November 2023

• November 15:
  • Added documentation for Notes and your website.
  • Added course info structured data documentation.
  • Added a best practice about avoiding flight prices in title links, as Google is less likely to show this information when generating title links for flight pages.
• November 14: Since we received many questions about the Google Safety crawler over the past year, added it to the list of Google crawlers.
• November 8: Updated the reviews system documentation to explain that this system is being improved at a regular and ongoing pace.
• November 1: Added a recommendation to include time and timezone information in Video structured data.

October 2023

• October 18:
  • Added a reference to the Rich Results Test in the Subscription and paywalled structured data documentation, as this data type is now supported in the testing tool. Also added a Generative AI in Search considerations section. Added information about SGE (Search Generative Experience) to the Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag specifications page for the nosnippet and max-snippet rules.
  • Clarified in the favicon documentation that both the favicon file and the home page of the site must be allowed for crawling by Googlebot-Image and Googlebot respectively. Also removed information about the Google Favicon HTTP user-agent string throughout our documentation, as this is no longer used. The removal of the HTTP user-agent string means no changes for site owners. Google Favicon depended on the Googlebot-Image and Googlebot robots.txt user agent tokens, which remain supported.
• October 17:
  • Added a reminder to provide the timezone in Article structured data and clarified what happens if a timezone isn’t provided.
  • Added mention about Googlebot’s timezone, which is PST.
• October 16: Added vehicle listing structured data documentation.
• October 13: Removed the host group visual element from the Visual Elements gallery, as it no longer appears in Google Search results.

September 2023

• September 29: Added more explanation about why Discover traffic may change over time.
• September 28: Added a new user agent token, Google-Extended, which acts as a new control that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products.
• September 27: Clarified how Google handles sites with a high proportion of CSAM content in our spam policies and ranking systems guide.
• September 26:
  • Revamped two previously published blog posts into new documentation pages with tips to debug drops in search traffic and improve SEO with a Search Console bubble chart.
  • Merged two introductory Search Console articles into one starter guide.
• September 22: Clarified in the developer’s guide that Google Search currently may not index content inside CSS content properties as that isn’t part of the DOM.
• September 14:
  • Added new guidance about hosting third-party content and more explanation on what to do after a helpful content system update (perhaps you don’t need to do anything, or perhaps self-assess your content).
  • Added new points about removing content or changing dates to the help page on how to create helpful, reliable people-first content.
  • Removed the How-to rich result case study, as this feature is deprecated.
  • Removed the How-to structured data documentation, as this rich result is no longer shown in search results, on both desktop and mobile devices. Read more in the blog post.
  • Updated the FAQ structured data documentation to state that the feature is only shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites.
• September 11: Fixed a typo in the user-agent string of the Google-InspectionTool common crawler.
• September 7: Updated the feature availability section in the site names documentation, as site names are now available in all languages where Google Search is available.
• September 6: Added transcript of September 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.

August 2023

• August 24: Added CSV to the list of indexable file types.
• August 15: Clarified that we only support standard schema.org enumeration values for local business opening hours, and these values must be in English per the schema.org specification.
• August 9: Added transcript of August 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• August 2:
  • Removed unneeded mention of "@id" in the site names documentation.
  • Clarified in the local business structured data documentation that the review and aggregateRating properties are only recommended for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses. This is not new information; see the guidelines about self-serving reviews and the update on our blog post from 2019 on this topic.

July 2023

• July 28: Added new sections to the site name documentation: what to do if your preferred site name isn’t selected, guidance around choosing an alternative name, and information about a known issue. Site names are now available on both desktop and mobile devices.
• July 20: Based on user feedback, we clarified what characters Google Search supports in URLs.
• July 19: Added a new case study about how video SEO features helped three global publishers reach their audiences.
• July 18: Removed the related: operator from the search operators documentation, as it’s no longer supported.
• July 11: Added transcript of July 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.

June 2023

• June 13: Added examples of how to handle derivatives, integrals, and limits in the potentialAction.mathExpression-input field in the MathSolver documentation.
• June 7: Added transcript of June 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.

May 2023

• May 30: Added .ai to the list of TLDs that Google Search treats as a global TLD (gTLD).
• May 26: Added a recommendation for adult sites with age gate interstitials.
• May 24:
  • Updated the list of countries where the events search experience is launched to only include those where users can see that experience. The previous list also included regions where users could see events in Knowledge Panels.
  • In November 2020 we accidentally updated the Google Read Aloud user agent string in our documentation, replacing the +https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1061943 crawler documentation URL with +https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/overview-google-crawlers. We reverted that change.
• May 22: Updated our documentation on site names to mention subdomains.
• May 17:
  • Updated the translated results documentation to include the following languages: Bengali, English, French, German, Marathi, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu.
  • Added a new crawler, Google-InspectionTool to the list of Google crawlers.
• May 10:
  • Added a new recommendation for Digital Source Type to the Image Metadata documentation.
  • Added a banner to pages about Core Web Vitals for informing about Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a replacement for FID in March 2024.
• May 4:
  • Moved the video description property to the recommended table, as it’s no longer required.
  • Added transcript of May 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• May 2: Updated our documentation about canonicalization with explicit recommendations for syndicated content.

