Weekly News: Google Search Console products rich result report error handling updated

31/12/2021

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Google Search Console products rich result report error handling updated

Google has made a change to the rich result reports for product structured data on December 28, 2021. This rich results report is viewable in Google Search Console and the change may result in the number of product entities and issues being different from previous days.

What changed. Google said the search company “changed the way that it evaluates and reports errors in Product structured data.” Google did not specify any more details than that.

The impact of the change. As a result of that change, Google said “you may see changes in the number of Product entities and issues reported for your property, as well as a change in the severity of some issues from errors to warnings.”

Google will annotate the report so that if you see a decrease or increase in these numbers, it might be related to the change Google made on its reporting end and nothing you changed on your end. Again, it might just be a reporting change and the Google search results have not changed.

If you notice changes in the product-rich results report in Google Search Console, do not panic, it is a confirmed change on Google’s end. If you didn’t make any changes to your site around this date, there is even less reason to be concerned.

You should still review all the errors, issues, and warnings Google specified in this report and resolve those issues going forward.

Read more: Google Search Console products rich result report error handling updated

Google algorithm updates 2021 in review: Core updates, product reviews, page experience and beyond

From an SEO perspective, 2021 can be summed up as stressful — not just because of several algorithmic updates throughout the year but also possibly because of the timing of some of those updates. With the COVID vaccine rollout, some businesses began returning to normal, but then the Delta and Omicron variant threw everything for a loop — was it just too much to handle for some?

It may have been a bit too much to handle for Google as well: The search engine launched Page Experience update late, never hit its deadline for the mobile-first indexing this year, and seemed to rush out two late. big algorithmic updates towards the end of the year.

June 2021 core update. Google took a while to release its first core update of the year, the June 2021 core update, which began rolling out on June 2, 2021. That update finished rolling out about ten days after it started, on June 12, 2021. This core update seemed to have been a slow rollout that had a bunch of mixed results based on the data given to us by several data providers.

Semrush's volatility index during the June 2021 core update.

Read more: Google algorithm updates 2021 in review: Core updates, product reviews, page experience and beyond

Google now lets you place products at the top of your local and Maps listing

Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, has a new feature in the products section that lets you mark a product as “special.” After you mark a product as special, that product will be moved to the top of the products you listed in your Google Business Profile listing.

What it looks like. Here is the setting in the Google Business Profile products section that says “Mark as Special.” It says “products marked Special is shown at the top of the page.”

Clearly, some local SEOs and businesses wanted a method to promote products to the top of the page. This gives them a way to feature one or more products higher up in their Google local search listings and Google Maps listings.

Read more: Google now lets you place products at the top of your local and Maps listing

December 27 & 28 Google Search Ranking Algorithm Jolt?

Around December 27th and 28th, we may have a Google search ranking algorithm jolt or quick tremor. I highly doubt Google pushed out something over the holidays, this last week of December. But it might just be some weird change that jolted the search results (like that even happens as I am describing).

There was a spike in SEO chatter in the WebmasterWorld forums starting late December 26th through December 28th and some, but not all, of the automated Google tracking tools, showed blips around December 27th and 28th. It is not unusual for Google’s search results to fluctuate without Google manually pushing an algorithm update, but this jolt seems stronger than normal fluctuations. Maybe it was some sort of weird bottleneck or something, I have no idea.

Our Google traffic and overall numbers have increased noticeably in the past couple of days, which frankly comes as a surprise for an international travel-planning site. The growth is in line with our standard pre-COVID traffic pattern: a low for the year before Christmas, followed by a slow but steady climb toward our annual summer peak starting around Christmas or New Year’s.

Read more: December 27 & 28 Google Search Ranking Algorithm Jolt?

Google: We Can Handle Really Long HTML Sizes Unlike Bing

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter when it comes to really long HTML file sizes, Google can handle it – and you should not worry about it. The question came up when someone shared a screenshot of Bing Webmaster Tools giving a notice that the “HTML size is too long.”

The SEO asked “Does Google have a limit on crawling long pages – Bing Flags some of our long posts as HTML Size is too long.” Google does have a limit but most pages won’t come to that limit.

John responded “we don’t have a documented limit, last I saw someone check it was 10’s-100’s of MB, so I wouldn’t worry about that.” John did add that it might impact your page speed and core web vitals metrics. He said “giant HTML pages do slow things down, so it’s probably still something to keep on your to-do list.”

Here is a screenshot of the Bing Webmaster Tools notice and to be clear, this is a notice and it does not mean Bing cannot handle it.