Latest documentation updates

2024 updates

December 2024

December 18

Consolidating the robots.txt error handling documentation

What: Consolidated robots.txt error handling documentation into a single spot.

Why: We previously had information about robots.txt error handling in several places (specifically, HTTP status codes and Search Console documentation), which lead to some confusion. This is a docs-only change, no change in behavior.

December 17

Documentation for managing crawling of faceted navigation URLs

What: Added new documentation about crawling faceted navigation URLs.

Why: While the information was already public in form of a blog post, it was never officially made into documentation.

December 9

Documentation for cache control support of Google's crawlers

What: Added a section about how Google's crawlers handle cache control headers in the overview of Google's crawlers.

Why: While the information was already public in form of a blog post, it was never officially made into documentation.

November 2024

November 29

Removing sitelinks search box documentation

What: Removed the sitelinks search box documentation and archived the nositelinkssearchbox rule.

Why: The sitelinks search box feature is no longer available in Google Search results.

November 20

Added information about opting out of the Page Annotations feature.

What: Added information about opting out of the Page Annotations feature that's available on the iOS Google App.

Why: The new Page Annotations feature was launched recently.

November 19

Updated our site reputation abuse policy

What: Updated language to make it clear that using third-party content on a site in an attempt to exploit the site's ranking signals is a violation of this policy — regardless of whether there is first-party involvement or oversight of the content.

Why: See our blog post for more details on what changed and why.

Updated our Guide to Google Search ranking systems

What: Brought over and expanded language from March 2024 blog post FAQ about site signals.

Why: To make it easier for those interested to understand through our documentation that we have both page-level and site-wide signals used in ranking.

November 13

Added information on how C2PA metadata can appear in Search

What: Added information on how Google extracts C2PA metadata for use in Search.

Why: Google Search now supports this metadata in the "About this image" feature.

November 1

Added notice about links for large websites with differing mobile and desktop pages

What: Added a best practice about making sure all links are present on the mobile version to the crawl budget documentation.

Why: For large websites with separate HTML on mobile and desktop versions, the discovery of new pages can be slower if the mobile version does not include all the links that are present on the desktop version.

October 2024

October 24

New documentation for Google Trends

What: Added a page explaining how to get started with Google Trends.

Why: Google Trends can help you better understand how people find information on Google Search, which can help you to develop your content strategy and refine how you talk to your audience.

Updating favicon size and aspect ratio requirements

What: Updated the favicon guidelines to state that favicons must have a 1:1 aspect ratio and be at least 8x8px in size, with a strong recommendation for using a higher resolution favicon of at least 48x48px.

Why: To reflect the actual requirements for favicons.

October 23

Clarifying URL parameter best practices

What: Added a URL parameters best practice to the URL structure documentation.

Why: To make it easier to find guidance about URL parameters, as it was previously only mentioned in the faceted navigation blog post.

October 7

Clarifying support for robots.txt fields

What: Clarified that fields that aren't listed in our robots.txt documentation aren't supported.

Why: We sometimes get questions about fields that aren't explicitly listed as supported, and we want to make it clear that they aren't.

October 3

Adding support for certifications

What: Added Certification markup support for merchant listings in the product structured data documentation.

Why: Starting in April 2025, we're replacing the EnergyConsumptionDetails type with the more robust Certification type, as the new type supports more countries and a broader scope of certifications.

October 2

Removing noarchive

What: Moved the noarchive rule to a historical reference section in the robots meta tag documentation.

Why: The cached link feature is no longer available in Google Search results. You don't need to remove the meta tag, as other search engines and services may be using it.

October 1

Clarifying dynamically-generated Product markup

What: Added two best practices for handling structured data when optimizing for shopping results in our documentation on product markup and generating structured data with JavaScript. We recommend putting Product markup in the initial HTML for best results, and making sure that your server can handle increased traffic if you're generating Product markup with JavaScript.

Why: To clarify that JavaScript-generated markup is supported for ecommerce sites, but there are some best practices to keep in mind.

September 2024

September 25

Spam policy clarifications

What: Clarified some wording in our spam policies for Google web search to focus more on what web spam is and the tactics involved. Also integrated an explanation of close involvement from our blog post for easier reference, and clarified that trying to circumvent our policies can also result in ranking lower or not at all.

Why: We review and refresh our documentation periodically. This update is part of that process.

September 24

Removing the cache: search operator documentation

What: Removed the cache: search operator documentation.

Why: The cache: search operator no longer works in Google Search.

