SEO Expert Insight: March 2023 News Round-up

Another episode of our SEO Expert Insights, hosted by our Co-Founder, James Owen.

In this February news roundup James gives his advice surrounding the Google Broad core update and what to do if it’s impact.  He also discusses new developments in Google technology such as Google’s answer to ChatGPT, Google Bard, recent Google updates, and the new Google Ads feature.

Video Transcription

Part 1: Google Broad Core Update 

Okay, so the first story we’re going to talk about today is the ‘Google March 2023 Broad Core Update‘ that was rolled out on the 15th March 2023.  In the kind of update notes, Google mentioned that it’s going to be a two week rollout period.  It’s looking at all types of content, it’s not a penalty, it promotes and rules great web pages, and it’s a global, all language rollout.

We can see the impact of the Google Core update around the kind of 15th and 16th on SEMrush sensor and essentially you can see here a huge peak at 8.2 versus the average 3.8.  Big uptick around the 15th/16th rolling out and the core rollout ended around the 28th.  But generally speaking, the first couple of days, first 24 to 48 hours, we saw huge volatility in multiple sectors, if not all sectors, and then it kind of plateaued where people were seeing the evidence of the rollout and taking stock of what’s going on.  Then, at the end, we see, there’s another peak. A similar situation on Rank Ranger, the Rank Risk Index, on the 16th and then right at the end we saw spot of volatility here as well.  So those are two tools I’m kind of looking at.

Interestingly, Google rolled this out now, and the Google Search Status dashboard, funnily enough, mentioned it was going up on the 22nd again, but that’s incorrect. Essentially, they have date stamped the 28th as the rollout completed. So this is kind of an interesting kind of Google status landing page that gives us lots of information about core updates that’s going on within Google.  Other things to consider here is the fact that Google has started to give some advice on if your site will be impacted by penalties or Google core updates, and this can be found on Search Roundtable.

Essentially from what we’re seeing from our clients, on the whole, is a general flux.  You would expect to see positions maybe two to four change up and down, and this would be considered kind of normal.  But actually what could you be doing if you see a slight dip over the course of two weeks? What you should be doing is just going back to basics. Making sure content is updated, it’s relevant, it’s authoritative; adding new content to a site; answering questions for industries asking; the EAT is as good as it can be (we’ll come on to that in a minute); and then also making sure the core web vitals is updated.  They sound basic, but actually you need to get them done properly.

So in terms of kind of EAT guidelines and just generally improving your site and credibility, Google put out this PDF report called the Quarantine Raters Guidelines. It’s a 176 page dossier. It’s a good read, you’ll need a few hours to shoot through it, but, essentially, you’re going to end up with between five and ten golden nuggets to take away to improve your website.  This is looking at how Google perceives a website, and how to improve your expertise.  When you read it, you think, oh it’s obvious, why am I not doing that?  But it has to be done and you should definitely read it and implement as much as you can within your niche, and what you’re able to do.  So to wrap this first news story up, I said it rolled out on the 15th, it finished rolling out around the 28th of March. Essentially, there’s no kind of quick fix, you should be doing all the good things that you should already be doing in terms of updating content, building new content, answering questions that industry is looking for answers for, along with building credible linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to your content naturally, and also through general kind of link acquisition.

Part 2: DuckDuckGo Enters the AI Race

So the second new story of today is ‘DuckDuckGo enters the AI race with Duck Assist’.  As discussed in last month’s episode of SEO Expert Insights, we’ve now got Google Bard, Bing’s ChatGBT, and now DuckDuckGo has entered the AI race with Duck Assist. What’s quite interesting is the other two search engines are using multiple sources. They haven’t specified exactly how many sources, however, DuckDuckGo uses answers from Wikipedia, which is one source.  It’s definitely a good source, for some of it generated, but essentially they’re still using one source. At the moment, they’re rolling out in the English language only.  The other two search engines, Google Bard and Bing’s Chat GBT are obviously in multiple languages.

In terms of how it’s going to look, with some screenshots on this news story, it’s kind of a similar theme to Bing’s ChatGBT versus Google Bard from what I can see. And they’re going to be rolling out other private AI Assisted search updates, over the coming months and essentially trying to mirror the look and feel of a optimal SERP.  Similar to more ChatGBT versus Google Bard, there’s other screenshots here along with that [in the article].

As another search engine joins the AI search party, it will be interesting to see how DuckDuckGo compares and competes with their answers when just using Wikipedia.

