PREPARE FOR CHANGES TO THE GOOGLE ALGORITHM IN 2018, AND BEYOND
PREPARE FOR CHANGES TO THE GOOGLE ALGORITHM IN 2018 AND BEYOND
I recently had the opportunity to host an event, known as Pubtelligence at Google's San Francisco office. The latter has brought together a wide variety of digital publishers of all sizes and levels of experience. During this event, no one was as religiously listened to as Illya Grigorik, a member of the Google Webmaster (Research) team.
In particular, he spoke about the necessary preparations for publishers for the planned changes in 2018 and in the future for the Google algorithm.
This was not a surprise to anyone. Google's search algorithm and webmasters' best practices are constantly the subject of speculation and rumors, articles or reviews. And all of this is perfectly justified.
Publishers rely on Google Search to drive traffic to their site. Entire companies have already built or collapsed as a result of changes made to this research giant's algorithm, and nobody wants to miss the mark.
I will present below the important points raised by Illya Grigorik during her presentation. I will also try to read between the lines of some of the statements he was able to make in front of the assembly, to bring you as much information as possible. Finally, I'll sum it up with a few simple guidelines for digital publishers who want to anticipate future changes and trends in Google search development.
ANALYSIS OF GOOGLE SEARCH TRENDS FOR 2018 AND IN THE FUTURE
Several key themes of this presentation have given us a glimpse of Google's focus in developing its search tool over the next 12 to 18 months.
It's important to keep in mind that Google has significantly slowed down the pace at which search algorithm changes are published ( find out more about past changes to Google Search here ). With the inclusion of artificial intelligence, the deployment of updates and changes to the display of paid search results, the changes made to Google search are now much more about how results are displayed than on properties that affect the ranking.
You can see above the types of factors that Google Webmaster teams insist on digital publishers. Google focuses heavily on mobile ( more on this point here ), emerging markets, and how to deliver relevant results and information for those specific users.
"Despite what most people think, we try as much as we can to reduce the amount of time users spend on our search results pages. We want users to be able to quickly find the information they're looking for, which naturally reduces the time spent on search results pages, says Illya Grigorik from the Google Webmaster team »
To be more specific, we can say that Google focuses on how to provide more relevant results to its users faster and more efficiently . This also includes special and extremely strict attention to security issues.
THE FUTURE IS MOBILE, IS NOT IT?
For those who are interested, the fact that Google continues to work hard to improve the satisfaction of mobile users of its search tool is not a surprise . This is still a point at which the average publisher has been slow to adapt, especially since most independent publishers primarily visit their sites on a desktop computer.
This has led to a much more detailed conversation about mobile data collected by Google, which shows the speed of switching users to mobile. Users visiting Google's mobile search are the most numerous, but the way they view mobile search results is constantly evolving.
Google is fully aware of these profound changes, especially in emerging markets. Many users who get their first Internet access in countries like India use mobile devices. Google ensures that its main technology is equipped to meet the needs of these users.
Many publishers have not taken Google seriously when it started talking about these trends, but let me tell you why it's especially important to hear what Google has to say about this ...
Changes made by Google to adapt to these markets and change the behavior of mobile users will have a huge impact for publishers, regardless of their target audience.
As Google grows to meet the needs of new users, publishers who adapt their content in parallel to changes in Google are likely to emerge winners of these transformations in terms of traffic.
In summary, while emerging markets may seem unimportant for many publishers, it is very important to closely monitor Google's adaptations to these markets. Alterations to the algorithm and ranking of search results will impact all publishers, regardless of their target audience.
GOOGLE REALLY WANTS TO MAKE SPEED A CRITICAL RANKING FACTOR
That is true. Until now, Google used key user experience indicators primarily to determine whether or not visitors were affected by criteria such as site speed.
Google has however decided to make speed a minor ranking factor from July 2018.
Unfortunately, Google also realized that most publishers were not trained to measure or improve the speed of their pages.
Their own tools can sometimes even complicate the work of some publishers who think they need to optimize their score on tools like Google PageSpeed Tool ... TIP: Google said it was not important.
So what should we consider important?
You need to understand and improve speed by adopting Chrome's vision, and using developer tools.
You can find out in detail how to measure and improve the speed of your site in a way relevant to Google here .
BUT WHAT IS A PROGRESSIVE WEB APPLICATION?
If you remember an article from the beginning of the year, John Cole and I had analyzed some trends for 2017 , notably explaining that Progressive Web Applications (or PWA) would become a major topic before the end of the year. .
A Progressive Web App is the integration of an experience similar to that offered by an application within a mobile browsing experience. Google was stubborn with this technology, explaining how it could serve all users of the search market.
Google hopes to integrate PWAs with AMP (AMP Web progressives) technology to provide mobile users around the world with a fast, dynamic and functional experience / application.
As previously mentioned during the presentation, Google is trying to put in place systems that allow users to access content quickly and affordably where connections are slow and rates are high for data.
The company believes this strategy can improve the experience for all users, especially since PWAs offer better functionality and higher speeds for mobile visitors.
In theory, PWAs offer better functionality and higher speeds to mobile visitors. This is an important part of the company's mission, as Google wants to help all users to access the content they are looking for as efficiently as possible ...
This seems to be one of the main motivations behind the implementation of a "mobile-first" indexation (mobile first) .
BUT WHEN WILL THIS "MOBILE-FIRST" STRATEGY REALLY BE APPLIED ?
