Hello, fellow SEO enthusiasts. Welcome to this week’s SEO news weekly. Let’s get into the SEO news we have for this week, shall we? 

• Google updates crawl budget management help document on Noindex & 404 Status Codes 
• Google releases topic search bar refinement feature 
• New Google Chrome address bar site search shortcuts 

5/12 – Google Updates Crawl Budget Management Help Documents On Noindex & 404 Status Codes 

Google has recently updated its crawl budget management help documents. And this time, they update on two topics which are mainly about Noindex and 404 status codes. 

According to Google’s recent updates, it says that noindex isn’t a good way to control the crawl budget, but it can be a method to free up the crawl budget in the long run indirectly.

However, Google does say that by not indexing certain URLs that you wish not to be indexed, it lets Googlebot focus on other URLs on your site, which means noindex can indirectly free up some crawl budget for your site in the long run. 

The second update that Google touched on in the help document is that pages that serve 4xx status codes (except 429) do not waste the crawl budget. For pages that serve 4xx codes, Google will receive the status code and no other content. 

6/12 – New Google Chrome address bar site search shortcuts 

Google has recently announced three new ways to search in Chrome using the address bar, which are @tabs, @bookmarks, and @history. 

Using these three shortcuts at the address bar, you can quickly locate your favorite tabs and bookmarks or comb through history. 

7/12 – Google Releases Topic Search Bar Refinement Feature 

In the spirit of new functions, Google has also released a previously tested search bar refinement feature. Hence, Google will now recommend related topics or keywords that would help Search users to refine their queries. 

Google said it is rolling the feature out in English/US on mobile as an “easy-to-scroll list of related topics alongside these filters at the top of the search results page to help you drill down or discover something new about a specific topic. You can add or remove topics designated by a + symbol, to quickly zoom in or backtrack on a search.

That’s It! 

What do you think about this week’s news? Are you able to use the new features by Google yet? What do you think about them? Let me know in the comments below. 

Updated: 25 April 2024

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