SEARCHENGINES
Google September Core Update & Product Reviews Update Both Completed On September 26th
As I called, Google has completed rolling out both the September 2022 core update and the September 2022 product reviews update while I was offline. Both officially finished rolling out on September 26, 2022 – so Monday.
Here are some quick facts on both these updates, now that they are done. But as you know, the core update took exactly two weeks to roll out, a full 14 days. The product reviews update took only six days to roll out.
Google September 2022 Core Update
- Name: Google September 2022 Broad Core Update
- Launched: September 12, 2022 at around 11:25 pm ET
- Rollout: Two weeks – completing on September 26, 2022
- Targets: It looks at all types of content
- Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
- Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update but so far, this seems to be a typical core update that reaches wide and the impact is fast.
- Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google’s core update advice.
- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates.
Google September 2022 Product Reviews Update
- Name: Google September 2022 Product Reviews Update
- Launched: September 20, 2022 at around 4 am ET
- Rollout: Six days – completing on September 26, 2022
- Targets: It looks at product review content
- Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards “insightful analysis and original research.”
- Not a core update: Many are going to say this is a core update, it is not.
- English Language but will expand: This is only looking at English-language content right now but likely will expand to other languages, this is a global launch. I am surprised it is still only English but it is, as we documented below.
- Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.
- Discover: This update can impact your performance in Google Discover, Google previously said.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google’s advice below
- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. This may be the first refresh that Google has done, it is the first refresh Google communicated about.
Both updates were fairly large and had big impacts for many many sites. Which one impacted which, despite what Google said, can be hard to pin point.
I have a bit more on the core update impact here and the product reviews impact here.
SEO Chatter
Glenn Gabe, as do others, thinks the product reviews update, was a bit (maybe a simplification) of a correction on the fourth product reviews update. Meaning, they fixed some flaws with the fourth product reviews update with the last one, the fifth product reviews update. Here are some tweets from Glenn:
Quick update on the Sep Product Reviews Update. Looks like Google pushed a BIG tremor on Sat into Sun & a # of sites that tanked w/the July PRU are recovering (w/out changing anything). I said in July that I expected changes there. Thx to the site owner letting me share this. pic.twitter.com/9clUFmmotj
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 27, 2022
OK, here’s another site that got hit hard w/the July Product Reviews Update that surged back on Sunday when Google pushed a tremor. The site owner explained the July hit was a wakeup call & they have been addressing some things. But sure seems like this was a correction by Google pic.twitter.com/BnuaeY7zIY
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 27, 2022
Well, that sounds familiar! I’ve had a bunch of site owners reach out w/a similar situation. Great to see that recovery. Google seemed to address some flaws with the July PRU. 🙂
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 27, 2022
There was definitely a spike in chatter in the SEO community over the weekend, here is some of that chatter from WebmasterWorld:
All of my sites are down around 25%.
How have ALL of them fallen basically the exact same percentage? Whatever this update is, it’s the worst one yet for me.
For whatever reason I’m off the cliff edge today, after 13 hours I am at 13% of my 1-24 Sept average!
My first thought was the site was down or had been down, nope, we’ll see what the rest of the day brings.
In the past few days, I’ve been seeing a rise in sites like TripAdvisor and TripSavvy, which are the travel information sector’s equivalent of big box stores. I see that as an erosion of subject authority as a ranking factor.
The ranking difference isn’t huge, but when you’ve been ranking at or near the top of the SERP for a bunch of important searches, a drop from the first position to the second–or from the second position to the third–can have a significant impact on Google traffic (especially if an answer box or a list of questions has been inserted after the first result).
25 year old site, medium-large, well established, first mover in our niche back in mid 90s, 20,000+ referring domains backlinking to us. Not a major brand.
The second the core update started running on the 13th we started dropping like a rock. Down 20% sitewide now, and continuing to drop. We were clearly hit by some invisible sitewide penalty, as EVERY SERP listing dropped for us by at least a spot, in many case many spots. We do not use any black hat SEO, keyword manipulation, unhelpful content, etc. We trimmed out our thin pages to improve quality indexing significantly over a year ago, and updated a good chunk of our content…
For my first 13 hours on Sunday I was almost flatlining and then traffic kicked-in resulting with an almost average Sunday plus the traffic has continued into today so far.
While my sites are all still down, today’s numbers look more like -5-10% down from the norm instead of the -25% I was seeing earlier.
Seeing our site tumbling over the same visibility chart cliff as a very friendly to google cable news network’s website does add some amusement to the situation…
20 year old site here. Aug update hit us slightly, but this update has been a major hit as well (though we have been on a slow slide this past year). Down another 20% it seems…
There is a bit of chatter into today with SEOs saying they are still seeing volatility.
