Backlink Breaker - Coverage Report Down, Images Up, and Wordpress AMP Story Support

We did it. Made it to episode 2. I’d like to take this moment to pat myself on the back for not giving up on this series.

The News

Google Search Console Coverage report has been out of operation for over 16 days, Google paused the report because of a larger set of indexing issues. While those issues should be fixed, the reports are still down.

According a report from SEOClarity, Google is now featuring images much more prominently in search results. The research states that more than one third of all keywords now contain images. Time to brush up on those image optimization skills... or at least include quality, topical images with your content and correctly implemented alt image tags.

Google confirmed that AJAX/XHR calls consume crawl budget. Only something to consider if you have a really, really large site.

Moz reported some interesting survey data about modern web search habits.

• 77% of respondents used Google over 3 times a day to search for things online.

• 72% of respondents only click on organic results

• 7% of respondents browse past the first page of results when searching

• 75% of respondents click on the first or second result

My professional interpretation of these findings: Google good. Organic good. First page good. First or second result on Google Organic = REALLY good.

A new feature launched in Google My Business allows you to publish customer testimonials as GMB posts. It’s only available in certain countries right now, and Google won’t tell us which ones. However, this will be really cool once it goes global, and a great way to stand out in local results.

Google has delivered AMP Stories features to Wordpress publishers with the latest AMP plugin update. This provides all the nice interactive formats offered up by AMP Stories in Wordpress. Great way for content marketers to get crazy without wasting development time.