Google made a Twitter announcement that as of 3:44 am ET on June 9, the May 2022 Broad Core Update is finally complete. The rollout took 15 days, originally starting on May 25, 2022. This was one of the bigger core updates, even more so than those experienced in 2021 in terms of how it affected the search engine optimization (SEO) of many websites. Here are some key factors noted by Search Engine Roundtable of the Google May 2022 Broad Core Update:
- Tremors: worst volatility experienced on May 26, June 5, June 7
- Targets: All kinds of content
- Penalty: Focusses on promoting or rewarding quality web pages rather than penalizing low-quality ones
- Global: impacts all regions and languages.
- Impact: the percentage of queries or searches that were impacted by this update is yet to be confirmed.
- Discover: Will impact Google Discover, feature snippets and various other features.
- Recover: If you’ve been affected, take a look at your content and see if you can improve on Google’s core update recommendations.
- Refreshes: Google will refresh its algorithm on a regular basis, although those adjustments may or may not be communicated in the future.
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Ahrefs Launches New Search Engine: Yep, that’s right! Ahrefs first made this exciting announcement in 2019, investing $60 million in resources into creating its new search engine, Yep, over the past three years. Ahrefs plans to position its creator-friendly search engine as a competitor for Google, or in the least, an alternative offering two main things: 1.) Privacy: Your search history and personal location will not be collected or shared and as little information will be stored as possible; its algorithms, spelling corrections and search suggestions will rely on aggregated search statistics based on entered keywords, language preference and approximate geographical search origin retrieved from IP address. And 2.) Profit-sharing: 90/10 revenue-sharing model, ie. Ahrefs plans to share 90 percent of its advertising gains with anyone who publishes content. Gerasymenko went on to say, “Creators who make search results possible deserve to receive payments for their work…We saw how YouTube’s profit-sharing model made the whole video-making industry thrive. Splitting advertising profits 90/10 with content authors, we want to give a push towards treating talent fairly in the search industry.” Because Google presents content in its search results without requiring users to visit, websites are losing less traffic; less traffic means less money for many websites like Wikipedia, which wouldn’t have to ask for donations to get by. According to Search Engine Land, Yep’s search results pages (SERPs) are minimal at the moment, offering web and news results and “knowledge” boxes featuring Wikipedia content related to your search. Although it isn’t quite at a point to compete with giants like Google, we’ll be keeping a close eye on the development of this search engine in the years to come.
Google Releases API Version 11: In an announcement made on June 8, 2022, Google Ads API v11 is now available. Client libraries and code examples are set to be published next week. This follows the version 10 release just four months earlier this year on February 9, 2022, only to sunset on April 27, 2022. The request error rate has increased incrementally since then, from 25 percent until May 2022 to 50 percent on June 1, 2022. API v10 is set to stop working by July 31, 2022. Check out the main technical highlights mentioned here and the full list of functionality and changes here.
Google Opposes Tech AntiTrust Bill: The Tech Antitrust Bill S.2992 was submitted by U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Google claims that the bill, also known as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), could potentially do more damage than good as it could jeopardize users’ safety and affect Google’s product integration like Search, Maps and Business Profile. The bill being passed could also result in less visibility of Google’s own products, inevitably leaving users with a scaled-down version of Google Search. U.S. Congress, however, claims that AICOA’s goal is to even the playing field for online companies and is aimed at alleged anti-competitive activities like platforms that favor their own services or products over their rivals. Senator Klobuchar described what she hopes to achieve by presenting the bill on the Morning Joe Show on June 7, 2022: “… what the bill does is it says if you’re going to sell stuff on your own platforms, then you can’t preference it over other competitive business products. Because that’s what they’re doing. They’re starting to buy thing after thing and basically outcompete, because they own the pipeline by which people are buying other competitors. That’s not fair capitalism. That’s when antitrust steps in.” According to Search Engine Journal, some concerns of how it may impact users include compromised security, restricted ability to combat misinformation, failure to tackle legitimate security concerns and the possibility for foreign enterprises to profit from Google’s offerings. Google is not the only tech giant concerned about the proposed bill. The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) launched a campaign, “Don’t Break What Works“, to raise awareness of the impending effects that S.2992 could have.
WordPress Proposes a Proactive Approach To Increase Security and Website Performance: WordPress announced that it intends to implement a plugin checker to ensure that third-party plugins adhere to best practices in three ways to improve security and site performance: Static analysis (themes are verified, but it has drawbacks, such as the inability to run the code), server-side analysis (lets the plugin code run while concurrently performing a static analysis) and client-side analysis (loads a headless browser and then checks if the plugin has any issues that a server-side solution may not be able to detect. As it stands, the server-side analysis seems optimal; however, this is just the starting point for the plans to launch its third-party plugin checker.
LinkedIn Introduces Five New Tools To Help Creators Gain More Followers and Visibility: LinkedIn announced some new features that could help creators be discovered and gain more followers with ease from search results, the feed or other platforms. Here are some of the new features available if you’re in Creator Mode: 1.) Follow from the feed or people who aren’t a first connection but see your content will now have the opportunity to follow you without leaving your feed by displaying a Follow button. LinkedIn will also encourage users to follow creators to view more of their posts and learn more about the topics they discuss. 2.) Follow from search: Make sure you’ve included any relevant hashtags to your creator profile if you haven’t already. Now, when users look for a business or a topic on LinkedIn, they’ll find people who often discuss similar or relevant issues. Also, make sure you’re posting on things that are important to you. 3.) Followers from other platforms: Creators on LinkedIn will soon be able to generate a link to share or embed on other websites or in emails. Anyone who clicks on that link will be able to join your LinkedIn network. 4.) Followers from connection requests: You will be able to create a link to share or embed on other websites or in emails. Potential followers will be able to connect with you on LinkedIn by clicking on that link. And lastly, 5.) Add a link to your profile: Following an announcement in April that all contributors would be able to include a link in their profile’s introductory section, the rollout is now complete. You’ll find it below your user name and description but above the number of followers and connections you have.