Sept. 19th, 2022 - Earlier updates to the Siteimprove platform

Link checker update

We are updating the engine used by the Siteimprove services to check links (e.g. checking for broken links in the product Quality Assurance). 

This involves moving from Windows 2012 to a Kubernetes based Linux implementation for the link checking service.

No action need to be taken at the customers end for the migration to happen, and the migration itself wont limit the customers' use of the platform.

Click here for further information about the link checker migration.

Timeline

We started the migration for a few customers in the beginning of September, and we have completed the migration November 1st.

Migrated customers have received an in-platform notification

September 14th, 2022

We now support HTTP/2

Siteimprove has added support for HTTP/2 on its Analytics collection endpoints.

Cookies have been updated and are now called AWSALB instead of AWSELB . Click here for further information about cookies.

Background information

HTTP/2 is the second version of the HTTP protocol aiming to make applications faster, simpler, and more robust by improving many of the drawbacks of the first HTTP version.

The primary goals of HTTP/2 are:

• Enable request and response multiplexing
• Header compression
• Compatibility with the methods, status codes, URIs, and header fields defined by the HTTP/1.1 standard
• Optimized prioritization of requests, making sure that loading for optimal user experience is as fast as possible
• Support for server-side push
• Server-side backwards compatibility, making sure servers can still serve clients only supporting HTTP/1.1 without any changes
• Transforming to a binary protocol from the text-based HTTP/1.1

The Upwork Team, (2021). What is the HTTP/2 Protocol? Overview and Examples. [Online] upwork. Available at: https://www.upwork.com/resources/what-is-http2 [Accessed September 14th 2022].

Key features of HTTP/2

• Binary: Meaning commands use 1s and 0s and not text
• Multiplex: Permits multiple requests and responses to be sent at the same time
• Compression: Compresses headers that have been requested previously to make things more efficient
• Stream prioritization: This allows for the exchange of successive streams at one time
• Server push: The server can send additional information needed for a request before it is requested
• Increased security: HTTP/2 is supported through encrypted connections

The Upwork Team, (2021). What is the HTTP/2 Protocol? Overview and Examples. [Online] upwork. Available at: https://www.upwork.com/resources/what-is-http2 [Accessed September 14th 2022].

June 23rd, 2022

Dashboard and Reports: Move dashboard widgets accessibly

We’ve added an accessible way to move widgets on a dashboard. Previously, widgets could only move via drag and drop. As this was inaccessible, you can now move widgets up or down on the dashboard via the three-dot menu button located in the dashboard widget. This is also the better option when you want to move tall widgets on the dashboard.

Alt text: A screenshot of the Broken Links widget on a dashboard. The tree-dot menu is expanded and highlighted in green are the options to move this widget: Top of dashboard, Up one position, Down one position, Bottom of dashboard. 

Dashboard and Reports: Change report owner to avoid failed reports

A dashboard can be shared as a report with stakeholders via email. Dashboard reports scheduled to be sent regularly must have a “report owner”. Otherwise, sending the report will fail.

Users can now see who is listed as the dashboard report owner and they can change the owner. Additionally, a red symbol now highlights scheduled reports that have no owner, as these reports won’t be sent.

Alt text: A platform screenshot of the Manage scheduled reports page. On the first scheduled report, the three-dot menu is expanded presenting the options to: edit the scheduled report, change the owner, or delete the scheduled report. The new “Owner” column is highlighted in green and demonstrates that this reports lacks an owner and won’t send.  

June 9th, 2022

Adding sites to your account: Now easier and faster  

We are improving the way you add sites to your Siteimprove account. Adding sites is necessary for Siteimprove to crawl and check the pages on your website. Previously, you had to add sites manually one by one or reach out to us via Customer Support to ask for a bulk upload. With this release, you can now bulk upload a list of URLs saving you time when you want to add multiple sites at once. 

We have also started validating each index-URL when sites are added (an index-URL is the starting point for a crawl). This lets us identify potential unsuccessful index-URLs that would lead to failed crawls and prolong your account setup. URL validation helps us save time and avoid unsuccessful crawl attempts. 

With unsuccessful index-URLs you are presented with the associated http status code (e.g. 301, 404, 403, 500), an explanation, and in many cases the possibility to solve the issue. It will often be sufficient to copy the URL into your web browser and see if it loads correctly. If the browser redirects and shows a different URL, then that's the one you should use as index-URL.  

We continue to build and improve on the workflow for adding and crawling sites. We plan to make the improvements described above available for remaining markets over the summer. 

Visit the Help Center to learn more about The Siteimprove scan process and How to add a site to your Siteimprove Subscription. 

Screenshot of the platform settings section from where you can add sites. The two options for adding sites are highlighted in red: bulk upload or adding sites manually. The “Learn” component is expanded and highlighted in red.

