Most of this year's announcements needed nothing from a small business site. The few that did were removing Google+ links, replacing Flash, moving off old PHP, fixing images loaded over http, and retiring noindex lines in robots.txt.

A year of announcements

This year brought a steady stream of announcements: three changes to how Google ranks pages, new behaviour in Chrome, Safari and Firefox, a social network closed, and a new name for Bing's ads.

Each arrived with headlines, and few small business owners had time to follow them all. Most had no need to.

Looked at together, the year sorts into a short list of jobs that genuinely needed doing, and a longer list of things worth understanding and then leaving alone.

The jobs that needed doing

The fourth is the one still open on many sites. Chrome began changing how it treats insecure content on secure pages this month, and the changes continue early next year.

Three core updates and a language model

Google rolled out three broad core updates this year: March, June and September. For the June one it gave a day's notice, a first.

These updates change how Google weighs pages in general; they are not penalties aimed at particular sites, so there was never a specific fix. The sensible response was to note the date, change nothing that week, and compare figures later.

In October came BERT, a language model that helps Google read searches the way people actually phrase them. It started with roughly one English search in ten in the US, and this month spread to more than seventy languages.

Nobody can tune a page for it. Pages that say plainly what a business does were already doing the right thing.

Mobile-first became the default

Since July 1, Google has indexed every new website from its phone version as standard, and older sites have kept moving across a few at a time.

In May, Google also said its crawler now sees pages through a current version of Chrome, which reads modern scripts the way visitors' browsers do.

Together these make the phone version the one Google reads. Text, links or structured data that appear only on the desktop version may not count at all.

Chrome changed what loads

Chrome 76, released on July 30, blocked Flash by default. Galleries, menus and intros still built in Flash became blank spaces on most desktops, as they had always been on phones.

The same release added native lazy loading, a single attribute that lets images further down a page wait until they are needed. Useful, optional, and wrong for the first images a visitor sees.

Chrome 79, this month, began the changes to insecure content and started warning people when a saved password appears in a known breach.

Privacy changes in Safari and Firefox

Since March, Safari has kept cookies set by scripts, which Analytics uses to recognise a returning visitor, for no more than seven days. In May, a further change cut that to one day for some visitors arriving from tracking sites.

Firefox 69, in September, began blocking known third-party tracking cookies for everyone by default.

Nothing broke on an ordinary site. What changed was the reports: more visitors counted as new rather than returning, and fewer ad conversions credited, particularly from iPhones.

Links, robots and review stars

In September Google added sponsored and ugc as labels for paid links and for links in comments and forums, and began treating them and nofollow as hints. Existing nofollow links need no changes.

The same month it stopped following noindex lines in robots.txt, an unofficial rule some sites used to keep pages out of search. Pages hidden that way needed a supported method.

And from September 16, review stars stopped appearing for reviews a business marks up on its own site about itself. There was nothing to fix; the stars simply went.

A worked example

A granite and quartz countertop fabricator with a small showroom has a WordPress site built in 2015 and looked after by an outside supplier.

Four of the year's announcements touched it. A Google+ icon came out of the footer in March. In spring the site moved from PHP 7.0 to 7.3, since 7.0 had stopped receiving security fixes in January.

A Flash slideshow of finished kitchens went blank in Chrome at the end of July and was replaced with ordinary photographs. In October, two images on the same page were found still loading over http, and corrected.

The core updates, BERT and the Safari changes went into the company's notes beside its monthly figures. Nothing else changed in response to them.

Across the whole year, the work took a few hours.

WordPress and PHP

Since version 5.2 in May, WordPress has a Site Health screen, and a plugin that crashes the site triggers an email with a recovery link. That email should reach somebody who will act on it.

Version 5.3, in November, began scaling down very large uploaded photographs automatically.

PHP 7.0 and 7.1 both reached the end of their security support this year. A site on either should move to 7.2 or 7.3, tested on a copy first.

Renamed and retired

Bing Ads became Microsoft Advertising at the end of April. Google Ads removed the average position figure on September 30, so rules and reports built on it needed rebuilding around impression share.

Inbox by Gmail closed with Google+ in April, and Instagram began hiding like counts from everyone but the account owner, starting with a test in Canada.

The counter-case

For some businesses the year asked for more.

Stores selling to European cardholders met new authentication rules for card payments in September. Sites that depend on ad conversion tracking lost sight of some Safari and Firefox visitors.

Businesses selling into the US saw the Supreme Court there leave standing a ruling that a pizza chain's website must work for blind customers. California's privacy law takes effect on January 1.

For most small business sites, though, the year came down to the short list above.

Before the year ends

  1. Search the site for Google+ and Flash.
  2. Ask which PHP version the site runs.
  3. Look for http:// images on secure pages.
  4. Open robots.txt and check for noindex lines.
  5. Label paid links as sponsored.
  6. Check the phone version has everything.
  7. Note this year's update dates beside your figures.

Step three is the one with a deadline still running. Chrome's changes continue in the releases due early next year, and an image loaded over http is easy to miss until it disappears.

The longer view, across three decades of the web, is in the web turns thirty.

Frequently asked questions

What actually needed doing this year?

Removing Google+ links, replacing Flash, moving off PHP 7.0 and 7.1, fixing images loaded over http, retiring noindex lines in robots.txt, and labelling paid links as sponsored.

Did the core updates need a response?

Not a specific one. Core updates change how Google weighs pages generally rather than targeting particular sites, so the response was to note the date, change nothing that week and compare later.

Can a site be optimised for BERT?

No. It helps Google understand searches the way people phrase them. Pages written plainly about what a business does were already doing what it rewards.

What did the Safari and Firefox changes affect?

Mostly the reports. More visitors are counted as new rather than returning, and fewer ad conversions are credited. Nothing broke on an ordinary business site.

Do old nofollow links need changing?

No. Google now treats nofollow, sponsored and ugc as hints, and existing nofollow links are fine. Use sponsored for paid links from now on.

Is anything from this year still unfinished?

Often the insecure images. Chrome began its changes this month and continues them early next year, so images and scripts loaded over http need fixing now.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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