GOOGLE

Google’s Top 5 SEO Tools

Published

2 years ago

September 3, 2021

how to access chrome lighthouse 612ca27952afd sej

Google offers a constantly updated suite of tools that are useful for SEO.

These tools help publishers understand why a page is underperforming and guide them with specific advice for improving webpage performance for the purpose of ranking better.

Here are Google’s top five SEO tools.

1. Lighthouse

Lighthouse is a web page performance improvement tool that is built into every browser that is based on Chrome. The tool is accessible within the Chrome Dev Tools panel.

Multiple Ways to Access the Google Lighthouse Tool

On a Windows machine, press the F12 function button.
On Windows or Mac right-click the page and choose “Inspect” then choose the “Lighthouse” tab.
On Mac press: Command+Option+C
On Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS press: Control+Shift+C
In Chrome, click the 3-dot menu on the top right corner then, More Tools > Developer Tools

Step by Step of How to access Google Lighthouse on Chrome browser.

Screenshot from Google Search, August 2021

Screenshot of Lighthouse within the Chrome Dev Tools panel.

Screenshot from Chrome Dev Tools, August 2021

Lighthouse Offers 5 Feedback Categories

It currently provides five categories of SEO performance feedback:

Performance.
Progressive Web App.
Best Practices.
Accessibility.
SEO.

While accessibility isn’t strictly an SEO-related metric, it is related to good user experience for disabled site visitors.

Using the feedback from these five categories will help improve the search visibility of most webpages.

The SEO section of Lighthouse provides 10 points of feedback on factors that matter for Google.

Some Metrics Chrome Lighthouse Reports On

Viewport Meta Tag.
Title Element.
Meta Description.
HTTP Status Code.
Descriptive Text on Links.
Page Status for Successful Crawling & Indexing.
Validates Hreflang.
Validates rel=canonical.
Checks mobile-friendliness.
Validates font legibility for mobile devices.
Checks mobile tap targets.
Checks if document avoids browser plugins for viewing.
Checks crawling and indexing.
Checks the Robots.txt.
Checks if the page sends a successful HTTP status code.

Why You Should Use Lighthouse SEO Tool

I won’t deny it, Lighthouse is a lightweight site review tool.

But it’s an important site review tool because it represents Google’s opinion of 10 metrics you should be looking at.

If Google feels that these metrics are important, then you should, too.

To make the most of this tool, be sure to check out A Technical SEO Guide to Lighthouse Performance Metrics.

2. Test My Site

Google’s Test My Site auditing tool offers two metrics:

Estimated loading time on a 4G mobile network.
Recommendations for speeding up the website.

Google Mobile Speed Test Recommendation.

Screenshot of Test My Site, August 2021

This is a good tool for obtaining a quick snapshot of the speed health of a website.

It’s a good starting point for obtaining an overall picture of mobile optimization.

The tool also offers to email a full report containing suggestions for speeding up the tested webpage.

Why You Should Use Test My Site

You can obtain similar information by using Page Speed Insights.

But the Test My Site tool provides the information in an easy-to-understand manner that’s easy for non-developer stakeholders to gain an understanding of what may be wrong with the mobile site performance.

Yet it’s also good for developers to get a quick overview, as well.

If you want granular details about what needs fixing, then head over to Google’s Page Speed Insights.

3. Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights is the tool that provides lab Core Web Vitals performance scores.

Core Web Vitals are important metrics created by Google to represent what a user experience on a webpage is.

This information is important because fixing the highlighted problems will improve SEO, sales conversions, ad clicks, and (if successful in fixing performance bottlenecks) give a small ranking factor boost.

This online tool provides specifics on what is causing the slowdown and gives suggestions for how to fix the problems.

It tells which scripts and style sheets are slowing down the site, which images are too big, and offers numerous other tips for speeding up affected webpages.

Why You Should Use Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights not only offers useful solutions for hidden technical issues impacting page speed, but it is also a resource for learning what those issues are.

Each highlighted issue links to a Google Developers page that offers more in-depth background information and an explainer of how to fix the problems.

4. Safe Browsing Test

Google crawls billions of pages every day to check for malware. This tool reports if there is any malware on a site.

The tool also provides the date for the last time the site was checked for malware.

Some sites are tested more often than others.

Why You Should Use the Safe Browsing Test Tool

Many people do not consider website security an SEO problem.

But website security quickly becomes an SEO issue when Google starts dropping URLs from its index because the site is hacked.

That’s why website security should be considered a part of SEO. Failure to secure a site can severely affect search visibility.

