SEO

What It Is & Why It Matters For SEO

Published

2 years ago

February 14, 2022

Entireweb News Bot

You may have run across the W3C in your web development and SEO travels.

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, and it was founded by the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

This web standards body creates coding specifications for web standards worldwide.

It also offers a validator service to ensure that your HTML (among other code) is valid and error-free.

Making sure that your page validates is one of the most important things one can do to achieve cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility and provide an accessible online experience to all.

Invalid code can result in glitches, rendering errors, and long processing or loading times.

Simply put, if your code doesn’t do what it was intended to do across all major web browsers, this can negatively impact user experience and SEO.

W3C Validation: How It Works & Supports SEO

Web standards are important because they give web developers a standard set of rules for writing code.

If all code used by your company is created using the same protocols, it will be much easier for you to maintain and update this code in the future.

This is especially important when working with other people’s code.

If your pages adhere to web standards, they will validate correctly against W3C validation tools.

When you use web standards as the basis for your code creation, you ensure that your code is user-friendly with built-in accessibility.

When it comes to SEO, validated code is always better than poorly written code.

According to John Mueller, Google doesn’t care how your code is written. That means a W3C validation error won’t cause your rankings to drop.

You won’t rank better with validated code, either.

But there are indirect SEO benefits to well-formatted markup:

Eliminates Code Bloat: Validating code means that you tend to avoid code bloat. Validated code is generally leaner, better, and more compact than its counterpart.
Faster Rendering Times: This could potentially translate to better render times as the browser needs less processing, and we know that page speed is a ranking factor.
Indirect Contributions to Core Web Vitals Scores: When you pay attention to coding standards, such as adding the width and height attribute to your images, you eliminate steps that the browser must take in order to render the page. Faster rendering times can contribute to your Core Web Vitals scores, improving these important metrics overall.

Roger Montti compiled these six reasons Google still recommends code validation, because it:

Could affect crawl rate.
Affects browser compatibility.
Encourages a good user experience.
Ensures that pages function everywhere.
Useful for Google Shopping Ads.
Invalid HTML in head section breaks Hreflang.

Multiple Device Accessibility

Valid code also helps translate into better cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility because it conforms to the latest in W3C standards, and the browser will know better how to process that code.

This leads to an improved user experience for people who access your sites from different devices.

If you have a site that’s been validated, it will render correctly regardless of the device or platform being used to view it.

That is not to say that all code doesn’t conform across multiple browsers and platforms without validating, but there can be deviations in rendering across various applications.

Common Reasons Code Doesn’t Validate

Of course, validating your web pages won’t solve all problems with rendering your site as desired across all platforms and all browsing options. But it does go a long way toward solving those problems.

In the event that something does go wrong with validation on your part, you now have a baseline from which to begin troubleshooting.

You can go into your code and see what is making it fail.

It will be easier to find these problems and troubleshoot them with a validated site because you know where to start looking.

Having said that, there are several reasons pages may not validate.

Browser Specific Issues

It may be that something in your code will only work on one browser or platform, but not another.

This problem would then need to be addressed by the developer of the offending script.

This would mean having to actually edit the code itself in order for it to validate on all platforms/browsers instead of just some of them.

You Are Using Outdated Code

The W3C only started rendering validation tests over the course of the past couple of decades.

If your page was created to validate in a browser that predates this time (IE 6 or earlier, for example), it will not pass these new standards because it was written with older technologies and formats in mind.

While this is a relatively rare issue, it still happens.

This problem can be fixed by reworking code to make it W3C compliant, but if you want to maintain compatibility with older browsers, you may need to continue using code that works, and thus forego passing 100% complete validation.

Both problems could potentially be solved with a little trial and error.

With some work and effort, both types of sites can validate across multiple devices and platforms without issue – hopefully!

Polyglot Documents

Polyglot documents include any document that may have been transferred from an older version of code, and never re-worked to be compatible with the new version.

In other words, it’s a combination of documents with a different code type than what the current document was coded for (say an HTML 4.01 transitional document type compared to an XHTML document type).

Make no mistake: Even though both may be “HTML” per se, they are very different languages and need to be treated as such.

You can’t copy and paste one over and expect things to be all fine and dandy.

What does this mean?

For example, you may have seen situations where you may validate code, but nearly every single line of a document has something wrong with it on the W3C validator.

This could be due to somebody transferring over code from another version of the site, and not updating it to reflect new coding standards.

