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Latest documentation updates
This page details the latest major updates made to the Google Search Central documentation.
May 2024
- May 1
-
Restructuring the
Product
structured data documentation
What
: Reorganized the
Product
structured data documentation into three pages:
intro to product markup
,
product snippet
, and
merchant listing
.
Added a new section about
deciding which markup to use
.
Why
: The previous tabbed structure was difficult to navigate and find the property you
were looking for.
April 2024
- April 26
-
Improvements to the debugging traffic drops documentation
What
: Expanded on the effects of
algorithmic updates
and how to identify them. Simplified the section on policy and manual actions to be about
spam issues.
Why
: To better help site owners identify reasons for a traffic drop.
- April 25
-
Exporting an additional range of Google fetcher IP addresses
What
:
Added an additional list of IP addresses
for fetchers that are controlled by Google products, as opposed to, for example, a user controlled
Apps Script
.
The new list,
user-triggered-fetchers-google.json
,
contains IP ranges that have been in use for a long time.
Why
: It became technically possible to export the ranges.
-
Removing the iOS variant of AdsBot Mobile Web
What
: Removing the iOS variant of AdsBot Mobile Web from the
list of Google crawlers
.
Why
: Simplify maintenance of AdsBot.
- April 24
-
Adding definitions for favicon
rel
attribute values
What
: Added definitions for each supported
rel
attribute value in the
favicon documentation
.
Why
: We got a question about which value to use for a favicon and if there's a difference.
- April 17
-
Removing video carousel (limited access) documentation
What
: Removed video carousel guidance from the
video structured data documentation
.
Why
: We initially tested video carousel markup with a group of site owners, and ultimately
found that it wasn't useful for the ecosystem at scale. You can leave the markup on your
site so that search engines and other systems can better understand your web page.
- April 16
-
What
:
Clarified
that images are
only extracted from the
src
attribute of
img
tags.
Why
: While not a new change, we occasionally get questions about what HTML
elements Google Search can extract images from.
- April 11
-
Clarifying the beta carousels feature
What
: Clarified that the
beta carousel feature
is for sites that have a summary page that links out to other detail pages on their website.
The markup must be on the summary page, and you don't need to add markup to the detail
pages in order to be eligible for this feature.
Why
: Based on feedback and questions you submitted, we added more precise guidance on what
use cases are supported and what page you need to add markup. This is a documentation
update only; there's no material change in feature requirements or eligibility.
March 2024
- March 28
-
Clarified our changelog entry regarding availability of Web Stories
What
: Clarified our
February 8 changelog entry
regarding the feature availability of Web Stories in Google Images.
Why
: Web Stories continue to appear in Google Images, just as other web content may
appear, but Web Stories no longer appear with the Web Stories icon in Google Images. Also,
a bug that was blocking Search Console reporting for these URLs in Google Images
is now resolved
.
- March 25
-
Added 3D models for products
What
: We added new
3DModel
markup support for merchant listings in the
product structured data documentation
.
Why
: Sometimes 3D models appear on pages with multiple products and are not clearly connected with any of them. This markup lets site owners link a 3D model to a specific product.
- March 12
-
Clarified references to page experience and Core Web Vitals
What
: Clarified how we talk about page experience and Core Web Vitals in our documentation on
page experience
,
signed exchanges
and
ecommerce pagination
.
Additionally updated to reflect that
INP
is now a Core Web Vital.
Why
:
INP replaces FID as a Core Web Vital
.
- March 6
-
Cleaning up recipe documentation
What
: Removed guided recipes from the
recipe structured data documentation
.
Why
: As this
Google Assistant feature was removed
,
we're updating our recipe markup documentation to reflect that change. There's no change needed
from site owners; all properties continue to be recommended for use in Google Search.
- March 5
-
New spam policies
We added 3 new spam policies:
expired domain abuse
,
scaled content abuse
,
and
site reputation abuse
.
Also added a new
FAQ on helpful content
.
