Google updated their hreflang documentation to note a quirk in how some websites are using it which (presumably) can lead to unintended consequences with how Google processes it.
hreflang Link Tag Attributes
is an HTML attribute that can be used to communicate data to the browser and search engines about linked resources relevant to the webpage. There are multiple kinds of data that can be linked to such as CSS, JS, favicons and hreflang data.
In the case of the hreflang attribute (attribute of the link element), the purpose is to specify the languages. All of the link elements belong in the
section of the document.
Quirk In hreflang
Google noticed that there is an unintended behavior that happens when publishers combine multiple in attributes in one link element so they updated the hreflang documentation to make this more broadly known.
“Clarifying link tag attributes What: Clarified in our hreflang documentation that link tags for denoting alternate versions of a page must not be combined in a single link tag.
Why: While debugging a report from a site owner we noticed we don’t have this quirk documented.”
What Changed In The Documentation
There was one change to the documentation that warns publishers and SEOs to watch out for this issue. Those who audit websites should take notice of this.
This is the old version of the documentation:
“Put your tags near the top of the
element. At minimum, the tags must be inside a well-formed section, or before any items that might cause the to be closed prematurely, such as
or a tracking pixel. If in doubt, paste code from your rendered page into an HTML validator to ensure that the links are inside the
element.”
This is the newly updated version:
“The tags must be inside a well-formed
section of the HTML. If in doubt, paste code from your rendered page into an HTML validator to ensure that the links are inside the element. Additionally, don’t combine link tags for alternate representations of the document; for example don’t combine hreflang annotations with other attributes such as media in a single tag.”
Google’s documentation didn’t say what the consequence of the quirk is but if Google was debugging it then that means it did cause some kind of issue. It’s a seemingly minor thing that could have an outsized impact.
A new study shows that readers prefer simple, straightforward headlines over complex ones.
The researchers, Hillary C. Shulman, David M. Markowitz, and Todd Rogers, did over 30,000 experiments with The Washington Post and Upworthy.
They found that readers are likelier to click on and read headlines with common, easy-to-understand words.
The study, published in Science Advances, suggests that people are naturally drawn to simpler writing.
In the crowded online world, plain headline language can help grab more readers’ attention.
Field Experiments and Findings
Between March 2021 and December 2022, researchers conducted experiments analyzing nearly 9,000 tests involving over 24,000 headlines.
Data from The Washington Post showed that simpler headlines had higher click-through rates.
The study found that using more common words, a simpler writing style, and more readable text led to more clicks.
In the screenshot below, you can see examples of headline tests conducted at The Washington Post.
Screenshot from: science.org, June 2024.
A follow-up experiment looked more closely at how people process news headlines.
This experiment used a signal detection task (SDT) to find that readers more closely read simpler headlines when presented with a set of headlines of varied complexity.
The finding that readers engage less deeply with complex writing suggests that simple writing can help publishers increase audience engagement even for complicated stories.
Professional Writers vs. General Readers
The study revealed a difference between professional writers and general readers.
A separate survey showed that journalists didn’t prefer simpler headlines.
This finding is important because it suggests that journalists may need help understanding how their audiences will react to and engage with the headlines they write.
Implications For Publishers
As publishers compete for readers’ attention, simpler headline language could create an advantage.
Simplified writing makes content more accessible and engaging, even for complex articles.
To show how important this is, look at The Washington Post’s audience data from March 2021 to December 2022. They averaged around 70 million unique digital visitors per month.
If each visitor reads three articles, a 0.1% increase in click-through rates (from 2.0% to 2.1%) means 200,000 more readers engaging with stories due to the simpler language.
“With this feature, you can use a combination of standard fields and event-scoped custom dimensions to join and analyze imported event metadata with your existing Analytics data.
You can then create custom reports for a more complete view of your Analytics data and imported event metadata.”
“Custom event data import allows you to import and join data in ways that make sense to you. You have more flexibility in the choice of key and import dimensions.”