Either way, the only way to repair this is to either rework the code line by line (an extraordinarily tedious process).

How W3C Validation Works

The W3C validator is this author’s validator of choice for making sure that your code validates across a wide variety of platforms and systems.

The W3C validator is free to use, and you can access it here.

With the W3C validator, it’s possible to validate your pages by page URL, file upload, and Direct Input.

Validate Your Pages by URL: This is relatively simple. Just copy and paste the URL into the Address field, and you can click on the check button in order to validate your code.
Validate Your Pages by File Upload: When you validate by file upload, you will upload the html files of your choice one file at a time. Caution: if you’re using Internet Explorer or certain versions Windows XP, this option may not work for you.
Validate Your Pages by Direct Input: With this option, all you have to do is copy and paste the code you want to validate into the editor, and the W3C validator will do the rest.

While some professionals claim that some W3C errors have no rhyme or reason, in 99.9% of cases, there is a rhyme and reason.

If there isn’t a rhyme and reason throughout the entire document, then you may want to refer to our section on polyglot documents below as a potential problem.

HTML Syntax

Let’s start at the top with HTML syntax. Because it’s the backbone of the World Wide Web, this is the most common coding that you will run into as an SEO professional.

The W3C has created a specification for HTML 5 called “the HTML5 Standard”.

This document explains how HTML should be written on an ideal level for processing by popular browsers.

If you go to their site, you can utilize their validator to make sure that your code is valid according to this spec.

They even give examples of some of the rules that they look for when it comes to standards compliance.

This makes it easier than ever to check your work before you publish it!

Validators For Other Languages

Now let’s move on to some of the other languages that you may be using online.

For example, you may have heard of CSS3.

The W3C has standards documentation for CSS 3 as well called “the CSS3 Standard.”

This means that there is even more opportunity for validation!

You can validate your HTML against their standard and then validate your CSS against the same standard to ensure conformity across platforms.

While it may seem like overkill to validate your code against so many different standards at once, remember that this means that there are more chances than ever to ensure conformity across platforms.

And for those of you who only work in one language, you now have the opportunity to expand your horizons!

It can be incredibly difficult if not impossible to align everything perfectly, so you will need to pick your battles.

You may also just need something checked quickly online without having the time or resources available locally.

Common Validation Errors

You will need to be aware of the most common validation errors as you go through the validation process, and it’s also a good idea to know what those errors mean.

This way, if your page does not validate, you will know exactly where to start looking for possible problems.

Some of the most common validation errors (and their meanings) include:

Type Mismatch: When your code is trying to make one kind of data object appear like another data object (e.g., submitting a number as text), you run the risk of getting this message. This error usually signals that some kind of coding mistake has been made. The solution would be to figure out exactly where that mistake was made and fix it so that the code validates successfully.
Parse Error: This error tells you that there was a mistake in the coding somewhere, but it does not tell you where that mistake is. If this happens, you will have to do some serious sleuthing in order to find where your code went wrong.
Syntax Errors: These types of errors involve (mostly) careless mistakes in coding syntax. Either the syntax is typed incorrectly, or its context is incorrect. Either way, these errors will show up in the W3C validator.

The above are just some examples of errors that you may see when you’re validating your page.

Unfortunately, the list goes on and on – as does the time spent trying to fix these problems!

More Specific Errors (And Their Solutions)

You may find more specific errors that apply to your site. They may include errors that reference “type attribute used in tag.”

This refers to some tags like JavaScript declaration tags, such as the following: <script type=”text/javascript”>.

The type attribute of this tag is not needed anymore and is now considered legacy coding.

If you use that kind of coding now, you may end up unintentionally throwing validation errors all over the place in certain validators.

Did you know that not using alternative text (alt text) – also called alt tags by some – is a W3C issue? It does not conform to the W3C rules for accessibility.

Alternative text is the text that is coded into images.

It is primarily used by screen readers for the blind.

If a blind person visits your site, and you do not have alternative text (or meaningful alternative text) in your images, then they will be unable to use your site effectively.

The way these screen readers work is that they speak aloud the words that are coded into images, so the blind can use their sense of hearing to understand what’s on your web page.

If your page is not very accessible in this regard, this could potentially lead to another sticky issue: that of accessibility lawsuits.

This is why it pays to pay attention to your accessibility standards and validate your code against these standards.

Other types of common errors include using tags out of context.

For code context errors, you will need to make sure they are repaired according to the W3C documentation so these errors are no longer thrown by the validator.

