Skip to main content

SEO Update: Google Makes More Changes to Mobile

Sometimes there are huge announcements with lots of bells and whistles, like this one about the forthcoming Google Mobile update on April 21st.
This is very important and something you should be aware of, but sometimes it is the little things that sneak under the radar that can also make a difference to our SEO.

More Mobile Changes on Google

Google quietly releases a whole bunch of changes that most of the time we are not even aware of.
And this month is no exception.

Google Mobile Search Results URL Changes

The most recent change that can impact your mobile search results is as follows:
  • Your website name instead of your domain name (no more madlemmings.com in there)
  • Breadcrumbs instead of the URL (so website URL is important)
You can see an example of this change below.
Google URL Schema Changes 2
Google URL Schema Changes1
Images Courtesy of Google
Note: These results according to Google are:
  • only affecting mobile search results
  • the site name change is US only (for now)
  • breadcrumb changes are worldwide

Why You Should Care

Now that Google is taking your site name seriously, you might want to make sure it is correct (some resources below to help with that).
Not only that, but your URL structure is starting to become more of an issue (for me too, as mine was wrongly set up years ago to use year and month). The better your URL structure is at helping people and Google know what your content is about the better. It helps in finding it too. (more resources below)

Useful Resources

Google has some useful resources to help with
  • getting your site name right
  • adding structured data for breadcrumbs
And if you want to learn how to structure your URLs
  • Moz’s Short Guide on URLs
  • More in depth guide from WordTracker

Yoast – WordPress SEO Changes

Yoast is always on the ball and is taking these changes into account very shortly to help us easily modify our sites for these changes.
They are rolling out a new feature on Monday April 20th to help us set the site name (as well as an alternate). Which hopefully Google will use in the Search Results Pages.
Here is what the new settings in Yoast will look like:
Yoast Sitename Feature

The can also help you implement the Breadcrumbs if you are interested in those settings.
ref: http://madlemmings.com/2015/04/20/google-seo-updates-mobile-url/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Intel launches website to help gamers on integrated graphics get a boost in gaming performance

Integrated graphics solutions won’t get you far when it comes to gaming, but they’ve evolved to the point that you can actually get decent frame rates in relatively modern games with the right graphics settings. Looking to remove some of the guesswork for gamers on a budget, Intel has set up a site compiling the optimal settings for a bunch of titles based on your Intel IGP. To get started users must head to gameplay.intel.com and manually select their CPU. Intel will then show you a selection of games that are playable with your chip’s integrated graphics solution, or you can manually search for a particular title, after which you are presented with a screenshot of the in game optimizations and settings recommended by Intel. Intel doesn’t mention what kind of performance you can expect, nor what other hardware was used in their test system. But it’s still a good starting point for anyone wanting to find out what games are playable on a given IGP. While providing ga...
Google’s Matt Cutts –  who holds the title of “distinguished engineer” — is taking a break from his duties as Google’s chief web spam fighter. Cutts has announced on his personal blog that he’s taking leave through October. It will be the longest break Cutts has ever taken from Google since he started with the company back in 2000 and since he began overseeing the web spam team in 2004. It’s also one that he writes is overdue. From his post : When I joined Google, my wife and I agreed that I would work for 4-5 years, and then she’d get to see more of me. I talked about this as recently as last month and as early as 2006. And now, almost fifteen years later I’d like to be there for my wife more. I know she’d like me to be around more too, and not just physically present while my mind is still on work. Cutts says he’ll be off work through October of this year. He notes he won’t be checking any work email. He also stressed that there’s no specific event behind him...

Google Launches New Local Search Algorithm: SEOs Notice Significant Ranking Changes

Last night, Google pushed out a new and major local search ranking algorithm change. I broke the story at Search Engine Land where Google provided details for me on this update. Note: Later we named the update the Pigeon update . This is not really a spam change but more of a fundamental change to the local search ranking algorithm. Google would not tell me the percentage of queries impacted by this change but based on early reports, I'd say it is a significant number of queries impacted by this local algorithm change. The changes have rolled out to both the Google Maps search results and Google Web search results. Google told me that the new local algorithm has "deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more." It also has better accuracy over distance and location rankings. This has rolled out ...