Google For Developers | Swipe Insight

Google Revamps URL Structure Documentation for Better Search Performance

5 days ago

Google updated its URL guidelines to improve crawling, stressing IETF STD 66 compliance and proper encoding. It advises against URL fragments for content changes and favors descriptive, human-readable URLs with audience language and UTF-8 encoding. Hyphens separate words, and URLs are case sensitive. Multi-regional sites should use country domains or subdirectories. Issues like filtering, session IDs, and dynamic calendars need robots.txt and crawl fixes.

Tired of spending too much time creating audits for your clients?

Featured

Marketing Auditor simplifies your audit process, letting you generate comprehensive, white-label reports in just a few clicks. Save over 10 hours per report while analyzing 200+ data points and delivering 50+ pages of actionable insights. Customize reports with professional themes or your own branding, and export them in editable formats like PowerPoint or Google Slides to showcase your expertise.

Google Analytics Measurement Protocol Adds Device and User Agent Fields

11 days ago

Google Analytics

Google Analytics updated its Measurement Protocol with new device and user_agent fields for better event measurement via HTTP requests. Users can send device info such as category, language, screen resolution, OS, model, brand, browser, and versions. This enhances data accuracy by capturing detailed device info for server-to-server and offline interactions, helping businesses track user activity across platforms.

Google Removes Robots.txt Guidance for Translated Pages in Documentation Update

12 days ago

SEO

Google removed guidance on using robots.txt to block auto-translated pages from its multilingual documentation, without changing system behavior. This aligns with a March 2024 spam policy update targeting scaled content abuse, which involves creating many low-value pages to manipulate search rankings. The policy covers abusive content made by automation, humans, or both, expanding previous rules on auto-generated content to maintain search quality.

Google updates event and recipe structured data guidance with new clarifications

18 days ago

SEO

Google updated its event structured data guidelines, clarifying that events must be bookable by the public and held at a physical location to qualify for event experiences, removing online event properties. For recipes, the image property in structured data is only used for rich results, not text result images. These changes aim to help site owners better implement structured data for search results.

Google Updates Ranking Algorithm for Explicit Content and Videos with New SafeSearch Docs

18 days ago

SEO

Google updated SafeSearch docs and ranking algorithms for explicit content and videos. It added best practices for moderating content, removing CSAM and non-consensual material, and guidance for sites wrongly flagged as explicit. Sites blocking Googlebot from accessing explicit videos may face ranking drops, especially in Video mode. Allowing Googlebot to crawl without age gates is essential to avoid poor rankings and misclassification.

Google Updates Image SEO Best Practices to Recommend Consistent URLs for Images

1 months ago

SEO

Google updated its Image SEO best practices, emphasizing the need for consistent image URLs across larger websites. The key change advises that if an image appears on multiple pages, it should be referenced with the same URL to optimize Google's crawl budget. This approach allows Google to cache the image, reducing the need for repeated requests. Using the same URL conserves resources, ensuring efficient crawling and indexing, which is crucial for managing large sites.

Google corrects Google News crawler documentation error regarding publisher preferences

1 months ago

SEO

Google updated its Google News crawler documentation to clarify that publisher crawler preferences for Googlebot-News do not influence the News tab in Google search results. The News tab shows results from eligible publishers complying with Google's policies. The changelog corrected an error stating that crawling preferences affected the News tab and removed the misleading section. The updated description specifies that preferences only affect Google News.

Google updates documentation for Google-Extended user agent and product token description

1 months ago

SEO

Google updated the documentation for the Google-Extended user agent, enabling publishers to control if their data is used for AI training. The product token description was clarified based on feedback. The crawler preferences for the Googlebot-News user agent were corrected, clarifying they do not affect the News tab on Google. The updated documentation offers a clearer explanation of the user agent's purpose and the effects of blocking it.

Google updates Merchant Center documentation on energy efficiency and certification

2 months ago

Google Merchant Center SEO

Google updated its Merchant Center documentation by removing the EnergyConsumptionDetails properties and providing an alternative for the certificationIdentification property. The hasEnergyConsumptionDetails remains backwards compatible for existing implementations. The update aims to enhance energy efficiency documentation, as the EnergyConsumptionDetails type is replaced by the more robust Certification type, announced in October 2024.