Part 3: Google Explains Why Bard Isn’t Citing Content Sources

So, for the third news story of this month, is ‘Google explains why Bard rarely lists citations and links to content creators‘.  In last month’s SEO Expert Insights, we discussed the pitfalls of the search engine using AI generated content as their answers and not showing any links off to the original citationsA citation is a mention of your company, product, or service in an online publication. Citations increase the ranking of your site on search engines (the publishers of that original content).  Obviously there’s a big conversation in the industry about it. While, you’re (search engines) nicking content, and you’re not giving a link to it, we’re (publishers) not going to get any referring traffic from the search results to the publisher websites. Why should publisher websites even publish any unique content which is going to be nicked and republished, and they’re not going to get anything for it? Google has now come out and said kind of why they wouldn’t always link to the publishers.  Google said a few things which are quite interesting, essentially a reason why Google rarely show citations.  So Google has updated its Bard FAQs to explain that Bard will likely show citations when Bard directly quotes at length for a web page.  That’s down to everyone’s idea what length is. Otherwise, Bard won’t show a citation because Bard generates original content and does not replicate existing content at length.  So that’s just going to cause problems.  Yes, it says it generates original content, although, then again, you have to take the seed of the content from somewhere to spin it, right?  Google is kind of spinning or rewriting content to make it look unique, but it does not replace this in content length.

The story kind of continues and goes down a rabbit hole.  I know that Bing ChatGBT, I believe, shows quite a few citations.  Google is just being a bit more shady about it.  Again, it comes down to business strategy.  ChatGBT, they had lots of time to kind of think about it and roll it out.  They rolled it out under the nodes of Google.  Google then had to respond and Google hasn’t.  It’s kind of half baked, the search AI feature, and they haven’t got the answers yet.  Hopefully they’re going to sort their act out because this will make problems for the publishers.  Why should they write unique content? And is it going to be nicked by Google?

If we go below here [of the article], this is a short answer, or short passage, not from anyone’s website; they’ve completely written it themselves and this is with no citations and publishers getting no credit whatsoever for the answer, for their content, and for their hard work.  If you then asking Bing chat exactly the same question and Bing links to its sources, this is the correct thing to do, you should link to your sources.  That is a big problem.  I think Google will get it right eventually, but they’re going to be out of place for a little while to come, it seems.

Part 4: The Deadline To Opt-Out Of Google Analytics 4 Auto Migration 

So the fourth news story this month is around the deadline to opt-out of Google Analytics for Auto migration.  So this is now passed, it was on February 28th.  Essentially what will happen now is everyone who hasn’t opted out will automatically see a GA4 profile in their Google Analytics profile drop down.  We’ve started to work on our client’s migration now from Universal to GA4.  If you’re a simple B2B business, it could be fairly straight forward.  If you’re a more corporate business with an ecommerce division of your company, it could be a lot more complicated.  But we’re working our clients now to back up their universal data.  Starting to get all tracking set up for GA4, and it’s something that I encourage everyone now to make a start with.  So when you get to the 1st July 2023, when the lights go out on Universal Analytics, you’ve got your data points backed up and your GA4 profile is tracking the right data and you’re seeing the right conversions.  That being said, we’ve actually built a Knowledge Hub article regarding the migration from Universal Analytics and it’s also got a video with lots of content around the migration.  The content is by our SEO Team Leader, James King, who works within our SEO Department of Click Intelligence.  So definitely a good read.  I would encourage everyone to please start the process, so when lights do go out on the Universal Analytics in July 2023, all your data backed up to start using analytics for your traffic reporting.

Part 5: Introducing AI-Powered Features to Google Docs and Gmail

Okay, so the fifth new story of this month is that ‘Google Brings AI Powered Features to Google Docs and Gmail’.  So this is really, really cool and really interesting.  I was kind of expecting this to happen where Google would allow you to use their AI technology to enhance your workflow, maybe for kind of business or for education. But essentially if you’re writing a piece of content in Google Docs, you potentially could ask the AI to help you write a better sentence or to reword it for you to enhance the piece of content.  Same with.  In terms of kind of Microsoft doing this, they’ve already rolled it out in Latest Update and they will continue to update things over next few years.  So essentially AI isn’t just with search engines, we now use it ourselves within Google Docs and also in Gmail.  I’ve also noticed the amount of businesses now (this is on LinkedIn, and other news stories on LinkedIn, and people put on posts and stuff) that have just sprang out of nowhere, basically using the API ChatGPT to build their business, and to enhance various areas.  So this is now a whole new chapter in the AI and how powerful that technology is to enhance businesses and more importantly, for SEO as well.