January 2019 Google Webmaster Report

Jan 3, 2019 - 8:46 am 4 by

Chalkboard4 WebmasterReport Magnified 1900px

In our first monthly recap for 2019 we covered a couple smaller unconfirmed Google updates. It was a slower month with the holidays and New Years but Google launched some new features.

Google made AMP featured snippets do fancy moves, They also launched support for livestreams in search with new markup and also audio news for Google Assistant. Google Search Console moved some reports off the old version and to the new version.

Google's mobile first index hit a big milestone this past month, hitting over half of their search results. There was a lot of chatter around links and what is allowed and not allowed. Sundar Pichai said Google has thousands working on core search and Paul Haahr said searchers can tell the difference between organic listings and paid listings in search.

In the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread, there is some limited chatter around traffic fluctuations earlier this week. It might be an update but more likely related to New Years traffic slumps. I'll keep an eye on it.

Here is a summary of stories that I wanted to highlight over the past 30 days:

Google Algorithm Updates:

Google News: Google User Interface: Google Search Console: Google Mobile First Indexing: Google SEO: Google My Business & Local: 

For last month's recap, click here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 15, 2025

Jul 15, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Maps

Google Local Ranking Documentation Updated

Jul 15, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Automatically Adding Social Media Links To Businesses

Jul 15, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Console Analytics API New Metadata Incomplete Data Points

Jul 15, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google AdSense

Google AdSense PIN Verification Issues

Jul 15, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Now Requests Text/WhatsApp Number During Setup

Jul 15, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Zero Results For Record A Video Result