April 2023

• April 28: Removed the opt out section from Education Q&A structured data documentation.
• April 26: Increased the maximum number of return countries (applicableCountry) from 25 to 50 in the return policy information in the Product structured data documentation.
• April 24: Reorganized the page about Google’s crawlers so the user agents are now in logical clusters based on their capabilities and triggers.
• April 21: Added more information about the different crawlers Google uses, along with the JSON formatted list of IP addresses the different crawlers use.
• April 20: Added a new generic crawler, GoogleOther, to the list of Google crawlers.
• April 19: Updated the guidance on creating helpful content to include page experience, revised the page experience help page, partially moving content to a new Core Web Vitals page.
• April 17: Added return policy information to the Product structured data documentation.
• April 12: Added transcript of April 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• April 3: Updated the eligibility criteria for the package tracking documentation Early Adoption Program to focus on India, Japan, and Brazil.

March 2023

• March 17: We further clarified that the 15MB fetch size limit applies to each fetch of the individual subresources referenced in the HTML as well (in particular, JavaScript and CSS files).
• March 13:
  • Updated the User Agent string for AdsBot Mobile Web Android. If you hardcoded the old value in your code, update the string to avoid potential bugs.
  • Added an overview page for the Google SEO Office Hours.
• March 9: Added transcript of March 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• March 2: Removed South Korea from the available regions for the job search experience on Google.

February 2023

• February 23: Removed the hosting location requirement from the favicon documentation; you don’t need to host the favicon in the same domain in order to be eligible for a favicon in Google Search results.
• February 22: Clarified that Discover uses many of the same signals as Search, in both the Discover documentation and the helpful content system page.
• February 15: Added new best practices for links.
• February 13:
  • Simplified the wording in the Policy circumvention section of our spam policies based on user feedback.
  • Based on user feedback, we revamped our documentation about sitemaps. Notably, we reduced duplication between the sitemaps protocol and our documentation, added more examples to our documentation about sitemap extensions, and added a new document about how to combine sitemap extensions.
• February 10: Added the GoogleProducer user agent to the list of Google crawlers (this is not a new user agent; this is a documentation update only).
• February 8: Added new guidance about thinking in terms of “Who, How, and Why” in relation to how content is produced.
• February 3: Clarified why JSON-LD is recommended for structured data: it’s because it’s generally the easiest for website owners to implement and maintain. All 3 supported formats are equally fine for Google, as long as they are valid and implemented properly per the feature’s documentation.
• February 2: Refreshed our documentation about canonicalization. To better help site owners, the original documentation is split in three distinct sections:
  1. What is URL canonicalization.
  2. How to specify a canonical with rel="canonical" and other methods.
  3. Fix canonicalization issues.
• February 1: Added a new section for Authors on the Google Search Central Blog.

January 2023

• January 31: Added transcript of January 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• January 25: Added a new case study about how Vimeo improved Video SEO at scale for their customers by using the indexifembedded rule combined with noindex and adding structured data.
• January 23:
  • Added guidance about what to include in the RSS feed for the Follow feature in Google Discover: the <title> element and your per item <link> elements.
  • Updated the Images best practices to clarify that Google parses <img> elements (even when they’re enclosed in other elements such as <picture> elements) when indexing images. Also updated the alt text and filenames in the examples to be more descriptive.
• January 6: Clarified that www and m prefixes for domain names are generally considered as root domain names for Site Names in Google Search.
• January 5: Added information about the If-Modified-Since request header to our documentation about managing crawl budget.
• January 3: Removed the 110 character limit for the headline property in the Article structured data documentation. There’s no hard character limit; instead, we recommend that you write concise titles as long titles may be truncated on some devices.

December 2022

• December 29: Added transcript of December 2022 Google SEO Office Hours.
• December 19: Removed the Web Light documentation and retired the Web Light user agent. We introduced Web Light to enable us to serve faster, lighter pages to people searching on entry-level devices. While this feature has worked as intended and enabled broader access to the richness of the web, increased affordability of more powerful smartphones has diminished the need for such functionality. We remain committed to evolving and refining the Search experience to meet the changing needs of our users.
• December 14:
  • Added link spam specific information to the spam updates documentation.
  • Added a new page on how to use the Google Search Status Dashboard.
  • Updated Learning Video structured data to state that the text field is recommended instead of required for Problem walkthrough videos and clips.
• December 13:
  • Added a section for transcripts from the Google SEO Office Hours.
  • Added the new Visual Elements Gallery of Google Search.
  • Cleaned up and consolidated our mobile site and mobile-first indexing related documentation. Unsurprisingly, there’s no additions.
• December 6: Updated the Helpful content system page to state that the classifier works globally across all languages.
• December 2: Added two new myths to the crawl budget documentation. noindex isn’t a good way to control crawl budget (but can be a method to indirectly free up crawl budget in the long run), and pages that serve 4xx status codes (except 429) don’t waste crawl budget.
• December 1: Retired the Duplex on the web user agent.