You begin the process by defining reporting goals and identifying any relevant external data sources not collected in Google Analytics.
You can then set up custom, event-scoped dimensions to use as “join keys” to link the imported data with Analytics data.
Mapping Fields & Uploading Data
Once the custom dimensions are configured, Google provides a detailed mapping interface for associating the external data fields with the corresponding Analytics fields and parameters.
This allows seamless integration of the two data sources.
Google’s help documentation reads:
“In the Key fields table, you’ll add the Analytics fields to join your imported data. In the Import fields table, you’ll select the external fields to include via the join key across both standard Analytics fields/dimensions and custom typed-in event parameters.”
After the data is uploaded through the import interface, Google notes it can take up to 24 hours for the integrated data set to become available in Analytics reports, audiences, and explorations.
Why SEJ Cares
GA4’s custom event data import feature creates opportunities for augmenting Google Analytics data with a business’s proprietary sources.
This allows you to leverage all available data, extract actionable insights, and optimize strategies.
How This Can Help You
Combining your data with Google’s analytics data can help in several ways:
You can create a centralized data repository containing information from multiple sources for deeper insights.
You can analyze user behavior through additional lenses by layering your internal data, such as customer details, product usage, marketing campaigns, etc., on top of Google’s engagement metrics.
Combining analytics data with supplementary data allows you to define audience segments more granularly for targeted strategies.
Using the new data fields and dimensions, You can build custom reports and dashboards tailored to your specific business.
For businesses using GA4, these expanded reporting possibilities can level up your data-driven decision-making.
Google removed the Covid-era structured data associated with the Home Activities rich results that allowed online events to be surfaced in search since August 2020, publishing a mention of the removal in the search documentation changelog.
Home Activities Rich Results
The structured data for the Home Activities rich results allowed providers of online livestreams, pre-recorded events and online events to be findable in Google Search.
The original documentation has been completely removed from the Google Search Central webpages and now redirects to a changelog notation that explains that the Home Activity rich results is no longer available for display.
The original purpose was to allow people to discover things to do from home while in quarantine, particularly online classes and events. Google’s rich results surfaced details of how to watch, description of the activities and registration information.
Providers of online events were required to use Event or Video structured data. Publishers and businesses who have this kind of structured data should be aware that this kind of rich result is no longer surfaced but it’s not necessary to remove the structured data if it’s a burden, it’s not going to hurt anything to publish structured data that isn’t used for rich results.
The changelog for Google’s official documentation explains:
“Removing home activity documentation What: Removed documentation on home activity structured data.
Why: The home activity feature no longer appears in Google Search results.”
Read more about Google’s Home Activities rich results:
YouTube will launch a new “Thumbnail Test & Compare” feature for all channels over the next few weeks.
This tool allows you to upload and test up to three different thumbnails for each video to see which performs best.
How Thumbnail Testing Works
The ‘Thumbnail Test & Compare‘ feature lets you upload multiple thumbnail options when publishing a new YouTube video.
During the testing period, YouTube will randomly display the different thumbnails to some of the video’s viewers.
After collecting enough data, which takes around two weeks, YouTube analyzes which thumbnail generated the highest “watch time share” from viewers.
It will then designate one of three potential outcomes:
Winner: A clear winner outperforming the other options based on watch time. The winning thumbnail is automatically applied.
Preferred: One thumbnail likely performed better than others, but the results are less certain statistically.
None: No thumbnail emerged as a clear winner. The original uploaded thumbnail is kept.
You can manually select your preferred video thumbnail even if it isn’t the winning option.
For a full demonstration, see the video below:
YouTube Thumbnail Best Practices
As part of the demonstration, YouTube outlined best practices for designing and testing thumbnails.
YouTube suggests creators start by testing thumbnails on a limited number of older videos to get initial guidance. Then, apply any learnings to testing thumbnails for more recent videos.
For thumbnail design itself, YouTube offers these tips:
Balance & Focal Point
“Ensure your images are balanced with a focal point to direct viewers’ attention towards.”