September 23

Adding support for sale pricing

What: Added the priceType property to the merchant listing documentation. Also added new sale pricing examples.

Why: To make it easier for merchants to specify sale pricing through structured data and bring parity with price features in Merchant Center.

September 17

Migrated the JavaScript guidance for infinite scroll

What: Migrated guidance from the blog post on infinite scroll to our documentation for infinite scroll. There is no change in the guidance.

Why: To make it easier to find our recommendations on infinite scroll and make sure it's still up to date.

September 16

Updating the HTTP user agent string of GoogleProducer

What: Updated the URL in the GoogleProducer HTTP user agent string in the documentation for Google's user-triggered fetchers to match the value used by the actual fetcher.

Why: The HTTP user agent string used by GoogleProducer was recently updated and future fetches will use the new value.

Adding content encoding information to the crawler documentation

What: Added information about the content encodings (compressions) supported by Google's crawlers and user-triggered fetchers. This is just documentation change, no change in behavior.

Why: We realized we never actually documented the content encodings Google's crawlers support, even though we blogged about it in the past.

Reorganizing the crawler documentation

What: Reorganized the documentation for Google's crawlers and user-triggered fetchers. We also added explicit notes about what product each crawler affects, and added a robots.txt snippet for each crawler to demonstrate how to use the user agent tokens. There were no meaningful changes to the content otherwise.

Why: The documentation grew very long which limited our ability to extend the content about our crawlers and user-triggered fetchers.

September 11

Clarifying Indexing API usage guidelines

What: Clarified that submissions to the Indexing API are subject to spam detection.

Why: Usage of the Indexing API is subject to spam detection, and attempts to exceed quotas may result in revoked access.

September 10

Video markup accepts ineligibleRegion

What: Added the ineligibleRegion property to the video structured data documentation.

Why: Google accepts the ineligibleRegion property as another way to restrict a video.

September 4

Clarifying quota and usage of the Indexing API

What: Clarified that the default quota is for setting up the Indexing API, and how to request approval and quota. Also corrected a documentation error for DefaultRequestsPerMinutePerProject quota (it's always been a 380 quota).

Why: To better explain that the default quota is for initial setup and testing, and it requires additional approval for usage and resource provisioning.

August 2024

August 30

Adding support for AVIF

What: Added AVIF to the list of supported image formats.

Why: Google Search now supports AVIF.

August 26

Clarifying how organization markup is used

What: Updated the introduction for organization markup to clarify how the markup is used in Google Search.

Why: To better explain that some properties can influence which logo is shown, while others are used behind the scenes.

Adding og:title to the list of title link sources

What: Added og:title to the list of title link sources.

Why: Google Search can use content within og:title meta tags to automatically generate title links.

August 23

Improving the Video SEO documentation

What: Overhauled the video SEO best practices. Notably, we clarified the video indexing criteria and technical requirements, added a new watch page section, and expanded our examples.

Why: Based on feedback submissions, we revisited our video SEO guidance to clarify what's eligible for a video result and how site owners can make it easier for Google to find their videos.

Clarifying how profile page and discussion forum markup is used

What: Updated how profile page and discussion forum markup is used in Google Search.

Why: Perspectives was renamed to Forums in Google Search.

August 20

Introducing the Google-CloudVertexBot crawler

What: Added Google-CloudVertexBot to the list of Google crawlers, a new crawler that crawls sites on the site owners' request when building Vertex AI Agents.

Why: The new crawler was introduced to help site owners identify the new crawler traffic.

August 15

Improvements to the core updates documentation

What: Restructured the core updates documentation so it has clearer sections and includes information from other docs (such as traffic drops and the self-assessment guidance). Reduced duplication with the helpful content FAQ and redirected that page. Moved the helpful content system section to the archived section of the ranking systems guide.

Why: To better help site owners assess a traffic drop and make improvements to their site. Also, the helpful content system became part of core ranking systems (as we previously shared in March 2024).

Clarifying how AI Overviews are logged in Search Console

What: Clarified that AI Overviews are counted and logged in Search Console in the Performance report. This is a documentation clarification on methodology only, and not a change in Search Console reports.

Why: To confirm the methodology behind how clicks, impressions, and position are recorded for AI Overviews, just as we do for featured snippets, carousels, and other types of Search results.

August 9

Removing Notes documentation

What: Removed the documentation about Notes.

Why: The Notes experiment is no longer available. If you created a note, your notes content is available to download using Google Takeout through the end of August 2024.

July 2024

July 31

Geo Data Upload string and URL update

What: Replaced the Geo Data Upload tool references in the Get on Google documentation with the Google Maps Content Partners resource.

Why: The Geo Data Upload name and support pages are deprecated.

July 31

Non-consensual fake imagery update

What: Clarified how Google handles sites with a high proportion of sexually explicit non-consensual, fake imagery in our spam policies and ranking systems guide.

July 24

Google Publisher Center user agent string update

What: Changed the Google Publisher Center user agent string from GoogleProducer; (+http://goo.gl/7y4SX) to GoogleProducer; (+https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers#googleproducer). If you hardcoded the old value in your code, update the string to avoid potential bugs.

Why: goo.gl is going away.

July 19

A note about Notes

What: Added a note about the status of Notes to the Notes documentation.

Why: Notes is winding down at the end of July 2024.

July 11

Adding more detail about shipping and return policy precedence

What: Added Search Console shipping and return settings as an option and expanded on how precedence works in the organization and merchant listing documentation.

Why: Search Console now supports shipping and return settings, and we want to make it clearer how overriding works when combining various configurations.

July 10

Expanding translated results to more languages

What: Updated the translated results documentation to include the following languages: Arabic, Gujarati, Korean, Persian, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese.

Why: Translated results now support more languages.

July 9

Supporting a new IPTC digital source type

What: Added compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia to the IPTC photo metadata documentation.

Why: Google can now extract the compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia IPTC NewsCode.

July 5

Clarifying fragment URL guidance

What: Clarified our guidance about fragment URLs in the URL structure documentation.

Why: To make it easier to find the guideline about fragment URLs, as it was previously only mentioned in the JavaScript and mobile sites documentation.

June 2024

June 21

Clarifying return policy precedence

What: Clarified in the organization-level return policy documentation that product-level return policy markup takes precedence over organization-level return policy markup. If you choose to use both markup (whether it's at the product- or organization-level, or both) and settings in Merchant Center, the Merchant Center return policy information takes precedence for any products submitted in your Merchant Center product feeds.

Why: To address user feedback about which return policy method takes precedence.

June 20

Marking up categories with many items for structured data carousels (beta)

What: Added guidance on how to mark up categories with many items to the structured data carousels (beta).

Why: We received a question through our feedback button about how to implement this markup for categories with many items, such as paginated content or infinite scroll.

June 12

Clarifying link tag attributes

What: Clarified in our hreflang documentation that link tags for denoting alternate versions of a page must not be combined in a single link tag.

Why: While debugging a report from a site owner we noticed we don't have this quirk documented.

June 11

Adding support for Organization-level return policies

What: Added documentation on how to specify a general return policy for an Organization as a whole.

Why: This makes it easier to define and maintain general return policies for an entire site.

Removing home activity documentation

What: Removed documentation on home activity structured data.

Why: The home activity feature no longer appears in Google Search results.

June 4

Publishing a new video SEO case study

What: Added a new case study about how Vidio brought more locally relevant video-on-demand (VOD) content for Indonesian users through Google Search.

Why: To show how adding video structured data and following best practices can improve video discoverability.

Updating Discussion Forum guidelines

What: Confirm that SocialMediaPosting markup is also supported and allow only image or video in comments without text.

Why: To more accurately reflect how the data ingestion for these features work and to remove noise in validation reports.

Resolving the issue with site names and internal pages

What: Removed the warning about the issue that was preventing new site names from propagating to internal pages.

Why: The issue has been resolved. Keep in mind that it takes time for Google to recrawl and process the new information, including recrawling your internal pages.

May 2024

May 23

Adding epub to indexable file types

What: Added EPUB to the list of indexable file types.

Why: Google Search now supports epub.

May 16

Introducing the GoogleOther-Image and GoogleOther-Video crawlers

What: Added two new crawlers, GoogleOther-Image and GoogleOther-Video, which are versions of GoogleOther optimized for fetching image and video bytes respectively. While at it, we also updated the list of user agent strings of GoogleOther to better reflect the most active user agent versions.

Why: The new crawlers were launched to better support crawling of binary data that may be used for research and development.

May 14

Introduced AI Overviews in the documentation

What: Added a separate page for AI Overviews and your website, and updated the existing pages for robots meta tags and subscription and paywalled content accordingly.

Why: AI Overviews in Search are replacing Search Generative Experience.

