Google recently announced that they’re replacing the “warning” labels in their Google search console with “alert” labels. The change comes after Google rolled out the new search console a few weeks ago, and it’s to reduce confusion for webmasters about what those warnings mean. For example, some of those warnings have gone away and others are now simply alerts. Those alerts will be about things like duplicate meta descriptions—not something that you need to worry about when optimizing a page.
Google announced they are replacing the “warning” labels in their search console with “alert” labels.
First announced by Google in a blog post on May 31, the company said this is to reduce confusion.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Google rolled out the new search console a few weeks ago. Some of those warnings have gone away and others are now simply alerts. If you receive an alert, it means that there is something wrong with your site (like a missing verification or disavow file) but it does not mean that your page won’t rank well anymore. It only means that you should fix it once you get around to it—and if there’s no urgency then don’t worry about fixing it right away!
Google said this is to reduce confusion.
“We want to make it easier for users to understand what’s going on, and we want to reduce the number of warning messages they receive,” Google said in a statement. “That said, we don’t want you to forget about your site’s performance issues.”
Google said that if you have an issue that affects how well your site performs, then you should still take action and fix it so that people can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily on your page.
The change comes after Google rolled out the new search console a few weeks ago.
The change comes after Google rolled out the new search console a few weeks ago. The company said that this change will help reduce confusion, improve the user experience and improve the quality of search results.
Some of those warnings have gone away and others are now simply alerts.
If you’re a webmaster who’s been using Google Search Console for a while, you might have noticed the change. Some of those warnings have gone away and others are now simply alerts.
The difference between the two can be subtle at first glance. Warnings are yellow and appear in your search console with a red icon. They will include more information about what caused them and ways to correct them, whereas alerts do not include any further explanation as to why they were triggered or what steps to take next.
Alerts will usually tell you that something needs your attention; they may indicate issues with duplicate meta descriptions or missing canonical tags, for example. If there is an alert that appears often or remains unresolved after several months then it might be worth investing some time into fixing those errors through one of our many resources:
Those alerts will be about things like duplicate meta descriptions.
Google will alert you if it finds a duplicate meta description for a page of your site.
This is important because duplicate meta descriptions can cause problems in search results. If Google thinks that two versions of the same page are essentially the same, it may show only one version and not reveal which one. This doesn’t happen often, but it’s something to be aware of when you see this alert in Search Console or Webmaster Tools. You should fix any duplicate meta descriptions whenever possible so that Google knows which version is correct.
You can ignore this alert if you don’t want to fix it right away (or ever). Just click Dismiss at the bottom of the notification and continue on your merry way!
Google is changing the “warnings” in their search console to “alerts” as part of the new search console rollout, to reduce confusion.
Google is changing the “warnings” in their search console to “alerts” as part of the new search console rollout, to reduce confusion.
For example, if you have a low-quality page on your site, it will now be called an “alert” instead of a warning. There are also some new alerts that were added after the July 29th update. The old warnings were confusing because they were not clear enough about what was wrong with the website or how to fix it.
Conclusion
This change simply means that Google is trying to reduce confusion for webmasters.