Preventing Errors From Impacting Your Site Experience

The best way to prevent validation errors from happening is by making sure your site validates before launch.

It’s also useful to validate your pages regularly after they’re launched so that new errors do not crop up unexpectedly over time.

If you think about it, validation errors are the equivalent of spelling mistakes in an essay – once they’re there, they’re difficult (if not impossible) to erase, and they need to be fixed as soon as humanly possible.

If you adopt the habit of always using the W3C validator in order to validate your code, then you can, in essence, stop these coding mistakes from ever happening in the first place.

Heads Up: There Is More Than One Way To Do It

Sometimes validation won’t go as planned according to all standards.

And there is more than one way to accomplish the same goal.

For example, if you use <button> to create a button and then give it an href tag inside of it using the <a> element, this doesn’t seem to be possible according to W3C standards.

But is perfectly acceptable in JavaScript because there are actually ways to do this within the language itself.

This is an example of how we create this particular code and insert it into the direct input of the W3C validator:

Screenshot from W3C validator, February 2022

In the next step, during validation, as discussed above we find that there are at least 4 errors just within this particular code alone, indicating that this is not exactly a particularly well-coded line:

Screenshot showing errors in the W3C validator tool.

Screenshot from W3C validator, February 2022

While validation, on the whole, can help you immensely, it is not always going to be 100% complete.

This is why it’s important to familiarize yourself by coding with the validator as much as you can.

Some adaptation will be needed. But it takes experience to achieve the best possible cross-platform compatibility while also remaining compliant with today’s browsers.

The ultimate goal here is improving accessibility and achieving compatibility with all browsers, operating systems, and devices.

Not all browsers and devices are created equal, and validation achieves a cohesive set of instructions and standards that can accomplish the goal of making your page equal enough for all browsers and devices.

When in doubt, always err on the side of proper code validation.

By making sure that you work to include the absolute best practices in your coding, you can ensure that your code is as accessible as it possibly can be for all types of users.

On top of that, validating your HTML against W3C standards helps you achieve cross-platform compatibility between different browsers and devices.

By working to always ensure that your code validates, you are on your way to making sure that your site is as safe, accessible, and efficient as possible.

More resources:

Featured Image: graphicwithart/Shutterstock

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SEO

Firefox URL Tracking Removal – Is This A Trend To Watch?

Published

16 hours ago

December 1, 2023

Max

Firefox URL Tracking Removal - Is This A Trend To Watch?

Firefox recently announced that they are offering users a choice on whether or not to include tracking information from copied URLs, which comes on the on the heels of iOS 17 blocking user tracking via URLs. The momentum of removing tracking information from URLs appears to be gaining speed. Where is this all going and should marketers be concerned?

Is it possible that blocking URL tracking parameters in the name of privacy will become a trend industrywide?

Firefox Announcement

Firefox recently announced that beginning in the Firefox Browser version 120.0, users will be able to select whether or not they want URLs that they copied to contain tracking parameters.

When users select a link to copy and click to raise the contextual menu for it, Firefox is now giving users a choice as to whether to copy the URL with or without the URL tracking parameters that might be attached to the URL.

Screenshot Of Firefox 120 Contextual Menu

Screenshot of Firefox functionality

According to the Firefox 120 announcement:

“Firefox supports a new “Copy Link Without Site Tracking” feature in the context menu which ensures that copied links no longer contain tracking information.”

Browser Trends For Privacy

All browsers, including Google’s Chrome and Chrome variants, are adding new features that make it harder for websites to track users online through referrer information embedded in a URL when a user clicks from one site and leaves through that click to visit another site.

This trend for privacy has been ongoing for many years but it became more noticeable in 2020 when Chrome made changes to how referrer information was sent when users click links to visit other sites. Firefox and Safari followed with similar referrer behavior.

Whether the current Firefox implementation would be disruptive or if the impact is overblown is kind of besides the point.

What is the point is whether or not what Firefox and Apple did to protect privacy is a trend and if that trend will extend to more blocking of URL parameters that are stronger than what Firefox recently implemented.

I asked Kenny Hyder, CEO of online marketing agency Pixel Main, what his thoughts are about the potential disruptive aspect of what Firefox is doing and whether it’s a trend.

Kenny answered:

“It’s not disruptive from Firefox alone, which only has a 3% market share. If other popular browsers follow suit it could begin to be disruptive to a limited degree, but easily solved from a marketers prospective.

