Latest documentation updates

2023

December 2023

• December 19: Further clarified how Google handles sites with a high proportion of non-consensual explicit imagery in our spam policies and ranking systems guide.
• December 18: Added transcript of December 2023 Google SEO Office Hours.
• December 14: Updated the Discussion Forum and Q&A page documentation to explicitly clarify that author URLs are recommended.
• December 13: Updated the Organization documentation to explain that telephone and email can be specified at the Organization level besides contactPoint.
• December 12: Added information about course info availability.
• December 4: Added vacation rental structured data documentation.
• December 1: Removed mentions of the Mobile Friendly Test and the Mobile Usability report throughout our documentation, as they are going away.

November 2023

• November 29: Add new Organization documentation, which merges the Logo documentation and includes more organizational information (such as contact info, legal name, and business identifiers).
• November 27: Added profile page structured data documentation, discussion forum structured data documentation, and expanded recommendations for Q&A page structured data documentation.
• 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.

2022

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").

2021

December 2021

• December 16: Converted our old blog post about intrusive interstitials into guidelines. There are no substantial changes compared to what we have in the blog post.
• December 1: Added Write high quality product reviews to bring together advice from several blog posts.

November 2021

• November 18: Explained how to opt out of Google Read Aloud and clarified the crawling behavior of the user agent.
• November 17:
  • Added an interactive checklist that suggests readings based on the profile users select.
  • Added documentation about translated results and how to enable your ad network to work with translation-related Google Search features.
• November 16: Added a guideline about logos and white backgrounds.
• November 10:
  • Updated Logo documentation to support new flexibility in using the ImageObject type to specify an organization logo.
  • Published the list of Googlebot IP addresses.
• November 4: Removed the recommendation to verify that SXGs are well-formed from the signed exchange documentation. Added a note that Google will automatically retry without an SXG Accept header in these cases.
• November 4: Updated the page experience documentation to include the upcoming desktop rollout.
• November 2: Added a recommendation about creating a dedicated page for each video to the Video best practices.

October 2021

• October 28: Removed the following structured data fields from documentation, since they are unused by Google Search and Rich Result Test doesn't flag warnings for them:
  • HowTo: description.
  • QAPage: mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.author, mainEntity.dateCreated, mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.dateCreated, mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.author, mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.dateCreated, and mainEntity.author .
  • SpecialAnnouncement: provider, audience, serviceType, address, and category.
• October 15: Added a requirement that the author.name field in Review snippets must be less than 100 characters to be eligible for use in Search features.
• October 13: Clarified that VideoGame is not a valid node type for Software Apps. To make sure that your Software App is still eligible for a rich result appearance, co-type the VideoGame type with another supported type.
• October 8: Updated our documentation about titles and snippets in Google Search results. There are now two separate documents that explain each of these search result features:
  • Control your title links in search results: Created a new page to describe how to control title links in search results. Introduced a new term, title link, for the title of a search result on Google Search and other properties to help clarify when we mean the title link in search results versus a <title> element on a web page. Added examples of how Google may adjust title links. There aren't any changes to the best practices for writing descriptive <title> elements.
  • Control your snippets in search results: Created a new page to describe how to control snippets in search results. The updates were minimal structural updates; there aren't any changes to the guidelines themselves.

September 2021

• September 27: Added new documentation on Best practices for ecommerce sites in Google Search.
• September 1: Added documentation about the beta Follow feature and your website.

August 2021

• August 11: Added a new case study about how large images in Discover improve CTR and increase visits to publisher sites.
• August 9: The Schema Markup Validator has stabilized, and Google now redirects the Structured Data Testing Tool to a landing page to help you select the right tool.
• August 6: Added a new recommended author.url property to the Article structured data documentation. The url property helps Google disambiguate the correct author of the article.

