The Record podcast, Gary Illyes of Google said Google no longer assigns less importance to content or items that are not visible on the page. It just needs to be in the HTML o

Search Engine RoundtableBarry Schwartz

WebPageTest Introduced No-Code Performance Experiments

There are plenty of tools that help us review page loading speed and they always spit out suggestions on what fixes we should implement.

However, WebPageTest took this one step further - you are now able to run the test again with selected recommendations as if they were implemented.

Thanks to that you can see the impact of each change on performance right away. With no changes in the code! And that can inform your decision whether it's worth implementing or not.

Available on the paid plan only.  

Introducing Opportunities & Experiments: Taking the Guesswork out of Performance - WebPageTest Blog

WebPageTest BlogTim Kadlec

Google Will Crawl the First 15MB of a Page

Google updated its documentation to clearly specify that Googlebot will crawl and consider for ranking only the first 15MB of a page/file.

Even though this is a limit you'll (hopefully) never reach with a standard HTML page, if you host some large PDF files (which Googlebot crawls as well), make sure you are within this limit.

Googlebot will crawl and index the first 15MB of content per page

Make sure the content you want Googlebot to crawl, index and ultimately rank is within the first 15MB of that page.

Search Engine LandBarry Schwartz

Googlebot and the 15 MB thing | Google Search Central Blog | Google Developers

Google DevelopersGary

Multi-Source Featured Snippets and Other Experiments

Want to get a glimpse at some small changes that might at some point come to the search results?

In the article linked below, Glenn Gabe compiled a list of tests and small improvements that might at some point come to SERP or are already a reality.

Amazing Search Experiments and New SERP Features In Google Land (2022 Edition)

Glenn Gabe of GSQi covers the latest experiments in the Google search results (based on Glenn’s presentation at the Google SEO Meetup in NYC in June 2022).

The Internet Marketing DriverGlenn Gabe

Also, check out how Google automatically generates Pro and Cons in snippets:

Google Adds Pros & Cons To Search Result Snippets

Normally when someone sends me a sophisticated search result snippet from Google and I dig in, I find a reason for how Google came up with this snippet. But it seems like in this case below, Google is

Search Engine RoundtableBarry Schwartz

Adding In-Store Products Can Increase Local Visibility

If local SEO is relevant to your site, you should be aware that Google has recently updated its documentation which now lists adding products to your local profile as a visibility factor.

For this update and other recent developments in local SEO, check out this article:

New Tracking Restrictions

Italy has become the third country (after Austria and France) that banned Google Analytics due to GDPR compliance concerns. You'll find more information here.  

Also, the new version of Firefox lets users strip tracking parameters from the URL. So far it appears it doesn't remove UTM parameters (just fbclid and others) and it is off by default.

But what if the list of removed parameters grows and other browsers start implementing this functionality? The end of UTMs?

New Firefox privacy feature strips URLs of tracking parameters

Mozilla Firefox 102 was released today with a new privacy feature that strips parameters from URLs that are used to track you around the web.

BleepingComputerLawrence Abrams

Google News Has a New Look

Google News has a new layout - check it out. On top of that, Google News is now again available in Spain (after 8 years pause due to copyright laws).

Read all about it: A new look for Google News

We’re launching a redesigned, more customized Google News for desktop and new funding opportunities for publishers.

GoogleBrad Bender

Google Added Author Markup Best Practices

Google updated its documentation with new best practices for the author markup. There's nothing really surprising but please check to make sure you use the right structure:

Learn About Article Schema Markup | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google Developers

Learn how adding article schema markup to your news articles and blogs can enhance their appearance in Google Search results.

Google Developers

Google Fonts Can Violate GDPR

A website owner was fined for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted fonts (visitors' IP was exposed).

Based on that WordPress.org started to urge theme developers to switch to locally hosted fonts.

According to Builtwith.com, more than 60M websites use Google Fonts.

This is yet another reminder how difficult it is to comply with GDPR and similar regulations fully.

WordPress.org Strongly Urges Theme Authors to Switch to Locally Hosted Webfonts

In light of a recent German court case, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts, WordPress.org’s themes team is updating its recommendations for hos…

WP TavernDaan van den Bergh