High Contrast
“Utilize high contrast allowing your subject to stand out against the background in both Light and Dark mode.”
Facial Expressions
“If there’s a face in your thumbnail, consider emotion. Be expressive and consider how you want viewers to feel when seeing your thumbnail.”
Concise Text
“With text, remember that fewer words can be impactful while too much text can be difficult to process while scrolling.”
Depth & Blank Space
“When it comes to depth of field keep your background in mind and play with blank space.”
Rollout To All Eligible Channels
All channels can access the ‘Thumbnail Test & Compare’ feature in the YouTube Studio desktop application. To do so, the “Advanced features” setting must be enabled.
YouTube is gradually rolling this out over the next few weeks to all channels that have opted in and meet those requirements.
The company says it will provide updates on expanding availability, such as potential mobile app support, in the future.
Optimizing For Watch Time
In an FAQ addressing common questions, YouTube explains that thumbnails are judged solely based on their ability to drive watch time, not other metrics like click-through rates.
YouTube states
“We want to make sure that your thumbnail and content gets you the highest amount of viewer engagement, so we are optimizing for overall watch time share over other metrics.
We believe that this metric is the best way to guide your content strategy decisions & support your chances of success on the platform.”
Why SEJ Cares
The Thumbnail Test & Compare tool addresses a pain point by allowing true A/B testing. Previously, creators had to rely on best guesses or small-sample polls when selecting thumbnails for new videos.
By optimizing for watch time as the key success metric, YouTube is putting an emphasis on long-term viewer engagement over short-term clicks.
However, it’s understandable that some channels may also want data on how thumbnails impact initial impressions and click-through rates.
How This Can Help You
Smarter, higher-performing thumbnails could boost your content in YouTube’s recommendations and keep viewers watching more videos.
Video openers and thumbnails are the first make-or-break moments on YouTube, so having data-backed tools to perfect those first impressions could be a difference-maker.
Google updated their structured data guidelines to reflect support for a sitewide return policy within the Organization structured data. This eliminates the need to add redundant return policy information for every product listing structured data and can result in more traffic and sales to online merchants.
This doesn’t mean that merchants are required to change their current structured data, the old method remains unchanged. This simply adds an alternative way that is more streamlined and reduces the size of product structured data.
Improvement To Brand Knowledge Panel
Google’s change to the organization structured data will be reflected in the brand panel that Google shows when someone searches on a brand name. The updated brand panel will feature a new entry that reflects the company’s return policy.
Screenshot Of Brand Knowledge Panel Example
Benefits Of Organization-Level Return Policy
As part of this change Google is adding search features in Knowledge Panels and in Brand Panels that can show a merchant’s return policies. This means that a merchant’s search feature will be eligible to show a returns policy which in turn can encourage a higher clickthrough rate from the search engine results pages (SERPs) and a higher conversion rate.
Research conducted by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) in 2024 shows that online shoppers are strongly influenced by a merchant’s returns policy.
“82% of respondents said that when shopping online, return policies influence whether they decide to purchase from a retailer.
… If retailers charged a fee to ship back purchases made online, nearly three-fourths (71%) of respondents said they’d likely stop shopping online from that company altogether, while 6 in 10 said they’d likely stop shopping online with retailers that shortened the free return window.”
Clearly a return policy can be a way to generate more online sales and Google’s new support for a sitewide returns policy structured data helps to communicate that information to online shoppers directly from search.
Google’s announcement explained:
“A return policy is a major factor considered by shoppers when buying products online, and so last year we enabled the extraction of structured data return policies for individual products. Today we’re adding support for return policies at the organization level as well, 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.
Adding a return policy to your organization structured data is especially important if you don’t have a Merchant Center account and want the ability to provide a return policy for your business. Merchant Center already lets you provide a return policy for your business, so if you have a Merchant Center account we recommend defining your return policy there instead.
…If your site is an online or local business, we recommend using one of the OnlineStore, or LocalBusiness subtypes of Organization.
