Are you up to date with the most recent updates and modifications to Google Search Documentation? Get essential details for every change or enhancement made to documentation in 2024.
Last Updated Jan. 21, 2024 5:11 pm PST | By Luke Ross
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✔ Up to Date: January 21, 2024
January
Clarifying primary source of snippets
➢ January 5, 2024 – Google clarified in documentation about snippets that the primary source of the snippet is the page content itself. The previous wording incorrectly implied that structured data and the meta description HTML element are the primary sources for snippets.
Switching @ ID references to use hashtags
➢ January 9, 2024 – Switched all structured data code examples that use in-page @id references to use hashtags instead. For example, the clips example in recipe documentation. According to Google, It’s a schema best practice to use hashtags as resolvable in-page node identifiers in RDF, and examples should follow best practices.
*However, existing IDs don’t need to change if still using in-page identifiers.
Adding support for suggestedAge to Product
➢ January 9, 2024 – Google added support for the suggestedAge property as an alternative to suggestedMaxAge and suggestedMinAge. Clarified the list of possible values for age ranges in the Product structured data documentation. With an aim to make it easier and more flexible for people to specify age ranges for a product. Also, the previous wording didn’t map well to the Merchant Center documentation about product age ranges.
More accessible anchor texts
➢ January 10, 2024 – To make documentation more accessible, Google updated various anchor texts so they’re more descriptive of the target page. Depending on the settings of a screen reader, the user may jump from link to link on a page, so each anchor text on a page should be descriptive, even without the surrounding context.
By Luke Ross, SEO Gazette LLC
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