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

Clarifying image extraction source

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

Clarifying the extraction of rel="canonical" annotations

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

Switching @id references to use hashtags

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 updates

December 2023

• December 19: Further clarified how Google handles sites with a high proportion of non-consensual explicit imagery in our spam policies and ranking systems guide.
• December 18: Added transcript of December 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• December 14: Updated the Discussion Forum and Q&A page documentation to explicitly clarify that author URLs are recommended.
• December 13: Updated the Organization documentation to explain that telephone and email can be specified at the Organization level besides contactPoint.
• December 12: Added information about course info availability.
• December 4: Added vacation rental structured data documentation.
• December 1: Removed mentions of the Mobile Friendly Test and the Mobile Usability report throughout our documentation, as they are going away.

November 2023

• November 29: Add new Organization documentation, which merges the Logo documentation and includes more organizational information (such as contact info, legal name, and business identifiers).
• November 27: Added profile page structured data documentation, discussion forum structured data documentation, and expanded recommendations for Q&A page structured data documentation.
• November 15:
  • Added documentation for Notes and your website.
  • Added course info structured data documentation.
  • Added a best practice about avoiding flight prices in title links, as Google is less likely to show this information when generating title links for flight pages.
• November 14: Since we received many questions about the Google Safety crawler over the past year, added it to the list of Google crawlers.
• November 8: Updated the reviews system documentation to explain that this system is being improved at a regular and ongoing pace.
• November 1: Added a recommendation to include time and timezone information in Video structured data.

October 2023

• October 18:
  • Added a reference to the Rich Results Test in the Subscription and paywalled structured data documentation, as this data type is now supported in the testing tool. Also added a Generative AI in Search considerations section. Added information about SGE (Search Generative Experience) to the Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag specifications page for the nosnippet and max-snippet rules.
  • Clarified in the favicon documentation that both the favicon file and the home page of the site must be allowed for crawling by Googlebot-Image and Googlebot respectively. Also removed information about the Google Favicon HTTP user-agent string throughout our documentation, as this is no longer used. The removal of the HTTP user-agent string means no changes for site owners. Google Favicon depended on the Googlebot-Image and Googlebot robots.txt user agent tokens, which remain supported.
• October 17:
  • Added a reminder to provide the timezone in Article structured data and clarified what happens if a timezone isn't provided.
  • Added mention about Googlebot's timezone, which is PST.
• October 16: Added vehicle listing structured data documentation.
• October 13: Removed the host group visual element from the Visual Elements gallery, as it no longer appears in Google Search results.

September 2023

• September 29: Added more explanation about why Discover traffic may change over time.
• September 28: Added a new user agent token, Google-Extended, which acts as a new control that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products.
• September 27: Clarified how Google handles sites with a high proportion of CSAM content in our spam policies and ranking systems guide.
• September 26:
  • Revamped two previously published blog posts into new documentation pages with tips to debug drops in search traffic and improve SEO with a Search Console bubble chart.
  • Merged two introductory Search Console articles into one starter guide.
• September 22: Clarified in the developer's guide that Google Search currently may not index content inside CSS content properties as that isn't part of the DOM.
• September 14:
  • Added new guidance about hosting third-party content and more explanation on what to do after a helpful content system update (perhaps you don't need to do anything, or perhaps self-assess your content).
  • Added new points about removing content or changing dates to the help page on how to create helpful, reliable people-first content.
  • Removed the How-to rich result case study, as this feature is deprecated.
  • Removed the How-to structured data documentation, as this rich result is no longer shown in search results, on both desktop and mobile devices. Read more in the blog post.
  • Updated the FAQ structured data documentation to state that the feature is only shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites.
• September 11: Fixed a typo in the user-agent string of the Google-InspectionTool common crawler.
• September 7: Updated the feature availability section in the site names documentation, as site names are now available in all languages where Google Search is available.
• September 6: Added transcript of September 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.

August 2023

• August 24: Added CSV to the list of indexable file types.
• August 15: Clarified that we only support standard schema.org enumeration values for local business opening hours, and these values must be in English per the schema.org specification.
• August 9: Added transcript of August 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• August 2:
  • Removed unneeded mention of "@id" in the site names documentation.
  • Clarified in the local business structured data documentation that the review and aggregateRating properties are only recommended for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses. This is not new information; see the guidelines about self-serving reviews and the update on our blog post from 2019 on this topic.

