4 of the latest search developments

Here’s our roundup of some of the latest developments in search:

Intrusive Interstitial Mobile Penalty Goes Into Effect

Google have been rolling out their new ranking penalty which targets “pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results”. The ranking penalty was first announced in August. Websites which are being penalised include any with an intrusive popup or an intrusive standalone interstitial, such as those show in the examples below (provided by Google).

Mobile interstitials penalty

The intent of the move is to improve the user experience when browsing the web using Google. When users arrive on a site that frustrates them it reflects badly on the search engine that lead them there. Google is therefore highly motivated to present users with not only websites that answer their search queries, but also those that deliver a satisfying user experience.

Secure websites continue to garner favour

Google continues to favour secure websites with their latest Google Chrome update. The browser now flags websites which collect payment information but do not use the HTTPS protocol. Firefox have published a similar update and now warns users about insecure web pages that collect passwords. Firefox has also made a significant change to how they display security certificate data this last month to reinforce the point. If you aren’t using SSL for your website, perhaps now is time to consider it.

Google Home traffic measurement clarification

It has been confirmed that Google Home traffic (traffic from people who click through from Google’s voice-activated speaker and app) is recorded in Google Analytics as direct traffic, not organic traffic.

Continued growth of DuckDuckGo suggests privacy concerns on the rise?

Growing privacy focused alternative search engine DuckDuckGo served its 10 billionth search and passed the 14 million searches per day milestone.

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