July 2021

• July 30: Added technical, content, and quality guidelines to the Math solver guidelines and removed solution page markup instructions to make it easier for site owners to get their math solver site on Search. It is fine to remove any existing solution page markup.
• July 29: Added a new case study about how MX Player boosted organic traffic 3x by maximizing video discoverability on Google.
• July 28:
  • Removed guidance about hosting multiple factchecks per page. To be eligible for the single fact check rich result, a page must only have one ClaimReview element.
  • Added details about signed exchange cache lifetime.
• July 26: Added a requirement that priceRange fields in Local business must be less than 100 characters to be eligible for use in Search features.
• July 22:
  • Added example use cases for the FAQ guideline about hidden content on the page. The user must be able to access the answer on the page, and clicking an expandable section to view the answer is a valid use case.
  • Removed the @id property from the Local business documentation. The url property alone is a sufficient identifier to understand the local business.
• July 21: Added a set of new documentation about Google search operators.
• July 13: Added a new editorial guideline to the JobPosting documentation. Added a new optional property for directApply.

June 2021

• June 29: Significantly expanded our redirects guide with the different kinds of redirects and their effects on Google Search.
• June 25: Added a page that details how different HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect crawling and indexing.
• June 18: Based on feedback we've received from Search Central Product Experts and through the feedback tool, we've made several updates to our documentation:
  • Simplified the introduction page to make it clearer what is robots.txt and what is its intended use.
  • Expanded the instructions about creating and updating robots.txt files.
  • Removed redundant sections from our documentation about how Google handles robots.txt.
  • Simplified sentences across all robots.txt documentation in English. This helps with localization.
  • Removed redundant documentation about how to build, test, and release structured data. Each feature has guidance about this, embedded directly into each guide (for example, the Video structured data guide).
  • Improved the troubleshooting sections across all structured data feature guides (for example, the Product structured data guide).
  • Added more beginner-friendly information about how to get started with structured data.
• June 15: Updated the timeline in the page experience documentation. The page experience update is now slowly rolling out to all users. It will be complete by the end of August 2021.
• June 11:
  • Clarified the Sitelinks search box documentation to explain the more standard and explicit form for specifying the search box urlTemplate. Google will still accept the shorthand form as noted.
  • Added a new optional property to the Dataset documentation: funder.
• June 10: Deprecated the critic review documentation. We initially tested critic review markup with a group of site owners, and ultimately found that it wasn't useful for the ecosystem at scale. This deprecation doesn't affect any other features on Google Search that use review markup. You can leave the markup on your site so that search engines can better understand your web page.
• June 8: Added BackOrder as an allowed value for the availability property in Product structured data.
• June 4: Added gtin as an allowed identifier and clarified how to correctly use isbn for Product structured data.
• June 3: Added support for the inLanguage property to the Math solvers documentation.
• June 1:
  • Modified the Math Solver developer documentation to add six new problem types.
  • Updated the DuplexWeb user agent (in Overview of Google crawlers) to use a more recent system and Chrome version.

May 2021

• May 18:
  • Added documentation for SeekToAction structured data, which is an alternative way to participate in the key moments feature. Clip structured data is now out of beta, and available to be used by any site.
  • Modified the JobPosting region availability list to include Austria and Denmark.
• May 6: Modified the publisher logo requirements of AMP Article structured data to more accurately reflect that we understand both raw URLs as well as ImageObject markup.

April 2021

• April 19: Added new documentation for how to Get started with signed exchanges on Google Search. Learn more about the signed exchange (SXG) announcement in our blog post.
• April 8: Added a new quality guideline to the Discover documentation. Discover focuses on interest-based feeds (for example, articles and videos), and filters out content that might confuse readers (for example, Discover might not recommend job applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, or satirical content that's removed from its original context).
• April 7: Updated the Video structured data documentation to state that the thumbnailUrl property must use one of the supported Google Images file formats. Previously, the documentation didn't include WebP and SVG.
• April 1: Clarified the key moments feature. Google Search tries to automatically detect the segments in your video and show key moments to users, without any effort on your part. Alternatively, there are two ways that you can manually tell Google which timestamp and label to use: Clip structured data and updating the description of a YouTube video.

