📜

​Google has dropped continuous scroll from search results. This has already taken effect on desktop and mobile will follow in the next few weeks. Back to the traditional paginated results!

🌇

Starting 1 July 2024, (that's today, by the way), you will lose access to Universal Analytics data in the interface, the API, and via any product integrations. To maintain access to data from your property, you should download your data ASAP.

🏢

​Multiple WordPress plugins have been compromised. Only five plugins were initially found, but more were discovered shortly afterwards. This list may continue to grow in the near future.

🐛

​Google warns against using JavaScript for structured data. Google's Merchant Centre documentation advises that structured data should be added via HTML. Adding structured data via JavaScript makes it harder and slower to process.

🗺️

​In your sitemap, the lastmod date should reflect the last significant update to the page. Google's sitemap documentation was updated with this note, specifying that changing ‘the main content, the structured data, or links on the page is generally considered significant’.

✅

​The June 2024 spam update has finished rolling out. It began on 20 June and finished on 27 June 2024. This is separate from the algorithmic site reputation abuse update, which has yet to be implemented.

🛒

​Shopify's AI chatbot for merchants is now in early access. The chatbot, named Sidekick, is part of a larger push towards AI-powered features from Shopify. Other announced features include product categorisation and image generation.

🗂️

​Google is testing link cards at the top of AI Overviews. This may be the next stage in Google's experiments into the location of links in AI Overviews. The link cards are typically hidden behind a 'Show more' button.

We got a link on the BBC by analysing police data

This is exactly how we’ve done it:
​
✅ Analysed 999 performance data from the Police UK website
✅ Created a list with the top 10 and bottom 10 areas in terms of response time
✅ Wrote up a simple report based on our findings
✅ Used Roxhill Media to find journalists... (see more)

The power of the Freedom of Information

If you need that 'hook' for your story, digital PR, or link building, using FOI (Freedom of Information) requests in the UK can be really powerful.

The advantage is that this information is generally not in the public domain, so it can be a massive asset to get featured by journalists.

They can take a while to return, but rabbits can be pulled from hats! 🐇

Avoid using stock imagery where possible

Apart from not being massively helpful to users, I avoid stock photography as it makes it hard to rank in Google Images.

Image results contain unique images, not the same image over and over.

For this reason, using stock imagery can mean you miss out on a lot of traffic.

Don't always trust what tools say

Nobody can tell you the keyword a particular user searched for on Google and ended up on your site from an organic search, despite what some tools claim to be able to do!

Redirect your duplicate URLs

Any different URL counts as a different page to a search engine.

This means if your same content is accessible with and without a trailing slash (/my-content and /my-content/), it is counted as a duplicate!

The same is true if both www and non-www versions are accessible.

In cases where content is identical and accessible through different URLs, you should use permanent 301 redirects.

Don't use robots.txt to stop indexing

Contrary to popular belief, adding pages to robots.txt does not stop them from being indexed. 🛑

You need to use the noindex tag to prevent a page from being indexed. Robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing.

Top Core Updates referrer leaderboard

A big thank you to our top referrers, who have signed up over 10 people to the Core Updates newsletter, go follow them!

🥇 MJ Cachón Yáñez (LinkedIn / X)

🥈 Lidia Infante (LinkedIn / X)

Got any feedback?

We've learned that some people do read this far, we've had people email us! Thanks so much for helping us grow to nearly 5,000 subscribers since we launched at the start of 2024.

Mark is off this week so hopefully you didn't notice any dip in quality in his absence.

So, if you'd like to leave any nice messages for Mark when he returns next week (or feedback for me while I'm taking over), please reply to this email and let us know!

Jack Chambers-Ward