SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On October 22, A Day After The October ’22 Spam Update Finished?

So we had Google confirm that the October 2022 spam update finished Friday morning, the morning of October 21st. The tracking tools and chatter were somewhat mild but that makes sense for a spam update. But the day after, on Saturday, October 22nd, I see renewed chatter, and the tools show much bigger swings in the Google search rankings.
It is either that Google pushed out a new update, unrelated to the spam update, or Google told us the spam update was done before it was really done. Or maybe we have no clue what we are doing or tracking or studying and Google is toying with us all. It can also be that all the tools were delayed in their reporting by a day or more.
Google Tracking Tools
Here are screenshots from the automated Google tracking tools showing the movement being picked up a day or so after the Spam update completed.
SEO Chatter
Now, on the SEO chatter side, you have a ton of confusion. People are thinking they were hit by the spam update when maybe they were hit by whatever this update was after the spam update. So I am not sure how to isolate just those hit after this spam update to this new update. Or like I said above, maybe the two are related and Google was too quick to say the update was over or the tools were too slow to pick up on that the update was over?
Here is some of the newer chatter from several BlackHat World threads and WebmasterWorld:
It appears we’ve lost around 10% of our search traffic and then I guess because of this supposed spam update.
I lost search rankings plus my new links are not indexing, I’ve tried several times to index from search console to no avail!
I’m 70% down on traffic, and this is genuinely terrifying.
I lost 90% of my traffic. Whitehat site no black hat method used.
My blackhat websites and whitehat websites all lost 90% of traffic, all of them put on same Adsense account, what’s happened?
I can understand about some of my sites are just not good enough and just going down. But this site I have is a 3+-year-old completely normal white hat site, no link building by myself, not trying to fool google, nothing. Today I go to Google Search Console and see this. Thank you, Google.
Guys I don’t know why my traffic drops suddenly. This is so crazy. 🙁 I ordered some guest posts backlinks, which are clean. I don’t know if it is an update. What is this? My website is 5 months old already and getting 80-100 traffic per day but now it has only 8 🙁
my website hit very badly almost 90% traffic dropped
It seemed like this spam update may have been completed on Friday morning but the aftershock from it hit the next day.
Forum discussion at BlackHat World and WebmasterWorld.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Microsoft Advertising Target Shoppers By Browsing Categories With Keyword Boosters

The Microsoft Advertising team announced its PromoteIQ launched a new way to target your ads, by targeting shoppers based on the categories they browse with the ability to also use keywords as a booster for campaign bids.
Nicole Farley explained on Search Engine Land, “this latest development in category-based targeting with keyword leveraging is supposed to maximize revenue and sales for both retailers and advertisers, while also delivering an exceptional experience for shoppers. Interested advertisers should test the new.”
Unlike traditional keyword targeting, “which requires advertisers to research and build an exhaustive list of keywords per campaign,” Microsoft said. With this new targeting shoppers by what they browse, “advertisers only need to test and retain a few high-performing keywords,” Microsoft added.
Microsoft said that in their tests, “campaigns that boost bids by keyword whilst targeting by category exhibit 320% higher click-through-rate (CTR) than the campaigns without boosting bids by keyword.” “Meanwhile, retailers saw benefits from this solution by achieving 8x higher revenue per thousand impressions (RPM),” Microsoft added.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Console Shows If embedURL Page Uses indexifembedded

Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool can now report if the embedURL page for a video uses the newish indexifembedded robots tag. The indexifembedded tells Google if Google is allowed to index the content of a page if it’s embedded in another page through iframes or similar HTML tags, in spite of a noindex rule.
This was spotted by Jon Henshaw and posted on LinkedIn. He explained that he requested that Google add to the URL Inspection Tool to show if “indexifembedded” is being used, “and through the stars and moons aligning and perhaps other miracles, they told me they added it today,” he said.
Here is his screenshot:
You can see in the “indexing allowed” section it says “No: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag, ‘indexifembdedded’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag.”
Jon explained what this means:
If you use YouTube and make your video Unlisted, and then embed the video on your site, Google won’t index it. Why? Because they add a “noindex” directive to the page that serves the video on your page. Bummer!
However, if you use Vimeo, make your video Unlisted, and then embed it on your site, Google can still index it! Why? Because unlike YouTube, Vimeo adds “noindex” *and* a special directive created by Google called “indexifembedded.” That tells Google to index the video on any page that has an iframe embedded video.
Coupled with Vimeo automatically generating and inserting VideoObject Schema structured data for all embedded videos (including Unlisted videos), businesses now have the best chance they’ve ever had to get their pages to rank for videos instead of competing with their video hosting provider.
Jon knows this because well, he is the Senior Director, SEO at Vimeo, and Vimeo is a massive video site.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Bard Won’t Link To Sources Too Often