March 2021

• March 29: Removed the interest form for the Key moments feature. The feature remains in development with a select group of providers, but the program is no longer accepting submissions.
• March 25: Added new structured data documentation for practice problems and math solvers.
• March 24:
  • Based on user feedback, we added examples for the property experienceRequirements.monthsOfExperience in the JobPosting structured data documentation.
  • Added a new optional property to the Dataset documentation: isAccessibleForFree.
• March 17: Updated the video best practices to more clearly emphasize the important guidelines. Removed duplicate content and updated the screenshots.
• March 16: Based on user feedback, we added more examples for the max-snippet robots meta rule, and also specified for each tag what Google's default behavior is when the tags are omitted.
• March 11: Added new beta properties to the JobPosting structured data documentation. You may not see any appearance or effect in Google Search right away, as we are still developing how we are using this information.
  • educationRequirements.credentialCategory
  • experienceRequirements
  • experienceRequirements.monthsOfExperience
  • experienceInPlaceOfEducation
• March 8: Added the JP_E-CODE value as an accepted value for the PropertyValue property in the Book documentation.
• March 1: Removed instructions for submitting sitemaps on Google Sites from the sitemap guide. Google Sites doesn't create a sitemap for sites anymore.

February 2021

• February 8: Removed the page about joining the 3D and AR Early Adopters Program. The feature remains in development with a select group of providers, but the program is no longer accepting submissions.
• February 2: Removed the documentation for cross-language search results. This page was specific to an experimental approach with a small group of providers, and we're removing the page because it's obsolete.

January 2021

• January 28: Updated the Event structured data documentation to state that the offers.priceCurrency property requires an ISO 4217 currency code.
• January 22: Added documentation for the price drop enhancement for product rich results.
• January 20: Updated the Job Training documentation to clarify that the appearance isn't available on Google Search right now.
• January 5: Updated the list of recommended hreflang checker tools and removed those that don't work anymore.

2020

December 2020

• December 4: Migrated the following guides from the Search Console Help Center (the content hasn't changed):
  • Large site owner's guide to managing your crawl budget
  • Web hosting services
  • Keep redacted information out of Google Search
  • Best practices for bloggers
  • Soft 404 errors

November 2020

• November 19: Migrated the Google Webmaster blogs to the new Google Search Central Blog.
• November 16: Added a new guide about how to join the Google Search Central office hours.
• November 12:
  • Added a new guideline for STEM-education related Q&A pages.
  • Added information about Googlebot's ability to crawl through HTTP/2 to the Googlebot help page.
• November 11: Published a redesign of the entire site. Reorganized the navigation to account for a migration of over 100 new pages from the Search Console Help Center. The notable additions include:
  • Home page: Expanded the focus to include our entire audience, not just web developers.
  • Events landing page: Get an overview of upcoming events, including events that we host and attend as speakers.
  • What's new on Google Search Central: Check out the latest updates on Google Search, including changes to our blog, documentation, new Search events, YouTube videos, and podcast episodes.
  • Blog landing page: Added a new home page for our blog, previously known as the Google Webmaster Central blog. We plan to move archived posts soon.
  • Help landing page: Updated to include all of our help resources. Refreshed and simplified the Webmaster FAQ into 4 pages:
    • Crawling and indexing FAQ
    • Site position FAQ
    • Site appearance FAQ
    • Removing content from Google FAQ
  • Documentation landing page: Get an overview of the different learning paths in our documentation, including new Quickstart guides, beginner SEO guides, and advanced SEO guides.
  • Quickstart guides: A new set of guides for those that don't have much time to manage their site.
  • Beginner SEO guides: A new set of guides for beginners who want to learn about SEO. New pages include: Beginners guide to Search Console.
  • Advanced SEO guides: A new set of guides for advanced SEO topics. Most of the pages previously existed in the Search Console Help Center. New pages include:
    • Advanced guide to Search Console
    • Overview of Search Appearance topics
    • Block access to your content
    • Overview of international and multilingual site topics
    • What is a site move
    • Move a site without URL changes
    • Move a site with URL changes
• November 10: Updated the timeline information for the upcoming page experience ranking change. The changes are planned to go live in May 2021.

