Scott Services: Daily Search Forum Recap: April 29, 2020

Wednesday, 29 April 2020

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Confirmed: Google Site Speed Is A Teeny-Tiny Ranking Factor

I’ve been saying this for years but now Google has confirmed that the site speed ranking signals are a small, even “teeny tiny” ranking factor in Google search. Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter “ranking wise it’s a teeny tiny factor.”

Google: GoogleBot Would Rarely Ever Submit A Form On Your Website

Google’s John Mueller said it would be “extremely rare that Googlebot would submit a form” on your web site. He said Google did this more often in the old days, espesially on governmental web sites where there was no site navigation and the only way to get to public content was to use a search box on the site. But nowadays most sites have good navigation through links and this is rare.

Google Gets Picker About Showing Rich Results As Search Results Get Overloaded With Them

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that when the search results become overloaded with rich results of any kind, Google’s engineers may decide to show fewer. John said “but usually I see the search engineering teams get pickier about showing rich results when it starts to look like the search results are overloaded.”

Google May Delay Mobile-First Indexing Switch Over Deadline Due To COVID-19

In early March, Google announced it would switch fully over to mobile-first indexing by September 2020. But now Google may decide to delay it because of COVID-19. So far, John Mueller from Google said, it seems like things are on schedule but they may decide based on feedback to delay it if they find sites are not moving over due to resource issues.

Google Discards Duplicated Reconsideration Requests

Google’s John Mueller said it is a waste of time to submit an additional reconsideration request after you already submitted one. Google will discard any new reconsideration requests he said. So submitting a new one, won’t help you. John said “If the last reconsideration request is still pending, submitting another one won’t make it be processed faster — the new ones will be discarded as duplicates instead.”

Google Stay At Home Logo

Google posted on Instagram a SuperG stay at home version of that logo, the G logo. Here it is, as you can see from the GIF I made out of it, as you rotate the logo, it looks like a home with an arrow