Check out
our blog post
for
more details on what changed and why.
-
Generic Chrome version for Google StoreBot
What
: Updated the Google StoreBot user agent (in
Overview of Google crawlers
)
to use a placeholder version of Chrome. If you hardcoded the old value in your code,
update it to ignore the version.
Why
: To make it easier for the Google Shopping team to maintain the StoreBot crawler.
February 2024
- February 29
-
Adding new carousel documentation (beta)
What
: Added documentation for
structured data carousels (beta)
.
Why
: To make it easier for site owners to add carousel markup for new query types,
such as for travel, local, and shopping queries.
-
Added opt out information for place entities in Page Insights
What
: Added information about how site owners can
opt out of display in the Place Entity feature
in Page Insights.
Why
: To make it easier for site owners to control how their content appears on Google.
-
February 20
-
Added support for product variants
What
: Added new
product variant structured data documentation
.
Also added a new
isVariantOf
property to the
product structured data documentation
and clarified that Google
support product variants with distinct URLs
.
Why
: To better support product variant scenarios for ecommerce sites. Since product
variants can be a complex and important concept for ecommerce websites (especially for categories like
apparel and electronics), we're providing more examples and guidance on how to add product
variant structured data.
-
Clarified return fees markup for products
What
: Clarified when to use
FreeReturn
versus
ReturnShippingFees
as value for
returnFees
for product returns in the
product structured data documentation
.
Why
: To better support more granular shipping and return fee scenarios.
- February 15
-
What
: Clarified that
rel="canonical"
annotations
with certain attributes are not used for canonicalization.
Why
: The
rel="canonical"
annotations help Google determine which URL
of a set of duplicates is the canonical. Adding certain attributes to the
link
element changes the meaning of the annotation to denote a different
device or language version. This is a documentation change only; Google has always ignored
these
rel="canonical"
annotations for canonicalization purposes.
- February 9
-
Clarifying the use of spaces in product SKUs
What
: Clarified what characters are allowed in product SKUs in
the
Product structured data documentation
.
Why
: To better explain why a
sku
value might be invalid in the Rich
Results Test.
Image removals documentation refresh
What
: Part of our ongoing efforts to keep our documentation accurate, we updated
the documentation for
image removals
with more precise language, and addressed some documentation feedback.
Why
: We review and, if necessary, refresh our documentation periodically. This
update is part of that process.
-
February 8
-
Updated the availability of Web Stories
What
: Updated the
feature availability
of Web Stories.
Why
: To make sure our documentation aligns with how the feature appears in Google Search.
Web Stories don't appear in Google Images with an icon anymore, and the grid view is now a carousel view in
Search results.
Updated the description of the Google-Extended product token
What
: With the name change of Bard to Gemini Apps, we clarified that Gemini Apps is
affected by
Google-Extended
,
and, based on publisher feedback, we specified that Google-Extended doesn't affect Google
Search.
-
February 7
-
Updated Dynamic Search Ad targets crawl frequency
What
: Updated the crawl frequency for Dynamic Search Ad targets in the
managing crawl budget guide
.
Why
: To reduce stress on sites, Dynamic Search Ads crawls now occur less frequently, 21 days instead of 14 days.
-
February 6
-
Revisited JavaScript documentation
What
: Reviewed our guidance on
JavaScript SEO basics
,
fixing Search-related JavaScript problems
,
lazy-loading content
to remove outdated or unnecessary information. We updated our documentation on
dynamic rendering
to clarify it's a deprecated workaround.
Why
: Feedback from you showed us there are opportunities to improve and clarify a few aspects. A few things, like dynamic rendering, have evolved in the past few years and our documentation now reflects these developments.
-
February 5
-
A new case study
What
: Added a new case study about how
How Wix generated value for their users by integrating Google APIs
.
Why
: To explain how a CMS platform can integrate Google APIs directly into their UI,
and what impact it had for their users.
