Building for the web is harder than ever. Better mobile technology and web protocols are emerging every day.
So, how are websites doing?
Unlimited data plans are a luxury. But how much data is downloaded when visiting a website, and what is the impact on our web environment today?
Google’s mobile-first index prioritizes websites that provide a smooth page experience. Does your business ship with traceability in mind?
Developers have a huge impact on how successful a site is on Google – but do they always focus on search?
Good developers strike a balance between aesthetics and website functionality. Does your team set a web project budget with measurable goals?
In this piece, I explore ways to improve communication with your dev team. Chrome’s Developer Tools have information that needs to be fixed quickly.
We will see how the Canary browser is a good place to start your technical SEO research.
I’m going to share the latest SEO optimization things you should try today.
How Chrome Releases New Features
Canary is the first-release version of Google Chrome.
Google releases its features in four phases that it calls release channels. The channels are Canary, Dev, Beta, and Stable. Chrome Canary, Beta, and Dev can be installed side-by-side on Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Chrome engineers test new features on real users to see if they run into any issues before rolling out the feature to the next port.
Image from YouTube, August 2022
Canary gets updates first with a nightly release at 2 AM PST. You get the latest features, research tests, and web platform APIs. Updates also include bug fixes, browser improvements, code cleanup, safety, and security.
Features are evaluated over a six-week release cycle before reaching all 3.2B users.
Users will test the following features on their websites, web apps, content management systems (CMS), themes, and plugins. They report bugs and provide feedback on new features.
Not all features are past Canary. Browser enthusiasts, developers, industrial users, and SEO pros use the test browser.
Debugging SEO With Developer Tools
Chrome DevTools is a testing tool for testing websites in the browser. Developers test, build and maintain websites with tools that measure page speed performance.
Browser tools test the performance of the website in different conditions. It gives you a head start on editing websites.
For devs, the tools are almost as important as the browser itself.
No need to wait for a long and expensive crawl to finish; You can find technical SEO issues and fix them immediately with Canary.
Setting Up Chrome Canary For SEO
Websites need to work well across different locations, devices, and networks. DevTools allows you to simulate browsing in different environments and at high speeds.
Configure Canary to search as a Googlebot user agent in Chrome settings.
See what Google sees when it loads a page.
Screenshot from Chrome DevTools Network Conditions Panel, December 2022
Don’t let browser extensions interfere with the accuracy of your tests.
Download Canary as a separate browser dedicated to technical SEO analysis and optimization.
Plug And Scan Technical SEO Troubleshooting In Canary
Chrome DevTools lets you look under the hood of a website.
It tests and prints detailed performance reports in seconds – but it can overwhelm you at first.
SEO technicians look at the web like mechanics look at cars; We block and analyze pages in browser tools and analyze how they load and respond.
With Canary you can record and measure important parameters such as page loading, navigation, and user interaction. You can also find position numbers, Core Web Vitals (CWV) readings, water and time charts, and much more.
Image from YouTube, May 2021
Sometimes troubleshooting in Canary just points to a symptom rather than a problem. More advanced tools provide better readings, however the problem solving process remains the same.
Technical SEO Auditing With Google Chrome Canary
Google wants web pages to load quickly, but a page won’t look good if Googlebot doesn’t understand great content.
DevTools can measure and help improve website delivery and performance.
View and edit Javascript, CSS, and CWV content with Canary.
Use DevTools to preview your pages and products instantly.
Image from YouTube, May 2022
It helps to see how the site is leading visitors and Google crawlers. Check for internal links, duplicate content, broken links, missing images, and 404 pages.
Check the page’s metadata to see if it is available and has been updated. Look for problems with structured data, and search for things that Google didn’t do because of JavaScript translation problems.
Average network settings to check latency in different web environments, and analyze web performance time to identify bottlenecks.
Find opportunities to improve content delivery.
Check how the site’s resources are loaded and delivered. Not all resources are created equal – better resource delivery can improve the user experience.
Using DevTools In Canary For Technical SEO Website Audits
Here are some popular terms to use in DevTools for SEO pros:
Lighthouse
Network Panel
Performance Panel
Other SEO DevTools Workflows
Need Help Doing Marketing For SEO?
Use data to prove your SEO skills.
Benchmark site performance and compare content delivery to competitors.
Image courtesy of Looker Studio, December 2022
Use Canary to keep your site updated as it changes.
Chrome Browser Development Ecosystem
Chrome’s software development strategy handles multiple iterations and side-by-side deployments. This method allows her to conduct A/B and performance testing.
Chrome’s engineers control the rollover feature and avoid cold starts, and crashes. It is a simple system that provides control over a variety of browsers.