November 2022

• November 23: Added descriptions to enumerated properties, such as availability, in Product structured data to support page translation to non-English languages.
• November 22:
  • Added a list of currently supported languages for video key moments.
  • Clarified the eligibility criteria for rich result appearance in the General structured data guidelines.
• November 21:
  • Added a new section on Policy circumvention and clarified our phrasing in the Legal and personal information removals sections to align with definitions of those systems in the new Guide to Google Search ranking systems.
  • Added a new Guide to Google Search ranking systems.
• November 15: Removed the Mobile recharge Early Adoptors Program signup page, as we received enough signups.
• November 14: Updated Review Snippet structured data to recommend using dot separators for decimal ratings. If you’re currently using comma separators for decimal ratings in your markup, you’ll still be eligible for review snippets. However, we recommend that you update your markup for a more accurate interpretation.
• November 9: Clarified that it’s fine to use JavaScript to insert crawlable links into pages.
• November 8:
  • Clarified in the sitemap documentation for localized versions that child elements don’t count towards the total number of URLs in a sitemap file.
  • Added notes to the AdsBot user agents that they ignore the global (*) user-agent rules in robots.txt. This was documented already in our robots.txt documentation; we added the notes for consistency.

October 2022

• October 24: Clarified that site names are supported at the domain level, and not at the subdomain or subdirectory level. Favicons are supported at the domain and subdomain level, and not at the subdirectory level.
• October 14: Added the site name documentation.
• October 13:
  • Added new pages for the following Google ranking updates. The information itself isn’t new; the pages contain consolidated information from previous blog posts about each of these updates.
    • Google Search’s core updates and your website
    • Google Search’s helpful content update and your website
    • Google Search’s product reviews update and your website
    • Google Search’s spam updates and your website
  • Refreshed and renamed the Webmaster Guidelines. Notable changes include:
    • Google Search Essentials: Replaces the Webmaster Guidelines overview page. It includes new sections: technical requirements, spam policies, and key best practices.
    • Google Search technical requirements: Covers what Google needs from a web page to show it in Google Search.
    • Spam policies for Google web search: Replaces the Quality Guidelines section of the Webmaster Guidelines. It’s been rewritten to cover more relevant examples and use more precise language. Notable updates include:
      • Link spam: Consolidates previous pages on Paid links and Link schemes.
      • Malware and malicious behaviors: Consolidates information that was previously in the Security section on our site.
      • Hacked content: Consolidates information that was previously in the Security section on our site.
      • Thin affliliate pages: Consolidates previous pages on Thin content and Affiliate programs.
      New sections include:
      • Misleading functionality
      • Copyright-removal requests
      • Online harassment removals
      • Scam and fraud
    • Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content: This document consolidates advice from the helpful content blog post and the core updates post; none of the content is new.
• October 12: Added support for image credits to the Image Metadata structured data documentation. Previously, you could only provide image credit information with IPTC photo metadata.
• October 7: Added examples of product review pages to Write high quality product reviews.

September 2022

• September 20: Added the Google Site Verifier user agent.
• September 13:
  • Major update to Product structured data documentation to document requirements for eligibility to Merchant Listings experiences based on structured data. See the blog New Search Console Merchant Listings report: expanding eligibility with Product structured data for details.
  • Re-added the itemReviewed.datePublished property. This was removed accidentally as part of the previous update to the Fact Check structured data documentation.
• September 9: Removed the datePublished property from the Fact Check structured data documentation. Currently, the ClaimReview publish date isn’t used in the Fact Check rich result.
• September 2: Migrated the documentation about the file types Google can index from the Search Console Help Center (the content hasn’t changed).
• September 1: Added more examples to show how meta descriptions could be improved.