-
February 2
-
Revamping the SEO Starter Guide
The
SEO Starter Guide
got a
refresh: we removed outdated content, streamlined and simplified other parts, and added a few
sections. Check out our
blog post
for more in-depth explanation on what we changed and why.
January 2024
-
January 25
-
Refreshing the Googlebot documentation
What
: Part of our ongoing efforts to keep our documentation accurate, we updated
the documentation for
Googlebot
with more precise language. There was no actionable change to the documentation otherwise.
Why
: We review and, if necessary, refresh our documentation periodically. This
update is part of that process.
-
January 10
-
More accessible anchor texts
What
: Part of our ongoing efforts to make our documentation more accessible, we
updated various anchor texts so they're more descriptive of the target page.
Why
: Depending on the settings of a screen reader, the user may be jumping from
link to link on a page, thus each
anchor text on a page should be descriptive
,
even without the surrounding context.
-
January 9
-
What
: Switch all structured data code examples that use in-page
@id
references to use hashtags instead. For example, the
clips example in our recipe documentation
.
Why
: It's a schema best practice to use hashtags as resolvable in-page node identifiers in RDF, and
we want our examples follow best practices. However, you don't need to change your
existing IDs if you're still using in-page identifiers.
Adding support for
suggestedAge
to
Product
What
: Added support for the
suggestedAge
property as an alternative
to
suggestedMaxAge
and
suggestedMinAge
. Clarified the
list of possible values for age ranges in our
Product structured data documentation
.
Why
: We want to make it easier and more flexible for people to specify age ranges
for a product. Also, the previous wording was
confusing and didn't map well to the Merchant Center documentation about product age ranges.
-
January 5
-
Clarifying primary source of snippets
What
: Clarified in our
documentation about snippets
that the
primary source of the snippet is the page content itself.
Why
: The previous wording incorrectly implied that structured data and the meta
description HTML element are the primary sources for snippets.
2023
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
-
March 17
: We further clarified that the
15MB fetch size limit
applies to each
fetch of the individual subresources referenced in the HTML as well (in particular,
JavaScript and CSS files).
-
March 13
:
- March 9
: Added transcript of
March 2023 Google SEO Office Hours
.
-
March 2
: Removed South Korea from the
available regions
for the job search experience on Google.
February 2023
January 2023
2022
December 2022
- December 29
: Added transcript of
December 2022 Google SEO Office Hours
.
- December 19
: Removed the
Web Light documentation
and retired the
Web Light user agent
.
We introduced Web Light to enable us to serve faster, lighter pages to people searching
on entry-level devices. While this feature has worked as intended and enabled broader
access to the richness of the web, increased affordability of more powerful smartphones has
diminished the need for such functionality. We remain committed to evolving and refining
the Search experience to meet the changing needs of our users.
-
December 14
:
-
December 13
:
- December 6
: Updated the
Helpful content system page
to state that the classifier
works globally across all languages.
- December 2
: Added two new myths to the
crawl budget documentation
.
noindex
isn't a good way to control crawl budget (but can be a method to
indirectly free up crawl budget in the long run), and pages that serve
4xx
status codes (except
429
) don't waste crawl budget.
- December 1
: Retired the
Duplex on the web user agent
.
November 2022
- November 23
: Added descriptions to enumerated properties, such as availability, in
Product structured data
to support page translation to non-English languages.
- November 22
:
- November 21
:
- November 15
: Removed the
Mobile recharge Early Adoptors Program signup page
,
as we received enough signups.
- November 14
: Updated
Review Snippet structured data
to recommend using dot separators for decimal ratings. If you're currently using comma separators
for decimal ratings in your markup, you'll still be eligible for review snippets. However, we
recommend that you update your markup for a more accurate interpretation.
- November 9
: Clarified that it's fine to use JavaScript to insert
crawlable links
into pages.
-
November 8
:
October 2022
- October 24
: Clarified that
site names are supported
at the domain level, and not at
the subdomain or subdirectory level.
Favicons are supported
at the domain and subdomain level, and not at the subdirectory level.
