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Google Search Central Blog

Find the latest Google Search core algorithm updates, new features, and SEO best practices on the Google Search Central Blog.

September 16, 2024  08:00:00
We're sharing more information about our new search experiences in South Africa, and how South African platforms can express interest and participate.
September 12, 2024  08:00:00
This post is about the new Google Trends Tutorials YouTube series. In these videos you'll learn how to use Google Trends to analyze patterns in Google Search and Youtube searches, and use them to create interesting content online.
August 30, 2024  08:00:00

Over the recent years, AVIF has become one of the most commonly used image formats on the web. We're happy to announce that AVIF is now a supported file type in Google Search, for Google Images as well as any place that uses images in Google Search. You don't need to do anything special to have your AVIF files indexed by Google.

August 27, 2024  08:00:00
As previously announced, we're coming to Kuala Lumpur and to Taipei in the last quarter of 2024. And yes, we're very excited! The KL event will be in English and the Taipei event will be conducted in Mandarin (Traditional Chinese).
August 15, 2024  08:00:00
This post announces the August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.
August 5, 2024  06:00:00
This post announces Search Console recommendations, a new feature that provides websites with optimization opportunities and suggests actions they can take to improve their presence on Google Search.
July 11, 2024  06:00:00
This post discusses a new and easier way to add shipping or return information directly in Search Console.
June 20, 2024  06:00:00
We're coming back to Thailand with Search Central Live! As mentioned in our blog post about our APAC plans for SCL, we now have a date and a site where you can sign up for a chance to secure your spot at Search Central Live Bangkok 2024.
June 4, 2024  06:00:00
We're adding support for return policies at the organization level, which means you'll be able to specify a general return policy for your business instead of having to define one for each individual product you sell.
June 4, 2024  06:00:00
The Google Search Central LinkedIn channel is (finally) here!
June 3, 2024  06:00:00

The last step of our migration to a mobile-first index will soon be complete: the small set of sites we've still been crawling with desktop Googlebot will be crawled with mobile Googlebot after July 5, 2024. Most websites do not need to do anything!

May 29, 2024  06:00:00
Search Central Live is coming back to the Asia Pacific region, bringing you insights from Google Search, fun networking opportunity, and more! This year we're aiming to visit Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand.
April 16, 2024  06:00:00

This post discusses an update to Search Console's user and permissions to improve the accuracy and reflect the actual state of unused ownership tokens.

March 25, 2024  10:00:00

We're excited to announce a Search Central Live event in Warsaw, Poland on April 24, 2024. Search Central Live is our global Google Search event series specifically for site owners, publishers, and SEOs.

March 5, 2024  10:00:00

Today we announced the March 2024 core update. This is designed to improve the quality of Search by showing less content that feels like it was made to attract clicks, and more content that people find useful. We also shared that we have new spam policies to better handle the practices that can negatively impact Google's search results. In this post, we'll go into more detail for creators about both the update and the spam policies.

March 4, 2024  10:00:00

We're excited to announce a Search Central Live event in Bucharest, Romania on April 4, 2024. Search Central Live is our global Google Search event series specifically for site owners, publishers, and SEOs.

February 20, 2024  10:00:00

In 2022, Google expanded support for Product structured data, enabling enhanced product experiences in Google Search. Then, in 2023 we added support for shipping and returns structured data. Today, we are adding structured data support for Product variants, allowing merchants to easily show more variations of the products they sell, and show shoppers more relevant, helpful results. Providing variant structured data will also complement and enhance merchant center feeds, including automated feeds.

February 15, 2024  10:00:00

Following our latest update on our preparations for the DMA (Digital Markets Act), we're sharing more details about what publishers can expect to see in regards to new search results in European Economic Area (EEA) countries, and how they can express interest in these experiences.

