Google Chrome 69 & SEO Annoyances

Sep 10, 2018 - 7:45 am 13 by
Filed Under Misc Google

Google Chrome

As you know, Google announced version 69 of Chrome last week. The Omnibox now shows answers as you type, HTTPS sites are no longer green and Google also hides a lot of the URL in the URL bar. I covered some of this at Search Engine Land last week but more and more of the SEO community is getting bugged out by the URL change.

Hiding URLs in Chrome

So when you go to a site, Google Chrome 69 will crop off the URL to remove not just the http or https part, but also the www or non-www part. Here is a screen shot of this site:

Chrome Url Hide

This doesn't directly or even indirectly impact your rankings in Google search. But SEOs who want to quickly look at the canonical URL of a page need to now click in the search bar to see if the URL is HTTPs vs HTTP and if it is WWW vs non-WWW.

Here are some of the complaints with John Mueller responding:

So that is one thing.

Omnibox answers

The other thing is now by default you get answers as you type in the Omnibox (URL nox) in Chrome 69. I personally do not get them because I changed my default search service in Chrome to not get them but by default you will get it. Search for weather, sports scores, core facts, etc.

Google does not show featured snippets here, yet - so there is really no lose here, I think. Factual searches normally don't drive too much traffic to sites where Google just shows the answer at the top anyway.

Chrome Omnibox Search

Here is my hack:

HTTPS no longer green

So now if you go to an HTTPS URL, Chrome won't label the page as green in the URL bar. It will just have a gray lock. And in the next version of Chrome, it won't even be labeled as secure. Only non HTTPS URLs will be labeled as not secure:

Chrome69 Https

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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