SEO News Roundup: Chrome Non-HTTPS Sites To Be Marked As ‘Not Secure’

Discover the latest SEO news and trends, including non-HTTPS sites to be marked as ‘not secure’.

Non-HTTPS Sites To Be Marked As ‘Not Secure’ In Chrome

As of July 2018, Google will be determining non-HTTPS sites in Chrome as ‘not secure’.

The search engine giant recently announced the scheduled rollout of its Speed Update in July, which will be followed by the marking of insecure sites.

This process is set to correlate with the Chrome 68 release. Webmasters were already encouraged to make the move from HTTP to HTTPS before October 2017, which coincided with the Chrome 62 release.

AMP Stories Craze Drives Engagement

On 13^th February, Google released a new “visually rich content format designed to provide publishers with new storytelling options for the mobile web” – AMP Stories.

A lot of users may associate these with Stories on Instagram or Snapchat. But, the point of AMP Stories is to present content in different ways across the web, thus attempting to provide a seamless user experience.

Google released AMP Stories to publishers for feedback. According to Search Engine Land writer Greg Sterling: “Both Hearst and The Washington Post were very enthusiastic. They told me that Google had taken a highly consultative approach from the beginning.”

Google still warns webmasters that AMP Stories are experimental.

Timestamp Accuracy In Search Results

Getting the date right can be hard for Google. Team member Danny Sullivan puts this down to a couple of reasons:

• Publisher error (manual)
• Timezone differences

He tweeted saying:

Sometimes we can’t control it. For example, a Miami publication had the right date and time but wrong timezone, making the story seem five hours earlier than when it published. Hard for us to fix on our end.

Barry Schwartz has his own opinions about Google getting timestamps correct…

I really want Google to institute a date penalty for news or blog stories. If you are going to post stories on your website where the date is relevant, be it news, advice, tips, etc – they should all be dated and date din a way that Google can understand.

What do you think?

Whiteboard Friday – Optimising Value of Cross-Posted Content

Last week, Rand Fishkin talked cross domain rel=canonicals.

If you’ve got duplicate content on different domains, the rel=canonical tag will notify Google that this content exists.

This process also has some clever features that you should definitely take advantage of:

• Cross-post content across several domains
• Benefit from content being published by others
• Use third-party distribution

 Watch the latest episode here.

MORE SEO NEWS AND ADVICE

Read our previous SEO News Roundup: Google Publishes Guide To Featured Snippets

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