Designing for the web is harder than ever. Better mobile technologies and web standards emerge every day.
So how do websites keep up?
Unlimited data plans are a luxury. But how much data is downloaded when visiting a website and what is the environmental impact of our web today?
The Google search engine’s mobile index prioritizes sites that provide a smooth site experience. Does your business have search visibility in mind?
Developers have a huge impact on how well a website performs on Google – but are they always focused on search?
Good developers strike a balance between website aesthetics and performance. Does your team set web performance budgets with measurable goals?
In this article, I explore ways to improve communication with your development team. Chrome’s developer tools have the data developers need to solve problems faster.
We’ll see how the Canary browser is a great place to start a technical SEO audit.
I’ll be sharing updates on new features that SEO professionals should be testing today.
How Chrome Releases New Features
Canary is an early version of the Google Chrome browser.
Google releases its features in four phases, which 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 problems before releasing the feature to the next channel.
Screenshot from YouTube, August 2022
Canary gets updates first with nightly releases at 2am PST. You get the latest features, browser experiments, and web platform APIs. Updates also include bug fixes, browser improvements, code cleanup, security and protection.
Features iterate over a six-week release cycle before they become available to all 3.2B users.
Users can test upcoming features on their websites, web applications, content management system (CMS), themes and plugins. They report bugs and provide feedback on new features.
Not all features make it past Canary. Experimental Browser is used by browser enthusiasts, developers, business users and technical SEO experts.
Debugging SEO With Developer Tools
Chrome DevTools is a browser diagnostic tool for testing web pages within the browser. Developers test, build and maintain websites using instruments that measure page speed.
Browser tools test website performance under different conditions. It gives you an advantage in fixing websites.
For developers, tools are almost as important as the browser itself.
No need to wait for long and expensive indexing to finish; You can find technical SEO issues and report them to Canary immediately.
Setting Up Chrome Canary For SEO
Websites need to perform well across different locations, devices and networks. DevTools allow you to simulate browsing in different locations and at lower speeds.
Set Canary to browse as a Googlebot user agent in Chrome’s settings.
See what Google sees when it loads the page.
Screenshot from the 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 auditing and debugging.
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.
Technical SEO professionals scour the web the same way mechanics troubleshoot cars; We include and scan pages in browser tools and analyze how they load and respond.
With Canary you can capture and measure key moments like page load, navigation and user interaction. You can also get status codes, Core Web Vitals (CWV) readings, waterfalls and timeline charts, and more.
Screenshot from YouTube, May 2021
Sometimes troubleshooting in Canary only points to the symptom instead of the problem. More capable tools offer advanced readings, but the troubleshooting process remains the same.
Technical SEO Auditing With Google Chrome Canary
Google wants web pages to load quickly, but a page won’t rank well if Googlebot doesn’t understand the main content.
DevTools can measure website delivery and performance and help with debugging.
Review and troubleshoot Javascript, CSS, and CWV issues with Canary.
Use DevTools to instantly test your pages and templates.
Screenshot from YouTube, May 2022
It helps to see how the site is driving visitors and Google’s crawlers. Check for internal links, duplicate content, broken links, missing images, and 404 pages.
Check your metadata on the page to see if everything is there and optimized. Look for structured data issues and investigate content that Google didn’t index due to JavaScript rendering issues.
Throttle network settings to test latency under different web conditions and analyze website runtime performance to identify bottlenecks.
Look for opportunities to optimize content delivery.
Check how site resources load and display. Not all resources are created equal – better resource delivery can improve user experience.
Using DevTools In Canary For Technical SEO Website Audits
Following are some of the popular use cases of DevTools for SEO professionals:
Lighthouse
Network Panel
Performance Panel
Other SEO DevTools Workflows
Need help making a business case for SEO?
Use data to prove the value of technical SEO.
Benchmark website performance and compare content delivery with your competitors.
Screenshot from Looker Studio, December 2022
Use Canary to stay up to date with changes to your site.
Chrome Browser Development Ecosystem
Chrome’s software development strategy drives several rolling and parallel deployments. This method allows you to run A/B testing and capacity testing.
Chrome engineers automate feature rollbacks and avoid cold starts and crashes. It’s a simplified process that gives detailed browser version control.
