SEO News Digest: Shop with Google AI Goes Public, Bunch of SERP Anomalies and Google Supports Product Variations Structured Data

Hi, SEOs! We have a couple of updates for you. Let's dive in:

?? Updates & Search

No official updates were reported. We experienced typical volatility on February 14-15, along with a few more tweets from Danny Sullivan hinting at a "spam update coming soon," but that's about it.

However, Google Search seems cursed lately: from the indexing bug we mentioned in our last digest, to disappearing and then duplicating recipe carousels, to local packs not showing up for a while, and the vanishing of Featured Snippets (also known as “position 0 results”). Speaking of which, although Featured Snippets have returned, there's speculation that their disappearance might indicate a major recalibration of the site quality score.

?? Interface

(test) Google Search New Search Bar Design

Google Search seems to be testing a new search bar design on mobile search. The bar shows the images, videos, news, shopping, maps, etc buttons but with a light blue background color, as a curved button.

(test) Google Search Forums In Search Bar Menu

Google is testing a new menu item in its search bar. The new item is "Forums" and it filters the search results to forums, such as Reddit, Hacker News, and other forums on the internet. This is not too surprising in that Google has been pushing discussion and forum sections in the search results, even adding them recently to the Search Console reports.

(test) Restaurant Price Ranges in Local Pack

Google has always shown how expensive restaurants are by placing either one, two, or three dollar signs by the restaurant's name in the local pack listings. Now Google is testing showing actual price ranges.

...and it seems they've launched Shop With Google AI

That grand feature which was announced in November, generating product images in various options based on your verbal description. You pick the best match, and Google provides links to similar real products.

??? Technical

Google has rolled out support for Product Variants Structured Data

This is a real boon for e-commerce sites. Announced on the Search Central Blog on February 20, this update allows Google to better navigate your product assortment.

For example, if you're selling a phone model in gold, silver, and black, previously, you had to juggle canonical links between product versions, plus deal with nuances depending on how product parameters were displayed in the URL. Even with all settings correct, many questions remained about how search results are displayed.

Now, with microdata, Google will understand these aren't just similar pages but actual product variations, and you can even specify differences–color, size, etc.

(Is this related to the launch of Shop With Google AI?)

Speaking of the aforementioned canonicals, their documentation has also been updated (slightly).

Here’s what was added:

“rel=”canonical” annotations that suggest alternate versions of a page are ignored; specifically, rel=”canonical” annotations with hreflang, lang, media, and type attributes are not used for canonicalization.

Instead, use the appropriate link annotations to specify alternate versions of a page; for example, link rel=”alternate” hreflang for language and country annotations.”

?? Google Search Console

Filter design update

The official word is that this was done to “improve accessibility and standardize its look and feel.”

?? Tidbits

Project for an alternative monetization system for websites from Chromium

The Chromium team (the open-source engine of Google Chrome) announced a concept for micro-payments. Users will have wallets, and websites will have a plugin automatically drawing micro-amounts (currently stated as $0.00000001) from these wallets for page content views. Thus, websites can earn from users who don’t interact with the content/not click on subscriptions, without overwhelming their site with ads.

Users will also be able to leave "tips" for content creators.