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Google adds Discover data to Search Console

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Website owners can now see how much traffic they get from Discover.

Google has added data from Google Discover to its Search Console. This means website owners can now see how much traffic they are getting from Discover.

Discover is essentially “searchless” traffic from Google. It shows content to people in the Google app, on Google.com’s mobile home page and on Pixel phones.

Much like search, the goal is to show content to people who will find it relevant. By adding the data to Google Search Console, site owners can now see which of their content is getting the most traffic and the highest click-through rates from Discover. This should help them produce more successful content.

For example, my story about Alpnames shutting down last month had over 5,000 Google Discover clicks on roughly 53,000 impressions.

Screenshot of Google Discover traffic

Based on the data in my account and Google’s stated goal of Discover, it seems that content that gets the most clicks leads to more impressions. I suspect Google is also monitoring interaction with the content much as it does with clicks in search results.

 

Google is rolling out mobile-first indexing

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Mobile version of websites will increasingly be indexed instead of desktop versions.

Google is rolling out mobile-first indexing more broadly for its search index. This means that Google will crawl a site’s mobile website content for indexing rather than the desktop version.

The move will apply to sites that use a responsive web design or are dynamically served. Sites that don’t have a mobile-friendly version will continue to have their desktop sites indexed.

Mobile-first indexing does not affect search rankings (assuming you’re serving the same content). It only impacts which content is indexed. However, mobile-friendly sites get an edge in rankings when people search on mobile devices.

Google no longer bolding keywords in domain names

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Another blow to domain names in search.

Domain names and URLs that contain terms people search for on Google have long been thought to have some sort of advantage.

For a while, Google seemed to give preference to “exact match domains”. Then it tweaked the algorithm to downplay this, at least for low-quality sites that were created to take advantage of this benefit.

I believe that good domains with popular keywords still can get a boost thanks to the anchor text people use to link to them. But the other day I was doing some searches and noticed that domain names have been demoted again.

Google used to bold the words you searched for if they were present in the URL. This was something new top level domain marketers pointed to as a benefit; even if the keyword was part of the top level domain it was bolded.

But Google has apparently stripped the bolding from URLs. It still bolds words in the description, but not the URL. This is bad for domain names, as every bolded word has to give some sort of boost to click-through rates.

A search for “hockey” has bold terms in the description, but not the URL or title.

Things are even worse on mobile. Two years ago, Google stopped showing domain names at all in mobile search results.

It makes sense for Google to downplay domain names. They want people to start their navigation at Google instead of remembering domain names.

Study shows that new TLDs can rank like other TLDs, but not much else

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Study provides little more than anecdotal evidence.

You’re going to see some headlines today about an SEO study commissioned by The Domain Name Association (DNA). Some of these headlines might suggest that new top level domain names get some sort of search engine boost over .com domains. It’s not quite that simple.

Here’s the deal: DNA commissioned a search engine optimization study (pdf) about new top level domain names. It cherry picked a few niches that it felt would have a good mix of websites built on new top level domain names. It further highlighted four domain names built on non-.com domain names that are ranking exceptionally well.

And although the group was careful to not fall into the same trap Rightside did when Google debunked its headline SEO takeaways, its official headline still reads:

“SEO Expert Research Reveals Search Advantages of Relevant Domain Name Extension”

What the research did find was that the so-called “domain authority” of some of the ranked new top level domain names was much lower than .com domain names ranked for the same terms. This would suggest that it’s easier to rank a site on a new TLD than on .com. Click here to continue reading…

Google coughs over “New-TLDs-as-SEO-boost” claims

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Google’s John Mueller chimes in (again) on claims about new TLDs helping search engine rankings.

New top level domain company Rightside has been promoting the apparent search engine benefits of new top level domain names lately. It is promoting a case study it commissioned with GlobeRunner about an attorney who switched from ErickBlockLaw.com to Jacksonville.Attorney and saw a nice uptick in traffic.

After Rightside did a sponsored post about SEO benefits on Search Engine Land last week, Google’s John Mueller felt the need to comment. (Mueller is quickly becoming the new Matt Cutts when it comes to SEO claims.)

john-mueller-post

If you take a look at Rightside’s full report (pdf) about Jacksonville.attorney, you’ll see that the domain name change was only part of the big update made to the attorney’s site. In fact, the lawyer got an entirely new website and started adding good content to the site.

With so many variables at play, it’s hard to say the domain name had much of an impact.

I can see how the domain name would result in more clicks when a searcher sees the domain in search results, but the SEO claims are highly suspect.

Another notable part of Mueller’s post is the mention about how it’s hard to switch domain names. This is indeed the case. You can listen to a case study about the work involved in DNW Podcast #70. I keep wondering if Google is going to make the process more seamless. Doing so could be a huge boon to new domain name choices.