URL parameter tool
John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, recently disclosed a misconception about the URL parameter tool which is in Search Console. He clears that it does not actually remove URLs.
This point was raised on YouTube in a recent Google Webmaster Central hangout whether the URL parameter tool still works. Though Google has not transported from the classic version of the URL parameter tool to the new version of Search Console, yet it’s available in the new Search Console, and the parameter tool is still effective.
Another follow-up question was raised by one of the site owners during a session that they added a parameter to remove URL, but the change was not visible in search results.
Mueller said that,
“The URL parameter handling tool would not remove URLs from the search results. It’s really only to refine the crawling of URLs.
So it’s not something where we would say you add this parameter to that tool and then suddenly all those pages disappear from search results.
It’s more that, over time, we would crawl those URLs less and over time, they would drop out from the search results, but it wouldn’t be any immediate change there.”
Google to roll out Favicons to all the search results soon
At I/O 2019 keynote, Google has projected major announcements regarding 3D AR objects, podcast indexing, and many more. After that, the latest which it announced is about a redesign for mobile search by adding site favicon to each card.
What is Favicons?
Favicon is an icon associated with a specific website that displays in the address bar of an accessing browser site. Simply it is also known as URL icons, website icons, etc.
The aim of the visual redesign and addition of favicons is to guide users through the information available on the web.
“With this new design, a website’s branding can be front and center, helping you better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what you’re looking for.”
Till now the website name and path appears underneath the main page title, but the redesign of the page looks like the first line at the top of the card seems black instead of green. Google also ads the site favicons to the top-left corner with the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) lightning bolt to the right.
Advertising also indeed gets a similar design along with the black URL.
Google says that the site icon plays a significant part in “anchoring each result” and supports users to scan the page of results and decide to explore next.
The inclusion of Google Search favicons and the card redesign will be first updated to mobile presume both Android and iOS Search apps in next few days with the company implying it will be soon updated to the desktop web.