5. Google Trends

Google Trends provides information about keyword popularity and also segments the information by time and geography.

The time segment can give you an idea of how seasons may affect keywords. It can also show you if a keyword is losing popularity.

If you see a downward trend in a keyword, this could indicate that a product or trend is causing searchers to lose interest in that search.

Why You Should Use Google Trends

Google Trends is also important for competitive research. It shows you how often people are searching Google with a competitor’s brand name.

The trend line by time will show you how steady this trend is – if it’s going up, down, or steady.

Obviously, a competitor trend line that is trending down is good. A trend line that is trending up is bad.

A trend line that is steady (the most common) means a competitor is doing well and you’ll have to identify their weaknesses and make those your strengths – among many considerations.

For more tips, check out 10 Ways to Use Google Trends for Better SEO.

Make Good Use of Google’s SEO Tools to Improve Rankings, Visibility, and User Experience

While SEO professionals tend to take much of what Google says about what helps rankings (or not) with a healthy dose of skepticism, it would be foolish not to take advantage of the tools it has on offer.

In these tools, you can see exactly what Google is looking for in a quality site, webpage, and user experience.

Use this to your advantage to optimize as closely to Google’s (and your audience’s) expectations as possible.

Featured Image: ImageFlow/Shutterstock

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GOOGLE

Google’s Next-Gen AI Chatbot, Gemini, Faces Delays: What to Expect When It Finally Launches

Published

5 days ago

December 4, 2023

Max

In an unexpected turn of events, Google has chosen to postpone the much-anticipated debut of its revolutionary generative AI model, Gemini. Initially poised to make waves this week, the unveiling has now been rescheduled for early next year, specifically in January.

Gemini is set to redefine the landscape of conversational AI, representing Google’s most potent endeavor in this domain to date. Positioned as a multimodal AI chatbot, Gemini boasts the capability to process diverse data types. This includes a unique proficiency in comprehending and generating text, images, and various content formats, even going so far as to create an entire website based on a combination of sketches and written descriptions.

Originally, Google had planned an elaborate series of launch events spanning California, New York, and Washington. Regrettably, these events have been canceled due to concerns about Gemini’s responsiveness to non-English prompts. According to anonymous sources cited by The Information, Google’s Chief Executive, Sundar Pichai, personally decided to postpone the launch, acknowledging the importance of global support as a key feature of Gemini’s capabilities.

Gemini is expected to surpass the renowned ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, and preliminary private tests have shown promising results. Fueled by significantly enhanced computing power, Gemini has outperformed GPT-4, particularly in FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second), owing to its access to a multitude of high-end AI accelerators through the Google Cloud platform.

SemiAnalysis, a research firm affiliated with Substack Inc., expressed in an August blog post that Gemini appears poised to “blow OpenAI’s model out of the water.” The extensive compute power at Google’s disposal has evidently contributed to Gemini’s superior performance.

Google’s Vice President and Manager of Bard and Google Assistant, Sissie Hsiao, offered insights into Gemini’s capabilities, citing examples like generating novel images in response to specific requests, such as illustrating the steps to ice a three-layer cake.

While Google’s current generative AI offering, Bard, has showcased noteworthy accomplishments, it has struggled to achieve the same level of consumer awareness as ChatGPT. Gemini, with its unparalleled capabilities, is expected to be a game-changer, demonstrating impressive multimodal functionalities never seen before.

During the initial announcement at Google’s I/O developer conference in May, the company emphasized Gemini’s multimodal prowess and its developer-friendly nature. An application programming interface (API) is under development, allowing developers to seamlessly integrate Gemini into third-party applications.

As the world awaits the delayed unveiling of Gemini, the stakes are high, with Google aiming to revolutionize the AI landscape and solidify its position as a leader in generative artificial intelligence. The postponed launch only adds to the anticipation surrounding Gemini’s eventual debut in the coming year.

GOOGLE

Google Brings Bard Students Math and Coding Education in the Summer

Published

6 months ago

June 8, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

$Google Brings Bard Students Math and Coding Education in the Summer$

Google is stepping up its AI efforts this summer by sending Bard, its high-profile chatbot, to summer school. The aim? To boost the bot’s math and coding smarts. These developments are excellent news— when Bard first debuted, it was admittedly not a finished product. But Google is steadily plugging away at it, and have now implemented implicit code execution for logical prompts, and handy Google Sheets’ integration to take it to the next level.

