Backlinko has done an extensive analysis of “voice search ranking factors” and identified 11 variables tied to appearing in Google Home results. The company examined 10,000 results delivered over the smart speaker. What Backlinko found was consistent with what many others have been saying but there were also a few surprises. For example, the study discounts the impact of Schema to some degree and page authority. Eric Bidelman from Google posted a PSA, public service announcement, that since GoogleBot is based on Chrome 41, Google is unable to crawl CSS Custom Properties. Using CSS custom properties (variables) CSS variables are entities defined by CSS authors that contain specific values to be reused throughout a document. They are set using custom property notation (e.g. --main-color: black; ) and are accessed using the var() function (e.g., color: var(--main-color); Eric said he ran into the issue himself when he was deploying a layout or design that relies on vars. He said make sure you are compiling CSS so your page renders properly. As you know, the mobile first index is getting ready to expand in the upcoming weeks and some webmasters that still have desktop only sites are a bit nervous. If you still haven't read the official Google tips or the what you need to know you might not understand that desktop sites will be fine.

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