May 2019 Google Webmaster Report: Massive Bugs & New Features

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The past month in terms of Google search, SEO and webmaster related topics can be summed up into two primary categories. First is the massive number of bugs and the second is about new features and tools. Let’s start with the bugs; we saw pages dropping from the Google index and it took them a few weeks to fully fix when you count in the 16-day Search Console data loss. Google had bugs with picking the correct canonical as well, also an issue with indexing Google News content, cache date issues, problems with both recipe markup and mobile friendly issues and so much more. It is because of all these bugs, it was hard to tell if there were any large algorithm updates – I am thinking there may have been one around April 26th.

Google added some new features and took away others – such as dropping the sort by date but adding before: and after: search operators. Google Search Console added a number of new reports such as new enhancement reports and unparsable markup reports, a new Google Discover report, AMP Stories filters, Android app filters and more. Heck, they even went Star Wars on us this weekend.

Google might be able to better crawl complex JS soon and change how they index robots.txt content. Let’s not forget Google launching support for your URLs with AMP pages. Finally, Eric Schdmit stepped down after 18 years of service.

There is a lot and a lot more – including the typical ongoing chatter in the WebmasterWorld thread. Here is a recap for the past month sorted by importance and category:

Google Algorithm Updates:
Google Algorithm Update Tools Going Off – Is It A False Alarm?
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Around April 26th?
Google Search Algorithms Are Designed To Be Granular But Older Updates Were More Broad

Google Search:
Google Is Dropping Pages Out Of The Search Index; A Bug?
Google’s Index Bug With Pages Being De-Indexed Is Almost Fixed
Was 4% Of Google’s Index Removed With The Indexing Bug?
Google: Some Other Google Bugs May Be Related To The De-Indexing Bug
Google: We Fully Fixed The Google De-Indexing Bug
Google Search Bug Selecting Unrelated Canonical URLs & Indexing Issues
Google Fixing Another Indexing Bug With Google News
Google Cache Date Is Old; Google Says Don’t Worry About It
Google Recipe Rich Results & Mobile Friendly Bugs Reported
Google Drops Sort By Date But Adds before: & after: Search Commands

Google SEO:
Google Tests A More Modern Rendering Engine For GoogleBot
When Google Says I Don’t Know, They Might Know.
Google Posts Reminder On How Structured Data Can Richen Search Results
Google: You Cannot Isolate Specific Ranking Factor Successes
Google: Mobile-First Indexing Is Still On Track & Making Good Progress
Google: Sitemap Dates vs Web Page Dates
Google Really Wants You To Use Remote Job Markup For Job Schema
Google Launches Video Series On SEO Myth-Busting
Google: AJAX/XHR Calls Can Impact Crawl Budget
Google Might Change How NoIndex In Robots.txt Works
Submit Questions Around JavaScript SEO For Google
Google Uploads Last JavaScript SEO Video: Dynamic Rendering For JavaScript Sites
Google: Use Site Command For Checking Individual URLs
Navigation Removal Trick Impacting Google Rankings Algorithm?
Google SEO Tips On Vue.js
Google: More Crawling Doesn’t Mean Things Are Better (i.e. Rankings)
5 Months Later Google Has Not Fixed A Googlebot Search Exploit
A New Google Useragent google-Read-Aloud?
Google Wants Feedback On Dynamic Rendering Success

Google Links:
Google Can See Disavow Links Between Canonical URLs
Google: If It’s Not Obvious Which Links Hurt You Then It’s Not Hurting Or Helping
Google: Nofollow Link Attribute Is Working Fairly Well
Google: No, You Can’t Force Someone To Link To You Legally

Google Maps & My Business:
Google My Business Explores Charging Fees?
Google My Business: POI Establishment Category
Google Maps Business Reviews Vanishing After Suspension Removal
Google Home & Assistant Listings May Need Google Guaranteed Label
Google Posts Supports Highlighting Customer Testimonials & Reviews
Google My Business Rolling Out Short Names & URLs
Google Tests More Graphical Google My Business Dashboard

Google User Interface:
Google AMP Now Can Support Real Publisher URLs
Google Discover Is The -1 Screen Or Position -1
AMP Stories Thumbnails In Google Search Results Snippets
Google Images, Featured Snippets & Videos More Often In Web Search Results
Q&A On Google Video Screenshots
Google Search Snippets With Image Collage Carousel
Google Showing Previously Fetched Results – Update Button
Live: Google Sitelinks Images

Google Business:
OMG: Google’s Internal Alert System
Eric Schmidt To Step Down As Google Board After 18 Years

For last month’s recap, see over here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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