The format of web stories in Google search results – when to wait in Russia and other countries and is it worth waiting at all?
Google’s John Mueller says Web Stories could be added to search results in other countries if more sites publish them. Mueller spoke about this on January 15 live on the Google Search Central YouTube channel. As part of the broadcast, Muller answered various questions from webmasters regarding the work of search, including about the release of new Google products to new markets.
Stories from social networks on regular sites — when can we expect them in Russia?
Google Web Stories is currently supported in search results in the US, India, and Brazil. Website owners want to be prepared for the release of stories in their countries.
We learned from Mueller that site owners can directly influence Google’s decision to roll out search in other countries. They can do this by laying the foundation beforehand. That is, if there are many sites in Russia that already have such a content format as web stories, then Google will include this feature in its search results.
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Site owners can influence changes in Google search results
Webmasters can speed up the adoption of new Google search features in their country by using them until they receive official support.
For example, there are structured data markup types that Google supports as rich results in some countries but not others. For example, the new Home Activities layout is only supported in the US.
If site owners in other countries start using unsupported markup, Google will notice this and take it as a sign that markup support should be rolled out more widely.
Here is a quote from Müller about this:
When it comes to enabling certain features in individual countries, sometimes it’s a matter of policy development and technical details. Sometimes it also comes down to the fact that we can look at country data and say, “Oh, a lot of people are already implementing this structured data, maybe we should just include it.” So for that matter, if you’re tempted to try something like this, I would suggest doing so, even if you don’t see the full benefits yet.
For Web Stories, site owners can prepare for potential deployment by creating and publishing them today.
Mueller explains that Google stories are no different from regular web pages in terms of how they are crawled and indexed. The only thing that will change with additional support is how they will appear in search results and Google Discover.
Any website owner in any country can create and publish web stories right now. They will still be indexed in search results, but they won’t appear the way they do in the US. Here is an example of what web stories look like in US search results:
“I don’t have any information on when the new features will come out, especially web stories in Australia. When working with Web Stories, it is important to remember that they are also regular pages, so you can already accept and use these Web Stories on your website, and we will crawl and index them like regular pages. As we start showing them more visually, you’ll see them a little differently in search results. You can also see them more prominently in Discover. But, in fact, you can already implement it.”
The full version of the broadcast is on YouTube .
What do you think about this issue? Can stories migrate from social networks to regular sites? Will it be popular? Write your opinion in the comments.
