Last month was incredibly active in so many ways when it comes to Google search and SEO topics. So if you want to catch up quickly on the past month, read this story.

We had the September 2019 Google core update roll out this month, it wasn’t as big as previous updates but it was noticed for sure. We saw unconfirmed updates the week of October 3rd, the weekend of the 13th and earlier this month around September 4th. Google said its original reporting skills for ranking got better over the past few months.

Google also updated the rules for showing reviews in search which resulted in what some are calling starmageddon because of the large loss of reviews in Google snippets. Google also made changes to the nofollow link attribute where it is becoming essentially a hint vs a directive Google must comply with, and sitewide nofollows may be ignored.

Google also updated its raters guidelines on September 5th. Began to more heavily penalize subdomain leasing. Google announced GoogleBot’s user agent is changing in December, oh it is now running Chrome 77. Google added more snippet controls for webmasters, which is a nice add.

The old Google Search Console is dead now but the performance reports are now way fresher. Oh, if you lost half of your links in Google Search Console, you are not alone.

It was just an insanely busy month, and the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is still buzzing about last week’s unconfirmed Google update.

Here are the stories you may have missed that are important:

Google Algorithm Updates:
Alert: Google To Release September 2019 Core Update Later Today
Google September 2019 Core Update Is Live But Seems Slow To Roll Out
Google September 2019 Core Update Impact Now Being Noticed
Possible Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On October 3rd
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Signs Heating Up More
Friday The 13th Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Chatter
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On September 4th & 5th?
Google: Our Newer Search Algorithms Have Been Promoting Original Reporting In Search
Google Updates Rules For Displaying Reviews Rich Results In Search Results
Data Shows A 4-5 Point Drop In Review Rich Results In Google
Google: The Reviews Rich Results Algorithm Still Rolling Out
Google Starmageddon vs Sept. 2019 Review Rich Results Update
Review Rich Results Keep Getting Removed From Google’s Search Results

Google SEO:
Everything Google Has Said On The Nofollow Link Attribute Change
Google Updates The Search Quality Raters Guidelines On September 5th
Google Now Penalizing Subdomains Leasing, Not Just Subfolder Leasing
Google To Rename GoogleBot With Dynamic User Agent
Evergreen GoogleBot Now On Chrome 77
Google Delivers On Webmasters Request To Control Search Result Snippets
Google Shortens Title Length In Search By ~5 Characters On Average
Google May Ignore Nofollow Link From Publishers That Default It
Google: H1 Tags Are Not Critical For Search Ranking
Timely: Google Posts H1 Tag Video After H1 SEO Controversy
Google: Headings Won’t Make Or Break Your Sites Rankings
Google: HTML Sitemaps Not Worthwhile For SEO Purposes
Google: Meta Robots Nofollow Is A Hint Also
WordPress To Adopt Google’s New rel=ugc in Next Release
Google: No Need To Disavow Nofollowed Links
Google: Links Do Not Expire But They May Become Less Important Over Time
Google: Embedded & Hotlinked Images Do Not Count As Links
Google On How It Picks The URL It Shows In Search
Google: Large Sites Should Not Use The Google Crawl Setting
Google: Optimizing For RankBrain Is The Same As Optimizing For Users
Google’s John Mueller: I Strongly Recommend New Sites Not Use M-Dot URLs
Google: Some M-Dot Sites In Google Desktop Search May Be Unstable
Google: Only Thing That Changes With Server Migrations Is GoogleBot’s Crawl Rate
Google: Old Content On New Domains Is Okay
Your Syndication Partners Should Canonical To You Or They May Outrank You On Google

Google Search Console:
Google Search Console Performance Report Data Now Less Than A Day Old
Old Google Search Console Is No Longer Available
Google Search Console Link Counts Drops – Cut In Half
Google Sends Mass Fix Breadcrumbs Markup Warnings
Google Migrates Change Of Address Tool To New Google Search Console
Google Is Investigating Spike In Impressions & Queries
Google Search Console Breadcrumb Report Had Errors
Google Adds Breadcrumb Structured Data To Search Console Enhancement Report
Google Search Console Datasets Schema Enhancements Report A Year Later

Google Maps & Local:
Google Hotel Results Now Displays Distance To Attractions
Google Discover Feed Now Showing Restaurants
Google Lets Businesses Opt Out Of Online Orders
Google My Business Guidelines For Practitioners Clarified

Google User Interface:
Google Launches Video Key Moments For YouTube Videos In Search
Google Knowledge Panels With Translation Feature
Google Has New Movie & TV Search Experience & New Developer Docs For Movie Schema
Google Featured Snippet Image Carousel To Show More Results
Google Tests Colorful Dots To Explain Search Results
Google Search Tests Side Bar Filters New Design
Google Tests 3.5 Listings In The Top Stories Carousel
Google Tests Vertical Line Next To Search Results Snippet On Hover
Google: Our Systems Cannot Determine Accuracy Of Content

Misc Google:
Google’s John Mueller Google Search News Videos
Google Webmaster Conference At The GooglePlex

Last months recap is over here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.