What Google changed, and what we changed
An SEO tool is only as current as the documentation behind it. Ours reads Google's own change log and re-fetches every documentation page a check depends on, comparing it byte for byte against the copy we hold. When a page changes, we are told which checks rest on it. We last read Google's change log on 24 October 2026, and we read it every morning.
Why this page exists
Advice in this field goes stale quietly. Two examples we have had to act on, both of which are still repeated as best practice by tools and agencies:
- How-to rich results were deprecated in September 2023. Google stopped showing them entirely. Markup added for them earns nothing today.
- FAQ rich results were removed in 2026. Google deprecated the feature in May and removed the documentation for it in June. Our own check now tells sites that this markup no longer earns a rich result — and this blog deliberately carries no FAQ markup of its own.
Both of those were caught by the same two scripts that feed this page, not by anybody remembering to look.
The pages our checks are built on
23 documentation pages, each re-fetched and compared word for word. The number beside each one is how many of our 101 checks would have to be re-read if Google changed it. Last compared 13 October 2026.
| Google documentation page | Section | Checks that depend on it |
|---|---|---|
| Consolidate duplicate urls | Crawling Indexing | 10 CANONICAL_CHAIN, CANONICAL_CROSS_DOMAIN, CANONICAL_FRAGMENT, CANONICAL_IN_BODY, CANONICAL_MULTIPLE, CANONICAL_RECURSIVE, CANONICAL_RELATIVE, CANONICAL_TO_REDIRECT, DUPLICATE_CONTENT, TLS_EXPIRED |
| Links crawlable | Crawling Indexing | 4 ANCHOR_EMPTY, ANCHOR_GENERIC, LINK_INERT_CONTROL, LINK_NOT_CRAWLABLE |
| Localized versions | Specialty | 4 HREFLANG_NO_RETURN, HREFLANG_RELATIVE, HREFLANG_RESERVED_REGION, LANG_SCRIPT_MISMATCH |
| Build sitemap | Crawling Indexing | 3 SITEMAP_BROKEN, SITEMAP_NON_CANONICAL, SITEMAP_TOO_MANY_URLS |
| Core web vitals | Appearance | 3 ASSET_CACHE_POLICY, CORE_WEB_VITALS_POOR, RENDER_BLOCKING |
| Howto faq changes | Blog | 3 SCHEMA_DEPRECATED_TYPE FAQPage(deprecated), HowTo(deprecated) |
| Javascript seo basics | Crawling Indexing | 3 BLOCKED_RESOURCES, JS_RENDERED_UNVERIFIED, SPA_SHELL |
| Product snippet | Appearance | 3 Product, Offer, AggregateOffer |
| 301 redirects | Crawling Indexing | 2 LINKS_TO_REDIRECTS, META_REFRESH_REDIRECT |
| Article | Appearance | 2 SCHEMA_MISSING_RECOMMENDED Article |
| Favicon in search | Appearance | 2 FAVICON_MISSING, FAVICON_UNSUPPORTED |
| Robots meta tag | Crawling Indexing | 2 NOINDEX_BLOCKED_BY_ROBOTS, UNAVAILABLE_AFTER_PAST |
| Special tags | Crawling Indexing | 2 CHARSET_MISMATCH, CHARSET_UNDECLARED |
| Url structure | Crawling Indexing | 2 URL_SESSION_ID, URL_UPPERCASE |
| Ai features | Appearance | 1 SNIPPET_SUPPRESSED |
| Breadcrumb | Appearance | 1 BreadcrumbList |
| Google images | Appearance | 1 IMAGE_GENERIC_FILENAME |
| Large site managing crawl budget | Crawling Indexing | 1 SOFT404 |
| Product | Appearance | 1 SHOPIFY_PRODUCT_SCHEMA |
| Robots txt | Crawling Indexing | 1 ROBOTS_TOO_LARGE |
| Sd policies | Appearance | 1 SCHEMA_MISSING_REQUIRED |
| Title link | Appearance | 1 TITLE_KEYWORD_REPETITION |
| Valid page metadata | Crawling Indexing | 1 HEAD_TRUNCATED |
Google's own recent changes
The most recent entries from Google's published change log and Search blog, in Google's own words, re-read every morning by a job rather than whenever somebody remembers. We hold 257 of them. Most change nothing for us; the point is that we read them rather than hear about them later.
- October 23 Docs Updated guidance on crawlable URL structures
- October 21 Docs Updated the control what you share with Google Search documentation
- October 16 Docs Updating the Indexing API quota page
- October 8 Docs Added documentation on the UGC Fresh Data Program
- October 1 Docs Updated guidance on using generative AI content
- September 24 Docs Added `creator` property and updated `interactionStatistic` in `VideoObject` structured data
- September 18 Docs Added local business query support to the aggregator and supplier units
- September 16 Docs Added documentation on adding a Search profile badge to your website
- September 8 Docs Added documentation about regional differences in Search experience
- August 31 Docs Updated the European Search Dataset Licensing Program page
- August 28 Docs Updated the favicon documentation
- August 28 Docs Updated the site reputation policy
- August 20 Docs New custom button for preferred sources
- July 29 Docs Added guide on analyzing social and video platform content
- July 24 Docs Added a new review snippet guideline
- July 14 Docs Updated the package tracking documentation
- July 10 Docs Updated the canonicalization troubleshooting guide
- July 7 Docs Added `category` to merchant listing structured data
- July 7 Docs Clarified how to specify sale price effective dates in Product structured data
- July 1 Docs Updating our AMP documentation
- June 17 Docs Site move guidance now includes information on domain variants
- June 15 Docs Clarifying guidance on llms.txt files
- June 15 Docs Removing documentation for the FAQ rich result feature
- June 12 Docs New article for small business owners in Tennessee
Source: Google's own Search Central documentation updates and Search Central blog. Dates are Google's.
Check your own site against them
48 of our 101 checks cite one of the pages above, and the report links the page each finding comes from.