Be sure to follow the features as they develop on all channels. Read the specifications and understand the business problems they can solve.
Chromestatus.com tracks features as they develop. Subscribe to the Chrome Developer blog to stay up to date with Chrome tools and libraries.
Image courtesy of ChromeStatus.com, December 2022
Experimental DevTools Features In Chrome Canary
New Performance Insights Panel In Chrome DevTools
Professional athletes watch action films to understand their performance. In a similar vein, the Performance Insights panel allows you to replay and share web page load records.
DevTools Chrome Working Group, Dec 2022
The new panel shipped with Chrome 102. It’s an update to the Performance Panel that provides clarity without the need for deep technical understanding of search terms.
The team has a simple UI to measure the CWV performance of a page. It provides active page insights, find blocking requests, layout changes, and more.
Future releases will expand use cases such as test interfaces.
Share network latency in a critical delivery way, and show GPU Performance for the dropped frames that keep your site running.
Save devs some time and include a work record when submitting a ticket. Show them exactly what’s wrong with your pages to boost action right away.
New Recorder Panel Updates In Chrome DevTools
The Record panel is an experimental feature that provides insight into the user flow.
It records the runtime performance for a multi-step user flow through the Workflow.
Use this feature to check the performance of your first website user.
Most users interact with your site after it loads. Therefore, it is a good idea to record user interactions such as clicking, scrolling, and navigating. Record and prepare your user journey for a simulated communication environment.
Also, record eCommerce checkout flow, and measure checkout performance by setting different add-to-bug levels.
You can also record page load and button or link click interactions and measure its CWV.
Screenshot from Chrome DevTools Panel Recorder, Dec 2022
Google lists support for multiple user input properties.
Automatically detects ARIA and CSS selectors. You can also add custom-* selectors used by popular JS and CSS frameworks. The latest release of Chrome 108 expands support to XPath and text selectors.
Pages may load quickly but run slowly – and a poor user experience has an impact on your brand perception.
Make sure visitors don’t leave the site because it freezes when they click close.
Scripts are exported for third-party playback
Export your large user logs to various formats for popular future testing tools.
Use the JSON output to edit the stream and return it to the Recorder and playback view.
Export custom text with Chrome extensions.
There is support for exporting code to Google’s Node.js Puppeteer library. You can also use them with Cypress, Nightwatch, Sauce Labs, and TestCafe.
Screenshot from Chrome DevTools Recorder Panel, December 2022
Automate Headless Browser Testing With Puppeteer
Headless browsing is when you visit a website without a browser UI. You can launch Chrome in the background of your computer and work with the search tools.
Puppeteer is a Chrome API that runs the DevTools protocol. Puppeteer can also run browser tests without using the Chrome UI in a headless mode.
Set up automatic periodic CWV tests, and take snapshots of your uploads on different devices and networks. Devs automated form submission and UI testing.
Automatically report your page speed performance.
Chrome lets you work smarter, not harder. Devs save a lot of time, and so can you when doing technical SEO research with Canary.
Automate Timeline Traces For Synthetic Testing
The tests used are real-time recordings from different browsers, devices, and networks.
Synthetic optimizes performance testing for your real user experience.
Set up a user flow record in the Record Panel and export the script to the Web Page test. You can generate custom Recording scripts by extending the Web Page Test recording.
Web Platform API Testing On Chrome Canary
The Chrome engineering team publishes experimental APIs.
Third-party tools and businesses rely on them to test new features. Origin Tests are like Flags – they kill and don’t always make it to Stable Chrome.
A feature recommendation document provides context and explains how they can help users.
Check the status of Chrome Feature Flags and APIs on chromesttus.com.
Image from YouTube, August 2022
Developers use APIs for automated web performance testing. Real User Monitoring (RUM) statistics providers use Chrome APIs to track and report CWVs of real users.
Chrome is built on the open source Chromium project and bugs are tracked on the Chromium bug index.
Back/Forward Cache Testing For Smooth Page Navigation
Modern browsers have recently added a feature that loads pages faster using a new type of cache.
Back/Forward Cache (bfcache) stores a snapshot of the page in the browser’s memory when you visit it.
Screenshot from Chrome DevTools bfcache test, December 2022
It reloads pages without making a new network request to your server.
Users who navigate to a previously visited page on your site get a faster page loading experience. Loading from bfcache is faster than traditional HTTP cache, because it saves your visitors from downloading more data.
Chrome 96 Stable release shipped the bfcache test in the application panel. Checks pages if Backward/Forward caching is deployed.
Fixing Analytics Underreporting From Bfcache Browser Feature
Improved bfcache is an automatic browser, but it affects CWV. Search engines may under-report page views because a page is loaded from its bfcache.
