The SEO community is buzzing after a potential Google algorithm update this week. We really are the gossip queens of the marketing world. There’s nothing an SEO loves more than some sweet algorithm drama.
So, have you seen anything weird with your site? I won’t tell anyone.
The News
Warner Bros changed the title of the new Harley Quinn movie to improve search performance. After an underwhelming opening weekend, they decided to boost sales by helping the film name better match searcher intent. The original title, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), was not optimized for the most important keyword — “Harley Quinn.” The film has been changed to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey so it can rank better for those character searches. Shows you just how important SEO is for driving business.
Google Search Console now supports review snippets, with a set of shiny new reports to help diagnose technical problems and track performance. This is a huge boost for anyone working with review structured data. Search Console support makes it easier to understand the impact of your review markup and triage any issues with the code.
Google disclosed YouTube ad revenue for the first time, and it’s massive. YouTube drove $15 Billion in revenue for Google in 2019, beating Amazon’s $14.1 billion ad revenue year. Ridiculous. I tell every single client (and people sitting next to me at the bar) that YouTube is one of the largest distribution channels out there, and it cannot be ignored as part of a healthy content strategy. You need to produce video and you need to put it on YouTube.
The AMP custom CSS limit has been increased from 50KB to 75KB. If you develop or work on AMP sites, you now have more wiggle room with the custom CSS. Sweet!
A new featured snippet image carousel is live in search results. This is just the latest in a long line of rich results enhancements. The change may impact traffic to your pages, potentially driving more clicks and interaction to images featured in the carousel and less clicks to the organic listings themselves.
Ranking Factors