July 2023

• July 28: Added new sections to the site name documentation: what to do if your preferred site name isn't selected, guidance around choosing an alternative name, and information about a known issue. Site names are now available on both desktop and mobile devices.
• July 20: Based on user feedback, we clarified what characters Google Search supports in URLs.
• July 19: Added a new case study about how video SEO features helped three global publishers reach their audiences.
• July 18: Removed the related: operator from the search operators documentation, as it's no longer supported.
• July 11: Added transcript of July 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.

June 2023

• June 13: Added examples of how to handle derivatives, integrals, and limits in the potentialAction.mathExpression-input field in the MathSolver documentation.
• June 7: Added transcript of June 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.

May 2023

• May 30: Added .ai to the list of TLDs that Google Search treats as a global TLD (gTLD).
• May 26: Added a recommendation for adult sites with age gate interstitials.
• May 24:
  • Updated the list of countries where the events search experience is launched to only include those where users can see that experience. The previous list also included regions where users could see events in Knowledge Panels.
  • In November 2020 we accidentally updated the Google Read Aloud user agent string in our documentation, replacing the +https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1061943 crawler documentation URL with +https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/overview-google-crawlers. We reverted that change.
• May 22: Updated our documentation on site names to mention subdomains.
• May 17:
  • Updated the translated results documentation to include the following languages: Bengali, English, French, German, Marathi, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu.
  • Added a new crawler, Google-InspectionTool to the list of Google crawlers.
• May 10:
  • Added a new recommendation for Digital Source Type to the Image Metadata documentation.
  • Added a banner to pages about Core Web Vitals for informing about Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a replacement for FID in March 2024.
• May 4:
  • Moved the video description property to the recommended table, as it's no longer required.
  • Added transcript of May 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• May 2: Updated our documentation about canonicalization with explicit recommendations for syndicated content.

April 2023

• April 28: Removed the opt out section from Education Q&A structured data documentation.
• April 26: Increased the maximum number of return countries (applicableCountry) from 25 to 50 in the return policy information in the Product structured data documentation.
• April 24: Reorganized the page about Google's crawlers so the user agents are now in logical clusters based on their capabilities and triggers.
• April 21: Added more information about the different crawlers Google uses, along with the JSON formatted list of IP addresses the different crawlers use.
• April 20: Added a new generic crawler, GoogleOther, to the list of Google crawlers.
• April 19: Updated the guidance on creating helpful content to include page experience, revised the page experience help page, partially moving content to a new Core Web Vitals page.
• April 17: Added return policy information to the Product structured data documentation.
• April 12: Added transcript of April 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• April 3: Updated the eligibility criteria for the package tracking documentation Early Adoption Program to focus on India, Japan, and Brazil.

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:
  • Updated the User Agent string for AdsBot Mobile Web Android. If you hardcoded the old value in your code, update the string to avoid potential bugs.
  • Added an overview page for the Google SEO Office Hours.
• 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

• February 23: Removed the hosting location requirement from the favicon documentation; you don't need to host the favicon in the same domain in order to be eligible for a favicon in Google Search results.
• February 22: Clarified that Discover uses many of the same signals as Search, in both the Discover documentation and the helpful content system page.
• February 15: Added new best practices for links.
• February 13:
  • Simplified the wording in the Policy circumvention section of our spam policies based on user feedback.
  • Based on user feedback, we revamped our documentation about sitemaps. Notably, we reduced duplication between the sitemaps protocol and our documentation, added more examples to our documentation about sitemap extensions, and added a new document about how to combine sitemap extensions.
• February 10: Added the GoogleProducer user agent to the list of Google crawlers (this is not a new user agent; this is a documentation update only).
• February 8: Added new guidance about thinking in terms of "Who, How, and Why" in relation to how content is produced.
• February 3: Clarified why JSON-LD is recommended for structured data: it's because it's generally the easiest for website owners to implement and maintain. All 3 supported formats are equally fine for Google, as long as they are valid and implemented properly per the feature's documentation.
• February 2: Refreshed our documentation about canonicalization. To better help site owners, the original documentation is split in three distinct sections:
  1. What is URL canonicalization.
  2. How to specify a canonical with rel="canonical" and other methods.
  3. Fix canonicalization issues.
• February 1: Added a new section for Authors on the Google Search Central Blog.

January 2023

• January 31: Added transcript of January 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• January 25: Added a new case study about how Vimeo improved Video SEO at scale for their customers by using the indexifembedded rule combined with noindex and adding structured data.
• January 23:
  • Added guidance about what to include in the RSS feed for the Follow feature in Google Discover: the