October 2020

• October 30:
  • Updated the librarySystem additionalProperty.value property in the Book documentation, replacing the national value with the government value.
  • Updated the timeline for data-vocabulary.org support on intro to structured data and breadcrumb page. As of January 29, 2021, data-vocabulary.org markup will no longer be eligible for Google rich result features. To be eligible after January 29, 2021, you need to replace data-vocabulary.org markup with schema.org markup. Learn more about sunsetting support for data-vocabulary.
• October 29: Added image ratio specifications to the hiringOrganization.logo property and the Logo is incorrect troubleshooting section.
• October 22: Changed the API requirement for package tracking documentation to state that we only accept POST requests.
• October 6: Added new examples of Web Stories, best practices for creating Web Stories, and Web Story content policy.

September 2020

• September 22: Added support for shippingDetails to the Product structured data documentation.
• September 21: Added new episodes about Indexing (JavaScript) comments and Google's Honest Results Policy to the Search Off the Record podcast page.
• September 18: Updated the fact check guidelines to include all relevant eligibility guidelines in one place (some guidelines were previously mentioned only in the Publisher Center article about fact-checked content). Added the following new guidelines:
  • You must have a corrections policy or have a mechanism for users to report errors.
  • Websites for political entities (such as campaigns, parties, or elected officials) aren't eligible for this feature.
  • You must clearly attribute the specific claim that you're assessing to a distinct origin (separate from your website), whether it's another website, public statement, social media, or other traceable source.
• September 15:
  • Added support for regionsAllowed in the Video documentation. Added Microdata examples.
  • Updated the EmployerAggregateRating and Review snippet documentation to clarify that bestRating and worstRating are recommended if you want to specify a different scale than the default 5-point system.

August 2020

• August 31: Updated the Image License documentation to state that the Licensable badge is now out of beta.
• August 27: Clarified merging of user-agent groups in the file robots.txt documentation.
• August 26: Added new documentation about the Home activities rich result.
• August 21: Added section to the Fix Search-related JavaScript problems guide to explain how to deal with non-HTTP network connections.
• August 10: Clarified that there are different Article requirements for AMP and non-AMP pages. Added an example of a non-AMP page with Article structured data.
• August 5: Clarified in all relevant documentation that images referenced in structured data must be in one of the image file formats that are supported by Google Images.
• August 3:
  • Added a new episode about Indexing (JavaScript) comments to the Search Off the Record podcast page.
  • Added the optional jobBenefits and industry properties to the Estimated salary documentation, to match the existing requirements in the Rich Results Test.

July 2020

• July 24: Added new episodes to the Search Off the Record podcast page.
• July 23: Clarified that Google Search is still working on way to display multiple fact checks for a single page, and that you may not see a rich result that features multiple fact checks in Google Search right away.
• July 21: Added a new optional property to the Dataset documentation, measurementTechnique, and clarified that the name property should be unique for distinct datasets.
• July 20: Added the reviewCount property to the EmployerAggregateRating documentation, to match the existing requirements in the Rich Results Test. Either reviewCount or ratingCount is required.
• July 16:
  • Updated the Book documentation to explain how select book providers can provide a feed of data to Google with the structured data schema.
  • Clarified that product rich results only support pages that are about a single product, not category pages or lists.
  • Based on Lighthouse recommendations, specified what small font size means on the Common mistakes page of the Mobile SEO guidelines.
• July 8: Clarified that Google Search understands when you specify multiple items on a page with structured data, whether you nest the items or specify each item individually.
• July 1: Clarified in the AMP logo guidelines in the Article documentation that the logo can be in any format supported by Google Images.

