Fabian Schlup, a software engineer at Google offered an interesting recap of this years Google I/O which was held a couple weeks ago. You can read Fabian’s full post in the Google Developers Blog.
Our summary of Google’s summary is as follows:
1. Rich cards
Rich Cards are Google’s latest version of its enhanced mobile friendly search results that from a site owners point of view can lead to more visitors and business if you follow the Rich Card protocol. Rich cards are a new search result format building on the concept of rich snippets, using schema.org structured markup to display content in a more engaging and visual format. Google believes that this approach provides the mobile Google searcher a better user experience.
2. New Search Console reports
Per Google – “We launched a new report in Search Console to help developers confirm that their rich card markup is valid. In the report we highlight “enhanceable cards,” which are cards that can benefit from marking up more fields.”
On WebProNews we also wrote about Google’s launch of ‘Property Sets’ within their Search Console, allowing webmasters to combine apps and sites within a single group in order to monitor overall clicks and impressions within a single report. It will be rolling out to all users over the next couple of days. This is a great feature for those that have many subdomains as well.
3. Real-time indexing
Per Google – “Instead of waiting for content to be crawled and indexed, publishers will be able to use the Google Indexing API to trigger the indexing of their content in real time.”
On WebProNews we wrote about the Google Search API getting a few updates:
There have been a handful of updates to the Search Console API (formerly the Webmaster Tools API). This is the API that lets you add sites to a Search Console account, retrieve data and diagnostics, and submit sitemaps. One update is the addition of pagination in Search Analytics. You can request over 5000 rows of data for your site without having to iterate through filters. Additionally, crawl errors now include “linked from” info from the start.
Google announced that they have provided an update on their use of AMP, an open source effort to speed up the mobile web. In a WebProNews article we quoted Google News engineering director Maricia Scott, “Our tests have shown that AMP documents load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than the equivalent non-amp’ed result. In many cases these stories will load instantly.”
5. New and improved Structured Data Testing Tool
Now tightly integrated with the DevSite Search Gallery and the new Search Preview service.
6. New Stuff For App Indexing
It’s migrating to Firebase, Google’s unified developer platform. Watch the session here.
7. App streaming
Per Google – “App streaming is a new way for Android users to try out games without having to download and install the app — and it’s already available in Google Search. Check out the session to learn more.”
8. Revamped documentation
Google is now organizing developer documentation around topical guides to make it easier to follow!