Transcript
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Scott Van Aken (2:11)
Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM. This is episode number 517. My name is Scott Van Ak. I am the senior SEO at Stepforth Web Marketing. Ross is away today so you've got all Scott this episode for better or for worse, here I am. I'm going to start off with a very simple non SEO piece of news and that is Happy Birthday to Search Engine Land. If anyone over there is listening, today, December 11th is their 19th birthday at Search Engine Land. So if, if you're in Canada, you could go have a beer, but I don't know if the drinking age in the States is 21 everywhere. But yeah, you got to wait a couple more years for that. So anyways, happy birthday, Search Engine Land, and keep doing what you do. And now for some SEO news. Google Updates. So there were some Google updates and a lot of search ranking volatility on December 3rd and 4th. I didn't really see anything, just usual minor tweaks and ranking fluctuations here and there. There was a lot of chatter about it. Google never said anything specific, but there was a lot of speculation throughout the SEO community and we never really learned anything about it. So there was a, an update, but we don't know anything, which is kind of typical for a lot of these Google updates later. And let's just roll that right into more Google Update action. So this is kind of funny. On December 9, 2 days ago at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich, John Mueller said they are working on the next core update and that it should be out soon. It was unclear if soon meant before or after the holidays, but John did say that he would not be surprised if one launches in the coming weeks. And he added, hopefully not before the holidays. Hopefully not before the holidays. Well, two days later today, December 11th, it's rolling out right now. There's a core update that just happened. Search Engine Land reported about an hour before recording this for me. So we don't know anything about that yet either because it's happening right now. So it's a, you know, your traditional core update. Do not react or panic until it is done. Done. If you see rankings fluctuate for the worst, don't worry about it yet. Wait till the core update is done before you act on that or try to do anything or try to figure anything out. If you see rankings skyrocket and get really exciting, don't get too excited because that could also fall back down. So who knows where it will settle, but wait to act until approximately three weeks. They say it will take three weeks, but I feel like every time Google says it'll take about three weeks, it ends up dragging into four or five weeks, even longer. So who really knows how long this update will take, but it is underway right now and hopefully it's a great Christmas gift for all you small businesses out there. We'll find out it might be a lump of coal. Hopefully not for anybody. But one thing Google has also done is they've confirmed that they do Roll out unannounced, smaller core updates. So Google's core update search developer documentation was recently updated. They added a new section that does confirm that it sometimes rolls out smaller, unannounced core updates unannounced. We kind of know this. I don't know if I would have called them core updates. We just say Google's doing an update, and they don't really say anything. They're calling them core updates. So they're just like small tweaks to the core updates. Google has sort of said this before. They've mentioned it before, but now it's official in the documentation. The new paragraph they added reads, you don't necessarily have to wait for a core update to see the effect of your improvements. We're continually making updates to our search algorithms, including smaller core updates. These updates are not announced because they aren't widely noticeable. They are another way that your content can see a rise in position if you've made improvements, which is true. I mean, if you're trying to tweak things and try to either recover from past updates or just make a better website, these smaller core updates will have those influences on your rankings. So when you do see things sort of spike up across the board for a bunch of stuff, it's possibly safe to say that there was an update that caused that. Not always, though. It could be changes on your site, changes to the competition. Who, who knows? Google said that their new paragraph in this documentation is to clarify that site owners that make content improvements can see a rise in position in Google search results without having to wait for the next major core update. So, yep, there we have it. Core updates are happening right now. They're happening all the time. And I kind of miss the olden days of updates like when there was a Florida update way, way, way back and all the other big updates of the past, because those updates came with very clear outlines, or we were able to figure it out very quickly what they targeted. Sometimes they would target links or spam or this or that. And now those updates are, for several years now, more specific. They come up with the spam updates and that kind of stuff. So they're independent. And those ones, we know what they do and we know how to react to the core updates. We just have to wait and see how it shakes out. And as always, just build awesome content that really strongly reflects your expertise in your area. If you keep doing that, you're going to be just fine. And now we have an update from Google Search Console. Actually a couple updates I want to talk about today, on December 8th, Google announced a new experiment in Google Search Console. They said Today we are excited to announce a new experiment in Search Console that that offers site owners a unified view of Google search performance across their websites and social channels. With this update, we're expanding the Search Console Insights report to include performance data not only for your website, but also for some of your social channels. This new integration allows your review. Sorry. This new integration lets you review search performance of social channels associated with your website directly within Search Console. At this point, it's an experiment. It has a very limited rollout. But Google goes on to say we are rolling out these new insights for a limited set of websites. At this first stage, the Insights are available only for sites and channels that Search Console has identified automatically. On the Search Console Insights report, you will be prompted to add the social channels that Search Console has automatically identified and associated with your website. So what will this new report show? Essentially a few things. Additional search. Sorry, additional traffic sources Total clicks to your site received from additional sources such as image search, video search, news search discover. The total reach will be shown. So total clicks and impressions driving traffic from Google to your channel. The various social channels content performance or top social channel pages as well as those trending up or down search queries. Top trending queries leading users to your social profiles and audience locations. So top countries where users are clicking on your channel in results. So have you set this up? Well, probably not, but if anyone out there has set it up, I would love to hear about it. You know, if you've got early access, hey share some screenshots and stories and what do you think about it? I have not been able to see it yet. For the rest of us who want it, you just have to wait until Google decides to prompt you to add those channels. Hopefully soon. But again, this is an experiment so who knows, maybe they will not roll it out for long. Maybe they'll start and decide, nah, they're going to cancel it because they Google likes to do those sorts of things. But I think it's great if you can merge all that social data into Search Console. It's going to make things interesting and a lot easier for a lot of people. The next bit of change at Search Console is that they are testing AI powered Configuration. Google has added a new experimental feature to Search Console. AI powered Configuration. Soon you will be able to tell Search Console that you want to see. Sorry, you'll be able to tell Search Console what you want to see and it will instantly build the report for you. The feature is still rolling out and you may not see it yet. Google says the AI Powered configuration feature is designed to streamline your analysis by handling three key elements for you. Selecting metrics so choosing which metrics you want to see clicks, impressions, average click through rate and average position all based on your question Applying filters so narrowing down data based on query, page country, device search, appearance or date range and configuring comparisons so you can set up complex comparisons like custom date ranges and things like that without manual setup for the full rollout, it's going to be slow and it's only available to a limited set of sites. It is expected to expand over time. Hopefully we all see that. I know I'm getting used to going into AI, whether it be ChatGPT or any of the various tools that we've been using and just ask a question and it spits out the answer. You know you you can ask complex questions and to be able to do that in Search Console and say I don't know, I haven't been able to play with it. But to specify you want to know how your site's performing for maybe a set of keywords or through dates or whatever, being able to just ask it and not have to navigate through the port reports is going to make things much easier for a lot of people. Google did also note a few limitations here. So one is that the feature is designed for configuration file filters, comparisons, metrics. It cannot perform actions like sorting the table, excuse me, or exporting data. Not yet at least. It supports only the performance report for search results, so it isn't available for discover or news reports yet. And some accuracy limitations I guess. AI can sometimes misinterpret results and requests, so always review the suggestions, the filters, anything that you get out of this and make sure that Google is displaying what you want it to so we are going to take a quick break now. When we come back we'll touch on LLM, LLMs, Txt, an AI mode study and some important information about structured markup and JavaScript.