Google SEO
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What you read here is written by our experienced in-house team, and subject matter experts from leading brands and agencies.
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2023 Survey: Local search ranking factors
Whitespark has surveyed dozens of local SEO experts to compile what they believe are the most important ranking factors for local search.
Google explains why Bard rarely lists citations and links to content creators
Google said it will link to citations when Bard directly quote at length from a webpage.
Google adds ranking update history to Search Status Dashboard
Google said the new Ranking section of the Search Status dashboard will show active updates as well as history up to 2020.
Google Bard waitlist opens: How to get access to the AI chatbot
You can sign up for the waitlist if you are based in the US or UK.
Google February 2023 product reviews update more volatile than previous updates, say data providers
Semrush compared the sixth release against the July 2022 version, while Rank Ranger compared it against September 2022 data.
Google rolled out new site names, favicon and sponsored label on desktop search
After launching this design for the mobile search results last October, this is now officially live for desktop search.
Google February 2023 product reviews update is finished rolling out
This update took 14 days to fully roll out and is now complete.
Google featured snippets gain blue highlighted text
Not all featured snippets will see text highlighted in blue, but many now do.
SEO opportunities in 2023: Helpful content, E-E-A-T, People also ask
Want to advance your SEO game and get ahead of the competition? Here are three sustainable opportunities worth investing in this year.
Google local map pack goes missing in search results (now fixed)
The local pack that Google generally shows for queries with local intent has gone missing.
Google limits access to news content in Canada
Google confirmed this test will impact 4% of Canadians. It's similar to what Google did in Australia in 2021.
How to update content and dates for SEO in 2023
Google says that only significant content changes should lead to updated article dates. Here are a few ways you can approach this.
Google helpful content system can now impact Google Discover visibility
Google core updates and other algorithm updates impacted Discover, but now Google says the helpful content system does as well.
Google Search Console users and permissions management updated
Make sure to review user permissions and levels of access with this update.
Google releases February 2023 product reviews update
This update brings new languages to the product reviews update including English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Polish.
Google Search Console adds daily bulk data exports to BigQuery
This will allow you to potentially do more analysis with your data in other platforms.
Google warns against using 403 or 404 status codes for Googlebot crawl rate limiting
Instead, Google recommends you use Google Search Console's crawl rate feature.
Google publishes new link best practices
This help document went from basics on crawlable links to a much more robust link best practices.
How to analyze Google’s SERPs
Conducting SERP analysis will help you understand what is and isn't working for a particular keyword. Here are tips and tools to get started.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) may gain more weight in overall Google Core Web Vitals or maybe not…
Google posted that the time to interact metric is being removed from Lighthouse 10 and thus that scoring weight will be assigned to cumulative layout shift.
Google reiterates guidance on AI-generated content – write content for people
Also consider evaluating the "who, how and why" of your content.
Google Search podcast carousel going away on February 13
Your Google podcast manager stats will show a drop in clicks and impressions.
Google launches Bard, its answer to ChatGPT – here’s what it looks like
Google promises to make their experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, available more widely in the coming weeks.
Advanced image SEO: A secret manual
Learn how search engines process images and key image SEO tactics to implement from this comprehensive overview.
How much will backlinks matter in 2023?
While backlinks' importance to Google has waned over the years, earning natural links through high-quality content still helps with SEO.
Google Search Console Video indexing report gains video impressions overlay and sitemap filter
Google has upgraded the video indexing report to help your videos perform better in search.
Is Google using a ChatGPT-like system for spam and AI content detection and ranking websites?
Key SEO takeaways from Google's 2020 paper on how text-generation models can be successfully used to detect low-quality content.
Google updates image SEO best practices and Google Discover docs
The title and link elements are most important for RSS feed follow in Discover and Google parses img elements within other elements.
Is AI-written content replacing cheap old content farms?
Red Ventures' use of AI to write cheap content that ranks well in search sure sounds like the old content farms Google Panda wiped out.
13 key SEO metrics to track in 2023
The right SEO metrics to track will depend on your marketing goals. Get started with these useful metrics recommended by top SEO experts.
How Google’s continuous scroll can impact SEO
Ranking on Google's first page will be useless if there's only one page of search results. Learn what else can happen with this change.
Google improves error classification in video indexing report
The total number of errors should not change, this is just a reclassification of those errors.
Product results in Google’s performance report may see an increase in impressions and clicks
This report no longer requires structured data and if Google finds products in your content, it may show in this report starting January 6th going forward.
Google ranking signals: A complete breakdown of all confirmed, rumored and false factors
An easy-to-read, highly condensed analysis of all the known, confirmed, rumored, and absolute myth-level Google ranking factors.
AI content: Is it helpful or spam?
AI-generated content has its place in SEO. Whether it's helpful or spam depends on how, where and why you're using it.
Google’s December 2022 helpful content update is now done rolling out
The update started on December 5th and completed 38 days later on January 12th.
Google December 2022 link spam update done rolling out
That's a wrap, the second Google algorithm update this month is done rolling out.
Google search responds to BankRate, more brands using AI to write content
In short, don't produce content that is written just for search ranking.
Google’s December 2022 helpful content and link spam updates still rolling out
Google said these updates may take one to two weeks longer to complete.
Google drops the character limit for headlines in article structured data
Google says headlines should be concise, eliminates 110 character limit.