December 2019 Google Webmaster Report

This past month we had a bunch of tremors and somewhat unconfirmed and semi-confirmed Google search algorithmic updates. We also had a big Google Local and Maps update that seems to be about relevancy, not proximity. It was not an insane month of news but it was busy.

On the bug side, Google had a bug with the new meta tags where in some cases pages would be removed from the index. The recipe markup bug is still ongoing, through Thanksgiving. Google may be ignoring the rel=canonical for syndication partners, in some cases. Oh, and Search Console lost data again.

Google got the median time to render for GoogleBot down to 5 seconds, which is super impressive. Google added a method to preview your recipes on smart displays like Google Home Hubs. Google added product result filters to Search Console. And Google updated the video structured data help documents in a big way.

The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is pretty calm, it was a slow Thanksgiving weekend.

Here are the more important Google webmaster stories over the past month but if you missed the month prior, see here.

Google Algorithms & Updates:

Google SEO:
Google Links:
Google Search Console:
Google Local, Maps & GMB:
Google User Interface Tests:
Google Misc: