DISC Inc

Google featured snippet callouts, the word or words called out above the featured snippet in a larger font, now can be powered by MUM (which is a new and rare use of MUM in search) to check what other sources are saying about the topic. Google said, "our systems can check snippet callouts against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there's a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing."

Featured Snippets callouts now uses MUM and general consensus

Now, with the help of MUM, Google can understand if there is a consensus across the web to help highlight the callout portions of the featured snippets.

Here is an example

Google reenables the validate fix feature in Search Console and adds new classifications

Google said the URLs or items in the Search Console report are no longer grouped at the top level by three or more status categories, i.e. Valid, Warning, and Error. Now they are grouped or classified into two more broad statuses that reflect whether those URLs or items are invalid or not. Google said invalid means that there is a report-specific critical issue in the page or item, and not invalid means that the item might still contain warnings, but has no critical issues. The implications and exact terms for the valid and invalid states varies by report type, Google added.

Google explained “grouping the top-level item (a rich result for the rich result reports, a page or URL for the other reports) into two groups: pages or items with critical issues are labeled something like invalid; pages or items without critical issues are labeled something like valid. We think this new grouping will make it easier to see quickly which issues affect your site’s appearance on Google, in order to help you prioritize your fixes.”

It’s also important to reiterate that Google will be continually improving and refining that signal over time. So things can absolutely change on that front. And remember, the site-wide signal is always running. So there won’t be periodic refreshes like we see with broad core updates or Product Reviews Updates.

Understand the questions in People Also Ask boxes. Notice how Google talks about having to search after a search to find answers? How else will you know what searchers ask for next?

Use trends, PAA clues, and news to drive your questions and ask them what they think.

After cross referencing with the monthly search volume for these questions, she added some of these as H3s within the guide to see how they would perform. They resulted in so much more traffic that she decided they warranted their own individual guides, hence the idea for the hub. This would mean we weren’t putting all of our eggs into one basket, and that we could also internally link all of them together for users wanting to read more. Users that are further down the marketing funnel don’t want to scroll down a huge guide to find the answer to their specific question, and we were certain that this would positively affect bounce rate. We therefore made sure that nine times out of 10, the H1 contained the question that was being answered.

the content hub

As a reminder, only 20% of SEOs said they noticed any ranking changes related to the helpful content update and I believe a good percentage of that 20% are confused