Yoast Opting Users In to Snippet Update
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September 30, 2019
Google’s recent core update included a feature, or at least the announcement of an upcoming feature, changing the search engine’s “Opt-Out” policy regarding snippets and website previews to an “Opt-In” policy. The update will give webmasters a variety of options regarding snippet word-count, preview video length, and whether or not to show a snippet at all.
Why
This update, set to launch late-October, is in response to a recently implemented French copyright law requiring search engines to offer “Opt-In” rather than “Opt-Out” options for webmasters. This is the first implementation of Europe’s new copyright laws, which Google is complying with by providing more snippet options.
Will it Affect Me
Users of Yoast SEO don’t have to worry about their Google snippets vanishing and costing them valuable web traffic; Yoast announced a company-wide policy that they will still offer the “Opt-Out” option for their users but will have all their websites automatically opted-in to snippets unless they were opted-out before the update.
What Should I Do
While Google’s update isn’t set to launch for another few weeks, Yoast SEO has announced its update for October 1st. George Nguyen, in a blog post for Search Engine Land, recommends that Yoast users who aren’t interested in the new snippet features shouldn’t update to version 12.2, and for those who do want to take part in the new features to keep track of their max-snippet limits for each of their pages.
This new update won’t have an impact on your Google rankings but could affect your rich results if you get opted out of snippets. This could affect traffic to your page the previously came from rich results, which is why Yoast SEO automatically opted its users in. If you are a Yoast SEO user who does not want to take part in Google’s snippets or rich results, make sure your preferences say so before or after Yoast’s version 12.2 update. If you do want to take part in snippets, still check and make sure all your preferences are up to date and to your liking after the update October 1st.