- October 14
: Added the
site name documentation
.
- October 13
:
-
Added new pages for the following Google ranking updates. The information
itself isn't new; the pages contain consolidated information from previous blog posts about
each of these updates.
-
Refreshed and renamed the Webmaster Guidelines. Notable changes include:
-
October 12
: Added support for image credits to the
Image Metadata structured data
documentation. Previously, you could only provide image credit information with IPTC photo metadata.
- October 7
: Added examples of product review pages to
Write high quality product reviews
.
September 2022
August 2022
- August 31
: Added a note on the use of JavaScript to add, change, or remove
meta
tags on a page to
the list of meta and inline tags Google Search understands
.
- August 29
:
-
August 24
:
-
August 22
: Updated the
Article structured data documentation
to reflect that
Article
markup is open to all types of pages (as
announced in 2020 with the page experience update
).
-
August 11
: Removed our documentation about rich-media files, such as Silverlight and
Flash. Turns out it's not 2005 anymore.
-
August 10
:
- Added the
gtin12
property to the
Product structured data
documentation. This has been supported; it's a documentation change only. Clarified that
you can use the generic
gtin
property for all GTINs, but we recommend that
you use the most specific one if possible.
- Updated the
dynamic rendering
documentation to explain that this isn't a recommended solution, and is a workaround if you have no other choice.
Instead we recommend server-side rendering, static rendering, or client-side rendering with hydration.
- August 9
: Added best practices for feeds to the
Follow feature documentation
. We recommend that you:
- Use a descriptive title for your RSS feed, just like you would for a web page.
- For multiple feeds, we recommend that you use a single feed. Both methods are still supported,
but we clarified that a single feed is easier for you to maintain and for users to
subscribe to your feed.
- August 8
: Clarified that we don't support the URL form for GTINs in
Product structured data
.
Make sure to use the numerical GTIN form.
- August 5
: Added documentation about the
pros and cons
enhancement for editorial product review pages.
July 2022
-
July 19
: Standardized how we refer to
headings and title text
on the page. Previously we used the word headline, but that can be confusing in other
languages.
-
July 13
: Updated the User Agent string for
AdsBot Mobile Web
. If you hardcoded the old value in your code, update the string to
avoid potential bugs.
-
July 7
: Added a new page for
Google Search ranking updates
.
This is not new information; it's a compiled list of things we've previously confirmed on
our blog
or on
Twitter
.
-
July 6
: Reorganized the navigational structure to be based on topic instead of level.
Removed duplicate guides that were aimed at basic or beginner level, as these documents were
duplicating guidance already explained in the
SEO Starter Guide
.
- July 4
:
Clarified that you must add three courses to be eligible for the
Course
rich result
. This is not a new requirement; it was previously only documented in the
Carousel documentation
.
June 2022
May 2022
- May 31
: Removed the
Job training structured data documentation
. We initially tested
this markup with a group of site owners, and ultimately found that it wasn't useful for the
ecosystem at scale. This change doesn't affect any other features that may use Job training
markup. You can leave the markup on your site so that search engines can better understand
your web page.
- May 22
:
Added
transparency guidelines for video thumbnails
. Ensure that at least 80% of your
thumbnail pixels have little or no transparency to enable video indexing.
April 2022
-
April 14
: Consolidated our
How Search Works documentation for site owners
by merging the basic, beginner, and advanced versions into one central document. While we
cleaned up the language slightly, we haven't added anything new to the How Search Works
documentation.
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
2021
December 2021
- December 16
: Converted our old
blog post
about
intrusive interstitials into
guidelines
.
There are no substantial changes compared to what we have in the blog post.
- December 1
: Added
Write high quality product reviews
to bring together advice from several blog posts.
November 2021
October 2021
- October 28
: Removed the following structured data fields from documentation, since they are unused by Google Search and Rich Result Test doesn't flag warnings for them:
HowTo
:
description
.