If it became more intrusive and they blocked UTM tags, it would take awhile for them all to catch on if you were to circumvent UTM tags by simply tagging things in a series of sub-directories.. ie. site.com/landing/<tag1>/<tag2> etc.

Also, most savvy marketers are already integrating future proof workarounds for these exact scenarios.

A lot can be done with pixel based integrations rather than cookie based or UTM tracking. When set up properly they can actually provide better and more accurate tracking and attribution. Hence the name of my agency, Pixel Main.”

I think most marketers are aware that privacy is the trend. The good ones have already taken steps to keep it from becoming a problem while still respecting user privacy.”

Some URL Parameters Are Already Affected

For those who are on the periphery of what’s going on with browsers and privacy, it may come as a surprise that some tracking parameters are already affected by actions meant to protect user privacy.

Jonathan Cairo, Lead Solutions Engineer at Elevar shared that there is already a limited amount of tracking related information stripped from URLs.

But he also explained that there are limits to how much information can be stripped from URLs because the resulting negative effects would cause important web browsing functionality to fail.

Jonathan explained:

“So far, we’re seeing a selective trend where some URL parameters, like ‘fbclid’ in Safari’s private browsing, are disappearing, while others, such as TikTok’s ‘ttclid’, remain.

UTM parameters are expected to stay since they focus on user segmentation rather than individual tracking, provided they are used as intended.

The idea of completely removing all URL parameters seems improbable, as it would disrupt key functionalities on numerous websites, including banking services and search capabilities.

Such a drastic move could lead users to switch to alternative browsers.

On the other hand, if only some parameters are eliminated, there’s the possibility of marketers exploiting the remaining ones for tracking purposes.

This raises the question of whether companies like Apple will take it upon themselves to prevent such use.

Regardless, even in a scenario where all parameters are lost, there are still alternative ways to convey click IDs and UTM information to websites.”

Brad Redding of Elevar agreed about the disruptive effect from going too far with removing URL tracking information:

“There is still too much basic internet functionality that relies on query parameters, such as logging in, password resets, etc, which are effectively the same as URL parameters in a full URL path.

So we believe the privacy crackdown is going to continue on known trackers by blocking their tracking scripts, cookies generated from them, and their ability to monitor user’s activity through the browser.

As this grows, the reliance on brands to own their first party data collection and bring consent preferences down to a user-level (vs session based) will be critical so they can backfill gaps in conversion data to their advertising partners outside of the browser or device.”

The Future Of Tracking, Privacy And What Marketers Should Expect

Elevar raises good points about how far browsers can go in terms of how much blocking they can do. Their response that it’s down to brands to own their first party data collection and other strategies to accomplish analytics without compromising user privacy.

Given all the laws governing privacy and Internet tracking that have been enacted around the world it looks like privacy will continue to be a trend.

However, at this point it time, the advice is to keep monitoring how far browsers are going but there is no expectation that things will get out of hand.

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SEO

How To Become an SEO Expert in 4 Steps

Published

1 day ago

November 30, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

With 74.1% of SEOs charging clients upwards of $500 per month for their services, there’s a clear financial incentive to get good at SEO. But with no colleges offering degrees in the topic, it’s down to you to carve your own path in the industry.

There are many ways to do this; some take longer than others.

In this post, I’ll share how I’d go from zero to SEO pro if I had to do it all over again.

Understanding what search engine optimization really is and how it works is the first state of affairs. While you can do this by reading endless blog posts or watching YouTube videos, I wouldn’t recommend that approach for a few reasons:

It’s hard to know where to start
It’s hard to join the dots
It’s hard to know who to trust

You can solve all of these problems by taking a structured course like our SEO course for beginners. It’s completely free (no signup required), consists of 14 short video lessons (2 hours total length), and covers:

What SEO is and why it’s important
How to do keyword research
How to optimize pages for keywords
How to build links (and why you need them)
Technical SEO best practices

Here’s the first lesson to get you started:

Lesson 1: SEO Basics: What is SEO and Why is it Important? Watch now.

It doesn’t matter how many books you read about golf, you’re never going to win a tournament without picking up a set of clubs and practicing. It’s the same with SEO. The theory is important, but there’s no substitute for getting your hands dirty and trying to rank a site.

If you don’t have a site already, you can get up and running fairly quickly with any major website platform. Some will set you back a few bucks, but they handle SEO basics out of the box. This saves you time sweating the small stuff.

As for what kind of site you should create, I recommend a simple hobby blog.

