Industry News

Many of you are wondering when the Google November 2023 core update and Google November 2023 reviews update will be completed. Normally these updates finish about two weeks after they start but now the core update is 22 days since it started and the reviews update is now 16 days since it rolled out.

Okay, Pandu Nayak didn’t exactly teach me about SEO.

But his October 18 anti-trust hearing testimony was both important and educational. And I’m a better SEO when I understand how Google really works.

Pandu Nayak is Vice President of Search working on various aspects of Search Quality. He’s been at Google for 18 years and is the real deal when it comes to search at Google.

I’m going to highlight areas from the October 18 transcript (pdf) I find notable or interesting and afterwards...

Google announced the hidden gems ranking system has been rolling out. This hidden gems update helps promote content deep within forum posts, social media, and blog posts that Google Search thinks provide authentic content based on personal insights and experiences.

Google also announced that later this year, in the US, Google will make it easier for you to find your favorite sites by showing you sites you view more often, more often in the search results. Plus, Google will make the search results more personalized with Perspectives, highlight more creator profiles and more.

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, spoke at BrightonSEO in San Diego on Friday and while most of what he said was "not new," he did say big changes are coming to search rankings. Sullivan told SEOs to "buckle-up" because major changes are coming to the search rankings.

Google launched its November 2023 Reviews update on Wednesday afternoon, November 8. But we didn't see it have much of any impact until Saturday, November 11th. It currently seems this Reviews update is not as widespread as the November 2023 core update but there are some sites getting hit hard by this update.

As expected, the Google November 2023 reviews update has started to roll out this week. It started on November 8, 2023 at about 1 pm ET. This will be the last time Google confirms a reviews update because it is now more of a regular update, compared to past reviews updates.

This blog is in a sad state. It was hacked and the recovery process wasn’t perfect.

I should fix it and I should blog more! But my consulting business is booming. And almost all new business comes via referrals. There’s only so much time – that precious finite resource! So I shrug my digital shoulders and think, it’s good enough.

Good enough might cut it for some random blog. But not for a search engine. Yet, that’s what I see happening in slow-motion over the past few years. Google...

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog lately, so I thought I’d bring back the link roundup thing I used to do quite a bit. Here’s some stuff I read and enjoyed recently outside the regular product/business topics I usually write about here…

Very good summary of The OpenAI Keynote by Ben Thompson. This bit stood out to me:

The fact of the matter is that a lot of people use ChatGPT for information despite the fact it has a well-documented flaw when it comes to the truth; that flaw is...

The Google November 2023 core update that started to rollout on November 2nd, Thursday afternoon, has been incredibly volatile, heated and in a very short time. We saw the fluctuations maybe even before Google announced the update and it has been super heated since, throughout this weekend.