Now, this shouldn’t have any significant impacts on SEO or Google usage more broadly, but Google has announced a couple of changes to the display of Search results to provide more clarity and transparency within its listings. While it may only be noticed by the most critical or niche of Google enthusiasts, more context, even if they are just for listings, is always a good thing.

Searching For What? 

To start, Google’s adding site names to search results on mobile, so that users can more easily identify the website that’s associated with each result at a glance. Based on official examples, visitors can now see the website name and URL for each result, providing more context as to what site you’ll be tapping into. This is an important milestone, considering that cookie tracking is gradually phasing out. Being able to identify the nature of a website from its name can help tell you more about it, along with potential privacy concerns that might occur if you ever click through.

Google has also expanded the favicon size for each listing, giving more branding exposure to each. That is, of course, so long as you’ve updated your site details to ensure that the favicon appears (find out more on how to implement it here). This is the only SEO consideration here – by ensuring that your site details remain up to date so that your favicon is displayed, that may help boost your presence in Search in the Google app, thus also increasing brand awareness and visibility.

The other key update of note is that Google is switching the ad notifier from ‘Ad’ to ‘Sponsored’. According to Google:

“Part of helping you make sense of the information you see is ensuring that ads are clearly labeled, which is why our label will now be featured on its own line in the top-left corner of Search ads. We also want the label to be prominent and clear across different types of paid content. That’s why when ads show on mobile search results, they will now be labeled with the word “Sponsored” in bold black text. This new label and its prominent position continues to meet our high standards for being distinguishable from search results and builds on our existing efforts to make information about paid content clear.”

The Wrap

Again, these aren’t major changes per se, but they could have an impact if your site isn’t properly aligned with Google’s configuration schemas. The variance of ‘ad’ and ‘sponsored’ has been muddied by years of different listings in social apps anyway. These days, most people know that the first results in any Google Search display are paid.

This update could help provide some additional clarity, via the added context, but for the most part, it’s more of an FYI than a major trend to note. The new SERP update is rolling out on in the Google mobile app right now and it will also soon be extended to desktop.

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Sources 

https://bit.ly/3MAV3L2