Talk about a busy month, we didn't just have one or two confirmed updates this past month - we had three! We had the helpful content update finish rolling out on September 9th, we then had the September 2022 core update kick off on the 12th, and then the September 2022 product reviews update on the 20th. Oh, and the core and product review updates both finished rolling out on the same day, the 26th of September.
We also thought there was a Google local search update but that just turned out to be some bug.
Google dropped the word count topic from its help documentation, told us what it considers quality issues and told us ton of SEO topics as summarized below.
Google Search Console got some new additions like new shopping tools and reports, the URL Inspection tool renders more, a new HTTPS report that is causing a lot of confusion and took away the international targeting report.
We had the big Search On event, most of these we saw Google testing or announced at Google I/O. Plus tons of more tests are summarized below...
And on the local side, we saw a spike in rejections, the removal of health attributes, and a new guideline around negative reviews.
If you missed last month, see the September 2022 Google webmaster report and the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is mostly on the core and product reviews right now.
Here are the more important stories I pulled out for you all:
Google Algorithms:
- Google Helpful Content Update Movement? Yes But Not Widespread.
- Google Helpful Content Update Not Done Yet (Now Done) But Now We're Seeing Fluctuations
- Google Helpful Content Update Finished On 9/9 But Were Those Fluctuations Related To HCU
- Google September 2022 Broad Core Update Is Live - What We Are Seeing Now
- Google Unleashes Fifth Product Reviews Update Before Core Update Is Done
- What We're Seeing From The Google Product Reviews Update #5
- Google September Core & Product Reviews Updates Both Finished Rolling Out On September 26th
- Google Tries Hard To Not Overlap Different Search Ranking Algorithm Updates
- Google September Core Update Slower To Roll Out In Some Countries?
- Google Local Search Ranking Update Around September 7th
- Google Local Search Ranking Bug Fix Rolling Out
- Google Drops Article Too Short & Word Count Section From The Search Console Content Errors
- Here Is What Google Considers Quality Issues: Things Users Consider Problematic
- Google: Word Count Is Not A Sign Of Thin Or Unhelpful Content
- Google: Crawl Spikes Aren't Global, Normally Noticed On A "Per Site Vibe"
- Google Product Review Updates Still Get Periodic Updates That Google May Not Announce
- Google: There Is No Percentage To Measure Duplicate Content
- Google Really Wants You To Avoid Changing URLs Just For SEO Reasons
- Google: Page Speed Issues Wouldn't Lead To Your Site Being Removed From Google Search
- Google: If You Don't Know If Your Content Is Expertly Written, Then It Is Not
- Google: We Won't Penalize For Keyword-Stuffed URLs
- Google's John Mueller On When, Where & How To Use Hreflang
- Google Merchant Listings Expanded, More Structured Data Properties & New Search Console Reports
- Google URL Inspection Tool Now Displaying Longer Rendering / Screenshot Of Page
- Google Search Console International Targeting Tool Is No Longer Available
- Google Search Console Adds New HTTPS Report
- Confusion: Google Search Console's HTTPS Is Invalid And Might Prevent Indexing
- All The Google Announcements From Search On 2022
- Google Results About You Search Beta
- Google Tests Top Stories Thumbnail Placement Locations
- Google "More Like This" Star Search Snippet Feature
- Google Tests Highlighting Text In People Also Ask As Well...
- Google Tests Two People Also Ask Results In One Question
- Google Testing Things To Know On Right Search Panel
- Google Tests Featured Snippet Yellow & Blue Highlights
- Google Search Cookbook
- Google Shopping Chat Feature On Product Results
- Google Business Profile Suspensions Spiking
- Google Review Guidelines Now Prohibit Incentivizing Removal Of Negative Reviews
- Google Business Profiles Removes Health & Safety Attributes
- Did Google Local Service Ads Remove License Numbers?
- Google Hotel Knowledge Panels Gain Health & Safety And Sustainability
- Google Asks German Reviewers If They Object To Reported Reviews Being Removed
- Google Business Profile Photos With Timestamp Of Photo
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