August 2022

• August 31: Added a note on the use of JavaScript to add, change, or remove meta tags on a page to the list of meta and inline tags Google Search understands.
• August 29:
  • Added the full list of supported academic values for educationalLevel in the Learning video structured data documentation.
  • Clarified how to specify multiple types in Local Business structured data. If you have multiple types, specify them in an array (additionalType isn’t supported).
• August 24:
  • Added content guidelines to the Education Q&A structured data documentation.
  • Removed references to the deprecated International Targeting report in Search Console. The recommendations described in our documentation about managing multiregional sites and localized versions of your pages remain relevant.
• August 22: Updated the Article structured data documentation to reflect that Article markup is open to all types of pages (as announced in 2020 with the page experience update).
• August 11: Removed our documentation about rich-media files, such as Silverlight and Flash. Turns out it’s not 2005 anymore.
• August 10:
  • Added the gtin12 property to the Product structured data documentation. This has been supported; it’s a documentation change only. Clarified that you can use the generic gtin property for all GTINs, but we recommend that you use the most specific one if possible.
  • Updated the dynamic rendering documentation to explain that this isn’t a recommended solution, and is a workaround if you have no other choice. Instead we recommend server-side rendering, static rendering, or client-side rendering with hydration.
• August 9: Added best practices for feeds to the Follow feature documentation. We recommend that you:
  • Use a descriptive title for your RSS feed, just like you would for a web page.
  • For multiple feeds, we recommend that you use a single feed. Both methods are still supported, but we clarified that a single feed is easier for you to maintain and for users to subscribe to your feed.
• August 8: Clarified that we don’t support the URL form for GTINs in Product structured data. Make sure to use the numerical GTIN form.
• August 5: Added documentation about the pros and cons enhancement for editorial product review pages.

July 2022

• July 19: Standardized how we refer to headings and title text on the page. Previously we used the word headline, but that can be confusing in other languages.
• July 13: Updated the User Agent string for AdsBot Mobile Web. If you hardcoded the old value in your code, update the string to avoid potential bugs.
• July 7: Added a new page for Google Search ranking updates. This is not new information; it’s a compiled list of things we’ve previously confirmed on our blog or on Twitter.
• July 6: Reorganized the navigational structure to be based on topic instead of level. Removed duplicate guides that were aimed at basic or beginner level, as these documents were duplicating guidance already explained in the SEO Starter Guide.
• July 4: Clarified that you must add three courses to be eligible for the Course rich result. This is not a new requirement; it was previously only documented in the Carousel documentation.

June 2022

• June 30: Added information about using JavaScript to inject canonical link tags.
• June 23: Added information about how many bytes of textual content, such as HTML, Googlebot will crawl. For FAQs on the matter, check out our blog post.
• June 22: Updated the Job Posting documentation to specify that when you use the jobLocation property, you must also include the addressCountry property.
• June 17: Clarified that product rich results support pages that focus on a single product, and that includes product variants where each product variant has a distinct URL.
• June 10: Documented new Vary: Cookie support for signed exchanges.
• June 3: Added a best practice for script or language mismatches in titles. For <title> elements, use the same script and language as the page’s primary content.
• June 1:
  • Added new author markup best practices to the Article structured data documentation.
  • Added new documentation about Learning Video structured data.

May 2022

• May 31: Removed the Job training structured data documentation. We initially tested this markup with a group of site owners, and ultimately found that it wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale. This change doesn’t affect any other features that may use Job training markup. You can leave the markup on your site so that search engines can better understand your web page.
• May 22: Added transparency guidelines for video thumbnails. Ensure that at least 80% of your thumbnail pixels have little or no transparency to enable video indexing.

• May 10:
  • Added new Education Q&A documentation.
  • Added new documentation about using valid page metadata.
  • Added new troubleshooting tip about headlines in the title link documentation.
• May 6: Removed the deprecated tags and attributes from the Image and Video sitemaps documentation. For more information, refer to our announcement about the deprecation.

April 2022

• April 14: Consolidated our How Search Works documentation for site owners by merging the basic, beginner, and advanced versions into one central document. While we cleaned up the language slightly, we haven’t added anything new to the How Search Works documentation.

March 2022

• March 23: Added two more best practices when writing high quality product reviews for reviews comparing multiple products.
• March 17: Added a section to the SafeSearch documentation about allowing Google to fetch your video content files.

February 2022

• February 25: Removed a reference to the Crawl Stats report in the signed exchange documentation. This is no longer relevant as of the update from November 4.
• February 11: Added link to SXG Validator Chrome extension in the signed exchange documentation.

January 2022

• January 28: Merged our SafeSearch documentation into one new document. We expanded on how SafeSearch works and added a troubleshooting section. The guidance remains the same: add the rating meta tag to explicit pages and group explicit content in a separate location on your site.
• January 21: Added a new robots meta tag, indexifembedded, to the robots meta tag documentation. Learn more about the new tag in our blog post.
• January 20: Added a note describing how to specify Car markup and still have Product review snippet feature eligibility.
• January 18: Removed guidance about specifying a range for the cookTime, prepTime, and totalTime properties in the Recipe documentation. Currently, the only supported method is an exact time; time ranges aren’t supported. If you’re currently specifying a time range and you’d like Google to better understand your time values, we recommend updating that value in your structured data to a single value (for example, "cookTime": "PT30M").