Be sure to follow the features as they develop on each channel. Read feature summaries and understand what business problems they can solve.
Chromestatus.com tracks features as they progress. Subscribe to the Chrome Developer Blog to stay up-to-date on Chrome tools and libraries.
Screenshot from ChromeStatus.com, December 2022
Experimental DevTools Features In Chrome Canary
New Performance Insights Panel In Chrome DevTools
Professional athletes watch game film to understand their performance. Similarly, the Performance Insights panel allows you to play and share snapshots of website loads.
Chrome DevTools Performance Panel, December 2022
The new panel shipped with Chrome 102. It’s a simplified update to the Performance panel that provides insights without requiring a deep technical understanding of browser rendering.
The panel has a simple user interface to measure CWV page load performance. It provides useful insights into pages, finds render blocking requests, layout offsets and more.
Future releases will expand use cases such as interactivity testing.
Share network delays in your critical rendering path and display GPU activity for dropped frames that are causing your site to lag.
Save your developers some time and include performance footage when submitting tickets. Show them exactly what’s wrong with your pages to get them to take action right away.
New Recorder Panel Updates In Chrome DevTools
The Recorder panel is an experimental feature that gives users insight into the flow.
Logs runtime performance for multi-step user flows via the performance panel.
Use this feature to audit the performance of a website’s primary user flows.
Most users interact with your website after it loads. Therefore, it is a good idea to record user interactions such as clicking, scrolling and navigation. Record and edit your user flows for simulated network conditions.
Also, record your e-commerce checkout flow and measure checkout performance by setting up different add-to-cart steps.
You can also script the interaction of a page load and a button or link click and measure their CWV.
Screenshot from the Chrome DevTools Capture Panel, December 2022
Google lists support for several user input properties.
Automatically detects ARIA and CSS selectors. You can also add custom data selectors* used by popular JS and CSS frameworks. The latest release of Chrome 108 has extended support for XPath and text selectors.
Pages can load quickly but perform slowly – and a poor user experience affects the perception of your brand.
Make sure visitors don’t leave the site because it froze when they clicked.
Export recorder panel scripts for third-party playback
Export your master user flow snapshots to various formats for popular interface testing tools.
Use JSON exports to edit streams and import them back into Recorder and watch replays.
Export custom scripts with Chrome extensions.
There is support for exporting snapshots to Google’s Node.js Puppeteer library. You can also use them with Cypress, Nightwatch, Sauce Labs and TestCafe.
Screenshot from the Chrome DevTools Capture Panel, December 2022
Automate Headless Browser Testing With Puppeteer
Headless browsing is when you visit a website without a browser user interface. You can run Chrome in the background of your computer and manage browser tools.
Puppeteer Chrome is an API that works over the DevTools protocol. Puppeteer can also run browser tests without using the Chrome UI via headless mode.
Set up automatic periodic CWV testing and take screenshots of your pages loading on different devices and networks. Developers automate form submissions and user interface testing.
Automate page speed reporting.
Chrome lets you work smarter, not harder. Developers save a lot of time, and so can you when you perform technical SEO audits with Canary.
Automate Timeline Traces For Synthetic Testing
Synthetic tests are snapshots of timeline tracking from different browsers, devices and networks.
Synthetic simulates performance testing for your user’s real-world experience.
Set up user flow recordings in the Recorder panel and export the script to the test website. You can export custom recording scripts via the WebPage Test Recorder extension.
Web Platform API Testing On Chrome Canary
Chrome’s engineering team publishes experimental APIs.
Third-party tools and companies depend on them to test new features. Origin Trials are like Feature Flags – they get turned off and don’t always make it to stable Chrome.
The feature proposal documentation provides context and explains how they can help users.
Check the status of Chrome’s feature tags and APIs at chromestatus.com.
Screenshot from YouTube, August 2022
Developers use APIs for automated web performance testing. Real User Monitoring (RUM) analytics service providers use Chrome’s APIs to track and report CWVs of real users.
Chrome is built on the Chromium open source project, and bugs are tracked on the Chromium bug tracker.
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) takes a snapshot of a page in your 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 return to a previously visited page on your website get a faster page loading experience. Loading from bfcache is faster than traditional HTTP caching because it saves your visitor from downloading additional data.
