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Google has announced on Twitter that website owners can now add a business description on their Google local listings directly inside Google My Business. The business description can be shown either in local knowledge panel in search or in a business’s Google Maps results. Experts had predicted the launch of this feature and now it has been fully rolled out for use by website owners.

In order to add your business description, you will need to log into Google My Business, click on the “Info” button in the menu bar. Then you will come across one new section which has been labeled “Add business description.” You will have to click on the pencil icon which is next to the field and a menu will appear allowing you to enter a short description.

Google has rolled out an improved version of Keyword Planner, which is available with the new AdWords experience. Keyword Planner has been streamlined and offers new features to enable advertisers to collect more data from search campaigns.

The new features include the ability to add keywords in a bulk and acquire an overview of forecasts at one place. The most notable upgrade to Keyword Planner are aesthetic changes, which are in sync with the look and experience of new experience on AdWords. You can view the new design, along with the new forecasts section in the example given below:-

Google has made an official announcement regarding roll-out of mobile-first indexing. This is the first acknowledgment they have made through their own channels. Google’s representatives had earlier stated that many websites had already migrated to mobile-first indexing.

Google has once again stated that it is only migrating those individual sites which follow the best practices prescribed for mobile-first indexing. Sites which use dynamic or responsive web design are most suitable for mobile-first indexing. When websites have AMP as well as non-AMP versions of content, Google will give precedence to mobile versions of non-AMP page.

Google has rolled out many visual updates to Search Console which are designed to offer more context to data which is included in reports. The visual update comprises:-

  • Annotation Cards: Fly over bullet points in the error report to learn more about the problem detected on that specific date.
  • Difference Column: It shows how data has changed over a time period.
  • Filter/Compare: This has been redesigned with a new look and pre-populated values
  • Overall improvements to the date picker and comparison window

As a response to Amazon, Google’s new umbrella program will widen existing relationships with retails. It will also enable comprehensive checkout across platforms and devices. Google has been focusing on retail challenges for some time. The major issues are:-

  1. How to make mobile shopping through its properties like Search quicker?
  2. How to maintain market share for product search in a breaking mobile landscape of digital assistants and applications?
  3. How to compete with Amazon, the major threat to product search coming from Google.

All these factors relate to how to make more money from product searches.

Recently, Google announced a new effort known as Shopping Actions which builds on existing programs and pairs its product search, mobile shopping, inter-device transactions and voice search initiatives. The program indicates Google’s existing partnerships with Target and Walmart in order to support shopping through Google Express and Google Assistant. Google extends it to other retailers also.

In the recent SMX conference held in Munich, Google’s John Mueller stated that Google Search Console will send FYIs to websites which have moved from desktop-first to mobile-first index. This will enable those website owners who are trying to find out whether their websites have switched over by verifying server logs or viewing Google’s cache to see whether each page is cached with the mobile or desktop version at present.

Mueller also mentioned that Google plans to include an annotation in Google Search Console in Performance Report to be an extra visual changeover for the website. This will certainly help those who witness fluctuations in their reporting data. This can be explained by Google once the site switches from desktop to mobile indexing.

Google has confirmed that a major core algorithm update was released last week. Such an update occurs many times in a year which might bring one or more changes to search results. Google didn’t specify as to what changes had been implemented since it could be anything from changes aimed at specific enhancements, to broad changes which can affect all search results.

Sights can witness or improve as a result of the changes which have occurred which Google says is normal. It sounds as though rankings can fluctuate according to the way pages should be ranking before this update. In case your rankings drop after this update, Google states that there is no particular “fix” other than to keep “building great content”.

Google’s AMP(Accelerated Mobile Page) team has launched a new feature named Render on Idle. It has been specifically designed for increasing ad impressions per page by speeding up ad load when an ad is increased ad impressions per page by speeding up ad load when a user doesn’t take action on any user.

Render on Idle is available to publishers who are using DoubleClick AMP ad tag or any ad network which implements Fast Fetch, an AMP-specific mechanism which lowers the likelihood that users will see empty ad slots for allowing ad requests to happen since page count is rendering. Ads render just before the ad slot is in view.

The AMP team has stated that publishers testing the feature has seen an increase in impressions per page and offers just .5% increase in clicks and viewable queries by being able to provide ads when a user’s browser is idle with Render on Idle. Publishers who are sensitive to viewability rate need to set data-loading strategy for keeping current viewport offset & disable idle render.

In a webmaster Hangout, Google’s John Mueller discouraged the use of Google Search Console’s URL Submit Tool. He also mentioned interesting facts about how Google indexes websites. He suggested interesting ways to ensure that new content is crawled properly and indexed first.

John Mueller addressed the common problem of Google not picking up content as promptly as a publisher wants to. He blamed publishers for this problem. If Google isn’t indexing your content, then it isn’t Google fault. It is the publishers fault in case it isn’t indexed and the publisher needs to find out the reason why it’s not being indexed.

John Mueller provided a number of suggestions for identifying the reasons behind Google not indexing content and provide solutions to ensure Google indexes it.

Google has updated search results pages by adding breadcrumbs to the page’s top. These breadcrumbs are initiated by informational search queries and come with images. The new search display update is a unique step through which Google displays search results. This change is being considered as Google’s mobile first version which is evolving.

Redefining Google’s mobile first index

Google has been shifting to a mobile first index and this has been clearly understood that it will give precedence to sites which perform well in mobile devices. It is moving to new ways of displaying information which are suitable for mobile devices. The breadcrumb SERPs are considered a part of the transition to SERPs. There has been no official announcement regrading breadcrumb search results. The results have been displayed for searchers only.