Is your analytics set up to detect when a page is loaded from bfcache?
Test your website for bfcache to make sure your important pages are being served by it.
Keep track of when your pages stop working from bfcache.
New Update To The Back/Forward Cache Testing API
The new NotRestoredReason API feature improves error reporting for bfcache issues. It helps to understand why the page does not provide the cache to return the visitors.
The API will ship with Stable Chrome 111.
Identifying Render Blocking Resources With The Performance API
RUM tools do not have an easy way to check if a method is blocking performance.
Chrome 107 ships a new feature for the Performance API that detects blocking tools. This update helps RUM users save time and improve production processes.
The Performance Panel helps identify blocking elements such as CSS, which slow down the loading of a website.
When the browser encounters a font style it holds off on loading the page until it has finished reading the file. A browser needs to understand the layout and design of a page before it can display and paint a website.
Devs can help minimize recoding, styling, and repainting to prevent website slowdowns.
Improved HTTP Response Status Codes Reporting For The Resource Timing API
The Resource Timeout API does not support reporting a failed response code. Chrome 109 will ship with a new feature for the Performance API that handles HTTP response codes.
Developers and SEOs can now share their RUM statistics for page visits that result in 4XX and 5XX response codes.
The Future Of Core Web Vitals Is Here
Google owns 86% of the search engine market, and Chrome commands 66% of the top 10 browser market share.
Google introduced Core Web Vitals (CWV) hours in 2020 to help quantify the user experience on a website.
Initial Entry Delay (FID) is a CWV that measures page interaction.
Ever since it was first introduced as a standard, people have been increasing the FID of their websites – and today, they’re crushing it. 92% of websites now have a good FID score for mobile users, and 100% for desktop users.
But FID only tested the first user interaction. It does not measure the user experience more than the load of the first page.
“Chrome usage shows that 90% of user activity happens after loading the first page.”
Google recently launched a test interface to the Next Paint (INP) standard at Google I/O 2022 – and it could soon replace FID as the CWV interface standard.
INP paints a better picture of the user experience and interaction. It captures clicks, taps, keyboards, and scrolling actions, and measures the average page response time for each interaction that occurs.
Image from YouTube, November 2022
The HTTP archive reported a positive correlation of Total Time (TBT) with INP on FID.
Google continues to test and optimize INP.
INP-optimized sites will gain a competitive advantage when Google changes their past FIDs.
Is your website ready for when INP becomes CWV and affects rankings?
Closing Thoughts On Using Chrome Canary For SEO
In order to perform well and have great value on usability, a website must look, feel, navigate, and load quickly – and be accessible. Beautiful design and fast search allow better visibility on search.
We see beautiful websites now, but sometimes it can come at the cost of user experience. Dev teams need to consider the environmental costs of deploying bloated websites.
Websites are built the way our developers build them.
Devs must consider design, content, performance, access, systems, networks, and devices. They need to build sites while balancing priorities from marketing, management, and SEO.
SEO pros and devs can work together to drive better website performance. Google’s out-of-the-box tooling provides a great starting point for technical SEO reviews.
DevTools helps reduce time on debugging and troubleshooting, while Canary allows you to customize and automate CWV reporting.
Find and share the information your devs need to start fixing SEO issues right away.
Credit: Studio Cantath/Shutterstock
Is my Chrome being monitored?
Search policies If your browser is managed, you can search for policies set by your organization. In the address bar, type chrome://policy and press Enter. If you’re an administrator, learn more about Chrome Enterprise for business or school.
How can you tell if your browser is controlled by your organization?
Can I be tracked on Chrome?
Every time a user searches for Google Chrome to surf the internet, it is possible for various websites to collect user information and track their devices. Due to the browser’s default feature setting, many websites are able to track users’ devices and access their data.
Does Chrome track you in incognito?
In Incognito, none of your browsing history, cookies and site data, or information entered into forms is saved on your device. This means your activity doesn’t show up in your Chrome browser history, so people who also use the device won’t see your activity.
How do I know if my browser is being tracked?
Panoptical. Panopticlick is one of the first sites to check out. Panopticlick analyzes your current browser settings, including plugins and extensions, to measure the number of trackers that detect your browsing sessions.
How do I turn off tracking in Chrome?
Turn “Do Not Track” on or off.
- On your computer, open Chrome.
- At the top right, click More. Settings.
- Click Privacy and security. Cookies and other site information.
- Turn Send “Do Not Track” requests with your search traffic on or off.
How do I stop Chrome from monitoring?
Turn “Do Not Track” on or off.
- On your computer, open Chrome.
- At the top right, click More. Settings.