We hope this addition makes it easier for you to add return policies for your business, and enable them to be shown across Google shopping experiences.”
Google Updates Organization Structured Data Documentation
Google added a new section to their Organization structured data documentation to reflect support for this new way to show return policies in the search results.
The new documentation states:
“MerchantReturnPolicy Use the following properties to describe general return policies for your entire Organization, if applicable to your business. If you have specific policies for individual products, use merchant listing markup instead.”
In a recent LinkedIn discussion, Gary Illyes, Analyst at Google, revealed that the search engine takes a binary approach when assessing a website’s lastmod signal from sitemaps.
The revelation came as Illyes encouraged website owners to upgrade to WordPress 6.5, which now natively supports the lastmod element in sitemaps.
When Mark Williams-Cook asked if Google has a “reputation system” to gauge how much to trust a site’s reported lastmod dates, Illyes stated, “It’s binary: we either trust it or we don’t.”
No Shades Of Gray For Lastmod
The lastmod tag indicates the date of the most recent significant update to a webpage, helping search engines prioritize crawling and indexing.
Illyes’ response suggests Google doesn’t factor in a website’s history or gradually build trust in the lastmod values being reported.
Google either accepts the lastmod dates provided in a site’s sitemap as accurate, or it disregards them.
This binary approach reinforces the need to implement the lastmod tag correctly and only specify dates when making meaningful changes.
Illyes commends the WordPress developer community for their work on version 6.5, which automatically populates the lastmod field without extra configuration.
Accurate Lastmod Essential For Crawl Prioritization
While convenient for WordPress users, the native lastmod support is only beneficial if Google trusts you’re using it correctly.
Inaccurate lastmod tags could lead to Google ignoring the signal when scheduling crawls.
With Illyes confirming Google’s stance, it shows there’s no room for error when using this tag.
Why SEJ Cares
Understanding how Google acts on lastmod can help ensure Google displays new publish dates in search results when you update your content.
It’s an all-or-nothing situation – if the dates are deemed untrustworthy, the signal could be disregarded sitewide.
With the information revealed by Illyes, you can ensure your implementation follows best practices to the letter.
In a LinkedIn post, Gary Illyes, an Analyst at Google, reiterated long-standing guidance for website owners: Use the robots.txt file to prevent web crawlers from accessing URLs that trigger actions like adding items to carts or wishlists.
Illyes highlighted the common complaint of unnecessary crawler traffic overloading servers, often stemming from search engine bots crawling URLs intended for user actions.
“Looking at what we’re crawling from the sites in the complaints, way too often it’s action URLs such as ‘add to cart’ and ‘add to wishlist.’ These are useless for crawlers, and you likely don’t want them crawled.”
To avoid this wasted server load, Illyes advised blocking access in the robots.txt file for URLs with parameters like “?add_to_cart” or “?add_to_wishlist.”
As an example, he suggests:
“If you have URLs like: https://example.com/product/scented-candle-v1?add_to_cart and https://example.com/product/scented-candle-v1?add_to_wishlist
You should probably add a disallow rule for them in your robots.txt file.”
While using the HTTP POST method can also prevent the crawling of such URLs, Illyes noted crawlers can still make POST requests, so robots.txt remains advisable.
Reinforcing Decades-Old Best Practices
Alan Perkins, who engaged in the thread, pointed out that this guidance echoes web standards introduced in the 1990s for the same reasons.
Quoting from a 1993 document titled “A Standard for Robot Exclusion”:
“In 1993 and 1994 there have been occasions where robots have visited WWW servers where they weren’t welcome for various reasons…robots traversed parts of WWW servers that weren’t suitable, e.g. very deep virtual trees, duplicated information, temporary information, or cgi-scripts with side-effects (such as voting).”
The robots.txt standard, proposing rules to restrict well-behaved crawler access, emerged as a “consensus” solution among web stakeholders back in 1994.
Obedience & Exceptions
Illyes affirmed that Google’s crawlers fully obey robots.txt rules, with rare exceptions thoroughly documented for scenarios involving “user-triggered or contractual fetches.”
