Google Could Expand the Roll Out of Web Stories if More Sites Begin to Use Them
A new article on Search Engine Journal reports that Google may roll out Web Stories more widely if site owners in other countries start using them.
Google's John Mueller recently used a Google Search Central live stream to reveal that Web Stories could get rolled out to search results in more countries on the proviso that more sites start publishing them. When asked by a site owner about the possibility of the feature branching out from where it's currently supported in search results - namely, the US, India, and Brazil - we learned something unexpected.
Site Owners Exert Influence Over Google Search Changes
Apparently, site owners can encourage Google to roll out features not currently supported in their locale by simply begin using unsupported markup. Mueller said that the search engine giant would notice such actions and act if the move was feasible:
In the case of Web Stories, site owners could prepare for an eventual roll out by creating and publishing them now - if they're so inclined. Web Stories get indexed in exactly the same way as web pages do. Any published Web Stories will get indexed in search results; they just won't get displayed the way they are in a location where the feature is already supported - such as the US:
Mueller added:
Google's John Mueller recently used a Google Search Central live stream to reveal that Web Stories could get rolled out to search results in more countries on the proviso that more sites start publishing them. When asked by a site owner about the possibility of the feature branching out from where it's currently supported in search results - namely, the US, India, and Brazil - we learned something unexpected.
Site Owners Exert Influence Over Google Search Changes
Apparently, site owners can encourage Google to roll out features not currently supported in their locale by simply begin using unsupported markup. Mueller said that the search engine giant would notice such actions and act if the move was feasible:
| "With regards to us turning on individual features in individual countries, sometimes that's a matter of working out the policies and working out the technical details. Sometimes it's also a matter of us being able to look into the data from the country and say: "Oh, lots of people are already implementing this structured data, maybe we should just turn it on." |
Mueller added:
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"I don't have any information on when new features will launch, particularly web stories in Australia. With web stories it's important to keep in mind they are normal pages too, so you can already adopt and use these web stories on your web site and we will crawl and index them like normal pages. When we start to show them more visibly you'll see them a little bit differently in search results. You might see them more prominently in Discover as well. But essentially, you can go in and implement these already." |