- Click Privacy and security. Cookies and other site information.
- Turn Send “Do Not Track” requests with your search traffic on or off.
Why is my personal Chrome browser managed?
If your Chrome browser has the message “managed by your organization†, it can mean two things. Either you’re using a work computer and your IT team / administration is in charge of Chrome policies, or you have a PUP (unwanted program) that changes Google Chrome settings.
How do I stop my Chrome browser from being managed?
To remove Chrome browser management policies from a Windows device, you need to clear the Chrome registry settings and restart the Chrome browser. For details on clearing the registry, see the Microsoft documentation. Delete registry keys: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareGoogleChrome.
What is a better browser than Chrome?
If you are concerned about how Google uses your data, Safari or Microsoft Edge may be your best alternative. Still, despite the privacy concerns, Chrome is a great browser overall if you use Google services. It’s probably the right default browser if you switch between Windows, Android, and Apple devices.
What is the fastest browser 2022? Puffin â the best Android browser â impressed us enough to take the number one spot, while its desktop version was dead last in terms of speed.
What is the best browser for 2022?
Top 10 BEST Browsers For PC [2022 Top Web Browser]
- Compare the Best Search Engine Optimization.
- #1) Firefox.
- #2) Google Chrome.
- #3) Microsoft Edge.
- #4) Apple Safari.
- #5) Opera.
- #6) Hero.
- #7) Vivaldi.
What is the #1 best browser?
As of November 2022, Google Chrome is the leading internet browser in the world with 65.84 percent of the global market. In other words, more than six out of ten people use Chrome to browse the Internet. Apple’s Safari is in second place with 18.7 percent, and 47.14 percent behind.
Which is the strongest browser?
Google Chrome is fast and available on almost every platform. This is our top speed pick, as it goes head-to-head with Safari on macOS and Microsoft Edge on Windows. It’s also a great alternative if you don’t want to use those native browsers.
What is world’s fastest browser?
Many tech users have tested different web browsers for speed and other features. Their consensus is that Google Chrome is the fastest web browser out there, especially for Windows users. It scored very well on the keyboard speed test, which we will discuss later in this article.
Does canary work with Google?
With Canary’s official integration with Google Assistant, you can ask your Google Home for important information about Canary Pro and Canary Flex devices. You can start by saying “Ok Google, talk to Canary,” or you can be specific and say, “Hey Google, ask Canary for the temperature at Home.”
. Download and open the Google Assistant app. Speak or write in “Talk to Canary.†Tap the link. Sign in using your Canary credentials.
What is the canary version of Chrome?
Chrome Canary is Google’s flagship web browser targeted at developers, tech professionals, and browser enthusiasts. In other words, it is a bleeding edge version of the Chrome browser ~ Google.
What is the difference between Chrome and Chrome Canary? The Dev Channel gives you a preview of Weeks 9â12. Canary is an early-release, experimental version of the Chrome browser that is recommended only for development testing. Channels do not share access points or user profiles with each other.
What does Google Chrome Canary do?
Canary is mainly for developers. Developers can test new features, APIs, changes, and flags while enjoying a stable environment for daily work as well. If you’re not a developer, you can use Canary to get a glimpse of where Chrome is headed, or to get a more customizable browser experience.
Does Chrome Canary track you?
Chrome’s nightly canary architecture can now track user interest and run ad auctions. Dimensions / Privacy Sandbox Settings.
What features does Chrome Canary have?
Canary flags
- Force Dark Mode: Creates a dark mode for websites that don’t have one.
- Custom Theme: Allows you to build your own Chrome theme.
- Read Mode: Takes the weird stuff out of web pages to make them easier to read.
Does Chrome Canary use less RAM?
If you use Chrome and are worried about this, you are not alone. While most people will immediately switch to alternative browsers, there is something you can do about it. You can now reduce Chrome’s RAM usage by testing using Chrome Canary.
Is Chrome Canary worth it?
Google Chrome Canary is a great tool for developers and engineers to test new Google Chrome features. It also has privacy protection that the old version of Google Chrome didn’t have, as well as extensions if you want them.
Does Chrome Canary track you?
Chrome’s nightly canary architecture can now track user interest and run ad auctions. Dimensions / Privacy Sandbox Settings.
Is Canary faster than Chrome?
It depends. Overall canary is an alpha version of Chrome and there may be a few bugs and crashes. It depends on the job. If there are some features added, like the latest version of Javascript V8, or any related gameplay, then yes.
Does Chrome Canary use less RAM?
If you use Chrome and are worried about this, you are not alone. While most people will immediately switch to alternative browsers, there is something you can do about it. You can now reduce Chrome’s RAM usage by testing using Chrome Canary.