February 2019 Google Webmaster Report: Algorithms, Hacks, AMP, Search Console & More

Chalkboard4 WebmasterReport Magnified 1900px

It was a busy January with a few unconfirmed Google algorithm updates around the 15th, 9th and 6th of January. Google also said the next 50% of mobile-first indexing will be the hardest.

Google had a couple of bugs – one was an old but embarrassing knowledge panel issue they finally fixed and the other was an AMP error that caused some issues. Google also put some news publishers on notice about being legit.

On Google Search Console, some of the features in the old version are going away as soon as March. But Google brought some new features to the URL inspection tool, did some message consolidation and added the security feature to the tool. Google ran lots of tests, did some things on local and much more.

Currently, the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is pretty quiet and stable now.

Here is a summary of stories that I wanted to highlight over the past 30 days:

Google Algorithm Updates:
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Chatter January 15th
Google Search Algorithm Update On January 9th?
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Around January 6th
Google: Last 50% Of Mobile-First Indexing Migration Will Be Harder

Google Larger Topics:
Google Image Search Changes Coming This Year: Think Different
Knowledge Panel Exploit Is Embarrassing For Google
Google Fixed The Knowledge Panel Hack

Google AMP Bug:
Google AMP Crawl Error Bug Fix Is Here
Google Fixing AMP Errors; Nothing To Fix On Your End Now
Google Investigating AMP Errors & AMP Pages Not Showing In Search
Google Sends Many AMP Issue Detected Notices

Google Links & Penalties:
Is Google Getting Ready To Punish Google News Publishers In Violation?
Google: Image Schema Or Noscript Tags Are Good For Images
Google Recommends To Disavow Links That Can Trigger Manual Actions
Google: Disavowing Bad Links May Help Google Algorithmically Trust Your Links
Google’s John Mueller: You Focus Too Much On Links
Google’s Nofollow Link Attribute Didn’t Help Improve Blog Comments; Sorry
Google: Unnatural Links By Humans Or Bots Are Your Responsibility

Google Search Console:
Google Officially To End Some Old Search Console Features
Google May Drop The Old Search Console In March
Google Will Discontinue Some Old Search Console Features
Google URL Inspection Tool Adds HTTP Response, Resources, JS Logs & Screenshots
Google May Consolidate Even More Search Console Messages
Google Now Sending Consolidated Mobile-First Indexing Notifications
Google’s John Mueller Can Send Personalized Messages Through Google Search Console
Google Rich Results Test Now With Code Editing
New Google Search Console Ports Security Issues Section
Most SEOs Want Fetch As Google Even With URL Inspection Tool
Google Search Console Stops Testing Domain Property?