Here’s a simple food blog I set up in <10 minutes:

A blog that I set up in just a few minutes. It's nothing special, but it does the job

Once you’re set-up, you’re ready to start practicing and honing your SEO skills. Specifically, doing keyword research to find topics, writing and optimizing content about them, and (possibly) building a few backlinks.

For example, according to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, the keyword “neopolitan pizza dough recipe” has a monthly traffic potential of 4.4K as well as a relatively low Keyword Difficulty (KD) score:

Keyword metrics for "neopolitan pizza dough" via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

Even better, there’s a weak website (DR 16) in the top three positions—so this should definitely be quite an easy topic to rank for.

Page from a low-DR website ranking in the top 3. This indicates an easy-to-rank-for keyword

Given that most of the top-ranking posts have at least a few backlinks, a page about this topic would also likely need at least a few backlinks to compete. Check out the resources below to learn how to build these.

It’s unlikely that your hobby blog is going to pay the bills, so it’s time to use the work you’ve done so far to get a job in SEO. Here are a few benefits of doing this:

Get paid to learn. This isn’t the case when you’re home alone reading blog posts and watching videos or working on your own site.
Get deeper hands-on experience. Agencies work with all kinds of businesses, which means you’ll get to build experience with all kinds of sites, from blogs to ecommerce.
Build your reputation. Future clients or employers are more likely to take you seriously if you’ve worked for a reputable SEO agency.

To find job opportunities, start by signing up for SEO newsletters like SEO Jobs and SEOFOMO. Both of these send weekly emails and feature remote job opportunities:

You can also go the traditional route and search job sites for entry-level positions. The kinds of jobs you’re looking for will usually have “Junior” in their titles or at least mention that it’s a junior position in their description.

Beyond that, you can search for SEO agencies in your local area and check their careers pages.

Even if there are no entry-level positions listed here, it’s still worth emailing and asking if there are any upcoming openings. Make sure to mention any SEO success you’ve had with your website and where you’re at in your journey so far.

This might seem pushy, but many agencies actually encourage this—such as Rise at Seven:

Call for alternative roles from Rise at Seven

Here’s a quick email template to get you started:

Subject: Junior SEO position?

Hey folks,

Do you have any upcoming openings for junior SEOs?

I’ve been learning SEO for [number] months, but I’m looking to take my knowledge to the next level. So far, I’ve taken Ahrefs’ Beginner SEO course and started my own blog about [topic]—which I’ve had some success with. It’s only [number] months old but already ranks for [number] keywords and gets an estimated [number] monthly search visits according to Ahrefs.

[Ahrefs screenshot]

I checked your careers page and didn’t see any junior positions there, but I was hoping you might consider me for any upcoming positions? I’m super enthusiastic, hard-working, and eager to learn.

Let me know.

[Name]

You can pull all the numbers and screenshots you need by creating a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account and verifying your website.

SEO is a broad industry. It’s impossible to be an expert at every aspect of it, so you should niche down and hone your skills in the area that interests you the most. You should have a reasonable idea of what this is from working on your own site and in an agency.

For example, link building was the area that interested me the most, so that’s where I focused on deepening my knowledge. As a result, I became what’s known as a “t-shaped SEO”—someone with broad skills across all things SEO but deep knowledge in one area.

Marie Haynes is another great example of a t-shaped SEO. She specializes in Google penalty recovery. She doesn’t build links or do on-page SEO. She audits websites with traffic drops and helps their owners recover.

In terms of how to build your knowledge in your chosen area, here are a few ideas:

Here are a few SEOs I’d recommend following and their (rough) specialties:

Final thoughts

K Anders Ericsson famously theorized that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a new skill. Can it take less? Possibly. But the point is this: becoming an SEO expert is not an overnight process.

I’d even argue that it’s a somewhat unattainable goal because no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn. That’s part of the fun, though. SEO is a fast-moving industry that keeps you on your toes, but it’s a very rewarding one, too.

Here are a few stats to prove it:

74.1% of SEOs charge clients upwards of $500 per month for their services (source)
$49,211 median annual salary (source)
~$74k average salary for self-employed SEOs (source)

Got questions? Ping me on ~~Twitter~~ X.

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SEO

A Year Of AI Developments From OpenAI

Published

1 day ago

November 30, 2023

Max

Today, ChatGPT celebrates one year since its launch in research preview.

