Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

So yesterday, I accidentally published a story too quickly, around a new FAQ around Google’s Page Experience Update. One point in there that is new information is this line “using page experience as a signal for ranking will apply only to mobile Search.”

Google is testing yet another form of layouts for the Google Search results. Here Google is testing showing half of a line break of some sorts to separate out the top answers and features snippets and other sections.

As we have been expecting, Google has rolled out more ways for businesses to message and communicate with customers. Plus, Google is also rolling out more performance insights reports to see how customers are finding your business in Google Maps and Search.

November was a pretty busy month where Google gave us a date for the launch of the page experience update and with that…

A while back, JR Oakes asked Martin Splitt of Google if he can confirm if there is a difference between display:none and visibility:hidden in terms of Google’s ability to “see” the content in the container? Martin said he does not think there is a difference. JR Oakes then decided to test it.

Google posted an FAQ around Core Web Vitals and the upcoming Google Page Experience update. Google’s Cheney Tsai said the company has compiled some of the most frequently asked questions about Core Web Vitals and Page Experience.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web…

Today marks the 17th anniversary of starting this site, the Search Engine Roundtable. I’ve been writing about search for over 40% of my life – which is weird to think about. And I’ve been doing it consistently every workday, several times per day, even through a pandemic, for 17 years. It is hard for me to fathom that.

Lily Ray ran a poll (I am kicking myself for not seeing it to retweet it but it has over 500 results). The poll asked how would you handle a lot of really spammy links pointing to your clients sites. The response was most would ignore the links but many will disavow them.

Google announced a new Google Discover ads format to choose from. There is a new 4:5 portrait aspect ratio format that helps advertisers visually showcase their products and services more prominently with consumers as they scroll and it leads into the lead form extensions.

Google has released a help document named large site owner’s guide to managing your crawl budget. It is an advanced help document on helping developers manage Googlebot crawls on their web site. It reminds me of the blog post Gary Illyes of Google wrote in 2017 about crawl budget.

Ryan Siddle, an SEO, asked John Mueller of Google if Google supports nested XML sitemap index files. The answer is no, Google does not support it. But Google does have a help document on how to split up your large sitemap files.

There may be another Google search ranking algorithm update rolling out again. This one started around Tuesday, December 1, 2020. Google has not confirmed this but there is chatter and the tracking tools are also showing an update.

Google Merchant Center seems to be rolling out a new reporting feature that lets you build your own performance report. You should be able to access this in the Google Merchant Center under the “Performance” tab.