Google Search Console Update – Farewell To Content Keyword Feature

Google has done it! What was supposed to happen in May 2016 finally occurred in November. The search engine giant has put every rumour to rest and has taken that very step, to remove confusion and improve site analytics. Finally, Google has decided to scrap the Content Keyword feature from its search console.

This comes right after a week of removing the Sitelinks demotion feature. It may seem that Google is currently on a scrapping spree and may eliminate few more of its analytics feature, but as of now, this termination is quite a big news to site developers.

Okay! What is Content Keyword in the first place?

Every person owning a site and hunting for that top rank will know this. However, for the uninitiated, here is how things work. No one can explain what search console is better than Google itself. So, check out the following video.

Click Here to see Google Search Console

Hence, every time you post a site, Google’s crawler named Googlebot will scroll through each and every word in your page and decide how to find it in the case of a search. Drawing the example from the above video, if your site is about jewellery, your page must feature in the search list every time that keyword is typed in.

Similarly, you may have words like ornaments or attire or gold included in your content. These can also act as a keyword. What Content keyword does is pick such keywords from your web page and arrange them in order of their relevance. A bar is placed alongside each word with a number (in percentage) associated with it.

This is helpful. Why scrap it then?

“Users are getting confused about this list in the Content Keyword Section” – this is what Google had to say and you can’t blame them. Take the word “jewellery” for instance. In that list, say it came in number 1 with a 100% marked alongside it. Now, you are here to analyse your site’s performance and you notice a 100% alongside a particular keyword.

This gives rises to two thought processes:

        –  This is the most significant keyword, and most of the queries in Google have been done using this.
        –  Including this word in high number will increase your site’s ranking.

Both of which are wrong. “Content keyword does not work like this” – Google again. It just counts the number of times “jewellery” has appeared in your article and gives it a percentage accordingly. Had it been 60%, adding a few more of this word would have increased the figure to 80% may be. That is all! It has nothing to do with the ranking process, hence the move.

What to do now?

Just continue doing what you were till date. Frame your article normally and use relevant keywords a decent number of times. Not seeing any number adjacent to your keyword will definitely help. Google only wants you to frame content for humans, not its Googlebot.

Then again, all other things remain the same. You still have to mention the keywords while posting a web page. “We can’t read your mind, so we need them” is what Google says. Its crawler will continue to scroll your article and search console will perform like the good old days. You just won’t see the content keyword feature anymore.

However, all hope is not lost

Just because it’s Google in question. The company’s (unofficial) motto is “enhance user-experience”. So, if you are unhappy with this move and want Content Keyword feature back on the table, all you have to do is give Google “one good reason.” Keep analysing and keep updating, Google is making quite a few exciting changes.

Govind Agarwal

Govind Agarwal is a Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing Expert at SubmitEdgeseo, with over 6 years experience in the Web Marketing Techniques.