As you were Googling on your phone at the weekend, did you notice that the search results looked a little different?
Here's an example:
This change to the search engine results page has just rolled out to mobiles. And apparently it's going to roll out to desktop searches, too.
These are the three main changes:
- Google is now pulling your favicon out from your website and displaying it on the search results page. The favicon is the tiny image that appears in the tab at the top
- It's also sometimes pulling out the first picture on the home page (not the header) and displaying that. This seems somewhat random at the moment. We'll need to wait for some experts to figure out why an image is displayed, or not displayed
- There are also some other design changes to the search engine results page, including the Ad label turning black. And results are separated from each other a little better.
In my mind, this is a great opportunity to stand out in the search engine results
Some suggested actions for you:
- Google "IT support yourtown" to see what your listing looks like
- Make sure you have an up-to-date favicon. This looks like a good tool
- Check what the first image is on your home page, and change it if you'd prefer something else appear in search engine results. Think people, people, people...
My final thought: This is a fairly minor job and is not going to generate any net profit today. But I'm a big fan of you getting every little nuance of your digital presence to be spot on.
So rather than stick this on your eternal to do list, and get round to it in 2025, why not just delegate or outsource it today. It's doesn't look like more than a 10 minute job at most.