Tracking Tools On September 2022 Core & Product Reviews Update
Here is what those tracking tools looked like over the past two weeks or more:
Sorry for being offline when the update finished, I am still catching up. I do hope you all did well with these two updates.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 25, 2024
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out and the SEO chatter is super heated despite the tools calming. Google Ads API version 16.1 is now out. Google’s John Mueller says splitting and merging sites takes longer than normal site moves for Google to process. Google updated its favicon documentation. And a scathing report on how Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan killed Google Search.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
-
Google March Core Update Stilling Rolling Out & Heated SEO Chatter Continue
Over the past few days, while I was offline, the SEO chatter around the Google search ranking volatility continued to be super heated. The Google tracking tools seemed to calm down a bit, but the chatter is still very heated. This is all while the Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out 51 days later. -
Report: How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search
Ed Zitron wrote a piece named The Man Who Killed Google Search. It goes through in detail how Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s former head of ads – led a coup so that he could run Google Search, and how an email chain from 2019 began a cascade of events that would lead to him running it into the ground, he said. -
Google Favicon Documentation Adds Rel Attribute Value Definitions
Google has updated its favicon documentation for Google Search to add definitions for each supported rel attribute value in the Google Search favicon documentation. -
Google Ads API Version 16.1 Now Available
Google released version 16.1 of the Google Ads API yesterday. The update includes query assets for Demand Gen, more location service details, more support warnings, Target ROAS bid simulation and more. -
Google: Splitting & Merging Sites Takes Longer Than Normal Site Migrations
Want to scare an SEO? Just tell them they need to manage a site migration. Want to make an SEO faint? Tell them they need to manage to split a site into two or more sites while merging content on those sites. John Mueller from Google said it takes Google longer to process site splits and merges than normal site migrations. -
Google Chefs In Dublin
Here is a photo I found on Instagram of a bunch of chefs at the Google office in Dublin. I am not sure if this was for some event or if Googlers were doing some sort of cooking class but it was a photo that caught my eye.
Other Great Search Threads:
- Interested in AI assistants within YouTube? -> The new experimental “Ask AI” feature in YouTube is pretty cool. Just tap the button and ask any question about the video you’re watching. Note, AI can’t control the video player as of n, Glenn Gabe on X
- What skeleton do you have in your closet?, WebmasterWorld
- Googlebot will crawl from one location (often the US), and if you redirect it based on its location, Googlebot would only see (and index) that country version. It’s better to use something like a banner., John Mueller on X
- I don’t know your sites, but even if the content’s the same, they’re essentially different sites (especially with ccTLDs), so it would be normal for a migration to affect them differently (and this seems to be quite a way back in the meantime)., John Mueller on X
- Search engines recrawl URLs at different rates, sometimes it’s multiple times a day, sometimes it’s once every few months. The verified removal tool is fastest, the public removal tool takes a few days because it needs to verify the URL properly., John Mueller on X
- You are now a Google Search Engineer. How do you fix organic search?, Gareth Boyd on X
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
- PPC for Retail: Biggest Trends, Challenges, & Strategies for Success, WordStream
- Unlocking Success with Performance Max Campaigns, Location3 Media
- Discovering and Diagnosing a Google AdSense Rendering Bug, Merj
- Google delays third-party cookie demise yet again, Digiday
- How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords, Ahrefs
- Q&A: Promoting your app or game with Apple Search Ads, Apple Developer
- Updates to Healthcare and Medicines Policy (May 2024), Google Advertising Policies Help
- Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone, The Verge
Search Features
Other Search
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Won’t Change The 301 Signals For Ranking & SEO
Gary Illyes from Google said on stage at the SERP conference last week that there is no way that Google would change how the 301 redirect signal works for SEO or search rankings. Gary added that it’s a very reliable signal.
Nikola Minkov quoted Gary Illyes as saying, “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal,” when asked if a 301 redirect not working is a myth. Honestly, I am not sure the context of this question, as it is not clear from the post on X, but here it is:
More from @methode:
– 301 redirect not working is a myth. “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal”.#SERPConf2024#SERPConf2024International— Nikola Minkov (@n_minkov) April 19, 2024
We’ve covered 301 redirects here countless times – but I never saw a myth that Google does not use 301 redirects as a signal for canonicalization or for passing signals from an old URL to the redirected URL.
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Again Says Ignore Link Spam Especially To 404 Pages
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing to pages that 404/410 are links that do not count – but John Mueller from Google said it again.
In a thread on X, John Mueller from Google wrote, “if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped.” “They do nothing,” he added, “If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link.”
John then added, “I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.”
Asking if it would hurt to disavow, after responding with the messages above, John wrote:
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
Earlier this year we had tons of SEOs notice spammy links to 404 error pages, John said ignore them. In 2021, Google said links to 404 pages do not count, Google also said that in 2012 and many other times.
Plus, outside of links to 404 pages, Google has said to ignore spammy links, time and time again – even the toxic links – ignore them. The messaging around this changed in 2016 when Penguin 4.0 was released and Google began devaluing links over demoting them.
Here are those new posts in context:
I’d say add both. Lol
— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) April 11, 2024
Sure. But also, save yourself the work completely :-).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
Re-reading your initial post – if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped. They do nothing. If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link. I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
… but still… is this a dumb idea?
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 11, 2024
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
And in general, Google says it ignores spammy links, so you should too (not new) but this post from John Mueller is:
I would just ignore them, Google ignores them too. Sometimes they’re just more visible in tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re a problem.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 18, 2024
And then also on Mastodon wrote about a similar situation, “Google has 2 decades of practice of ignoring spammy links. There’s no need to do anything for those links.”
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
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