In this show we got everything for you from creepy crawling to blood sucking vampires and and walking zombies. First, we had a few unconfirmed Google search algorithm updates this week, one last weekend, second on Monday and third on Wednesday and Thursday. Google said they don’t push algorithm updates out specifically before the weekends. Google said again that spikes in crawl rates do not mean an update is coming, they are unrelated Google said. We did see some weird crawl spikes this week on some sites. Google said they want to make crawling more efficient but it might not be done through IndexNow. Google said when it comes to deduplication of top stories, they remove the link if it’s the first link in top stories and if top stories shows before the web results – but that might change. Google released the page experience report for desktop pages in Search Console. Google said it is impossible for it to understand when different language content is equivalent. Google said it is getting better at understanding languages and locations without hreflang. Google product reviews update will expand, may use machine learning and might one day be incorporated into core updates. I wonder if Google might target fluffy content this year. Google’s John Mueller spoke about site migrations and URL changes in a video. Google said hosting companies should not use robot detection interstitials without 500 status codes. Google said recipe markup has to use fixed times, not ranges. Google might update and even rename the Google webmaster guidelines. Google said it is not doing away with target CPA. There is a bug with discovery and performance max campaigns plus there are new placement reports for performance max campaigns. Google Maps is testing showing review snippets in the map interface. Google has a location pack result with things to do, airports and transit stops. Danny Goodwin 301 redirected from Search Engine Watch to Search Engine Journal and now is redirecting to Search Engine Land. And if you are looking for the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, you won’t be able to find it in Google Search. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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Google has updated its product structured data help documents to say that you need both product and car structured in order for Google to display ratings and review snippets in search for car search results.

Google said “currently car is not supported automatically as a subtype of Product.” “So for now, you will need to include both Car and Product types if you would like to attach ratings to it and be eligible for the Search feature,” Google added. Here is a screenshot of this new note added to the help document:

Google noted this over here saying “added a note describing how to specify Car markup and still have Product review snippet feature eligibility.”

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Google’s John Mueller said again that a spike in crawling activity on your site is unrelated to an upcoming search ranking algorithm update. John Mueller said on Twitter “it’s unrelated” when asked if crawl spikes are related to Google updates.

This came up when I wrote about SEOs noticing a spike in crawling recently. To be fair, I did cover in the bottom of that story that this is likely unrelated to any update that might be coming. I wrote “large crawl rate increases is not related to algorithm updates, although, sometimes it might be – maybe.” Those referenced past times I covered Google’s statements on crawl spikes and how they are unrelated to algorithm updates.

Here is the Twitter thread with John’s confirmation:

Yep. Google seems to recrawl large parts of the index before core updates.

The question is “why?” Maybe to recalculate certain rank-related variables across many sites. Maybe to update its corpus at the same time. Maybe…🤷🏻‍♂️

— Kevin_Indig (@Kevin_Indig) January 19, 2022

That’s not really true. Google has explained that’s a myth. It would be due to big site changes causing the spike in crawling and not the upcoming algo update. I haven’t seen any connection there either (based on helping many sites impacted by broad core updates).

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 19, 2022

Yeah, it’s unrelated. I mean, there’s always something launching after a spike in crawling, but there’s also always something launching.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 19, 2022

I suspect some of the nuance got lost there, surprise. What I was trying to say here was that we’re always working on improvements, so anything (full moon, more crawling, sunshine, email-flood) and nothing () will be followed by improvements launching. They’re unreleated.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 19, 2022

Here is another time John said this:

Regarding crawling spikes being unrelated to Google’s broad core updates, it’s also important to understand that recent changes on a site would *not* typically be reflected in major algorithm updates (like broad core updates). Here’s @JohnMu about that: https://t.co/bI6lZM3iXm

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 19, 2022

So there, you have it again from Google – unrelated.

John Mueller added later this logic:

If you want to launch an update, you have to test it & prove that it’s good first. You can’t do that if you have to recrawl the whole web just before going live (and the web is gigantic, you can’t “just recrawl it briefly”). Crawl rate is not an early warning signal of updates.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 20, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.