#Google Webmaster Hangouts Notes – 28 May 2019













Welcome to MarketingSyrup! This post is part of my Google Webmaster Hangouts Notes. I cover them regularly to save you time.

You’ll find the notes from May 28th below. The timestamps of the answers are in the brackets. Let’s dive in!

Favicons in the SERPs are a hot topic right now

According to John Mueller, the favicons are meant to be handled in an algorithmic way (7:11).

But there are still many things that are not clear now. For example, there’s no process to tell Google you’ve changed the favicon. It’s also not clear what would the consequences be if you use a favicon which violates Google’s guidelines.

Here’s some more info on this from Twitter:

I'd suggest you switch back ASAP. This wasn't unanticipated. In cases of inappropriate favicons — and this almost certain will be such — we can change the site to only get the default favicon https://t.co/wZYUBkW1Aa pic.twitter.com/W0kevj8EFw — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 27, 2019

Visitors from Discover feed might be reported as direct traffic in Google Analytics (10:25)

Google has not unified yet how all the sources from different Discover feeds shown in Google Analytics.

In the long run, the aim is to report the source from such visits as normal organic.

Kristina’s note: I checked my Discover Feed reporting and see that the source is direct / none in Google Analytics L This is an inaccuracy from Google’s side in my opinion as ‘Direct’ traffic doesn’t really give you any valuable info.

I would also like to have an option to differentiate the Discovery Feed traffic in Google Analytics somehow to study the date and see how, for example, a business benefits from this traffic and how it can get more of it. Currently, there is only Impressions/Clicks info available in Google Search Console (which is still good):

Seems like the announced #Google search console Discovery report is here 🙃

Don't have much data to play with yet but looks interesting. I spotted this only in one account though. #SEO

cc: @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/Qf4L6t3mSN — Kristina Azarenko (@azarchick) April 17, 2019

Google will pick up only one set of structured data if you have 2 or more different sets that would result in different appearance in Google SERPs (21:10)

If you have different types of structured data on a page that Google would show in different ways in the search results, Google will pick only one set of structured data and show only it.

Thus it’s better to add only the structured data that is more important for you.

There’s no SEO benefit in having people search for your website in Google (33:34)

If users are explicitly looking for your URL, Google is going to show it. And the number of searches won’t really affect the ranking.