As you know, we’ve been playing with Google Bard, it just started to roll out a couple of days ago. Early on, we were disappointed thus far with how limited it seemed and more so, how it rarely linked to sources and content creators. Now, Google got back to us on why this is the case.
Google added a few topics to the Bard FAQs, including “How and when does Bard cite sources in its responses?” Let me quote what it says:
Bard, like some other standalone LLM experiences, is intended to generate original content and not replicate existing content at length. We’ve designed our systems to limit the chances of this occurring, and we will continue to improve how these systems function. If Bard does directly quote at length from a webpage, it cites that page.
Bard was built to be a creative and helpful collaborator—it works well in creative tasks like helping you write an email or brainstorm ideas for a birthday party. We see it as a complementary experience to Google Search. That’s why we added the “Google It” button to Bard, so people can easily move from Bard to explore information from across the web.
Bard is an experiment, and we’ll use its launch as an opportunity to learn, iterate, and improve the experience as we get feedback from a range of stakeholders including people like you, publishers, creators, and more.
So since Bard “generates original content and not replicate existing content at length,” Google does not feel the need to cite sources? Bard will however cite sources and link to them if Bard “directly quotes at length from a webpage.”
Instead, Google wants you to go from Bard to Google with the “Google It”, “so people can easily move from Bard to explore information from across the web.” So click on links from Google Search, do not click on links from Bard, too often.
But things with Bard are early and may change, “Bard is an experiment, and we’ll use its launch as an opportunity to learn, iterate, and improve the experience as we get feedback from a range of stakeholders including people like you, publishers, creators, and more.”
Honestly, I am shocked, I did not think Google would launch Bard without citing and linking to sources as much as and as well as Bing Chat does. Even Gary Illyes from Google hinted publishers would be okay with it.
Let me show some examples (click on the images to enlarge).
Google Bard on “Who is Barry Schwartz?” – this is not me, this is the famous Barry Schwartz, by the way:
No citations with the default response from Google Bard.
But Bing, it gives 15 links to 15 different sources:
To be fair, if I work hard, and go to draft two, I get some citations from Google Bard:
I posted about this on Twitter and here is some of the response and reaction to Google’s FAQ statement on the citation bit:
What a joke. Absolutely brazen content theft.
— Don Caldwell 🦑 (@DonCald) March 22, 2023
Meanwhile, Google could care less: https://t.co/QQmZ1jA8WK
— Rutledge Daugette (@TheRealRutledge) March 22, 2023
A positive perspective: Bard is bound to say weird things and give inaccurate information. If that’s the case, you won’t necessarily want your brand up there co-signing certain conversations or answers.
— dog excited to meet pluto (@dogmeetpluto) March 22, 2023
That’s not great for site owners.
I’ve also seen a number of people share Bard responses that are questionable or outright wrong. Responses should be treated like discussing a topic with a questionably-informed internet rando, rather than a factual response if there’s no source.— Peggy K (@PeggyKTC) March 22, 2023
Uggh. No/Minimal citations is a big negative for me. (both as a creator, and potential user of Bard)
— ElizabethH (@ElizabethH15) March 22, 2023
IMHO it’s impossible to overstate what an enormous problem this is for publishers. If citations are not prevalent and prominent, publishers should be able to opt out of being used in training data without it having any affect on SEO. And every publisher should opt out.
— Michael Magnuson (@mdmagnuson) March 22, 2023
To be honest, the user in me prefers Bard’s UI/UX compared to Bing Chat.
The SEO in me hates the lack of sources, but the way Bing Chat has them incorporated just looks a bit naff.
— Chloe Ivy Rose (@chloeivyroseseo) March 22, 2023
That’s a massive miscalculation on their side, it’s the wrong result that they will need to address
— @[email protected] (@davidiwanow) March 22, 2023
I mean this section is *interesting*…
“For now, Google Bard likely won’t be sending a lot of traffic to the web or websites.”And likely a challenge for anyone trying to do research.
— Crystal Carter (she/her) (@CrystalontheWeb) March 22, 2023
I actually think #Bard could work very well for local if Google was willing to include URLs, use more its local knowledge graph and offer Maps links. pic.twitter.com/YZLB1DrY3u
— Greg Sterling 🇺🇦 (@gsterling) March 22, 2023
The same thought I had when started playing with it https://t.co/RllWsaQ9KQ
— Gianluca Fiorelli (@gfiorelli1) March 22, 2023
One shimmer of hope is that if and when Bard is integrated some how into Google Search, those integrations you will see more prominent links to content creators. Via the WSJ, “Sissie Hsiao, a vice president in charge of Google Assistant, said the company “is deeply committed in supporting a healthy and vibrant content ecosystem” and “will be welcoming conversations with stakeholders.” She said when AI tools are integrated into search the company will give priority to sending valuable traffic to content creators. “
Good to hear from Google’s Sissie Hsiao about Bard for Search + Citations -> “She said when AI tools are integrated into search, the company will give priority to sending valuable traffic to content creators.” https://t.co/K3U82vtAu6 pic.twitter.com/xWbRl7SLRs
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 22, 2023
So we will see. Until now, prepare to be disappointed with any little traffic you might see from Google Bard.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
-
WORDPRESS2 days ago
Internal Linking for SEO: The Ultimate Guide of Best Practices
-
AMAZON4 days ago
The Top 10 Benefits of Amazon AWS Lightsail: Why It’s a Great Choice for Businesses
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
The best web hosting solutions for your personal webpage or business site
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
ActivityPub for WordPress Joins the Automattic Family – WordPress.com News
-
SEARCHENGINES1 day ago
Google Search Status Dashboard Adds Google Ranking Updates
-
MARKETING5 days ago
How to calculate customer lifetime value and maximize it for your business
-
PPC4 days ago
PPC Campaign Testing: The Dos & Don’ts to Turn Risks into Rewards
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Duane Forrester Acquires New Bing Mug From Fabrice Canel