When it comes to new advancements in the digital world and algorithm changes, Google certainly tops the list. With all the Coronavirus chaos surrounding the world and with several manipulations in the search engine traffic, the major search engine has come up with something new.
Google has disclosed to add new help documentation around using structured data that is adhered to COVID-19 announcements. As the trailblazer of Internet queries, the Search engine has took the first step in conquering structured data for pandemic announcements which is quite a remarkable step.
The real words from Google
This feature from Google became official when Google took to its twitter handle and posted that they have released new docs on how to add structured data for the pandemic announcements to users’ web pages. Although the feature isn’t yet visible in the Search results, this might happen in near future. But now you can add data to prepare so that later the process scan becomes more streamlined and easy.
How Google is aiming to help people?
Google also added that the world is facing a terrible pandemic and we need to be together in it. Many organizations like the government health organizations, educational institutes and more are publishing urgent or emergency announcements on their web handles that can affect the schedules along with the other aspects of the day-to-day life. This might include some major changes like that of rescheduling of events, closure of certain facilities, new availability of medical facilities such as testing centre etc. To gain a better perspective some of these special announcements are enlisted below:
- Quarantine guidelines to keep the general public informed
- Travel restrictions
- Announcements of certain shelter-in-place directive
- Closure notifications
- Notice involving a new drive-through testing facility
- Disease spread maps and statistics to relieve panic
- Announcement regarding revised hours along with the shopping restrictions
- Announcement of event cancellation or an event transition from offline to online.
Google’s this brilliant initiative has encouraged the web pages to organize their data according to the pandemic priority. This can make information globally accessible and useful because of the timely availability. Google has also stated that it will continue to enhance and update the highlighting feature with more resources on an ongoing basis.
What else Google has in store?
Google never fails to surprise the users. Google also has the feature of COVID-19 tracker to decipher the actual cases going on in several countries and the total death trolls. This can help in fundraising along with providing special attention to the zones that are mostly hit by the pandemic. Google has also included useful information to the COVID-19 SOS alerts including links of the national health authority sites along with the map of affected areas from WHO to help people.
Right now Google is also promoting a campaign on the homepage to raise awareness about simple measures that people can adapt to slow down the spread of the virus. Kudos to the Google team for introducing a new response for highlighting the announcements related to covid-19 on search engine results.
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