Take a look at your rankings because Google has wrapped its core update as of October 19, 2023, 14 days after rolling it out. This core update was big since many websites saw ranking volatility during those two weeks of rolling out.
In our previous report, we’ve covered the slim time gap between the September 2023 Helpful Content Update and the rollouts of October 2023 core and Spam updates. This indicates a major change happening behind the scenes, and it appears that Google has kept its foot on the gas pedal in terms of releasing updates.
Here are important resources to keep you up on Google’s algorithm updates:
Core updates play a huge role in search rankings since they impact a company’s organic leads, web traffic and even bottom line. While Google doesn’t disclose what happens during core updates, you can always take a look at how your content performs after the rollout.
Did it drop? Increase? Stay the same? How about your competitors? How did they fare?
Keep in mind that Google wants you to create human-centric content that adds value, focusing on the bigger picture rather than specific ranking factors. This means taking a look at your content’s overall quality and whether it solves the searcher’s query.
Read this help document to learn more about Google core updates.
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October 2023 Spam Update Also Wraps Up Its Rollout: One day after the October 2023 core update wrapped up, so did the spam update, bringing a cleaner search experience, thanks to “community members” that “reported in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and other language,” said Google in its October 4, 2023, blog post. The spam update will reduce cloaked, hacked, auto-generated and scraped spam you see on Google Search. If you think you’ve been hit by this update, Google recommends checking out its spam policies. Read this X discussion to learn more.
Google Adds More Links, Fact-Checking and “About This Image” Section on SGE: If you’ve been having trust issues over Search Generative Experience’s AI answers, this update might fix them. According to Google’s post, the “About this image” section and more sources for business descriptions will help you get “more context about the images and sources you’re finding.” About this image was a previously announced feature, which will now become widely available for SGE-enrolled users. This feature will give you insights about an image’s history, metadata and even how other websites are describing that image. For those researching about a seller online, Google will also generate content for you, supported by information from reputable sources, which will be hyperlinked as well. Journalists and fact-checkers are also in for a treat as Google introduces Fact Check Explorer, powered by the claim review markup, to vet information and images on the web. Read Google’s blog to read more about these features.
Chrome Tests Hidden IP Address Feature: In a bid to make its browser solution more privacy-friendly, Chrome is introducing IP protection, slated to make its Phase 0 debut on Chrome 122. This new feature will prevent cross-site tracking, making it harder for websites to identify and track visitors. Phase 0 will only test the feature on Google-owned domain websites first, tweaking it as user feedback pours in. Here’s a GitHub explainer to read more about how this feature works.
You Can Now Spin DALL-E 3 Images In ChatGPT Plus: First seen integrated with Bing, AI image generation tool DALL-E 3 makes its way to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users, allowing you to “create unique images from a simple conversation.” This latest iteration of DALL-E also has its own provenance classifies, which means you can detect if an image was generated using DALL-E 3. OpenAI also promised a safer, more robust model that mitigates the danger of DALL-E 3 being used for propaganda and misinformation. Read OpenAI’s documentation of this integration here.
Feeling Overwhelmed With AI? You’re Not Alone: A new survey by multi-location marketing platform SOCi reveals that 70% of marketers are overwhelmed by changes in AI. A large contributing factor to this is the lack of formal education and resources in AI, with 42% not receiving any AI training at all. “We need to better equip our marketing teams with the right AI training and resources,” said Monica Ho, CMO of SOCi. So, if you feel like you’re not keeping up with new AI tools, that’s completely normal. Unless AI courses and training become more readily available, the trend won’t change. Read more about this survey from Search Engine Land.
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