Let’s get things straight with the Google page experience update; Friday’s daily brief

Also, Google product reviews are being updated, local automobile inventory is being displayed, and soft 404s appear to be fixed.

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Good morning, Marketers, and let’s clear up some recent misunderstandings around Google Search.

Although we know that Google has postponed the page experience upgrade, there has been a lot of misunderstanding about it. Let me explain in more detail:

• This is not a “core update,” as the term “core web vitals” implies. The Google core upgrades and the page experience update are two completely separate changes. Please don’t get the two mixed up. Both names have the word “core” in them, however, they have nothing to do with each other.
• Googlebot isn’t in charge of acquiring your most important site stats. This data is not derived by crawling, as is the case with many other Google Search signals; rather, it is derived from real user field data from people who visit your page using Chrome browsers.
• It won’t be a major overhaul. I expect this to happen, and most sites’ Google ranks will remain unchanged.

There’s a lot more information and details about this page experience change, and we’ll have a lot of it at our forthcoming SMX Advanced exhibition in June.

Google showing local car inventory in search

Google appears to be experimenting with a new tool that will display local car and auto inventory in its search results.

At /local/cars, the search engine includes a new landing page that offers local automobile inventory near you. This appears to be based on dealership inventory websites and displays available cars, allowing you to filter and narrow down your car search as well as dive into specific cars for sale.

What it looks like.

You may find a list of automobile inventory for local dealerships in your area by going to google.com/local/cars. Here’s a screenshot of automobiles for sale in my neighborhood:

The results can then be filtered to reveal new or used cars, as well as the car brand, kind, and so on. The filters aren’t perfect, but that’s acceptable because it appears to be something that Google is testing and hasn’t announced yet.

Filtered Results from a Google Search for Local Auto Inventory

This is a screenshot of a specific car for sale, where you can view all of the data and specifications for this exact VIN. You may enlarge the image by clicking on it:

More.

Jim Kreinbrink was the first to notice this, posting on Twitter that Google had added these URLs to its robots.txt the night before.

Google Search Local Auto Inventory Results

Google statement. 

“Last year, as part of our ongoing efforts to connect businesses with potential customers, we began working with select car dealers and data providers in the United States to pilot new ways for dealerships to showcase their cars for sale directly on their Business Profiles in Search,” according to a Google spokesperson. Potential automobile buyers have told us that having this inventory information immediately on Google allows them to rapidly explore and compare available vehicles, resulting in more quality leads for dealers. If dealers and affiliated businesses are interested in learning more about this possibility, they can complete out a partner interest form. The car inventory data is derived from feeds provided by dealers or their data sources. This function is free of charge from Google.”

Why we care.

Is Google planning to enter the car dealership business, where it will sell cars directly to customers? I seriously doubt it. However, this might be a test project with a few dealerships to highlight their local inventory in Google search results.

I anticipate hearing from Google on how to get your local dealership to participate, or whether Google is simply crawling inventory feeds from these local dealership websites. In most cases, the forms of these feeds are the same across dealerships.

Google soft 404 ranking bug fixed?

A few weeks ago, there were claims that Google had categorized a large number of pages on some websites as soft 404s. That indicates Google believed a large number of legitimate web pages on those sites were being flagged as not belonging to its index. The problem has not been confirmed by Google. We enquired, but Google refused to respond. However, it appears that Google has resolved the issue on their end after a few weeks.

These websites reported not only a reporting error in Google Search Console but also considerable deindexing in Google Search as a result. As a result, Google Search traffic decreased.

Google, once again, declined to comment, although the problem appears to have been resolved. “When things affect so few pages/sites like this, we tend not to go into too much detail,” Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter.

According to Danny Sullivan of Google, the product reviews upgrade that began going out two weeks ago today has now been fully implemented. “The caveat is that with any update, there may still be some edge cases,” Sullivan added. When it comes to the distribution of this new Google search ranking algorithm, he stated, “But essentially done.”

The confirmation. 

When I asked Danny Sullivan if it was finished rolling out, he replied with this tweet.

Some more details.

To refresh your memory, the Google product review update debuted on April 8, 2021. This is a brand-new version that focuses on product review types of material and was released today, April 22, 2021.

 

The Google product reviews update attempts to promote review content that goes beyond much of what you’ll find on the internet. According to Google, these types of product reviews will be prioritized in its search results ranks.

Lower-quality product evaluations with “thin material that basically summarises a number of products” are not immediately penalized by Google. If you supply such content and your rankings are degraded as a result of other content being promoted above yours, it will feel like a penalty. According to Google, this isn’t a penalty for your material; rather, it’s a way of rewarding sites with more insightful review content with higher ranks than yours.

This change should only affect product reviews, not other kinds of material. This was a significant upgrade, according to the data suppliers, but not as significant as a core update.

Why we care.

Now is the moment to check your websites to determine if they have been affected by the upgrade. If you do not write product reviews, you are unlikely to have been affected by this update. But if you do, you may have been. With this upgrade. Google offered suggestions on how to help your product review material rank high. You can read that information in our original story.

Ad groups, site design, and abbreviations.

Ad group level ROAS targets.

Google’s Ginny Marvin confirmed on Twitter that “ad group level ROAS targets for Maximize conversion value will be allowed when a target ROAS has specified” with the future Google Ads target CPA and target ROAS bundle updates.

Change design may impact content changes.

“If you change the design, you generally change the content: headings, titles, images, internal linking, URL structure, accessibility, speed, etc. They’re all key components of a site and I’d view them as content too,” Google’s John Mueller wrote on Twitter. Keep this in mind while you’re planning your next website overhaul.

Abbr tag.

According to Google’s John Mueller, using the abbreviated HTML tag, abbr>, will not help you rank higher in Google Search.

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