For those of you who are not aware of Google's upcoming switch to fully mobile-first search indexing , here are the highlights:
- Google currently offers two search indexes (mobile and desktop)
- These two indexes will soon be merged into one index
- This new index will always first browse the mobile version of a given page
- This means that the mobile version of your site will be visited by Google's robots instead of the so-called "desktop" version
You can find out more in detail how this new index will work in our previous article, devoted to this topic (above).
The "mobile-first" index was officially deployed at the end of March 2018. Deployment is still ongoing,
and Google has advised to keep an eye on some specific points as part of these major changes.
Here are the main points to remember for publishers ...
- Whatever happens, ALWAYS roll out a mobile version of your site
- Do not make an ultra-simplified version of your "desktop" site
- Make sure that all elements of your site can be viewed by Google robots in mobile (Google explained that this problem was particularly common)
- Ensure that your structured data , meta-descriptions, tags, etc., are all configured identically on mobile and desktop version (some sites currently only include these elements on their version " Office ")
There is no reason to fear this major change to a mobile-first index. However, publishers have to make sure to put the points on the I's and the bars on the T's in the next 6 to 9 months, because having a mobile version that is only an impoverished version of your standard site could have very negative consequences for the general health of the site.
In this guide, I discuss some areas for improvement, such as the marking of structured data ...
THE USER EXPERIENCE IS THE REAL DRIVER OF INNOVATION BEHIND THE CHANGES MADE TO THE GOOGLE ALGORITHM
In order to allow users to spend less time on the search results page, Google hopes that by providing richer search results quickly, the company can improve the overall satisfaction rate of its users.
From the beginning, publishers have been skeptical about this analysis. Rich snippets and Knowledge Graph cannibalize the content of publishers for a long time.
But whatever they say or think, this trend will intensify.
Ultimately, it seems that publishers who are most inclined to adapt to this type of search will be in the best position to capture the traffic associated with the requests, even if this means that Google is taking some of the potential page views in the process. .
Indeed, Google still plans to develop these forms of advanced search results for its users. In particular, the company introduced new forms of enhanced markup for Google Images during the presentation, noting that only a handful of digital publishers take full advantage of the potential in the structured data market (or Schema.org markup).
It is also one of the most effective techniques to optimize the potential traffic on the sites in the months to come.
By equipping your site appropriately to provide rich results where possible, publishers can expect better rankings for related searches.
There are many ways to easily integrate structured data into your site. For WordPress users, you only need to find some reliable and adapted plugins. For others, simply add very simple coded tags on pages that may benefit from better markup.
SPEED IS CRUCIAL FOR GOOGLE
The fact that Google is talking more and more about the speed of pages should not surprise you. Given earlier comments on emerging markets and the speed of communication, this could be expected to be at the top of their agenda.
Google has revealed that for almost 20% of cases, the user clicks on a search result and then return to the results page even before the Google Analytics scripts have activated on the publisher's site. This represents a potential 20% increase in the bounce rate that publishers do not see because these actions are not counted.
There is no doubt, however, that Google is watching this indicator very closely, and that it is penalizing some publishers whose results are poor in this regard.
Interactive DOM engagement indicators : The time it takes for a page to load and a user to interact with it seems much more important than an arbitrary page speed value. Google insisted that the company does not use any form of "speed score" to determine the ranking or position of the sites. On the other hand, the company has emphasized the importance of providing users with the content they are looking for quickly.
That's the motivation behind the Google AMP initiative. Although publishers remain very skeptical about the relevance of the MPA (due to content caching and reduced advertising revenue), Google is actively working on improvements to promote the adoption of this technology. Google wants pages displayed in search results to load instantly.
Unfortunately, AMP still has major disadvantages for publishers, and may work better in some cases than in others. The lesson to be drawn from this for publishers is that optimizing sites for instant loading and REAL high speeds will pay off.
GOOGLE TRIES TO PUSH SITES TO CONVERT TO HTTPS
Many publishers have delayed converting their sites to HTTPS using an SSL certificate. The reasons justifying such a choice are now very much exceeded, the problems related to redirects and advertising partners no longer relevant. However, many publishers feel frustrated because Google insists on this change even when a site does not collect any user data.
If using HTTPS as a ranking factor in the search results was not enough to convince you to convert your site in the past, the new update announced by Google and the penalization of publishers who have not added SSL certificate on their site should convince you.
Even for the most refractory publishers, it's time to give in and change! If redirections worry you, rest assured: server-level redirects and hosting features now make it easy to solve these issues. All issues of monetization and other issues related to advertising partners on unsecured pages are also largely outdated. Most of the most renowned advertising content providers now guarantee perfect compatibility with HTTPS sites.
Note: Ezoic users can easily solve this problem via the platform, please contact your sales representative for more details.
Publishers who wait too long to make the change take the risk that their visitors will soon fall on the message below when they access your site using the Google Chrome browser ...
HOW TO USE THIS INFORMATION EFFECTIVELY
What can you do now that you have all this new information? Good question. As a publisher, there are some key points to remember ...
- Focus on mobile development (content, user experience, etc.)
- Test your site on multiple devices and channels, and work constantly to improve the metrics taken into account by the so-called "mobile-first" index
- Increase the amount (or create) of structured data for the different pages and images of your site
- Make sure your content loads as quickly as possible for your visitors
- Convert your site to HTTPS if it's not already done
Normally, the application of these few tips should allow you to anticipate the changes made by Google to its search algorithm over the next 12 to 18 months. Want to know more about the topics covered at Pubtelligence ? Check out the article below to discover the content discussed during the other sessions during this day ...
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