Industry News

A couple of weeks ago we reported on a possible Google local search ranking update that turned out to not be an update but rather a bug. Well, that bug seems to be fixed or being fixed now and rankings are beginning to return for these local service area businesses.

As you know, Google began to roll out the fifth Google product reviews update on September 20th during the roll-out of the September 2022 core update. I promised to return and share some of what we're seeing with this update, as it rolls out.

Google, at about 4 am ET today, September 20, 2022, has unleashed the fifth product reviews update. This was released prior to the September 2022 core update being completed, which was not excepted and Google's Danny Sullivan said likely would not happen - but it did happen.

Here’s a good analogy from Josephine Conneely to help figure out why growth might be stalling:

Imagine each of the 3 criteria pillars, Product, GTM and Org, as legs of a stool. Ideally each leg is of even height. This allows it to sturdily hold whatever is needed (in this case it’s increasing user volumes). Each leg can continue to grow (perhaps this is some sort of stool tree), and as long as the legs grow in tandem the success metrics of choice are safe. However, there may at times...

Google Search has started to roll out the second broad core update of the year, the September 2022 broad core update. It started on September 12, 2022 at about 11:25 am ET and can take about two weeks to roll out.

The Google helpful content update finished rolling out around 2 pm ET on September 9th. That morning we reported we started to notice more widespread volatility and fluctuations, possibly related to the helpful content update. But now I am thinking that maybe those or most of those fluctuations were unrelated to the helpful content update?

I never thought that I’d want to read a book about a guy who watched Predator 146 times. But Shooting at Nothing: An Interview with Ander Monson convinced me otherwise:

In following every rabbit hole of his obsession with the film through to its end, Monson creates a book that is truly one-of-a-kind—not just a dose of nostalgia for movie buffs, but a revelatory investigation for anyone who’s ever really loved a singular piece of culture, enough that it got tangled inextricably in...

In Official myths Mandy Brown talks about how we are trying to solve the legitimate challenges of remote work by blindly (and incorrectly) assuming that the solution is going back to the office:

In many a remote-critical piece I’ve read, there’s a kind of mythical office that remote culture is being compared to, a place where everyone is welcomed, where collaboration and support is easy-going and automatic, where everyone is always whiteboarding or talking in the hallways. It’s kind...

Today marks the two-week and one-day mark since the Google helpful content update started to roll out and by the time I am writing this (at 5:30 am ET on September 9th - jet lagged) Google has still not noted that the helpful content update is done rolling out. Plus, as I noted yesterday, we are now seeing more significant volatility and fluctuations as of yesterday and more today.