I'm Aleyda Solis, SEO consultant and founder at
I was kindly invited by the search relations team
to host this Search Central Lightning Talk
to present the 2020 Web Almanac SEO chapter.
As I had the wonderful opportunity to author it
with the amazing Jamie Indigo and Mike King.
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The web almanac is a comprehensive report
on the state of the web backed by real data.
It comprises 22 chapters
spawning aspects from page content to user experience, including SEO.
The goal of the web almanac SEO chapter is to identify and assess
main elements and configurations that played a role
in website Search Engine Optimization.
The web almanac analysis in 2020 was based on 7.5 million websites
from the august 2020 datasets of the HTTP Archive
taking into consideration both raw and rendered HTML elements.
It also included data from Lighthouse and the UX Chrome Report.
it's important to note that in the case of the HTTP Archive and Lighthouse,
the data is limited to the website home pages only,
not site-wide crawls.
Let's go through some of the most important SEO findings,
starting with the crawlability and indexability related configurations.
In 2019, 72.16% of mobile sites had a valid
versus 75% in 2020.
Meta robot
Interestingly, rendering changed the
in 0.16% of pages
While this percentage is not high, there is no inherent issue
with using JavaScript to add a
or change its content either.
SEO should be careful with this.
Why? Because if a page loads with a new index directive
in the
Google search, and potentially other search engines,
won't run the JavaScript that changed the tag value or indexed the page.
In the 2019 chapter, it was identified that 48.3% of mobile pages
were using a
In 2020 the number of mobile pages
featuring a
45% of mobile pages' canonical tags were self-referential
and 8.5% were pointing to a different URL as the canonical ones.
52% of desktop pages were found to be featuring
a
and 4% pointing to a different URL.
It's understandable that there's a higher share of mobile pages
canonicalized because of those sites using an independent mobile configuration.
However, the 4% canonicalized desktop pages
could be considered a bit too high if we think that these are from pages
which are not self-canonicalizing.
When analyzing the
versus those relying on client-side renderer JavaScript,
we identified that 0.7% of the mobile pages
and 0.5% of the desktop ones include a
but not in the raw HTML.
This means that there's only a very small number of pages
that are relying on JavaScript to implement canonical tags
in 0.93% of the mobile pages and 0.76% of the desktop ones.
We saw
with a conflict happening between the URLs
specified in the raw versus the render HTML of the same pages.
This can generate indexability issues
as mixed information is sent to search engines
about which is the canonical URL for the same page.
A similar conflict can be found with different implementation methods
with 0.15% of the mobile pages and 0.17% of the desktop ones
showing conflicts between the
implemented via their HTTP headers and the HTML head.
What about the content optimization status?
In 2020 the median desktop page was found to have 402 words
and the mobile page 348 words.
While in 2019 the median desktop page has 346 words and the media mobile page
had a slightly lower count at 306 words.
This represents 16.2% and 13.7% growth respectively.
It's important to note how more content is not necessarily better
and what is important is to satisfy user search needs
with comprehensive information that is helpful.
If you want to learn more about this topic,
i highly recommend you
to watch Lily Ray's conversation with Martin Splitt
in the "Is more content better?" episode of SEO Mythbusting.
We found that the median desktop site
features 12% more words when rendered
than it does on its raw HTML.
We also found that the median mobile page site
displayed 13% less content than its desktop counterpart,
the median mobile site also displays 11.5% more words when rendered
than its raw HTML counterpart.
This might not necessarily be a problem,
however, even if Google as well as other search engines
are continually improving in their capacity to render
and index JavaScript content some sites will be missing out
on opportunities to improve their organic search visibility
through a stronger focus on ensuring their content
is always available and indexable.
When analyzing the usage of the title tag, we found that 99% of desktop
and mobile pages are featuring one.
This represents a slight improvement since 2019
when 97% of mobile pages had a title tag.
The median page features a title that is six words long
with no different in the word count between mobile and desktop contents.
The median page title character account
is 38 characters on both mobile and desktop.
Interestingly, this is up from 20 characters
on desktop and 21 characters on mobile from the 2019 analysis.
When analyzing the use of meta descriptions
we found that 68.6% of desktop pages and 68.2% of mobile pages have one.
Although, this might be surprisingly low,
it's a slight improvement from 2019 when only 64% of mobile pages
had a meta description.
The median length of the meta description is 19 words.
The only disparity in word count takes place on the 19th percentile
where the desktop content has one more word than mobile.
The median character count for the meta description
is 138 characters on desktop and 136 characters on mobile pages,
which is under the 160 characters
that is usually shared as a guideline or reference in SEO best practices.
Let's see if things have also improved with links.
The median desktop page includes 76 links while the median mobile page has 67.
The median page has 61 internal links, going to pages within the same site,
on desktop and 54 on mobile.
This is down 12.8% and 10% respectively from the 2019 analysis
and might be suggesting that sites are not maximizing
in the ability to improve the crawlability and link equity flow
through their pages in the way that they did the year before.
The median page is linking to external sites
seven times on desktop and six times on mobile.
This is a decrease from 2019 when it was found that the median number
of external links per page were 10 on desktop and 8 on mobile.
This decrease in external links could suggest
that websites are now being more careful when linking to other sites'
whether to avoid passing link popularity or to avoid referring users to them.
There is a disparity between the links of mobile and desktop pages
that will negatively impact sites as Google becomes more committed
to mobile-only indexing rather than use mobile-first one.
This is illustrated in the 62 links on mobile versus the 68 links on desktop
for the median web page.
28.6 percent of pages include
and 30.7% on mobile.
However,
is quite low with less than 0.3% of pages having either.
Since these attributes don't add any more value to publishers
than the
it is reasonable to expect that the rate of adoption will continue to be slow.
