Google Search: 2019 Update

URL filtering , collection of domains of a site or analysis of structured data. Search Console has been enriched with many new data this year.

Without knowing what Google wants, the Search Console reveals to SEO what Google sees. Also, when the tool launches several features, these are all new perspectives that open to them to monitor the health of their sites, and sometimes interact directly with the search engine. As for example in the case of the indexing request in the URL inspection tool. Overview of news 2019.

Domain Properties

Announced on February 27, the Domain Properties feature aims to show in a single report all sub parts of a domain. For SEO agencies, like Digimood, it’s a step forward: “A single storage per domain, with all subdomains, http, https and folders inside, it’s much simpler than before” , rejoices Julien Ringard, its associate director. From now on, at the time of the addition of its site in the Search Console, the referencer has the choice between the registration of the prefix of the URL (www., M. Or https, corresponding to a view in the Search Console), as before, and that of the domain (domaine.com). A little more complex, it requires to have access to its host for validation.

URL Filtering

In addition to “refresh” or speed up the indexing of a page, the new URL inspection tool provides a wealth of information for understanding and debugging any crawling or indexing issues. “Especially concerning the AMP or the structured data”, notes Aymen Loukil, international SEO consultant. The part of this report titled “Show page explored” can now be seen with Google’s eyes: source code (HTML) seen by Googlebot mobile, to detect rendering anomalies. Aymen Loukil recommends using the Diffchecker tool to find the differences between source code from Google Chrome and Search Console.
a screenshot of the page seen by Google, the opportunity to spot errors
a summary of the loading of the resources, indicating the requests which could not succeed
information about the response code (200, 4xx, 5xx ..) and HTTP headers
a list of JavaScript errors displayed in the Chrome DevTools (F12 key on the keyboard)

The “warnings” section allows you to find some improvement points of the schema.org markup, such as filling additional fields that are not mandatory. Finally, icing on the cake, it gives “the ability to share a report in particular with a third person without having to share a total access to the property,” reports the SEO consultant.

Structured data

Recently, the search console also offers, in the “Improvements” section, a report on the enriched results from structured schema.org data on the site. Of course, one must have already implemented one of the structured data already taken into account to see it appear. However, “only eight categories are analyzed by the tool: events, job offers, logo, product, questions page answers, recipe, research field on the SERP and video”, recalls Aymen Loukil.