This adherence to the robots.txt protocol has been a pillar of Google’s web crawling policies.
Why SEJ Cares
While the advice may seem rudimentary, the re-emergence of this decades-old best practice underscores its relevance.
By leveraging the robots.txt standard, sites can help tame overzealous crawlers from hogging bandwidth with unproductive requests.
How This Can Help You
Whether you run a small blog or a major e-commerce platform, following Google’s advice to leverage robots.txt for blocking crawler access to action URLs can help in several ways:
Reduced Server Load: You can reduce needless server requests and bandwidth usage by preventing crawlers from hitting URLs that invoke actions like adding items to carts or wishlists.
Improved Crawler Efficiency: Giving more explicit rules in your robots.txt file about which URLs crawlers should avoid can lead to more efficient crawling of the pages/content you want to be indexed and ranked.
Better User Experience: With server resources focused on actual user actions rather than wasted crawler hits, end-users will likely experience faster load times and smoother functionality.
Stay Aligned with Standards: Implementing the guidance puts your site in compliance with the widely adopted robots.txt protocol standards, which have been industry best practices for decades.
Revisiting robots.txt directives could be a simple but impactful step for websites looking to exert more control over crawler activity.
Illyes’ messaging indicates that the ancient robots.txt rules remain relevant in our modern web environment.
People are always complaining that there’s something wrong with Google’s search results but what’s going on with search results for queries with the acronym “SEO” is in a class by itself and has to be seen to be believed.
Anomalies In Search Results
An anomaly is something that deviates from the norm or what’s expected. A lot of time when there’s something wrong with the search engine results pages (SERPs) the anomaly is explainable. For example, queries that combine a geographical element with a relatively longtail phrase tend to generate weird results. Another driver of strange search results is when there simply isn’t enough data about a specific combination of words, which sometimes leads to offensive search results.
What’s happening with a particular group of keyword phrases that are related to the word “SEO ” is not any of those kinds of anomalies. It’s a true anomaly.
Here are the keywords that Google is (arguably) getting wrong:
SEO program
What is an SEO program?
SEO New York (City)
SEO NYC
SEO Conference
SEO Events
SEO Education
SEO Awards
SEO-USA.Org
The site that’s ranking for all those SEO search queries (and probably more) is a site called SEO-USA.org. The acronym SEO in that website stands for Sponsors for Educational Opportunity. It’s not a spam site, it’s a legit non-profit website that’s been around since 1963. The purpose of the non-profit is to provide mentorship to young people who are underserved to help them get into colleges and universities. That program evolved in the SEO Scholars, an eight year academic program for talented young people to help them through high school and college.
“SEO Scholars creates a more equitable society by closing the academic opportunity gap for motivated young people, setting the standard for academics, mentorship, community, peer-to-peer support, and a powerful, lifelong network.”
SEO-USA.org Is Not Relevant For SEO
The acronym SEO is heavily relevant for the context of online marketing. A search for “SEO” in Google spawns suggestions that are all relevant for SEO in the sense of search marketing.
Google Trends shows that the phrase SEO Scholars and SEO Scholars Application are not widely searched in the United States, most of the searches occur in New York. But SEO-USA.org is top ranked for the group of keywords listed above in other areas outside of New York.
Screenshot Of SERPs For Keyword Phrase “SEO Awards”
It’s kind of obvious that SEO-USA.org is not relevant for the most commonly understood meaning for the acronym SEO.
Could Backlinks Be The Reason?
It’s possible that the reason SEO-USA.org is ranking for all of those phrases is because of backlinks. A search for the domain name but restricted to .edu sites shows almost seventy .edu websites that link to the the SEO-USA.org domain name.
This is the advanced search that shows scores of .edu sites that link or mention SEO-USA.org:
"seo-usa.org" site:.edu"
Screenshot Of Site:.EDU Search
There are also a large amount of high quality sites with dot org domains that link to SEO-USA.org as well, which is observable using the following advanced search:
"seo-usa.org" site:.org -site:seo-usa.org"
On the surface it looks clear that backlinks are the reason why SEO-USA.org ranks for irrelevant keywords.
