SEARCHENGINES
Google Says Web Stories Performance Not Indicative Of Overall Site Performance In Search

Google’s John Mueller said that the performance of your Web Stories in Google Search is not related to the overall ranking performance of your site in general in Google Search. He also added a side not that in general, Web Stories are hard to optimize for SEO because Web Stories typically have very little textual content.
John said this in his latest YouTube SEO hangout at the 42:51 mark, where he said “I would not worry that the performance of the Web Stories somehow relates to the ranking of the rest of your content because that’s that’s definitely not the case.”
He then briefly commented about how it is hard to do SEO on these Web Stories, saying “I think with Web Stories themselves doing SEO for them is sometimes tricky because there’s very little text on them. So if you’re getting impressions for them then you’re already doing some some really good work.”
Then he went back to how Web Stories do not impact your other pages on your site, in terms of rankings. He said “But in general these are essentially HTML pages they’re presented in a slightly different way in the search results and then Discover but it’s not going to be that those web stories will negatively affect the rest of your website’s ranking.”
Here is the video embed:
Just some history on Web Stories, in 2018, Google launched AMP Stories and then they got more visual, with visual stories in 2019. Then in 2020, Google renamed them from AMP Stories to Web Stories.
Forum discussion at YouTube Community.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Ads Testing Replacing Ad Label With Sponsored Label

Google Ads is testing replacing the “ads” label with a “sponsored” label again. And just so you know, Google in 2010 replaced the “sponsored” label with an “ad” label until this day. Yea, sometimes we do see “sponsored” labels in Google Search but not for the normal search ads – those have been labeled “ads” for the UK and US regions for a long time now.
I personally cannot replicate this but Bastiir posted some screenshots of this on Twitter:
Test: Sponsored label in Google Search:
Normal: Ads label in Google Search:
Here is another full size screenshot you can click on to see the “sponsored” label:
Here are more tests:
Here’s an interesting test. Google is currently showing new ad label variations on mobile, now with the words ‘advertisement’ and ‘sponsored’. This is matched with another URL + favicon test from March – lots going on here. More info: https://t.co/j6IUtkSa1z pic.twitter.com/FLSnZcmzWc
— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) May 17, 2022
I personally like the “sponsored” label, makes it feel more luxury. 🙂
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Google has now confirmed this as a test and sent Search Engine Land this statement:
This is part of a series of experiments to help users more easily identify the brand or advertiser associated with the Search ads they may see for a given query. We are always testing news ways to improve the experience for users on the search results page, but we don’t have anything specific to announce right now.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
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