SEO News You Can Use: Google is Testing Search Results Without URLs

Google has started testing search results that don’t include URLs. Only the website name is displayed.

Google has appeared to be headed in this direction for the last few months now, ever since the introduction of breadcrumbs a few months back. But, as is often the case with Google, there is no clear answer yet, but the king of all search engines has offered hints.

Some searchers have reported seeing search results that don’t display URLs, not even showing the domain name.

Will this have a major impact on SEO? Probably not, but it certainly affects a person’s user experience. One benefit of showing a URL is that it helps to exclude click-throughs to companies that aren’t legitimate. Websites with URLs that don’t necessarily match your search queries can be avoided if you see the URL.

Right now, this appears to be affecting very few users, so it’s only in the testing stages. But what you all should be monitoring is how the removal of URLs from search queries affects your company’s click-through rates. Will you see lower click-through rates because your URL isn’t displayed?

More SEO News You Can Use

Google Showing ‘Search By Photos’ Mobile Option: Google has started showing a new mobile option for specific local verticals for its “search by photos” box. It’s unclear whether this is just a test right now or something that will be used everywhere going forward.

Google Shopping to Compete with Amazon: Google announced on Thursday that it’s new personalized shopping destination is now live in the United States. It’s a revamped Google Shopping experience that could give Amazon more competition.

Google Announces Two New Video Reports; Yoast Adds Plugin: Google announced last week that it has added two new video reports within Google Search Console that will help you gauge how well your videos are performing in Google Search and also allow you to fix issues with how your videos are displaying. Yoast responded by adding a new Video SEO WordPress plugin you can get for Google’s new video reporting.

Google Says to Follow its Structured Data Requirements: To ensure content is eligible to be displayed as a rich result, Google says you need to follow its structured data requirements.

Moz Launches Domain Analysis SEO Tool: On Wednesday, Moz launched a free SEO metrics tool called Domain Analysis. It provides an overview of SEO metrics for any domain but doesn’t offer the depth of data that is available to you via the paid versions of Moz tools.

BrightEdge to Launch New Autopilot SEO Product: BrightEdge believes it has a product that will deliver “self-driving SEO” to allow you more time to work on creative content. The product is supposed to fully automate key SEO tasks.

Interesting Data From Google My Business Study: How does Google Maps affect local search results? How important is a Google My Business listing? This study first analyzed 45,000 businesses across 36 industries, but this takes a narrower approach of analyzing seven industries that aren’t likely to have a physical location listing.

HTML Study Helps With Technical SEO Audit: An HTML study from Advanced Web Ranking based on about 8 million index pages gathered from top 20 Google results for more than 30 million keywords could help you with your technical SEO audits and questions.

How an Engine Oil Blog Grew Traffic by 650%: Moz.com released an interesting case study article last week about how an engine oil blog grew its organic traffic by a whopping 650%. What, you don’t like to read blogs about engine oil?

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