Chrome 96 Stable release delivered the bfcache test in the application panel. Checks pages to see if Back/Forward caching is set.
Fixing Analytics Underreporting From Bfcache Browser Feature
The bfcache browser optimization is automatic, but it affects CWV. Analytics tools may report insufficient pageviews because the page is loaded from its bfcache.
Are 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 serving it.
Watch out when your pages are no longer served 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 site is not serving the cache to returning visitors.
The API will ship with Stable Chrome 111.
Identifying Render Blocking Resources With The Performance API
The RUM tools didn’t have an easy way to check if a resource was blocking rendering.
Chrome 107 delivered a new feature to the Performance API that identifies display-blocking resources. This update helps RUM users save time and optimize rendering paths.
The performance panel helps identify render-blocking resources such as CSS that are delaying page loading.
When the browser encounters a style sheet, it holds the page load until it finishes reading the file. A browser needs to understand the layout and design of a page before it can render and render a website.
Developers can help minimize recalculation, styling, and repainting to prevent website slowdowns.
Improved HTTP Response Status Codes Reporting For The Resource Timing API
The Resource Timing API did not support reporting a failure response code. Chrome 109 will ship with a new Performance API feature that captures HTTP response codes.
Developers and SEOs can now segment their RUM analytics 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 share, and Chrome holds 66% of the global browser market share.
In 2020, Google launched its Core Web Vitals (CWV) web performance metric to help quantify the user experience on a website.
First Input Delay (FID) is a CWV that measures the interactivity of a page.
Since it was first launched as a metric, people have been improving their websites’ FID – and today they’re destroying it. 92% of websites now have a good FID score for mobile users and 100% for desktop users.
But FID only tests the first user interaction. It does not measure the user experience after the initial page load.
“Chrome usage shows that 90% of user activity occurs after the initial page load.”
Google recently launched an experimental Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric at Google I/O 2022 – and it could soon replace FID as the CWV metric of the interactivity field.
INP gives a more accurate picture of the interactive user experience. It captures click, tap, keyboard and tab activity, and also measures the average page response time for each interaction that occurs.
Screenshot from YouTube, November 2022
The HTTP archive reported a stronger correlation of Total Blocking Time (TBT) with INP compared to FID.
Google continues to experiment and refine INP.
Sites optimized for INP will have a competitive advantage when Google evolves after FID.
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 score highly for usability, a website must look, feel, navigate and load quickly – and it must also be accessible. Beautiful design and fast browsing allow for better search visibility.
Now we see websites that look better, but that can sometimes come at the cost of a good user experience. Development teams must consider the environmental costs of shipping bloated websites.
The website loads the way our developers designed it.
Developers must consider design, content, performance, accessibility, frameworks, networks, and devices. They have to build websites while balancing marketing, management and SEO priorities.
SEO experts and developers can work together to improve website performance. Google’s Out of the Box tool offers a great starting point for a technical SEO audit.
DevTools helps reduce debugging and troubleshooting time, while Canary lets you streamline CWV reporting with browser automation.
Find and share the data your developers need to start solving SEO problems right away.
Featured Image: Studio Cantath/Shutterstock
Can you be hacked through Chrome?
Google has announced that Google Chrome has been successfully hacked, revealing 30 security vulnerabilities – seven of which pose a “high” threat to users.
Can Hackers Hack Google Chrome? If you’re using Google Chrome on your laptop or desktop, you need to update it immediately or face the consequences because hackers can exploit the flaw and steal your data.
Can I be hacked through Google?
Hackers can target all types of online accounts. As one of the largest email account providers, Google accounts are one of the most sought after. It’s important to know what signs to look out for in the event that your account is hacked so you can kick the hacker out and get things back on track.
Do hackers use Google?
Google accounts are popular targets for hackers because most people have them and they are often used for important services. Each account is equipped with security features that make it difficult for thieves to gain access.
How do I know if I am being hacked?
How to know if you have been hacked
- You get a message about ransomware.
- You are getting a fake antivirus message.
- You have unwanted browser toolbars.
- Your internet searches have been redirected.
- You see frequent, random pop-ups.
- Your friends receive social media invitations from you that you didn’t send.
- Your network password is not working.
