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News about Google’s Algorithms
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Ep. 230 - April 14, 2021 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss the completed rollout of the March product reviews update, the SERP turbulence in early April, Google introducing multisearch, and much more.

SNYCU Podcast

Search News You Can Use Podcast: SEO News · Glenn Gabe & Marie Haynes Discuss Google Core Algorithm Updates, Traffic Drops and Much More

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The following topics are covered in the premium version of this episode:

Lily Ray’s analysis of the March product reviews update
Google’s bubble chart for understanding performance
John kind of defines E-A-T
Doing this helped this site get indexed
Are thin content issues site problems or page problems?
Use this template to find competitors
Leveraging podcast appearances to build links
Why writing shorter sentences can help NLP understand your content
Download crawl stats in bulk
Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.

News about Google’s Algorithms

The product reviews update has completed its rollout

This was the third update for the product reviews algorithms. It started on March 23, 2022. On April 11, 2022, Alan Kent from Google confirmed that the rollout was complete.

Sorry for the delay in response. It was almost… almost… almost…….
Yes! The rollout is now complete!

— Alan Kent (@akent99) April 11, 2022

It is interesting to see that the data shows that this update was less impactful than the previous two. Semrush reported that the December product reviews update had volatility on the Semrush sensor of 9/10, whereas the March rollout was closer to 6/10. Rank Ranger data also supports the idea that the most recent rollout was not as big as December’s.

At MHC, our experience is not the same. We did not have many clients affected by the first two product reviews updates. But we have had several clients see nice changes with this current one. Most of these are affiliate sites with really good content describing “best” products to buy in their niche.

SERP turbulence April 4, 2022

We have several clients with nice increases starting on this date. The Semrush sensor and other tools are up as well. This may be just another one of those “significant shifts” in the SERPs that we keep seeing. We suspect it may be connected to the product reviews update as some of the sites that have increases in organic traffic are seeing this across pages that describe “best” products or services.

We have several clients with what appear to be significant changes on April 4-6.

Barry wrote of turbulence:https://t.co/j2kTNMjBAg @semrush sensor was quite high Apr 6.

Checked one site and it does look pru related, but others do not. pic.twitter.com/kn1Ag2hczE

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) April 12, 2022

Google Announcements

Introducing multisearch

Introducing the multisearch function by Google, which is an entirely new way to search. Using multisearch in Lens, you now have the ability to search using text and images simultaneously.

You can use this function by opening the Google app and tapping the Lens icon. In Google’s official documentation, they provide an example where the searcher snaps a photo of a yellow dress and then taps the “+ Add to your search button” where they include the keyword “green”. The results provide the searcher with the very dress in the green colour instead of yellow. This will be very convenient for shopping.

Another way to use multisearch is to take a picture of a plant and add the second query “care instructions”. Google should be able to figure out what type of plant you have and pull up the corresponding care instructions

To say this is a bit of a game-changer for searchers is an understatement!

SEO Tips

20 years of SEO lessons

Enterprise SEO is a strategic investment according to Trond Lyngbø in a recent article with Search Engine Land. Trond covers what a winning SEO strategy for large enterprises consists of. A few points that stood out to us were making sure you start with correct benchmarks that stack up to your full potential. As opposed to just comparing this year vs. last year. For this, keep in mind external data like keyword analysis as well as internal data from Google Analytics. Financial data that document costs should not be overlooked either. These should all be considered before starting an SEO budget.

We recommend giving the article a full read if you’re looking to get more detailed insight!

Search Off the Record episode on structured data

If you aren’t listening to the “Search Off the Record” podcast, you absolutely should be! For the purposes of this edition, we have you covered! As the tweet suggests, this episode of the podcast was all about structured data. Lizzi Sassman, tech writer on the Search Relations team at Google, Martin Splitt (also on the Search Relations team at Google), and Ryan Levering, software engineer at Google, talk about how structured data can be used, the impacts of using it and, how it works in conjunction with web search.

As we’ve always said with regards to structured data, you’re taking the guesswork away from Google by explicitly outlining these data fields. We really like what Martin had to say on structured data: “I think it’s generally easy to say like more data, as long as it is correct and reflects what’s shown to the user on the page, is never worse, right. It’s always better to add more data to clarify what the content on the page is.”

In our eyes, structured data is like the table of contents and synopsis of a book. It provides a lot of really useful information that’s been extracted from an otherwise lengthy, and somewhat disorganized read. Structured data can help Google better understand the entities associated with your website. The more we can do to help search engines, the better!

Local SEO

Say goodbye to the GMB app

The time has come for the Google My Business app to go away. They recommend using Google Maps and Search to keep your Google Business Profile updated for users. We knew this was coming with the introduction of GBP and now it has.

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