But of course, the most obvious answer isn’t always the right answer. There’s more to the picture.
Why Links Probably Don’t Explain The Rankings
If links were the reason for SEO-USA.org’s rankings then it would follow that virtually every keyword phrase related to SEO would be littered with .edu and .org websites but that’s not the case.
I’ve been doing SEO for about 25 years now and I remember the days when sites that had the maximum level of PageRank used to rank for virtually anything. Also, dot edu links were regarded as powerful because SEOs were able to rank quite well with them.
Google’s algorithms improved and the effect from .edu links started to wane because context of a link started counting more. The words in the title element and the words in the surrounding text influenced the links. I know this too from my experience.
Another important change in Google’s link ranking algorithms was to dampen the effect of quantity of links. It used to be that an avalanche of links was enough to help a site rank over more authoritative sites. I know this from my experience too.
But the effect of a huge amount of links also changed in many ways, like hundreds of links from one domain stopped counting as hundreds of links and began counting as just one link. The position of a link within a page also mattered more, there were lots of changes that whittled down the power of links so that less and less links mattered for the wrong reasons.
I’m kind of skeptical that links is the reason why SEO-USA.org ranks.
What’s The Answer?
For some reason, a relevance factor is not kicking in, which allows the (arguably) irrelevant SEO-USA.org site to rank for keywords it probably shouldn’t rank for.
I think that’s a clue, a reason for why that site is ranking where it should not. It’s slipping through because something is missing that would ordinarily be there to keep it out.
It may very well be that there’s a factor related to trustworthiness that is allowing that site to slip through. That’s just speculation. Do you have any ideas?
Are you feeling frustrated and anxious about your website’s performance?
Given the state of SEO this past year, we’d be surprised if you didn’t.
As the search landscape continues to evolve, we’re seeing a surge in volatility, with high-quality content often outranked by spam pages.
And with Google’s algorithms becoming more and more complex, traditional best practices no longer seem to cut it.
So, what does this mean for you and your strategy?
How can you navigate these complexities and boost your search rankings?
Our new ebook, Google Ranking Systems & Signals 2024, is the ultimate resource for understanding the recent ranking trends and unlocking sustainable SEO success.
You’ll get expert insights and analysis from seasoned SEO professionals, digital marketing strategists, industry thought leaders, and more.
Our featured experts include:
Adam Riemer, President, Adam Riemer Marketing.
Aleh Barysevich, Founder, SEO PowerSuite.
Andrea Volpini, Co-Founder and CEO, WordLift.
Dan Taylor, Partner & Head of Technical SEO, SALT.agency.
Erika Varangouli, Head of Branded Content at Riverside.fm.
Helen Pollitt, Head of SEO, Car & Classic.
Kevin Indig, Writer of the Growth Memo.
Kevin Rowe, Founder & Head of Digital PR Strategy, PureLinq.
Ludwig Makhyan, Global Head of Technical SEO, EssilorLuxottica.
Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand at Wix.
Scott Stouffer, CTO and Co-Founder, Market Brew.
Download the ebook to learn about the latest developments in Google Search, and how to meet the challenges of today’s competitive search environment.
We also address where different types of content belong and offer advice on whether you should diversify your acquisition channels or pivot to gated content models.
Explore the following topics inside:
Why Is Search Full Of Spam?
What Are The Top Ranking Factors That SEO Pros Can Rely On Right Now?
The Top 3 Ranking Factors
Freshness & Content Maintenance
“Ranking” In Search Generative Experience
Staying Indexed Is The New SEO Challenge
Where Does Your Best Content Belong?
Proactively Embracing SEO Disruption By Focusing On User Needs
Making Sense Of Ranking In 2024
Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting out, this ebook is full of practical tips and actionable strategies to help you improve your website’s visibility and drive organic traffic.