How do you tell if Chrome has been hijacked?
Signs that your browser has been hijacked include:
- Searches that are redirected to different websites.
- Multiple warnings about pop-up ads.
- Websites that load slowly.
- Multiple toolbars on a web browser that the user has not installed.
How do I get rid of hijacked Chrome?
Go to Chrome > Settings… to open its settings. Scroll down on the settings page to find the search engine section. Click Manage Search Engines. On the far right side of the list, click â® to delete any search engines you don’t want to have.
Can Chrome browser be hacked?
(NewsNation) â If you use Google Chrome as your Internet browser, beware: your data may be at risk. Google has issued an alert warning billions of Chrome users that the browser has been successfully hacked.
Has Google Chrome been compromised 2022?
Here’s everything you need to know. Google confirmed the news in an official blog post, stating that a new high-level Zero Day vulnerability (CVE-2022-0609) has been found in all Chrome browsers and is being openly exploited by hackers.
Is Google Chrome still vulnerable?
With 303 vulnerabilities and a cumulative total of 3,159 vulnerabilities since 2022, a new report says Google Chrome is the most vulnerable browser available. According to a report by Atlas VPN, these figures are based on data from the VulDB vulnerability database, which covers the period from January 1, 2022 to October 5, 2022.
What is the latest issue of Chrome?
| Platform | Version | Release date |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome on iOS | 108.0.5359.112 | 2022-12-13 |
What does canary version mean?
What is a Canary Release? A Canary release is a software testing technique used to reduce the risk of introducing a new version of software into production by gradually introducing a change to a small subset of users, before rolling it out to the entire platform/infrastructure.
What is the canary version? In software engineering, canary deployment is the practice of making incremental releases. We first roll out the software update to a small portion of users so they can test it and provide feedback. Once the change is accepted, the update is shown to other users.
What does canary mean in software?
In software testing, canary testing refers to testing a new version of software or a new feature with real users in a live (production) environment. This is done by pushing some live code changes to a small group of end users who are usually unaware that they are receiving new code.
What are canaries in Devops?
Canary deployment is a more risk-averse blue/green strategy that uses a phased approach. This can be in two steps or linear where the new application code is implemented and exposed for trial, and after acceptance is pushed out either to the rest of the environment or in a linear fashion.
What is canary function?
Canaries check the availability and latency of your endpoints and can store load time data and user interface screenshots. They monitor your REST APIs, URLs and website content and can check for unauthorized changes caused by phishing, code injection and cross-site scripting.
Why is it called a canary build?
“Releasing canaries” got its name from an old coal mining tactic. Miners would release canaries into coal mines in an attempt to measure the amount of toxic gases present. If the canary survived, well, things were safe. Fortunately, times have changed, but somehow the name still stuck with the Canary releases.
Why is it called canary build?
The first group of people to use canary wood find the worst bugs. The term comes from the earlier practice of using the “canary in the coal mine” to test for toxic gases. If the bird died or was visibly injured, the miners knew it was still not safe to enter the mine. See build, canary network and Chrome Canary.
Why is it called canary testing?
Understanding canary testing The term originated from coal mining and the expression “canary in the coal mine”. Canary birds have a lower tolerance for toxic gases than humans, so they were used to warn miners when these gases reached dangerous levels inside the mines.
What does canary test mean?
What is canary testing? Canary Testing is a way of reducing risk and verifying new software by releasing the software to a small percentage of users. With canary testing, you can deliver to specific groups of users at the same time.
What is canary in Devops?
Canary deployment is a more risk-averse blue/green strategy that uses a phased approach. This can be in two steps or linear where the new application code is implemented and exposed for trial, and after acceptance is pushed out either to the rest of the environment or in a linear fashion.
What is canary used for?
Countries such as Britain, the United States and Canada have used canaries as surveillance species. Until the end of the 20th century, miners brought canaries into coal mines as an early warning signal of toxic gases, primarily carbon monoxide.
What is the best browser to replace Chrome?
10 Best Chrome Alternatives
- Mozilla Firefox.
- Internet Explorer.
- Apple Safari.
- Brave.
- Microsoft Edge.
- Opera.
- Chromium.
- Iron.
