Ep. 189 - June 24, 2021 - Light Version

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What is going on with all of these updates? The helpful content update is finished rolling out. The September core is still underway and while that is happening, Google has launched a new update of the product reviews algorithm. Lots of tips in this episode on E-A-T, content and AI.

There is no podcast episode this week, but in case you missed it, last week I gave my thoughts on what we need to know about the September core update. I shared how to look at analytics data to see the early impact of the September core, and much more:

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The following topics are covered in the premium version of this episode:

• Quality fixes are usually not technical
• Case study on AI content punished by the helpful content update
• Spam problem in Turkish SERPS?
• How does Google know if a page has substantial content? (Marie’s theory)
• Too many 404 errors can stop Google from crawling
• Interesting keyword research tip
• More content improvement tips
• Entity benchmark analysis
• Does it harm your site if Google keeps requesting 404s?
• Tips for visual search optimization
• Tips for Black Friday optimization
• Knowledge based trust – a component of EAT?
• Google surveys going away
• Who has the biggest keyword database?
• What is SEO content?
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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A new product reviews update is live

Google told us in the Helpful Content update blog post that a product reviews update was on the way: 

“We know product reviews can play an important role in helping you make a decision on something to buy. Last year, we kicked off a series of updates to show more helpful, in-depth reviews based on first-hand expertise in search results.

We’ve continued to refine these systems, and in the coming weeks, we’ll roll out another update to make it even easier to find high-quality, original reviews. We’ll continue this work to make sure you find the most useful information when you’re researching a purchase on the web.”

The latest product reviews update started rolling out, Tuesday September 20th. The last one was July 27, 2022.

I have heard some stories of sites being strongly impacted by this update, but not enough time has passed for me to analyze just yet.

If you were affected, here is the list of questions Google tells us we should review.

Do product review updates run periodically or in real time?

This was a good question. Danny confirmed that at this point product review updates are periodic refreshes. If you got hit by this one, you’ll need to wait until another runs before you get a chance to recover.

It's still a periodic refresh situation. See: https://t.co/0gJccmGeoV

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 21, 2022

So. Many. Updates.

This was comedy. When the September core update fell on the heels of the helpful content update, Danny Sullivan shared with us that Google tries to keep updates separated from each other.

Just saw this. We’ve worked very hard to keep updates separated from each other, or as little overlap as possible, to help creators understand more. So no, not coincidence we are due a core update but said let’s wait on that until the helpful content update has rolled out…

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 16, 2022

And when it’s unavoidable for updates to overlap, we have worked to space them apart as much as possible so people might have a better idea of what might have caused a particular change (and for many sites, updates cause no change at all).

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 16, 2022

And then, while the September core update was still rolling out, they released the product reviews update!

Here are the important dates:

• August 25, 2022 – September 9, 2022 – Helpful content update
• September 12, 2022-(still rolling out) – September Core update
• September 20, 2022 -(still rolling out) – Product reviews update

Many in the SEO community believe Google is purposely running overlapping updates just to confuse SEO’s. Personally, I think Google just has several teams that are working fast to push out their work. I do think it’s possible that the HCU introduced a new signal that is taken into consideration by the core and product reviews updates. 

If you were hit this week and aren’t sure whether it was due to the core update or the PRU, Google has this advice:

If you see a change and wonder if it's related to the core update or the product reviews update:
– If you produce product reviews, then it's probably related to that.
– If not, then it might be related to the core update.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) September 20, 2022

But that's why today's tweet thread tries to give more clarity in where the core update is at and a reminder that if you don't do product reviews, then that update might not produce changes for you.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 20, 2022

The latest on the September core update

The update is still rolling out at the time of publication. For sites in our profile that are affected, the majority have a very obvious change in traffic patterns that starts within 24 hours of the initial rollout date, September 12, 2022.

Here are some tweets we found of people who may have benefited from this update:

I have put an eye bleed inducing amount of work into the quality of this site since I bought it last year.

So much more still to do, but it’ll be a huge boost to my flagging energy / resolve if this sticks 🤞 pic.twitter.com/U8IfW5Q5Nq

— Kirsty McCubbin (@AffiliateStuff) September 17, 2022

Continuing my coverage of the Sep 2022 Broad Core Update, here are some sites focused on finance seeing a lot of movement. I already shared health & medical + health/medical reviews seeing a lot of movement. I'll post more soon (the update is really starting to show). Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/G0gyKRh7ON

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 15, 2022

This could easily be a chart in which I say we "won" in the Google Core Update – but in reality, it's a new site (since March) and the core update really just gave it a big boost when it comes to topical relevance, query understanding, search intent matching etc… pic.twitter.com/uDWe63LsoQ

— Dan Shure (@dan_shure) September 19, 2022

A nice jump, thanks to September 2022 Core Algorithm Update.

This is from a website that I published in one of my previous SEO Case Studies.#seo pic.twitter.com/pJpbexsD7J

— Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR (@KorayGubur) September 15, 2022

My traffic jump is amazing, and Googlebot has not crawled all pages, yet.
I like the Google september 2022 core update. 👍#SEO pic.twitter.com/EC7t5dUACU

— Christian Radny (@ChrisRadny) September 15, 2022

This has been a very good update for many of MHC’s clients who have been working on improving E-A-T and content quality.

