The GoodRelations schema.org vocabulary for e-Commerce markup has been greatly expanded, allowing a range of more granular information to be included on product pages. This can range from product types, brands, shipping options to payment methods and eligible shipping countries.
Google has changed the layout of its search engine results pages (serps) to a format which is much closer to those they have been using on tablet and smartphone devices. The official Google blog post indicates the thinking behind the change:
‘….we’ve been working on ways to create a consistent search experience across the wide variety of devices and screen sizes. With the new design, there’s a bit more breathing room……whether from web results or from a feature like the Knowledge Graph.’
In late July last year Google released a trial product called Google Hotel Finder. Until today this product was geared towards the US market, so only available on Google’s dot com version and was only accessible by searching “Google Hotel Finder” in Google.
Yesterday we found Google have quietly released the UK version and have immediately gone ahead and started testing their product in UK search engine results pages.
This month has seen a considerable degree of activity within Google. The update frenzy all kicked off when Google confirmed with Search Engine Land that on September 27th they had released an update to the Panda algorithm – this is the 20th update since Panda first rolled out in February 2011. Recent updates had been rather minor ‘refreshes’, however, number 20 was much bigger. As Google revealed to Search Engine Land:
One of the effects of the recent Google algorithm updates, particularly Panda, has been the realisation amongst the industry that creating quality content is now vital to ensure a strong web presence. The increasing influence of ‘content marketing’ can be seen in the Google Insights Search Trend graph for this term:
Coming hot on the heels of the Panda 20 update, Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts announced that there had also been two other updates released. The first of these was an update to the ‘exact-match’ domain (EMD) algorithm:
Last month saw the official launch of the latest update of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, aimed at improving security for its users. The Mozilla Foundation reports that version 14 of the browser will make browsing more secure by utilising Google’s HTTPS search functionality by default. This change means that the search terms used by the user will not be passed onto third parties – unless of course they use Google’s AdWords advertising network.
On the 18th of July 2012, the old version of Google Analytics officially retired and will no longer be available, forcing anyone who was not previously using the new version to adapt. Google had been supporting both the old and new versions of Google Analytics for just over a year, but have decided that it is now time for all analysis to be conducted in the new version.
On May 30th Google converted Google Places to Google+ Local. Google made these changes with minimal fuss, in fact the transition was seamless and completed in two days so there is no need for marketers to do anything to their places pages.
This move has led to a few notable changes, the biggest being changes in user interface that have appeared during the move from Google Places to Google+ Local.
Recently all SEO talk has been around Google pandas, Google penguins, Google+, Google+ Local, Google+ Business and all other sorts of Google-related stuff…so today we are going to shift some of the attention to Bing.
Bing have revamped and released the brand new Bing Webmaster Tools complete with Link Explorer, which is essentially the successor to the very popular Yahoo! Site Explorer.