What is the best browser 2022? However, choosing the best web browser in 2022 requires taking multiple factors into consideration. According to Statcounter, Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox are among the top choices for most users.
What will happen if I uninstall Google Chrome?
Because no matter what device you’re using, when you uninstall Chrome, it will automatically switch to your default browser (Edge for Windows, Safari for Mac, Android browser for Android). However, if you don’t want to use the default browsers, you can use them to download any other browser you want.
Is it OK to uninstall Chrome?
If you want to replace your primary browser, you can disable Chrome without much consequence. You can install your new browser and continue using your device as usual. However, completely removing the app could be problematic.
Can I uninstall Google Chrome and then reinstall?
Uninstall and reinstall Chrome to fix most problems with default search engines, pop-ups, or Chrome updates.
What is the #1 best browser?
As of November 2022, Google’s Chrome is the leading Internet browser in the world with a global market share of 65.84 percent. In other words, more than six out of ten people use Chrome to browse the Internet. In second place is Apple’s Safari with 18.7 percent, trailing by 47.14 percentage points.
What is world’s fastest browser?
Many tech enthusiasts 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 high on key speed tests, which we’ll discuss later in this article.
What is the fastest browser 2022?
Puffin – the best browser for Android – impressed us enough to take the top spot, while its desktop version came last in terms of speed.
Why are people leaving Chrome?
People may have come to Chrome for speed, but if there’s one reason they’re leaving it, it’s privacy. Privacy experts have long warned that Chrome collects so much data about users that you’d be shocked to even peek into its server data sets.
Is Chrome being discontinued? The timeline they provided states that all Chrome apps will be completely phased out by June 2022. Although Google has extended that to 2025, Quillsoft no longer supports these apps as they have been replaced by one WordQ for Google Chrome Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
Should I use Chrome in 2022?
Verdict: Google Chrome vs. Firefox If you’re looking for the best browser for Android, these two are great options. Chrome is a faster browser with more features for everyday use, but many will prefer Firefox for its privacy and security.
What browser should I replace Chrome with?
Microsoft Edge. The new Microsoft Edge is built on Chromium so it’s as compatible as Chrome itself, but with that Microsoft look.
What is the most preferred browser in 2022?
As of November 2022, Google’s Chrome is the leading Internet browser in the world with a global market share of 65.84 percent. In other words, more than six out of ten people use Chrome to browse the Internet. In second place is Apple’s Safari with 18.7 percent, trailing by 47.14 percentage points.
What is the slowest browser?
Microsoft’s IE8 is the slowest of the top five production browsers, according to SunSpider results.
What is a bad browser? Bad browser: The source of the request was not legitimate or the request itself was malicious. Users would see a 1010 error page in their browser. Cloudflare’s Browser Integrity Checker looks for common HTTP headers most commonly abused by spammers and denies them access to your site.
Which browser is fastest?
What is the fastest browser in the world? Chrome is the fastest internet browser we’ve tested. Edge followed closely behind him. Opera was also a fast web browser, but slower than Edge.
Which is the fastest browser 2022?
Chrome is the fastest internet browser we’ve tested. Edge followed closely behind him.
Which browser is faster than Chrome?
Microsoft Edge is a close second. It supports all the same browser extensions as Google Chrome, as it is based on the same Chromium engine. However, it’s noticeably less RAM-demanding, allowing for faster performance – plus it now comes with a built-in password manager.
What is the slowest search engine?
Checknews.fr was the slowest search engine, but also the most accurate. It wasn’t powered by algorithms, but by Liberation journalists who researched each query, meaning the responses were anything but immediate.
What is the most unsafe browser?
With 303 vulnerabilities and a cumulative total of 3,159 vulnerabilities since 2022, a new report says Google Chrome is the most vulnerable browser available. According to a report by Atlas VPN, these figures are based on data from the VulDB vulnerability database, which covers the period from January 1, 2022 to October 5, 2022.
Which Internet browser is slowest?
However, if you want the most secure browser on the planet, Firefox is the way to go, even though it’s the slowest browser on our list.
Is Internet Explorer the slowest?
Is Internet Explorer slower than other browsers? That. That browser has not been updated since 2013 except for security and stability fixes. It lacks all the features, speed improvements and technologies supported by modern browsers.