Industry News

Welcome to April, the real April, not April 1st, and with that, I have the monthly Google webmaster report for you all. This is a big one, so get comfy and start reading. We had the product reviews update start rolling out, we had the page experience update for desktop finish rolling out and several unconfirmed updates.

Earlier this week I reported that we were not seeing huge changes yet for the March 2022 Google Products Reviews update. Well, it seems like some of the tools and a number of SEOs are now noticing larger changes specific to sites that would match the product reviews categories.

So far, I will say that the Google Products Reviews update version 3, the March 2022 version, is not that huge. That is, not that huge compared to the previous product review updates or core updates. Some would say this update is a mild update, again, so far...

On March 22nd and 23rd I noticed the BrightLocal tracking tool spike up a bit, so I kept tabs on that we may have had a Google local search update. Well, Joy Hawkins posted in the Local Search Forums that this update seems to have been a "correct" of the "Vicinity Update," which was the update we reported on in December 2021 that later Google confirmed.

Google has rolled out its third version of the product reviews update, named the March 2022 Product Reviews Update. The previous two versions were the April 2021 Product Reviews Update and the December 2021 Product Reviews Update. The March version was updated to incorporate more signals and criteria in this niche ranking algorithm.

Google may have started to release another Google search ranking algorithm update starting Friday, March 18th through today, March 20th. This is an unconfirmed update but unlike the last one we reported, we have both chatter from the SEO community and also the tracking tools are picking up on it. I am calling this the Spring 2022 Google search ranking update.

This week, I covered a possible Google update that ticked off a week ago, but it was weird, the tools didn't pick up on it. Google announced it is sunsetting Google Analytics Universal Analytics in 2023 and you will need to start using Google Analytics 4...

So Google is doing away with Google Analytics 3, aka Universal Analytics and you will all have to switch to Google Analytics 4, aka GA 4. Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. That means you need to set up GA 4 really soon so you can compare year over year data - GA 3 data won't migrate to GA 4.

For the past few days I have been debating if I should cover what may have been a Google search ranking update that ticked off on Friday March 11th. There was super unusual update like chatter in the WebmasterWorld forums but the automated tracking tools showed nothing - nada.

This past Friday, March 4, 2022, I noticed that the chatter within the SEO community started to heat up and then the day later, the automated search engine tracking tools started to show volatility. There may have been a Google search ranking algorithm update on March 4th.