This is time for yet another weekly SEO roundup to catch up what is the latest development in the industry during the first week.
On September 6, SEO realm saw the signs of a new algorithm brewing up. It is still too early to say if there was any actual Google Ranking update or not.
The automated tools picked up changes in rankings, but early on signs showed the update has affected only US websites and that too only for desktops.
Did you also witness the impact of this update? Do tell us in comments.
Moving on to the biggest update of this week.
Google Rolled Out Chrome 69
This week Google announced the Chrome 69 version that has too many new features. Remember when HTTPS became suddenly a fad in SEO, but in latest version Chrome does not shows green lock. Yes, we know interesting.
The Omnibox (a fancy word for search bar) now shows you answer as you type. But the update that is bugging most SEOs is the one that hides most of the URL in the address bar.
URLs Hidden in Chrome
Google Chrome 69 now crops off the URL to remove the http or https part as well as the non-www or www part. See it at work:
For rankings, it makes no difference at all, because beneath the layer the original URL is at work, but for SEOs it is now an additional step to check whether an URL is http or https or www/non-www for canonical URLs.
Omnibox answers
Now users will get to their queries by default for the most part as they type in the Omnibox in Google Chrome 69. If you want you can change the default search service to not get them. Most the Omnibox will answer weather, core facts, sports scores, and related queries.
But as there is no featured snippet shown, we do not think there is anything to lose here. Factual services don’t drive too much from Google anyway.
HTTPS no longer green
Google Chrome 69 no longer labels pages with HTTPS as green, it just displays a grey lock. In the following version of Chrome, it is expected to not even show secure, just non HTTPS URLs will be labeled as non-secure.
