SEARCHENGINES
Google SEO Advice Around LastPass Security Breach

As some of you may know, LastPass had a pretty big security breach that is pretty concerning. But outside of password issues, what do SEOs need to consider with this security issue? John Mueller of Google noted that the website URLs in the breach were unencrypted and thus can be published and accessed by bots.
John wrote on Twitter, “The passwords are encrypted, but the URLs aren’t. If you used it for any staging sites or internal environments where you didn’t want the URLs to be public (less secure setups, URLs leak information), it would be good to take care of that too.”
The announcement wrote “The threat actor was also able to copy a backup of customer vault data from the encrypted storage container which is stored in a proprietary binary format that contains both unencrypted data, such as website URLs, as well as fully-encrypted sensitive fields such as website usernames and passwords, secure notes, and form-filled data.”
The passwords are encrypted, but the URLs aren’t. If you used it for any staging sites or internal environments where you didn’t want the URLs to be public (less secure setups, URLs leak information), it would be good to take care of that too.
— John Mueller is mostly not here 🐀 (@JohnMu) December 23, 2022
So the website URLs of your test servers may be published and search engines might pick them up. So you want to make sure to lock those down from Google or other search engines crawling them and potentially ranking them.
But the bigger issue are the password issues, but again, those are not necessarily SEO issues unless someone gains access to your Google Search Console and removes your site, or someone deletes your website.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Daniel Waisberg Hosts Lizzi Sassman & Martin Splitt At Google Tel Aviv

A couple of months before John Mueller visited Daniel Waisberg at the Google Tel Aviv office, Lizzi Sassman and Martin Splitt of Google did as well. Here are the three smiling on the streets of Tel Aviv.
This was shared a while back on Twitter.
This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Ad Revenues Down 3.6% Year Over Year

Google reported earnings last night and their ad revenue not only slowed but was technically lower year over year. Google’s ad revenue was down about 3.6%, while total revenue was up just around 1%.
Here is the snippet from the earnings report showing that:
Remember, Microsoft reported earnings the week prior and showed slowed growth but still growth. Microsoft Bing Ads grew 10% last quarter.
Here is a look at Google’s earnings numbers for the past 3 years:
You can see that Q4 2021 was higher than Q4 2022!
Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet and Google, said: “Our Q4 consolidated revenues were $76 billion, up 1% year over year, or up 7% in constant currency, and $283 billion for the full year 2022, up 10%, or up 14% in constant currency. We have significant work underway to improve all aspects of our cost structure, in support of our investments in our highest growth priorities to deliver long-term, profitable growth.”
Hence the mass Google layoffs to cut costs and increase profit. Keep in mind, Google’s profit was insane – $18 billion, that is $1 billion in profit per week! Sure, Google’s net income was down 34% year over year, so I get Wall Street.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Microsoft Bing ChatGPT Search Interface Screenshots?

Owen Yin shared some screenshots of what he said he saw on the Microsoft Bing website. It looks like the beta version of the upcoming ChatGPT features that we are all expecting Bing to announce in the coming weeks (maybe even this coming Tuesday).
Owen shared these screenshots on Twitter and then posted more details on Medium.
Here is the home page screenshot that widens and enlarges the search box and says “Ask me anything”:
Here is his screenshot of the results, the answers being returned:
And here is the GIF he made of this:
It would not surprise me if this is being tested in the wild by Microsoft Bing, as all the evidence leads to a big announcement about this type of feature being released sometime in the next week or so.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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