June 2020

• June 30: Added more examples to the Carousel documentation, and clarified the supported types and how to add them.
• June 23: Added a note to differentiate between guidelines applicable to Article AMP logo guidelines and generic Logo guidelines.
• June 19: Added a contentUrl requirement to the Image License documentation to make it clear that the feature needs a specific image URL to apply the license to.
• June 16: Added native lazy-loading to the lazy-loading guide.
• June 15: Added monitoring rich results video and more detailed information on using Search Console to monitor rich results to structured data reference pages (for example Product, Recipe, FAQ).
• June 12: Added .webp, too, to the list of supported image file formats for Logo structured data.
• June 10: Added .svg to the list of supported image file formats for Logo structured data.
• June 8: Clarified that the recognized values for an applicationCategory on a Software App are of type Text.
• June 4: Clarified in the Sitelinks search box documentation that the search query parameter key can be any string permitted by RFC 3986; it doesn't have to be q.

May 2020

• May 28: Added new documentation that explains page experience in Google Search results.
• May 27: Updated the Job training developer documentation to require the occupationalCategory property, recommend the description property, and remove the requirement of the url property. Also updated the educationalProgramMode and financialAidEligible fields to have more precise value specifications.
• May 19: Added new guidance on how to enable Web Stories on Google.
• May 15: Added a note to the Product structured data documentation about how to be eligible for the Google Shopping tab. Learn more about the data and eligibility requirements.
• May 12: Extended the JavaScript SEO basics guide to include guidance on JavaScript-generated links, History API instead of fragment URLs, and avoiding soft 404 errors.
• May 11:
  • Added guidance on how to reduce the Googlebot crawl rate.
  • Removed the following documentation that has been deprecated since June 2019:
    • Social Profile structured data: We now automatically discover social profiles to include in Google knowledge panels. If you're verified as an official representative, you can suggest a change directly. Learn more at Update your Google knowledge panel.
    • Corporate Contact structured data: We now automatically discover corporate contact information to include in Google knowledge panels. If you're verified as an official representative of a Google knowledge panel, you can suggest a change directly. Learn more at Update your Google knowledge panel.
    • Place Actions structured data: Instead, scheduling providers can use the Maps Booking API. Google Search continues to support existing partners that added Place Action structured data prior to June 17, 2019.
• May 7:
  • The Rich Result Test now supports Article structured data on AMP pages. Removed the following recommended fields from the documentation because we no longer need these signals: description, publisher.logo.height, publisher.logo.width.
  • Added a video to the Submit URLs guide that explains what a sitemap is, whether you need one or not, and how to submit a sitemap and track its status using Search Console.
  • Removed the page about joining the Mini-apps Early Adopters Program. The program is no longer accepting submissions.
• May 6: Added information about how to test robots.txt markup.
• May 5:
  • Updated the Job posting content policies to have a clear structure and language that describes what Google will enforce. Added the following new policies:
    • Irrelevant content
    • Incomplete content
    • We don't allow job postings on behalf of an organization or company without authorization.
    • Advertisements disguised as a job posting
  • Updated SpecialAnnouncement structured data to include information on how to use Search Console to troubleshoot markup and analyze the rich result performance.
  • Podcasts on Google information has migrated to the new Podcasts Manager help center. Visit the help center to learn how to get your podcast on Google.
• May 1: Updated the Indexing API documentation to include the <meta name="robots" content="noindex" /> tag as an option for removing a URL.