Most of the client sites we monitor have not been impacted by the September core update yet.

But many of the ones that *were* affected saw big changes🎉 pic.twitter.com/JR572bWX10

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) September 19, 2022

We have also seen reports of sites not doing well.

An interesting drop & a good lesson to NOT blindly follow another site. You could follow them off a cliff. It's a competitor to one of my clients that kept doing well despite some glaring issues, including building unnatural links. Looks like the Sep core update caught up w/them. pic.twitter.com/u1rJDFCt50

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 19, 2022

Haven't seen too many examples, but here's one that stood out — it is a product review site that declined with the broad core update + PRU pic.twitter.com/vsaYbfuPwm

— Vlad Rappoport (@vladrpt) September 21, 2022

We’ll keep an eye on this update and hopefully will have more analysis soon.

Marie is speaking at the Growth Summit

I’m on the virtual stage October 4, 2022 at 11 am PST. They’ve got me paired up with Brian Dean – The Backlinko guy who sold his content to Semrush. We’re having a discussion about “Navigating Google’s Algorithm”. 

This should be an interesting conference! They have not asked me for a presentation so it sounds like this will be an off-the-cuff discussion.

There are some other great talks such as Eli Schwartz and Bernard Huang talking about scaling organic reach and turning readers into customers and Wes Bush and Ryan Kim (Spotify) talking about designing a product that acquires and retains users at scale.

You can snag a free ticket here:

https://www.demandcurve.com/growth-summit/accept?name=Marie

Upcoming SMX Next talk

I’m also working hard on my upcoming SMX next presentation. I’ll be sharing on improving sites based on Google’s recommendations for improving content quality. I’m going to explain how machine learning is likely used to answer many of the questions and give practical examples of what types of content core updates is rewarding these days.

You can register for this virtual event for free.

New improvements to image recognition in Google’s AI system

Pali is designed to be a more efficient and scalable language for image learning. By using Pali, Google’s AI system is able to learn faster and more effectively.

👀
Google is getting even better at understanding language.

Pali helps with visual question answering, image captioning, object detection, image classification, OCR, text reasoning, and more. https://t.co/R3vTclAkP9

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) September 16, 2022

This feels like a big deal to me considering the number of changes we have seen in the SERPS to include images and video. 

A reminder about the new Merchant Listings report in Search Console 

If you have an ecommerce site, it could be worth having a look at the new "Merchant Listings" report in Search Console. Quick to do and it might point out issues on your site that you did not realize you had!

— Alan Kent (@akent99) September 13, 2022

A huge component of E-A-T is likely based on what others say of you

So much about EAT is based on what others say about you.

It's one thing to say, "I've been doing this for x years".
It's another to have other experts in your field recognizing your expertise👊

Raters are told to look for the opinion of experts: pic.twitter.com/4BEAatybCw

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) September 15, 2022

Using AI to instantly design clothing

Clothing retailers, take note. This is mind blowing.

What if we imagined what shopping could be like with the technology we already have today?

• Images generated by #AI from text
• #AR clothes fitting
• Voice assistant

In seconds we automatically create a customized product for the customer. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/Evv1uV8yZD

— Sergey Galkin (@sergeyglkn) September 19, 2022

The Kansas bug is back – seriously impacting local rankings for some businesses

There is an odd bug that shows many businesses as being located in Kansas when they are not. 

Moffat (Kansas) Bug is growing daily for @GoogleMyBiz SABs pic.twitter.com/pynCEop4GL

— Tim Capper (@GuideTwit) September 15, 2022

Local SEO Amy Toman shared with me that SABs are not appearing in their local packs or in brand searches in their local areas. But they do come up in local searches in Kansas, the geographic center of the US. 

If your local rankings have gone awry in the last couple of weeks this is worth looking into.

Google is apparently working on a fix.

How to tell if you’ve been hit by an algorithm update
https://searchengineland.com/algorithm-update-traffic-patterns-387959

Nichola Stott – September 15, 2022

The game no one’s talking about: Internet manipulation is on the rise in India
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/fake-profile-gaming-imdb-internet-manipulation-india-tricking-search-algorithm-google-knowledge-panels-film-industry-multimedia/article65888975.ece

Prashant Baid – September 16, 2022

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The following topics are covered in the premium version of this episode:

• Quality fixes are usually not technical
• Case study on AI content punished by the helpful content update
• Spam problem in Turkish SERPS?
• How does Google know if a page has substantial content? (Marie’s theory)
• Too many 404 errors can stop Google from crawling
• Interesting keyword research tip
• More content improvement tips
• Entity benchmark analysis
• Does it harm your site if Google keeps requesting 404s?
• Tips for visual search optimization
• Tips for Black Friday optimization
• Knowledge based trust – a component of EAT?
• Google surveys going away
• Who has the biggest keyword database?
• What is SEO content?
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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