However, it is important to mention that these attributes
add semantic information that Google can use,
so, it's advisable to make use of them.
The link discoverability for major JavaScript frameworks
used for single page applications increased dramatically compared to 2019.
By testing mobile navigation links for hash URLs,
we solved minus 53% of instances of uncrawlable links
from sites using
minus 58% fewer from
and minus 91% reduction from
What's the status of structured data?
As part of our examination,
we took a look at the incidence rates of different type of structure markup.
JSON-LD
It appears on 29.8% of mobile pages and 30.6% of desktop ones.
38.6% of desktop pages and 39.3% of mobile pages feature
or micro format structured data in the raw HTML
while 40.1% of desktop and mobile pages feature structured data in the render
When reviewing this in more detail, we found that 1.5% of desktop pages
and 1.8% of mobile pages only feature this type of structured data
in the render
relying on search engines' JavaScript execution capabilities.
4.5% of desktop pages and 4.6% of mobile pages
feature structured data that appears in the raw HTML
and is subsequently changed by JavaScript transformation
in the rendered
Depending on the type of changes applied to the structured data configuration,
this will generate mixed signals for search engines when rendering them.
Also, despite the fact that reviews are not supposed
to be associated with home pages,
the data indicates that aggregate ratings is used on 23.9% on mobile
and 23.7% on desktop.
It's also interesting to see the growth
of the video object structured data-- the usage of it grew 30.11%
on desktop and 27.7% on mobile.
The growth of this object is a general indication
of the increased adoption of structured data.
There's also an indication of what Google gives visibility
within search features increases the incidence rates
of lesser used objects.
Google announced that
as search visibility opportunities in 2019
and they sustained significant year over year growth.
FAQ page markup grew 3,261% on desktop and 3,000% on mobile.
HowTo markup grew 605% on desktop and 623% on mobile.
QAPage grew 167% on desktop and 192% on mobile.
It's important to note that this data might not necessarily be representative
of their actual level of growth,
since these objects are usually placed on internal pages.
Are websites ready for the page experience update?
When analyzing for web vitals,
desktop continues to be the more performant platform for users
despite more users on mobile devices.
33.1% of websites score good Core Web Vitals
for desktop and only 20% of their mobile counterparts
pass the core web vitals assessment.
From a security perspective, 77.4% of desktop pages
and 73.2% of mobile pages have adopted HTTPS.
This is up 10.4% from 2019.
It is important to note that browsers
have become more aggressive in pushing HTTPS
by signaling that pages are insecure when you visit them without HTTPS.
Also HTTPS is currently a requirement
to capitalize on higher performing protocols
such as HTTP/2.
All these things have likely contributed to the higher adoption rate
year over year.
From a mobile friendliness perspective, 42% of mobile pages
and 42% percent of desktop ones too
have a
However, 11% of mobile pages and 16.2% of desktop ones
are not including the tag at all
suggesting that they might not necessarily be mobile friendly yet.
We found that 80.3% of desktop pages and 83% of the mobile ones
are using either the
meaning that a high percentage of pages have responsive features.
On the other hand, desktop websites that have separate mobile versions
are recommended to link to them using the
in their
Only 0.64% of the analyzed desktop pages were found to be including this tag
with the specified media value.
It's so much data, as you can see some areas
have improved but others, not so much.
Let's wrap up.
Consistent with what was found and concluded in 2019,
most sites have crawlable, indexable desktop and mobile pages
and are making use of the fundamental SEO-related configurations.
It is important to highlight how the link discoverability
for major JavaScript frameworks used for single-page applications
increased dramatically compared to 2019.
Additionally, we also identified that there has been a slight improvement
from 2019 findings across many of the analyzed areas.
For example,
72.2% of mobile pages had a
versus 75% in 2020.
Canonical
were using a
Structured data, despite the fact that reviews
are not supposed to be associated with home pages,
the data indicates that aggregate ratings is up 24% on mobile and desktop pages.
HTTPS usage, 77.4% of desktop pages
and 73% of mobile pages have adopted HTTPS.
This is up 10.4% from 2019.
However, not everything has improved over the last year.
The median desktop page includes 61 internal links
while the median mobile page has 54.
This is down 13% and 10% respectively from 2019.
Also, 5.6% of desktop pages contain no internal links
as well as 6% of mobile phone pages.
Despite the growing use of mobile devices and Google moved to a mobile-first index,
the following findings could negatively affect
as Google completes its migration to a mobile-first index in March 2021.
10.8% of mobile pages and 16.2% of desktop ones
are not including the
suggesting that they are not yet mobile friendly.
Non-trivial disparities were found across mobile and desktop pages
like the one between mobile and desktop links
illustrated in the 62 links on mobile
versus the 68 links on desktop for the median webpage.
33.1% of desktop pages score good Core Web Vitals,
while only 20% of their mobile counterparts
passed the Core Web Vital assessment,
suggesting that desktop continues to be
the more performant platform for users.
Disparities were also found across render and non-rendered HTML.
The median mobile page displays 11.5% more words
when rendered than its raw HTML,
indicating a reliance on client-side JavaScript to show content.
This finding suggests that search engines are continually evolving in their capacity
to effectively crawl, index, and run websites.
And some of the most important SEO configurations
are now also better taken into consideration.
However, many sites across the web are still missing out
on important search visibility and growth opportunities,
which also shows the persisting need of SEO evangelization
and best practices adoptions across organizations.
Thank you very much for your attention,
I hope these findings help you to prioritize
your organic search optimization efforts
in this year.
As you could see, the web needs SEO.
if you have any questions or comments,
please don't hesitate to leave them here.
Thank you very much, bye bye.
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