Most of the search industry news we saw in February was related to Google updating SERP features and appearance. From the official launch of the “about this result” feature, to autoplaying video previews and a new swipe through functionality for Google Product Search, we continue to see Google testing and rolling out new SERP enhancements as well as updates to GSC functionality (and the occasional bug).
It’s not just about the Google news, though — we’re also sharing some of our favorite tools and technical tips to help make your workflow easier. We’ve included our favorite recent insights and research from others in the industry, including the launch of Tom Critchlow’s new SEO MBA email newsletter. And here at Tight Ship, we’ve been discussing John Mueller’s comments about using a 503 when temporarily removing site functionality, and diving into the debate swirling in response to AJ Kohn’s recent blog post (controversially titled “The Comforting Mirage of SEO A/B Testing”).
Here’s our monthly news and insights roundup for February:
Industry News and Updates
General News
- Google launches “about this result” feature
- Note: This feature officially launched on Feb 1 but Google’s been testing it for a while.
- There has been some initial discussion on Twitter around whether the use of Wikipedia is a form of “gatekeeping”, but Danny Sullivan wants to remind us that the feature is still in BETA.
- If Google launches an in-SERP label/indicator for Page Experience, they say that all requirements must be met to receive the label.
- Our take: If this does launch, it could provide additional ammunition for prioritizing web vitals. That said, it doesn’t intuitively seem like people will know what the icon indicates. So far it also has been unusual for sites to score well across all three metrics (LCP, FID and CLS) — but big publishers will probably get there first.
- Will it make that much of a difference to have the label? There was a (lightweight) study from WompMobile which identified an 11% boost in CTR for AMP pages with the “lightning bolt” label vs non-AMP pages in the same position. But ultimately it’s hard to say — the WompMobile study is decent but there’s so much context involved with query/intent types, doing a simple before/after comparison is likely to be noisy and/or random.
- Insights from GMB analytics are getting better
- Google Search Video Carousel Autoplaying Videos Previews
- Passage ranking launched Sun Feb 21 (in US English)
- Google May Discover URLs In Form Action Attributes & Text Files
- How AI is powering a more helpful Google
- New Google Product Search feature: Swipe Through Results and Style Ideas
- Google SEO Advice on Using a 503 When Temporarily Removing Site Functionality
- From the article: “John [Mueller] said ‘If you remove, replace, or redirect your normal content, search engines may index your pages like that (or, drop them from the index). This can have a negative effect on your site’s overall visibility in search. However, you can also do it in a way that’s neutral for search: 503.’ He added ‘returning a 503 HTTP result code tells search engines to ignore the current content, and to come back again a bit later.'”
GSC and BWT Updates
- Update on January GSC reporting issues: Google confirms issues with canonical reporting.
- Possible Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool Bug With HTTP/2
- GSC Core Web Vitals Boundaries Changed on February 17th
Tips, Tricks and Tools
- A tip about how Screaming Frog’s web crawler tool treats pushState() (Mike)
- Oddly Screaming Frog seems to treat pushState() style updates to address bar (without a new page load) as “JS Redirects.”
- This URL shows up in Screaming Frog as Non-indexable, Redirected with a JS Redirect, but there is no real redirect here (just the address bar is updated, there’s no new HTTP page request ). Also, GSC shows the requested page as indexable.
- Productivity hack: grouping tabs in Chrome (Ben)
- Grouping tabs in Chrome might be my favorite productivity hack of the year. I’ve been using this for grouping and organizing technical issues found in our tools for audit write-ups, and for organizing screenshare views for a presentation.
- I’ve also been trying to start the day by adding tabs of “full screen” Asana tasks, then order and knock out from left to right. Grouping helps keep that organized with the expand/collapse feature, which really helps with switching between multi-tasking and getting back to what I’m focusing on. The goal with this process is to complete and close out tabs – my rule is that can’t have anything open that isn’t actively getting translated into an Asana task or doc.
- Optimizing email management with Simplify Gmail v2 (Ben)
- I’ve enjoyed using the Simplify Gmail tool and would recommend after trying out the (now live) v2 sneak peek (paired with knowing all the Gmail shortcuts).
- One of my favorite functions is no overlap when typing out email – easy to reference other emails.
- A quick way to transpose JSON to CSV (from the Learn Google Spreadsheets Youtube channel)
- Adding multiple conditions to another formula in Google Sheets (Mike)
- Using the OR() function in Google Sheets is a quick way to add multiple conditions to another formula, e.g. to create a column that sets boolean value for whether either D2 or E2 is greater than 0 or not:
=IF(OR(D2>0,E2>0),TRUE,FALSE)
- Tools and tech we’re interested in
- Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyzer
- Notion Workspace Tool
- Mike’s take:
- Kind of a blend between Google Docs, Asana and Airtable.
- Maybe best for simple projects, content collaboration, basic reporting – I still think the power of Google Sheets is hard to leave behind, and Asana has all the task features. But I’m curious and playing around with it.
- So far, I’m liking:
- Pleasant and simple interface (with dark mode)
- Speed (it’s really fast)
- Various content types/templates to start from
- Apparently the back-end and integrations are very sophisticated, but I haven’t gotten my head around that yet.
- The macOS app seems best – similar to Slack in usability and speed
- Mike’s take:
Insights and Hot Takes
- Tom Critchlow – SEO MBA email newsletter
- Nick LeRoy – Relaunched Google Search Console “Request Indexing” tool limits use to submitting 10-12 URLs in a 24 hour period [Case Study]
- Barry Schwartz – Google Can Process JavaScript Redirects But Be Concerned About Other Search Engines
- AJ Kohn – The Comforting Mirage of SEO A/B Testing
- Our take: Overall while SEO A/B testing is a lot of work, the statistics aren’t trivial, and even just running a test (prepping cohorts and deploying the change) can be months of work without a testing platform, etc, we’d still rather have the capability and an agreed measurement protocol than just be stuck recommending changes and trying to measure on before/after trends.
- Follow the spirited Twitter discussion on this thread.
- Our take: Overall while SEO A/B testing is a lot of work, the statistics aren’t trivial, and even just running a test (prepping cohorts and deploying the change) can be months of work without a testing platform, etc, we’d still rather have the capability and an agreed measurement protocol than just be stuck recommending changes and trying to measure on before/after trends.