QAPage
:
mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.author
,
mainEntity.dateCreated
,
mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.dateCreated
,
mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.author
,
mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.dateCreated
, and
mainEntity.author
.
SpecialAnnouncement
:
provider
,
audience
,
serviceType
,
address
, and
category
.
- October 15
: Added a requirement that the
author.name
field
in
Review snippets
must
be less than 100 characters to be eligible for use in Search features.
- October 13
: Clarified that
VideoGame
is not a valid node type for
Software Apps
.
To make sure that your Software App is still eligible for a rich result appearance, co-type the
VideoGame
type with another supported type.
- October 8
: Updated our documentation about titles and snippets in
Google Search results. There are now two separate documents that explain each of these
search result features:
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
- July 30
: Added technical, content, and quality guidelines to the
Math solver guidelines
and removed solution page markup instructions to make it easier for site owners to get
their math solver site on Search. It is fine to remove any existing solution page markup.
- July 29
: Added a new case study about how
MX Player boosted organic traffic 3x by maximizing video discoverability on Google
.
- July 28
:
- Removed
guidance
about hosting multiple factchecks per page. To
be eligible for the single fact check rich result, a page must only have one
ClaimReview
element.
- Added details about
signed exchange
cache lifetime.
- July 26
: Added a requirement that
priceRange
fields in
Local
business
must be less than 100 characters to be eligible for use in Search features.
- July 22
:
- Added example use cases for the
FAQ
guideline
about hidden content on the page. The user must be able to access the answer on the
page, and clicking an expandable section to view the answer is a valid use case.
- Removed the
@id
property from the
Local
business documentation
. The
url
property alone is a sufficient identifier to
understand the local business.
-
July 21
: Added a set of new documentation about
Google search operators
.
- July 13
: Added a new
editorial
guideline
to the
JobPosting
documentation. Added a new optional property
for
directApply
.
June 2021
- June 29
: Significantly expanded our
redirects guide
with the
different kinds of redirects and their effects on Google Search.
- June 25
: Added a page that details
how different HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect crawling and indexing
.
- June 18
: Based on feedback we've received from Search Central Product
Experts and through the feedback tool, we've made several updates to our documentation:
-
Simplified the
introduction page
to make it clearer
what is robots.txt and what is its intended use.
-
Expanded the instructions about
creating
and
updating
robots.txt files.
-
Removed redundant sections from our documentation about
how Google handles robots.txt
.
-
Simplified sentences across all robots.txt documentation in English. This helps with
localization.
- Removed redundant documentation about how to build, test, and release structured data.
Each feature has guidance about this, embedded directly into each guide (for example, the
Video structured data guide
).
- Improved the troubleshooting sections across all structured data feature guides (for example, the
Product structured data guide
).
- Added more beginner-friendly information about how to
get
started with structured data
.
- June 15
: Updated the timeline in the
page
experience documentation
. The page experience update is now slowly rolling out to all
users. It will be complete by the end of August 2021.
- June 11
:
- Clarified the
Sitelinks search box
documentation to explain the more standard and explicit form for specifying the search box
urlTemplate
. Google will still accept the shorthand form as noted.
- Added a new optional property to the
Dataset documentation
:
funder
.
- June 10
: Deprecated the
critic
review documentation
. We initially tested critic review markup with a group of site
owners, and ultimately found that it wasn't useful for the ecosystem at scale. This
deprecation doesn't affect any other features on Google Search that use review markup.
You can leave the markup on your site so that search engines can better understand
your web page.
- June 8
: Added
BackOrder
as an allowed value for the
availability
property in
Product structured data
.
- June 4
: Added
gtin
as an allowed identifier and clarified how to correctly use
isbn
for
Product structured data
.
- June 3
: Added support for the
inLanguage
property to the
Math solvers documentation
.
- June 1
:
May 2021
April 2021
- April 19
: Added new documentation for how to
Get
started with signed exchanges on Google Search
. Learn more about the
signed exchange (SXG)
announcement in our blog post
.
- April 8
: Added a new quality guideline to the
Discover documentation
. Discover
focuses on interest-based feeds (for example, articles and videos), and filters out
content that might confuse readers (for example, Discover might not recommend job
applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, or satirical content that's removed
from its original context).
- April 7
: Updated the
Video
structured data documentation
to state that the
thumbnailUrl
property
must use one of the
supported Google Images file
formats
. Previously, the documentation didn't include WebP and SVG.
- April 1
: Clarified the
key
moments feature
. Google Search tries to automatically detect the segments in your
video and show key moments to users, without any effort on your part. Alternatively, there
are two ways that you can manually tell Google which timestamp and label to use:
Clip
structured data
and
updating the description
of a YouTube video
.
March 2021
- March 29
: Removed the interest form for the
Key moments feature
. The feature
remains in development with a select group of providers, but the
program is no longer accepting submissions.
- March 25
: Added new structured data documentation for
practice problems
and
math solvers
.
- March 24
:
- March 17
: Updated the
video
best practices
to more clearly emphasize the important guidelines. Removed duplicate
content and updated the screenshots.
- March 16
: Based on user feedback, we added more examples for the
max-snippet
robots
meta
rule
,
and also specified for each tag what Google's default behavior is when the tags are omitted.
- March 11
: Added new beta properties to the
JobPosting
structured data documentation
. You may not see any appearance or effect in Google Search
right away, as we are still developing how we are using this information.
educationRequirements.credentialCategory
experienceRequirements
experienceRequirements.monthsOfExperience
experienceInPlaceOfEducation
- March 8
: Added the
JP_E-CODE
value as an
accepted value for the
PropertyValue
property in the
Book
documentation.
- March 1
: Removed instructions for submitting sitemaps on Google Sites
from the
sitemap guide
. Google
Sites doesn't create a sitemap for sites anymore.
February 2021
- February 8
: Removed the page about joining the 3D and AR Early Adopters
Program. The
feature
remains in development with a select group of providers, but the
program is no longer accepting submissions.
- February 2
: Removed the documentation for cross-language search results.
This page was specific to an experimental approach with a small group of providers, and
we're removing the page because it's obsolete.
January 2021
2020
December 2020
- December 4
: Migrated the following guides from the Search Console Help Center (the content hasn't changed):
November 2020
- November 19
: Migrated the Google Webmaster blogs to the new
Google Search Central Blog
.
- November 16
: Added a new guide about
how to join the Google Search Central office hours
.
- November 12
:
- Added a new
guideline
for
STEM-education related Q&A pages.
- Added information about Googlebot's ability to crawl through HTTP/2 to the
Googlebot help page
.
- November 11
: Published a redesign of the entire site. Reorganized the
navigation to account for a migration of over 100 new pages from the
Search Console Help
Center
. The notable additions include:
- Home page
: Expanded the focus to include our entire audience, not just web developers.
- Events landing page
: Get an overview of upcoming events,
including events that we host and attend as speakers.
- What's new on Google Search Central
: Check out the latest
updates on Google Search, including changes to our blog, documentation, new Search events, YouTube videos, and podcast episodes.
- Blog landing page
: Added a new home page for our blog,
previously known as the Google Webmaster Central blog. We plan to move archived posts soon.
- Help landing page
: Updated to include all of our help resources. Refreshed and simplified the Webmaster FAQ into 4 pages:
- Documentation landing page
: Get an overview of the different learning paths in our documentation, including new Quickstart guides, beginner SEO guides, and advanced SEO guides.
- Quickstart guides
: A new set of guides for those that don't have much time to manage their site.
- Beginner SEO guides
: A new set of guides for beginners who want to learn about SEO. New pages include:
Beginners guide to Search Console
.
- Advanced SEO guides
: A new set of guides for advanced SEO topics. Most of the pages previously existed in the
Search Console Help Center
. New pages include:
- November 10
: Updated the timeline information for the
upcoming
page experience ranking change
. The changes are planned to go live in May 2021.
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
- August 31
: Updated the
Image License documentation
to state that the
Licensable badge is now out of beta.
- August 27
: Clarified merging of user-agent groups in the file
robots.txt
documentation.
- August 26
: Added new documentation about the
Home activities
rich result.
- August 21
: Added section to the
Fix Search-related JavaScript problems
guide to explain how to deal with non-HTTP network connections.
- August 10
: Clarified that there are different
Article
requirements
for AMP and non-AMP pages. Added an example of
a non-AMP page with
Article
structured data.
- August 5
: Clarified in all relevant documentation that images referenced
in structured data must be in one of the image file formats that are
supported by Google Images
.
- August 3
:
July 2020
- July 24
: Added new episodes to the
Search Off the Record podcast page
.
- July 23
: Clarified that Google Search is still working on way to display
multiple fact checks
for
a single page, and that you may not see a rich result that features multiple fact checks in
Google Search right away.
- July 21
: Added a new optional property to the
Dataset documentation
,
measurementTechnique
, and clarified that the
name
property should be unique for distinct datasets.
- July 20
: Added the
reviewCount
property to
the
EmployerAggregateRating
documentation
, to match the existing requirements in the Rich Results Test. Either
reviewCount
or
ratingCount
is
required.
- July 16
:
- July 8
: Clarified that Google Search understands when you specify
multiple items
on a page with
structured data, whether you nest the items or specify each item individually.
- July 1
: Clarified in the AMP logo guidelines in the
Article
documentation
that the logo can be in
any format supported by Google Images.
June 2020
- June 30
: Added more examples to the
Carousel
documentation
, and clarified the supported types and how to add them.
- June 23
: Added a note to differentiate between guidelines applicable to
Article
AMP logo
guidelines and
generic
Logo
guidelines.
- June 19
: Added a
contentUrl
requirement to the
Image License documentation
to make
it clear that the feature needs a specific image URL to apply the license to.
- June 16
: Added native lazy-loading to the
lazy-loading guide
.
- June 15
: Added
monitoring rich results video
and more detailed information on using Search Console to monitor rich results to structured data reference pages
(for example
Product
,
Recipe
,
FAQ
).
- June 12
: Added
.webp
, too, to the list of supported image
file formats for
Logo
structured data
.
- June 10
: Added
.svg
to the list of supported image file
formats for
Logo
structured data
.
- June 8
: Clarified that the recognized values for an
applicationCategory
on a
Software App
are of type
Text
.
- June 4
: Clarified in the
Sitelinks search box
documentation that the
search query parameter key can be any string permitted by
RFC 3986
; it
doesn't have to be
q
.
May 2020
- May 28
: Added new documentation that explains
page experience in Google
Search results
.
- May 27
: Updated the
Job
training developer documentation
to require the
occupationalCategory
property, recommend the
description
property,
and remove the requirement of the
url
property. Also updated the
educationalProgramMode
and
financialAidEligible
fields to have
more precise value specifications.
- May 19
: Added new guidance on how to
enable Web Stories on Google
.
- May 15
: Added a note to the
Product
structured data documentation
about how to be eligible for the Google Shopping tab.
Learn more about the
data
and eligibility requirements
.
- May 12
: Extended the
JavaScript SEO basics guide
to include
guidance on JavaScript-generated links
,
History API
instead of fragment URLs
, and
avoiding
soft 404
errors
.
- May 11
:
- Added guidance on
how
to reduce the Googlebot crawl rate
.
- Removed the following documentation that has been deprecated
since June 2019:
- Social Profile structured data
: We now automatically discover social
profiles to include in Google knowledge panels. If you're verified as an official
representative, you can suggest a change directly. Learn more at
Update
your Google knowledge panel
.
- Corporate Contact structured data
: We now automatically discover
corporate contact information to include in Google knowledge panels. If you're verified
as an official representative of a Google knowledge panel, you can suggest a change
directly. Learn more at
Update your Google knowledge panel
.
- Place Actions structured data
: Instead, scheduling providers can use the
Maps Booking API
. Google
Search continues to support existing partners that added Place Action structured data
prior to June 17, 2019.
- May 7
:
- The Rich Result Test now supports
Article
structured data on AMP pages
. Removed the following recommended
fields from the documentation because we no longer need these signals:
description
,
publisher.logo.height
,
publisher.logo.width
.
- Added a
video
to the
Submit URLs guide
that explains what a sitemap is, whether you need one or not, and how to submit a sitemap and track its status using Search Console.
- Removed the page about joining the Mini-apps Early Adopters
Program. The program is no longer accepting submissions.
- May 6
: Added information about how to
test robots.txt markup
.
- May 5
:
- Updated the
Job posting
content policies
to have a clear structure and language that describes what Google
will enforce. Added the following new policies:
- Updated
SpecialAnnouncement
structured data to include information on
how to use Search Console
to troubleshoot markup and analyze the rich result performance.
- Podcasts on Google information has migrated to the new
Podcasts Manager
help center. Visit the help center to learn how to get your podcast on Google.
- May 1
: Updated the
Indexing API documentation
to include the
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
tag as an option for removing a URL.
April 2020
March 2020
- March 31
: Added new guidance for how to
add structured data to COVID-19 announcements
. This feature is still under development,
and you may see changes in requirements, guidelines, and how the feature appears in Google Search.
- March 26
: Added new guidance for how to
pause your online business
.
- March 24
:
- In the
Estimated Salary
documentation
, replaced the
unitText
property with the
duration
property. Starting March 24, 2020, we updated the
documentation to require
duration
instead of
unitText
.
While we continue to support
unitText
, we require
duration
moving forward. We recommend that you switch over to using
duration
, if
possible.
- Updated the
Google
Podcasts brand assets
to include localized Google Podcasts badges in 49 languages.
- March 23
: Added a new recommended field to the
Package tracking developer documentation
:
CanReschedule
.
- March 20
:
- Added the Latest updates page (this page), which includes the major updates made
to the Google Search developer documentation in March 2020.
- Added a new recommendation to the
JavaScript best practices
about using long-lived caching to avoid caching issues with Googlebot. Added a new
step about using content fingerprinting to the
JavaScript troubleshooting documentation
.
- Added a note to the
Event
structured data documentation
about the new optional properties that were added
on March 16-17, 2020. The Rich Results Test now supports the new properties.
- March 17
:
- Added optional properties to the
Event
structured data documentation
:
eventAttendanceMode
,
VirtualLocation
type for
location
,
location.url
for online events. For more information about this change, check out our
blog post
.
- Added
general
troubleshooting info
to the Sitelinks search box documentation. Clarified that
while Google Search may automatically display a search box scoped to your website,
it's still helpful to explicitly provide information by adding
WebSite
structured data, which can help Google better understand your site.
- In the
Job training developer documentation
,
removed the
hasCredential
property from the list of recommended properties for
EducationalOccupationalProgram
. This is because
hasCredential
is only recommended for the
Organization
type on schema.org, not
EducationalOccupationalProgram
.
- March 16
: Added optional properties to the
Event
structured data documentation
:
eventStatus
and
previousStartDate
. For more information
about this change, check out our
blog post
.
- March 5
:
- In the
Product
structured data
documentation, clarified that one of the following properties is required:
review
,
aggregateRating
,
offers
. Changed the
expected type for
brand
to be
Brand
or
Organization
(
Thing
is still accepted).
- Added new recommended fields to the
Package
tracking developer documentation
:
TimestampEvent
and
LocationEvent
.
- March 3
: Added
hostload
issues
to the list of error messages in the
mobile-first indexing best practices
.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
, and code samples are licensed under the
Apache 2.0 License
. For details, see the
Google Developers Site Policies
. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2024-05-01 UTC.
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