November 2017 Google Webmaster Report: Mobile First Index, Algorithm Updates & Flexible Sampling

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I’d say the past month was a time where Google ramped up their testing of the mobile first index. In fact, they already rolled it out for a few sites they said. So we have a lot more around that below. We did see some algorithm updates and fluctuations, none of which Google confirmed, although they did say they plan on confirming some in the future.

Google killed off the first click free program for flexible sampling and is strongly encouraging schema use for paywalled content. Also Google changed how they show country specific search results a week or so ago.

On the SEO front, Google talked about improving vs pruning content, how AMP works with the mobile first index and hinted at off site signals they may be using.

Let’s not forget that Danny Sullivan became a Googler this month.

The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is relatively quiet for the first couple days of November.

There is a lot but it was not one of those crazy months. Here are the stories I pulled out for the past month:

Google Algorithm Updates:
Google Search Algorithm & Ranking Update : October 7th – 9th
Google Search Algorithm & Ranking Update Brewing?
Google Mobile Ranking Search Update, Mobile First Index Related?
Google Says They Are Not Done Announcing Future Algorithms

Google Mobile First:
Google Testing Mobile First Index In The Wild
Google Has Started The Mobile First Indexing, For Some Sites At Least
Google Mobile First Index Is Live For Few Sites & Never Will Stop Rolling Out
Google: Mobile First Index Rolls Out On Host Level Per Site
How To Tell If Google Is Testing The Mobile First Index
Google May Message Webmasters With Mobile First Indexing Issues

Google Search:
Google: Strongly Encourages Paywalled Content Markup With Flexible Sampling
Google Won’t Change Search Results Based On Google Domain Names Anymore

Google SEO:
Google Ranking Algorithm Same For Top Ten Results As Top Hundred Results
Google Retake: Improving Content & Pruning Content Are Both Valid Strategies
Google: Pruning Content Never Should Have Worked For Panda
Google: Pruning Content Is Not Safe; Instead Make It Better
Google: Got AMP & Desktop But No Mobile Page? Google Will Index The Desktop Page.
Google Short Webmaster/SEO Question & Answer Videos
Google: Penguin Is On Autopilot & Only Tweaked Occasionally
Google Suggests They Use Off-Site Sentiment Analysis For Ranking
Google: Featured Snippets Are Evolving & Changing
Did Google Say Affiliate Sites Are Not Quality Sites?
Google Does Not Want To Depend On Structured Data & Schema In Future
Google: Structured Data Not Required For Rich Snippets But Recommended
Google Date Bylines In Search Results Snippets Penalty
Google May Stop Crawling Old AJAX Scheme With Escape Fragment URLs Soon
Google Ignores Symbols For Rankings
Google: Grammar Does Not Impact SEO & Search Rankings
Google: Duplicate Content Issues Are Rainy Day Tasks
Google: Your Multilingual Pages Shouldn’t Be Word For Word Translation
Google: Use Fetch & Submit To Increase Indexing Speed
Google Measures Server Response Time In Milliseconds, Is 200 Milliseconds The Benchmark?
Google’s John Mueller Comments On PageRank For Internal Links
Google: Avoid Changing Images URLs
Google: Disabling Right Click & Content Selection Doesn’t Impact SEO
Google: Comments Better On Your Site Then On Social Networks
How Cyrillic Script Impacts Google Search Rankings
Google: HTTPS Migrations Don’t Result In Traffic Loss