Try talking with ChatGPT, our new AI system which is optimized for dialogue. Your feedback will help us improve it. https://t.co/sHDm57g3Kr

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 30, 2022

From its humble beginnings, ChatGPT has continually pushed the boundaries of what we perceive as possible with generative AI for almost any task.

a year ago tonight we were probably just sitting around the office putting the finishing touches on chatgpt before the next morning’s launch.

what a year it’s been…

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 30, 2023

In this article, we take a journey through the past year, highlighting the significant milestones and updates that have shaped ChatGPT into the versatile and powerful tool it is today.

a year ago tonight we were placing bets on how many total users we’d get by sunday

20k, 80k, 250k… i jokingly said “8B”.
little did we know… https://t.co/8YtO8GbLPy

— rapha gontijo lopes (@rapha_gl) November 30, 2023

ChatGPT: From Research Preview To Customizable GPTs

This story unfolds over the course of nearly a year, beginning on November 30, when OpenAI announced the launch of its research preview of ChatGPT.

As users began to offer feedback, improvements began to arrive.

Before the holiday, on December 15, 2022, ChatGPT received general performance enhancements and new features for managing conversation history.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2022 ChatGPT At One: A Year Of AI Developments From OpenAI

As the calendar turned to January 9, 2023, ChatGPT saw improvements in factuality, and a notable feature was added to halt response generation mid-conversation, addressing user feedback and enhancing control.

Just a few weeks later, on January 30, the model was further upgraded for enhanced factuality and mathematical capabilities, broadening its scope of expertise.

February 2023 was a landmark month. On February 9, ChatGPT Plus was introduced, bringing new features and a faster ‘Turbo’ version to Plus users.

This was followed closely on February 13 with updates to the free plan’s performance and the international availability of ChatGPT Plus, featuring a faster version for Plus users.

March 14, 2023, marked a pivotal moment with the introduction of GPT-4 to ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023 ChatGPT At One: A Year Of AI Developments From OpenAI

This new model featured advanced reasoning, complex instruction handling, and increased creativity.

Less than ten days later, on March 23, experimental AI plugins, including browsing and Code Interpreter capabilities, were made available to selected users.

On May 3, users gained the ability to turn off chat history and export data.

Plus users received early access to experimental web browsing and third-party plugins on May 12.

On May 24, the iOS app expanded to more countries with new features like shared links, Bing web browsing, and the option to turn off chat history on iOS.

June and July 2023 were filled with updates enhancing mobile app experiences and introducing new features.

The mobile app was updated with browsing features on June 22, and the browsing feature itself underwent temporary removal for improvements on July 3.

The Code Interpreter feature rolled out in beta to Plus users on July 6.

Plus customers enjoyed increased message limits for GPT-4 from July 19, and custom instructions became available in beta to Plus users the next day.

July 25 saw the Android version of the ChatGPT app launch in selected countries.

As summer progressed, August 3 brought several small updates enhancing the user experience.

Custom instructions were extended to free users in most regions by August 21.

The month concluded with the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise on August 28, offering advanced features and security for enterprise users.

Entering autumn, September 11 witnessed limited language support in the web interface.

Voice and image input capabilities in beta were introduced on September 25, further expanding ChatGPT’s interactive abilities.

An updated version of web browsing rolled out to Plus users on September 27.

The fourth quarter of 2023 began with integrating DALL·E 3 in beta on October 16, allowing for image generation from text prompts.

The browsing feature moved out of beta for Plus and Enterprise users on October 17.

Customizable versions of ChatGPT, called GPTs, were introduced for specific tasks on November 6 at OpenAI’s DevDay.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, November 2023 ChatGPT At One: A Year Of AI Developments From OpenAI

On November 21, the voice feature in ChatGPT was made available to all users, rounding off a year of significant advancements and broadening the horizons of AI interaction.

And here, we have ChatGPT today, with a sidebar full of GPTs.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, November 2023 ChatGPT At One: A Year Of AI Developments From OpenAI

Looking Ahead: What’s Next For ChatGPT

The past year has been a testament to continuous innovation, but it is merely the prologue to a future rich with potential.

The upcoming year promises incremental improvements and leaps in AI capabilities, user experience, and integrative technologies that could redefine our interaction with digital assistants.

With a community of users and developers growing stronger and more diverse, the evolution of ChatGPT is poised to surpass expectations and challenge the boundaries of today’s AI landscape.

As we step into this next chapter, the possibilities are as limitless as generative AI continues to advance.

Featured image: photosince/Shutterstock

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