Weekly News: GA4 now has an enhanced measurement option for Form interactions

03/10/2022

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GA4 now has an enhanced measurement option for Form interactions

Google has added an enhanced measurement option for Form interactions. Now you can not only see when a form has been submitted, but you can also see when one has been started by a new user.

Lead gen marketers rejoice!

Enable enhanced measurement. Enhanced measurement should be enabled automatically if you already have a web data stream created. If not, check your analytics account and turn this on.

Dig deeper. You can read the announcement from Google here.

With so many new shopping products being released lately, it’s nice to see one for lead gen. The new enhanced measurement feature will let you see visitors to your website who started filling out forms but did not complete them for some reason. With that information, advertisers can create remarketing campaigns with unique messages to entice visitors to come back and complete the form.

Source: GA4 now has an enhanced measurement option for Form interactions

Technical SEO testing: How Googlebot handles iframes

Earlier this year at SMX Advanced, I presented results from our Peak Ace test lab. These tests shed some light on several technical implementation points and how Googlebot would deal with them.

One of my favorite tests examined Google’s indexing of iFramed URLs and their content. In my SMX Advanced presentation, I touched on various scenarios that may lead Google to index the content inside an iFrame, while “assigning” that content to its parent URL.

In the iFrame test, was the iFramed content coming from the same domain or a different one?

My example showed two URLs that live on the same domain: domain.com/test.html would iFrame domain.com/tobeframedA.html, so that test.html could rank for content that only exists in tobeframedA.html.

The same also works for externaldomain.com/tobeframedB.html – which can still cause test.html to rank for content only present in tobeframedB.html, as well as for iFrames residing on subdomains. We tested every combination we could think of and concluded that it made no difference where the iFrame content was hosted.

If you want to prevent someone from loading (and ranking for) your content in an iFrame, it would be a good idea to look into the X-Frame-Options Header. This indicates whether a browser should be allowed to render a page in an iFrame.

If we were to use iFrames with a no-indexed content page, would the parent page still rank for the listed content with the intent to improve page speed?

As soon as the iFramed URL contains a meta robots noindex directive, the parent URL won’t be able to rank for the content from the iFramed URL.

The same is true if you iFrame a URL that would be served with an X-Robots noindex header directive or is actively blocked using robots.txt.

Does Google give full value to semi-hidden content (content that typically comes after ‘Read more’)?

There doesn’t seem to be too much love for using “Read more” functionality within the ranks of Google. John Mueller went on record a couple of times here and here, questioning the use of the functionality in its entirety. Mueller added, “I don’t think you’d see a noticeable, direct change in SEO, […]”.

When we tested it, the purpose of the test was to understand what difference the technical implementation could potentially make – and if, in general, the content behind a “Read more” would be indexed (if correctly set up).

The short answer: whether or not it was visible, the content would be indexed, found, and returned.

Did you mention that duplication in certain areas of the content can be fixed by CSS implementation since it is not indexed?

I did present some behavior that I find fairly interesting regarding CSS selectors. What technically happens is that selectors such as ::before create a pseudo-element that is the first child of the selected element. In practice, this is often used to add cosmetic content to an HTML element.

This could also be useful from an SEO point of view because Googlebot seems to treat this just as it would treat Chrome on desktop/smartphone. The rendered DOM remains unchanged (which is to be expected since it’s a pseudo-class). As a result, content from within said selectors won’t be indexed.

Source: Technical SEO testing: How Googlebot handles iframes

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core & Product Reviews Update Done, Local Search Ranking Bug Fixed, Search On Event Recap & More

Google has finished rolling out both the September 2022 core update and product reviews update on Monday, September 26th – yes, there is a lot of confusion. Google fixed a bug with the local search rankings and service area businesses. Google had its big Search On event, I recap most of it. Google product review updates do get periodic updates that may not be announced. Google said if you don’t know if your content is written expertly, then it probably is not. Google said there is no percentage of measurement for duplicate content. Google really wants you to avoid changing URLs just for SEO reasons. Google said page speed issues won’t lead to a site being removed from Google Search.

Google is testing the Google Search Cookbook. Google Search talks about when a brand outranks the generic meaning of the word. Google is testing a more like this search feature. Bing is testing traffic analysis in the search results. Microsoft Bing is also testing a web label. Google Ads continues to suffer from latency issues. Google Local Service ads dropped the license number from the listings. Google’s John Mueller now is offering to review parts of your public presentation for accuracy. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Source: Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core & Product Reviews Update Done, Local Search Ranking Bug Fixed, Search On Event Recap & More

Google Tests Shady Design For Product Panels

Google is testing another design for the product panels in Google Search. This new design shades the boxes for some of the products and reviews, etc. It also moves some of the filters around.

Here is a screenshot of this from Valentin Pletzer on Twitter: