Google Search Core Update - November 2023
Google Search regularly updates their search ranking systems to ensure they are showing the most relevant, helpful content that they can. For more information on how these updates can affect your site see Google Search Update FAQ's.
Reviews System Update
The reviews system works to ensure that people see reviews that share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products, services or other things. The reviews system is improved at a regular and ongoing pace.
The reviews system is designed to evaluate articles, blog posts, pages or similar first-party standalone content written with the purpose of providing a recommendation, giving an opinion, or providing analysis. It does not evaluate third-party reviews, such as those posted by users in the reviews section of a product or services page.
Reviews can be about a single thing, or head-to-head comparisons, or ranked-lists of recommendations. Reviews can be about any topic. There can be reviews of products such as laptops or winter jackets, pieces of media such as movies or video games, or services and businesses such as restaurants or fashion brands.
The reviews system primarily evaluates review content on a page-level basis. However, for sites that have a substantial amount of review content, any content within a site might be evaluated by the system. If you don't have a lot of reviews, a site-wide evaluation is not likely to happen.
Currently, this system applies to the following languages globally: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish.
Expanding markup support: Organisation details
Since 2013, Google has supported logo structured data, which recognised the Organisation logo and url.
They are expanding the support for organisational information by extracting additional administrative data such as name, address, contact information, and various business identifiers. With this update, Google can make use of this markup in knowledge panels and other visual elements (such as attribution), which helps users more easily find your organisation's details on Google Search.
When you provide additional organisation details, your markup can be eligible to be shown on knowledge panels, such as the recently announced merchant knowledge panel.
You can test your organisation structured data using the Rich Results Test by submitting the URL of a page or a code snippet. Using this tool, you can confirm whether or not your markup is valid instantly.
Expanding markup support: Attribution
Attribution describes the source of a search result, and can appear for a variety of search result types, including text, image, and video results. Attribution can include various aspects of the source, such as the name of the site, favicon, and URL to the web page.
New in structured data: DISCUSSION FORUM AND PROFILE PAGE MARKUP
Google are also announcing support for profile page and discussion forum structured data for use in Google Search, including new reports in Search Console. This markup works with Google Search features that are designed to show first-person perspectives from social media platforms, forums, and other communities. Implementing this structured data will help ensure what Search shows in these features is as accurate and complete as possible.
Profile Page
Profile Page markup is designed for any site where creators (either people or organisations) share first-hand perspectives. It allows Google Search to better identify information about the creator, such as their name or social handle, profile photo, follower count, or the popularity of their content.
Discussion Forums
Discussion Forum Posting markup is designed for any forum-style site where people collectively share first-hand perspectives. It allows Google Search to better identify forum sites and online discussions across the web. Forums with this markup are considered for having their content appear in the Perspective and "Discussions and forums" features. However, the use of the markup does not guarantee appearance.
Displaying your courses within course structured data features
As people continue to search for courses on Google, the desire for more detailed course information has grown. Google are announcing a new set of recommendations to provide course structured data to Google. Publishers now have the opportunity to surface supplemental course information on Google Search by providing detailed information like pricing, educational level, ratings, and length with structured data. This data can appear in the course info rich result, which is a new carousel feature in Google Search that helps learners discover and compare courses that fit their unique needs.
