A Smattering Of SEO - Getting AMPed & In-Depth

Hey folks, welcome to another Smattering of SEO news! There’s a lot of fun stuff around this time, such as some news on AMP, news that after the next Penguin update we might not get any further updates, and the return of in-depth articles, yay! Check it all out below!

Google News

• Next Penguin Update Might Be the Last – In an interestingly cryptic Tweet from Google’s Gary Illyes, when responding to a joke about being bugged about the next Penguin update, he replied simply, “it’s likely there won’t be “next one’.” OH MY GOD WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?! Calm down! It likely means that the upcoming update will be the real-time update, and after that, it’ll just be in a continual state of updating. We hope.
• In-Depth Articles Triumphantly Return to Google SERPs – After around two weeks of simply disappearing, in-depth articles are making their way back into the search engine results. There’s been no word on why the articles disappeared, nor why they’ve returned, but I for one am happy they’re back.
• Google Adding TV Listings to SERPs – Less a news thing and more of a “Huh, that’s neat” thing, Google will now be adding TV Guide-like program listings directly to their search results. Heh, eventually you’ll never have to leave Google itself for anything WAITAMINUTE…that can’t be part of their plan, can it? Nah, of course not, that’d be silly…

Google AMP News

• Google News Now Using AMP – In a move that should shock no and one, Google has now implemented Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) into Google News. While this is indeed no surprise, it’ll be interesting to see if this helps with AMP adoption rates. Speaking of which…
• Study: While 23% of Surveyed SEO Pros Implement AMP, Nearly 50% Believe in Its Ranking Potential – In a new study from SEO Powersuite, they surveyed nearly 400 SEO professionals and asked them various questions about AMP. Interestingly, while only 23% of respondents are implementing it (29% are planning to, 42% are still researching it), nearly 50% of respondents feel that AMP will have what they term a “significant impact” on rankings in the future. It’ll be interesting to see if they’re right.

Other News

• Facebook to Start Tracking Time Spent Reading Articles to Gauge What to Put in Users’ Feeds – While time spent on-site is something Google has been tracking for eons now, it appears as if Facebook is going to start following suit. They’ll now track how long you spend reading certain articles via their in-app browser (which I’m sure we all use). This will determine which articles get ranked more highly in users’ feeds. It’ll be interesting to see how this changes things in our feeds in the weeks to come.