Screenshot of the platform settings section from where you can add sites. A site has been added but the index-URL was unsuccessful. The 301-status code and an explanation to help solve the issue is highlighted in red.  

Accessibility: Activity page updated and new Learn component

We have given the Activity page an overhaul to make it more intuitive and support usage. 

Improvements include a new Learn component at the top of the page offering explanations on: Dismissing issues, reporting false positives, and issues that can’t be fixed.  

In the table’s Comment column, we have replaced the tool tip comment with a pop-out box. In addition to message date and sender’s name, the box allows for more thorough messaging and e.g. screenshots. 

Finally, we have divided “Dismissed as can’t fix” and “Dismissed as false positive” into two separate tabs on the Activity page. This provides a much clearer overview of which decision users have made about these occurrences and what Siteimprove’s feedback might be.   

A platform screenshot of the Activity page in Accessibility. The new Learn component is expanded and highlighted in red. The two new tabs “Dismissed as can’t fix” and “Dismissed as false positive” are highlighted in red and so is the Comments column. 

Prepublish now available on additional CMS plugin  

We continue to make our prepublish feature available in more CMS plugins. Sitecore was recently added making prepublish available in the following five CMS plugins: Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Optimizely, Tridion (RWS), Drupal, and Sitecore.  

Prepublish allows you to check the quality of your content before publishing it to your website. It helps you ensure that your content is accessible, error-free, SEO optimized and lives up to your brand’s standards. 

The content checks available depend on the Siteimprove features within your subscription and your CMS software. Learn more in the help center: What is Prepublish? 

Read more on our website: Your content at its best with Siteimprove Prepublish.

May 19th, 2022

Dashboard and Reports:

We continue to build on our dashboard reporting and add features requested by our users.

In the Manage scheduled reports table, you are now able to filter the list of scheduled reports by three different criteria: type of dashboard(s), site(s), and group(s). In addition, you can type searches within these three criteria to find that specific report you’re looking for. Managing multiple scheduled reports is now much easier. 

April 28th, 2022

SEO Advanced: 

We’ve improved our integration with Google My Business (GMB). GMB is a tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google Maps and Google Search.

Siteimprove’s integration with GMB lets users manage their local business information listed in Google directly from their Siteimprove account. From here it’s easy to ensure up to date information which now also includes:

• Opening hours
• Name, address, and phone number
• Website and business category

Additionally, it’s now possible to customize user access and permissions. This flexibility is particularly helpful for Enterprise organizations where Customer Support for example needs access to reading and replying to customer reviews but don’t need to update opening hours or business location. Go to Settings -> Local SEO.

Read more in the article: How to connect SEO Advanced to Google My Business accounts.

April 21st, 2022

Dashboard and Reports:

We’ve added a learn component to the Dashboard page in the platform. This is to help explain what you can achieve and demonstrate with dashboards and its reporting capabilities.

The learn component also links to other dashboard resources in our Help Center such as: how to get started and our library of pre-configured templates for your inspiration. 

With dashboards you can: 

• get data and insights from across Siteimprove 
• track progress on work done to your site 
• share data with colleagues and stakeholder

April 7th, 2022

Performance: Now available in all platform languages

Until today, the Performance product was available in US English, UK English, Dutch and Japanese but is now available in all the supported platform languages: English UK+US, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Finnish, and Japanese.

Performance: Improved best practices

We have made a number of improvements to the best practices that are listed for each monitored web page in the Performance product. Following best practice will benefit the performance of a page and we have given the best practice explanations an overhaul to make the message more clear and actionable. Further, we have improved the layout of the page to better present this information to the user.

March 17th, 2022

SEO Advanced: Google Search Console

Users who have connected their Google Search Console with their Siteimprove account can now view keyword and visitor behavior data going 12 months back. Previously, this was 3 months. The extended data timeframe offers better insight into how your website performs in Google. 

Read more on how Siteimprove works with Google Search Console.

February 4th, 2022

SEO Advanced: SEO Insights

Our new SEO Insights are easily digestible, actionable highlights of data related to your search engine optimization. They can assist you in identifying important trends to kickstart your SEO efforts. With insights, you will be notified when:

• your keywords are ranking significantly higher or lower
• your Activity Plans are performing better or worse than competitors
• you’ve gained or lost backlinks
• we discover keywords that could be relevant to your organization.

Read more on SEO Insights. 

January 13th, 2022

Quality Assurance: Discontinuation of Trademarks page

We have decided to discontinue the Trademarks page, which was found through Quality Assurance > Inventory. We decided to do this, as the page was one of the least visited in Quality Assurance.

If you still need to track pages that have trademarks, you can do so via our new policy, 'Trademarks'. It can be found in the Policy Library.

Performance: Now available in Japanese

The Performance product is now available in a Japanese user interface. This is in addition to the already available US English, UK English, and Dutch interfaces. The remaining platform languages will follow.