Thanks to implicit code execution, Bard can respond to inquiries requiring calculation or computation with Python code snippets running in the background. What’s even more amazing is that coders can take this generated code and modify it for their projects. Though Google is still apprehensive about guaranteeing the accuracy of Bard’s answers, this feature is said to improve the accuracy of math and word problems by an impressive 30%.

In addition to this, Bard can now export directly to Sheets when asked about tables. So, you don’t need to worry about copying and pasting, which comes with the risk of losing formatting or data.

From the company’s I/O keynote address, it is clear that they are focused on making the most of what Bard can offer. As they continue to speak highly of the chatbot, we’re sure to expect more features and capabilities when the summer comes around.

GOOGLE

Google Bard vs. ChatGPT: which is the better AI chatbot?

Published

10 months ago

February 20, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Google Bard vs. ChatGPT: which is the better AI chatbot?

Google Bard and ChatGPT are two of the most prominent artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots available in 2023. But which is better? Both offer natural language responses to natural language inputs, using machine learning and millions of data points to craft useful, informative responses. Most of the time. These AI tools aren’t perfect yet, but they point to an exciting future of AI assistant search and learning tools that will make information all the more readily available.

As similar as these chatbots are, they also have some distinct differences. Here’s how ChatGPT and Google Bard measure up against one another.

Which is better, Google Bard or ChatGPT?

This is a tricky question to answer, as at the time of writing, you can only use Google Bard if you’re part of a select group of early beta testers. As for its competition, you can use ChatGPT right now, completely for free. You may have to contend with a waitlist, but if you want to skip that, there’s a paid-for Plus version offering those interested in a more complete tool the option of paying for the privilege.

Still, when Google Bard becomes more widely available, it should offer credible competition for ChatGPT. Both use natural language models — Google Bard uses Google’s internal LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), whereas ChatGPT uses an older GPT-3 language model. Google Bard bases its responses to questions on more recent data, with ChatGPT mainly trained on data that was available prior to 2021. This is similar to how Microsoft’s Bing Chat works.

We’ll have to reserve judgment on which is the more capable AI chatbot until we get time to play with Google Bard ourselves, but it looks set to be a close contest when it is more readily available.

Are Google Bard and ChatGPT available yet?

As mentioned, ChatGPT is available in free and paid-for tiers. You might have to sit in a queue for the free version for a while, but anyone can play around with its capabilities.

Google Bard is currently only available to limited beta testers and is not available to the wider public.

Banner of Google Bard intro from February 6.

What’s the difference between Google Bard and ChatGPT?

ChatGPT and Google Bard are very similar natural language AI chatbots, but they have some differences, and are designed to be used in slightly different ways — at least for now. ChatGPT has been used for answering direct questions with direct answers, mostly correctly, but it’s caused a lot of consternation among white collar workers, like writers, SEO advisors, and copy editors, since it has also demonstrated an impressive ability to write creatively — even if it has faced a few problems with accuracy and plagiarism.

Still, Microsoft has integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine to give users the ability to ask direct questions of the search engine, rather than searching for terms of keywords to find the best results. It has also built it into its Teams communications tool, and it’s coming to the Edge browser in a limited form. The Opera browser has also pledged to integrate ChatGPT in the future.

ChatGPT	Google Bard
Accessible through ChatGPT site. Only text responses are returned via queries.	Integrated with Google Search. You only need to change a Google setting to get your regular search results when using Google Bard AI, and vice versa.
ChatGPT produces answers from its trained database from 2021 and before.	Google Apprentice Bard AI will be able to answer real-time questions.
Based on GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer).	Based on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).
Service has a free and paid plan option (called ChatGPT Plus).	Service is free.
Has built-in plagiarism tool called GPT-2 Output Detector.	No built-in plagiarism detection tool.
Available now	Still in beta test phase

Google Bard was mainly designed around augmenting Google’s own search tool, however it is also destined to become an automated support tool for businesses without the funds to pay for human support teams. It will be offered to customers through a trained AI responder. It is likely to be integrated into the Chrome browser and its Chromium derivatives before long. Google is also expected to open up Google Bard to third-party developers in the future.

Under the hood, Google Bard uses Google’s LaMDA language model, while ChatGPT uses its own GPT3 model. ChatGPT is based on slightly older data, restricted in its current GPT3 model to data collected prior to 2022, while Google Bard is built on data provided on recent years too. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it more accurate, as Google Bard has faced problems with incorrect answers to questions, even in its initial unveiling.

ChatGPT also has a built-in plagiarism checker, while Google Bard does not, but Google Bard doesn’t have the creative applications of ChatGPT just yet.