Industry News

Google's Search Liason, Danny Sullivan, said that the December 2022 helpful content update would take longer to roll out than originally expected. The update started to roll out on December 5th and was expected to finish earlier this week.

Last Wednesday, December 14th, Google began to roll out the December 2022 link spam update, and it seems, at least based on the chatter and tracking tools I follow, this link spam update has some teeth. I am seeing a nice number of real reports of sites feeling the impact in a big way and Google really being able to zone in on links it never did prior with other link algorithms.

The Google search quality raters guidelines were updated and updated in a big way, with a new E added on to E-A-T. Google is adding experience on top of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Google said that trust is the most important of all four elements here.

Google began rolling out a revised link spam update on December 14, 2022 named the December 2022 link spam update. This update is new in that it uses SpamBrain AI to "detect both sites buying links, and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links," and not just "detect spam directly," Google said.

Google has launched a new visual elements of Google Search gallery that documents some of the more popular search features in Google Search. Now we no longer have to guess or make up names for some of the Google Search features.

Google Search Console is testing a new feature named "content ideas." It is labeled as an "experimental" feature that brings Question Hub-like concepts directly into Google Search Console.

Google has officially confirmed the launch of the second release of the Google helpful content update/system. It started lightly on December 5th but became noticeable, according to Google, on December 6th, which is why Google did not announce it until the 6th. This update adds new signals, most notably making it work for all languages globally - it is not just looking at English content anymore.

Every Monday, I end up covering an unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update but this past week, going into the weekend, was even more volatile than the others. I am seeing way more chatter, and even the tools are showing heavier volatility than the normal high volatility.

Welcome to the big Google Webmaster Report for December 2022, the last one for the 2022 year. It was a fun 30 days or so; we learned a lot. The VP of Google Search, Hyung-Jin Kim, told us E-A-T is used everywhere and that there was a Coati algorithm that replaced Panda.

Yesterday I asked So where should we post now? and I think I made a decision. Well, for now. All decisions are reversible, after all.

After publishing Elezea on and off for 13 years I’m going to stop splitting my attention and move all my writing and sharing to the Elezea Newsletter. It’s hosted on Substack right now, but it might not always be—which is one of the nice things about being on a platform that lets you take your readers with you when you leave. Reversible decisions! (I hear...