February 2, 2024  10:00:00
Today we're publishing a refreshed, more pocket-sized version of the SEO Starter Guide with a better focus on a starter audience and the topics we think a person who's just dipping their toes in SEO should focus on and why.
February 1, 2024  06:00:00
We're excited to announce that Search Central Live is coming to Buenos Aires on March 5, 2024. Following successful events throughout the world last year, we're continuing our mission to help website owners to enhance their site's performance in Google Search.
February 1, 2024  06:00:00
We're excited to announce that Search Central Live is returning to São Paulo on February 29, 2024. Following our successful events last year, we're continuing our mission to help Brazilian businesses enhance their site's performance in Google Search.
December 31, 2023  09:00:00

I'm sure you're all wondering why we have gathered you here today. That's right: it's the end of year blog post in which we go over what happened in 2023 on Google Search Central, and have some fun along the way!

December 4, 2023  10:00:00
Earlier this year, we made a change to only show video thumbnails next to results on the main Google Search results page when the video is the main content of a page. Today, we're extending this change to search results in Video mode to better connect users with the video content they're looking for (rather than having to comb through a page to find that video). This change will start rolling out today, and it could take up to a week to complete.
December 4, 2023  10:00:00
Vacation rentals on Google make it easier for travelers to discover the best lodging options, whether they're searching for a cozy cabin or a house that sleeps ten. Today, we're announcing a new and simpler way for vacation rental integration partners to provide listing data to Google.
November 29, 2023  10:00:00
Since 2013, Google has supported logo structured data, which recognizes two Organization fields: logo and url. Today we're expanding our support for organizational information by extracting additional administrative data such as name, address, contact information, and various business identifiers. You can continue to provide the logo and url fields to specify which image we use as your logo in Google search results.
November 27, 2023  10:00:00
Today we're announcing support for profile page and discussion forum structured data for use in Google Search, including new reports in Search Console. This markup works with Google Search features that are designed to show first-person perspectives from social media platforms, forums, and other communities.
November 24, 2023  09:00:00

The crawl rate limiter tool in Search Console is being deprecated on Jan 8th, 2024. This tool has been available for over a decade, but with the improvements we've made to our crawling logic and other tools available to publishers, its usefulness has dissipated.

November 16, 2023  10:00:00
As of November 16, Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines have been updated to simplify our guidelines. As a reminder, these guidelines are what are used by our search raters to help evaluate the performance of our various search ranking systems, and their ratings don't directly influence ranking.
November 15, 2023  10:00:00
As people continue to search for courses on Google, the desire for more detailed course information has grown. Today, we are announcing a new set of recommendations to provide course structured data to Google. Publishers now have the opportunity to surface supplemental course information on Google Search by providing detailed information like pricing, educational level, ratings, and length with structured data. This data can appear in the course info rich result, which is a new carousel feature in Google Search that helps learners discover and compare courses that fit their unique needs.
November 2, 2023  10:00:00
Google Search regularly updates our search ranking systems to ensure we're showing the most relevant, helpful content that we can. We've had a series of notable updates we've shared about in the past few weeks, and we have two for this month. Given this, it's a good time to share some reminders in a Q&A format about how we do updates, why we share about them, and what (if anything) creators need to consider when one happens.
November 2, 2023  10:00:00
We're excited to announce that Search Central Live is coming back to Taipei for the first time ever on December 6. As usual, the event is hosted by the Google Search team and we're looking forward to bringing together the community to learn, share, and network.
October 31, 2023  10:00:00
We're delighted to announce that the trek to Mobile First Indexing is now complete.
October 18, 2023  10:00:00

We're excited to announce that Search Central Live Singapore is coming back this year again on November 22. As usual, the event is hosted by the Google Search team and we're looking forward to bringing together the community to learn, share, and network.

October 16, 2023  05:00:00
Google Search will start supporting vehicle listings markup, a new way to appear in vehicle listings on Google. It now has its own Search Console Rich result report and is supported in the testing tool.
October 4, 2023  09:00:00
We're releasing an update to our spam detections systems today that will improve our coverage in many languages and spam types.
September 29, 2023  10:00:00
We're very excited to announce that Search Central Live is coming back to Zurich on Tuesday, October 24th, 2023! After our last Search Central Live event in Zurich in December 2019, we're back in town for more presentations, Q&A and networking!