Google announced an important change in how the PageSpeed Insights tools gather information. The change is a switch to using the http/2 protocol for connecting to a web page. HTTP/2 allows faster transfer of data. That in turn improved the PageSpeed Insights scores across all metrics. The only hangup is if your server does not support HTTP/2, you can test your site here.

Google My Business has upgraded the new performance report, which was an upgrade from the Insights report, to add a section for people who viewed your business profile. This new section shows you how people found your local listing, either on desktop or mobile and either through Google Search or Google Maps.

This report for platform and device breakdown rolled out as a beta in late January, if you log into the insights panel you will have an option to See new profile performance to see this new report.

If rich results aren’t shown in the SERPs, and it’s set up correctly from a technical POV, then it is possible that Google’s quality algorithms are not 100% happy with the website according to Google’s John Mueller.

Microsoft has just announced several updates to their Bing Search Engine that make the search experience more visually immersive. Here is a quick recap:

• an updated recipes experience that extracts and aggregates the most relevant recipes content and presents it in a single view on the search results page. eg: fish tacos recipes
• this experience also applies to  home improvement or for creative projects eg: DIY coffee table . They have also integrated visual search into the experience, so you can quickly search using an image. For example, in the “DIY coffee table” result, you may see wicker baskets that fit the table’s look and feel. With just a click, you’ll get image results of similar-looking items, and can directly click off to retailer sites to purchase a particular basket if you’re sold on it.
• updates to our carousel experiences, with intuitive hover-over experiences that can help you, for example, quickly organize your book or movie lists. eg: chef documentaries
• infographic-inspired experiences eg: “Kenya” or “giraffes”.
• upgraded local answers results (USA only) – you’re trying to stay close to home and want to be a tourist in your own hometown. Search for things like “things to do in Seattle” or “Eiffel Tower”, and you’ll get aggregated information from a variety of sources. Instead of just a single carousel of images, or just a text summary of one aspect of what you’ve searched for.

As a searcher, I think these are really great at least in the examples shown and for general queries, I think Bing can work well. For example, if I want to learn more about “giraffes” I think bings’ SERPs looks better BUT when I am looking for specific things Google is still king at surfacing relevant content so my default search engine will stay as Google.