So the first month of 2021 is now over and it has proven to be an important month. We had Google trickle out a few unconfirmed ranking algorithm updates this month, including confirming rolling out subtopics rankings last year. Google launched a new mobile redesign, did tons of various UI tests and feature launches.

Google said it won’t rank teasers in the form of web stories. Google officially dropped support for data-vocabulary.org and added support for price drop rich results. Google Search Console launched news performance reports, they also added new coverage report categories and types of crawl stats, plus a lot more.

A lot happened in the local space as well – but let’s not forget about the Australia news.

Anyway, if you missed last month, catch that report over here.

Here is a break down of the more important stories you may want to catch up on:

Google Algorithms:
Google Confirmed Launching Subtopics Ranking In Mid-November 2020
Smaller Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On January 27th
Small Google Algorithm Update Around January 12, 2021? 
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Signals – January 7th & 8th 2021
No, Google SMITH Algorithm Is Not Live

Google SEO:
Google Will Stop Showing Teaser Web Stories In Search & Discover
Google Explains Why Sites With Some SEO Bad Practices Rank Well
Google Adds Price Drop Enhancement Documentation
Google To Stop Supporting Data-Vocabulary.org In Search This Weekend
Google On Same Link But Different Anchor Text On Same Page
Google: Digital Public Relations Is Not Spammy Link Building
Google: Paying For Content Review Or Time With Links Is Paid Links
Google Diversity With Indexing Languages For Search
Google On Mobile-First Indexing For Separate Mobile URLs
Google’s Thoughts On Selling Domains Based On SEO Value

Google Search Console:
Google Search Console Google News Performance Report
Google Index Coverage Report Updated With More Specific Categories
Google Crawl Stats Report Can Handle Additional Types Of Crawls
Possible Issues With Google Search Console Canonicals & AMP Reporting
Google Search Console Coverage Report Validate Fix, Fixed.
Google URL Inspection Tool Now Displays Multiple Referring Pages
Old Google Disavow Tool Going Away On January 19, 2021
Google Marketing Search Console Owners To Verify Via Domain Property
Google Search Console Notification For Google Will Start Crawling Over HTTP/2
Google Data Studio Can Pull Search Console News Tab Queries

Google Tests & Features:
Google New Mobile Search Design Side By Side Comparison
Google Launched The About This Result Snippet Feature
Google Tests New Design For Sitelinks On Mobile
Google Search Pushing More Local News
Google Search Tests Sans Serif Font
Google’s People Also Search For Entity Overlay Feature 
Google Continues Injecting Links Into Featured Snippets
Google Search Critic Ratings Scale Visualization
Google Search Gains AR Photorealistic 3D Car Models
Google Expandable Knowledge Panels More Visible
Google Search Tests Expandable Accordion Carousels
Google Search Interesting Finds List Adds Related Tags
Google Product Result Size Slide Visualization

Google My Business & Local:
Google My Business Begins Rolling Out New Performance Metrics / Insights
New Google My Business Insights Platform & Device Breakdown
Google My Business Insights Breaks Photos Uploads By Owner vs Customer
Google Shopping Black-Owned Business Label
Flagging Reviews In Google My Business Has Changes
Old Google Posts Showing On Local Panels In Search
Google My Business Not Applied Changes Now Offer Send Edit Feedback
Google Local Review Summaries Now Grouped By Place Topics & Displays 3rd Party Reviews

Google Business:
Google Australia Adds Notice To Search Results About News Links Law

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.