A few days ago, I reported that Bing Chat has now integrated the Bing Image Creator tool. But the truth is, it was not integrated, not until at least after 4:30 pm ET yesterday, March 23rd. It now works in Bing Chat under “Creative” mode.

I have been trying it every few hours since it launched, and finally, at 4:30 pm ET last night, it began to work. Later last night, Bing even posted a more detailed blog post about this feature.

Here is an image of [a flower in mud] it made for me (click to enlarge):

To compare, this is what MidJourney made for me:

In any event, this was not launched when it was announced but Microsoft’s Mikhail Parakhin did say that on Twitter a few times. He said it on March 22nd, the day after it was announced, “Folks, we are aware that Bing Image Creator is overly restrictive with sensitive queries, had to be on the safe side at launch. As we gather feedback, we will be gradually fixing those issues. And it should be fully coming to Bing Chat tomorrow, fingers crossed.”

He then said it yesterday as well in this tweet:

Shipping today in Creative mode. Please give it a few hours.

— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) March 23, 2023

It going live:

As promised, we shipped image generation in Bing Chat Creative mode today. I find this ability to keep tweaking the image quite addictive. Still not Ingrid Bergman, though 🙂 pic.twitter.com/WZs9oNi4kD

— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) March 24, 2023

Here is a technical quirk about this image creator:

Not yet. As I explained previously, it is quite a bit more expensive, capacity-wise, we want to roll out text understanding and image generation everywhere first.

— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) March 24, 2023

Now it is live – so have fun!

Forum discussion at Twitter.

As you know, Google has started to roll out the Google March 2023 Broad Core update on March 15th, it should probably continue to roll out through the first half of next week and complete. But like most Google updates, we see tremors and fluctuations during (and sometimes after) the roll out.

In the past 24-hours, I’ve been noticing larger tremors and fluctuations with this update. It may signal that the update is almost done rolling out or that there is a big more to go. There are over 400 comments on the original story with SEOs following these fluctuations closely, as well as chatter on WebmasterWorld. I will quote some of it below but let me first start with the tracking tools.

Tracking Tools On March 2023 Core Update – Updated For March 24th

As a reminder, this update started on March 15th, but here is what the tracking tools showed over the roll out. You can see a big spike the day or so after it was announced and then it started to calm. Then the past 24 hours or so, the spike and volatility started to kick up a notch again. Here are what the tools are showing:

Semrush:

RankRanger:

Accuranker:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SERPmetrics:

Cognitive SEO:

SERPwoo:

Algoroo:

Mozcast:

I suspect some of the ones that are showing lower volatility will update today with higher volatility…

Renewed SEO Chatter On March 2023 Core Update

Here is some new chatter from the over 400 comments on the original story here and WebmasterWorld.

My total traffic in the past 48 hours is only 3 (Three). I suspect if analytics is broken. How about yours?

Back to normal here, the second shuffle round didnt start here yet.

Look into your own real server logs. No webbug shows better numbers.

I think so second wave is under the way. In UAE I can see the websites with .nz, .ca, co.uk, .com, .au ranking on 1st and 2nd page.

today traffic is lowest of all these years and same time the Bard Launch for public in US and UK!

Just coming up to 19 hours of my Goggleday and US traffic is 50% of its usual level.

Nearly all non-US companies in my widget sector have been pushed down to a minimum 30+ for the top selling widgets but I wonder what the actual organic traffic levels are since there are so many ads and images it’s nearly impossible to find them.

This new core update has been quite a roller coaster for me – I initially went up around 35% week over week, then went down, and then back up again. Overall, I’m back to my early Jan rankings/traffic levels, so no biggies.

Our 21-year-old editorial travel information site had a nice uptick about a day before the March Core Update was announced. In the days immediately after the update began rolling out, we had a moderate but sharp decline in traffic, seemingly across the board.

Traffic dropped maybe 10 to 15 percent, depending on the day, with average positions in Google Search Console dropping from the 17-18 range to 26 one day and 19 or so overall.Things have perked up a bit in the last couple of days, but we’re still below the levels of the same dates last year.

Usually I don’t see this much volatility during major Google updates, and in most cases we’re barely affected by the updates at all. I’m guessing that our site won’t see a lot more change from this current update, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong (preferably in a good way!).

I was doing well as well, until today. Anyway Core update not yet done. I’m receive almost no traffic from the US/Canada too.

My site is ranking higher and higher, with a big increase in top 3/10 ranking pages in the last two days, but traffic to my home page and some of my landing pages is in the dog house. my top landing page that was doing well, is down 80% this morning. I checked and there are two ads at top of page, then local search results, then I dropped from 1st to 2nd, but my site has the wide carousel of images underneath. I would call that good placement…but an 80% drop.

Traffic overall has been higher since this core update, but USA and Canada are definitely not sending more traffic. There are zero new inquiries for the last week or more…unusual for this time of year.

Anyway, we are not done yet – and I hope you are all managing during this update.

We will keep you posted on any future changes – as always.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Google broad core update for March is not done yet, and we see tremors. Google started to roll out Bard, and while it is fast and has a sleek interface, it was a bit underwhelming when compared to Bing Chat. In fact, Bard is unlikely to link to sources and content creators too often. Even Bing’s CEO at Microsoft said Bard is “pretty far behind” Bing Chat. Bing is testing Chat answer boxes in the search results. Bing Chat is also integrating its Bing Image Creator tool, and it started to work a few days after it was announced. Microsoft is relaxing restrictions on balanced mode before other modes. Microsoft Bing said there is no site blacklist for the Bing Chat sidebar in Edge. Google posted its generative AI policies, will they apply to Search? Google updated the Google Search Status dashboard to include ranking updates. Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool added if a video embed URL page uses indexifembedded. Google said URLs are not removed until after Google processes the robots.txt file and then after the specific URL is processed by Google. Bing Webmaster Tools may be missing a week of data. Google is testing highlighting snippets in the Google Explore search feature. Google Business Profiles displays wrong and dangerously incorrect service pricing for some businesses. Google is testing showing only one star in the local pack. Google Local Service Ads industry and service selector was updated. Some Google Ads campaigns may suffer significantly if they don’t upgrade to Google Analytics 4 by July 1. Microsoft Advertising launched target shoppers by browsing categories with keyword boosters. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: This week’s video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own. You can register for the webinar with Bing and AI, where I will be hosting along with others over here.

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