April 2020

• April 30:
  • Added a note to explain that it isn't reliable to use cached links for debugging purposes. Instead, use the URL Inspection Tool because it has the a most up-to-date version of your page. The note was added to the general debugging guide, JavaScript debugging guide, and the structured data debugging guide.
  • Updated the Breadcrumb structured data documentation to have some explanatory text on how breadcrumbs relate to URL paths.
• April 27: Updated the Job training structured data documentation to require 2-letter country codes for provider addresses.
• April 23: Added missing meta description issue to the list of error messages in the mobile-first indexing best practices.
• April 22: Updated the Paywalled content structured data documentation to include a list of supported types.
• April 20: Added COVID-19 resources for sites from Google Search and Best practices for education sites
• April 16:
  • Added a new example and optional properties to support COVID-19 announcements about government benefits:
    • governmentBenefitsInfo
    • governmentBenefitsInfo.audience
    • governmentBenefitsInfo.audience.name
    • governmentBenefitsInfo.name
    • governmentBenefitsInfo.provider
    • governmentBenefitsInfo.provider.name
    • governmentBenefitsInfo.serviceType
    • governmentBenefitsInfo.url
  • Updated the JobPosting structured data documentation to highlight markup for work from home jobs. Added a screenshot of the feature in Google Search, a code example, and a banner at the top of the documentation.
• April 14: Added optional properties to the Event structured data documentation: organizer, organizer.name, organizer.url.
• April 10: Updated the COVID-19 announcements documentation. The Rich Results Test now supports SpecialAnnouncements.
• April 8:
  • Added a note to COVID-19 announcements documentation to clarify that businesses should use LocalBusiness markup or Google My Business to update store hours and post updates.
  • Added a new case study that showcases how Saramin increased organic Search traffic 2x by investing in SEO.
• April 7: Updated the Event structured data documentation to state that the timezone UTC/GMT offset is required for online events, since there is no location information that Google can use to understand when the event starts.
• April 3:
  • Removed the caution note about the Structured Data Testing Tool from the COVID-19 announcements documentation. The Structured Data Testing Tool now supports announcementLocation. Added a new screenshot of an announcement in Search results. Added a new example that shows a page with multiple announcements, and added Microdata examples.
  • Added new guidance on how to add structured data with JavaScript.
• April 2: Added new guidance on how to submit COVID-19 announcements in Search Console. Added information on how to sign up for the technical support group. At first, we'll be accepting only national government domains and US state level agencies. For more information about the group, read our announcement.

March 2020

• March 31: Added new guidance for how to add structured data to COVID-19 announcements. This feature is still under development, and you may see changes in requirements, guidelines, and how the feature appears in Google Search.
• March 26: Added new guidance for how to pause your online business.
• March 24:
  • In the Estimated Salary documentation, replaced the unitText property with the duration property. Starting March 24, 2020, we updated the documentation to require duration instead of unitText. While we continue to support unitText, we require duration moving forward. We recommend that you switch over to using duration, if possible.
  • Updated the Google Podcasts brand assets to include localized Google Podcasts badges in 49 languages.
• March 23: Added a new recommended field to the Package tracking developer documentation: CanReschedule.
• March 20:
  • Added the Latest updates page (this page), which includes the major updates made to the Google Search developer documentation in March 2020.
  • Added a new recommendation to the JavaScript best practices about using long-lived caching to avoid caching issues with Googlebot. Added a new step about using content fingerprinting to the JavaScript troubleshooting documentation.
  • Added a note to the Event structured data documentation about the new optional properties that were added on March 16-17, 2020. The Rich Results Test now supports the new properties.
• March 17:
  • Added optional properties to the Event structured data documentation: eventAttendanceMode, VirtualLocation type for location, location.url for online events. For more information about this change, check out our blog post.
  • Added general troubleshooting info to the Sitelinks search box documentation. Clarified that while Google Search may automatically display a search box scoped to your website, it's still helpful to explicitly provide information by adding WebSite structured data, which can help Google better understand your site.
  • In the Job training developer documentation, removed the hasCredential property from the list of recommended properties for EducationalOccupationalProgram. This is because hasCredential is only recommended for the Organization type on schema.org, not EducationalOccupationalProgram.
• March 16: Added optional properties to the Event structured data documentation: eventStatus and previousStartDate. For more information about this change, check out our blog post.
• March 5:
  • In the Product structured data documentation, clarified that one of the following properties is required: review, aggregateRating, offers. Changed the expected type for brand to be Brand or Organization (Thing is still accepted).
  • Added new recommended fields to the Package tracking developer documentation: TimestampEvent and LocationEvent.
• March 3: Added hostload issues to the list of error messages in the mobile-first indexing best practices.