Taaglio Consulting
20 July, 2022
Taaglio Consulting
20 July, 2022
In 2022 again a number of significant Google updates relevant to SEO were released and it can be expected that those updates will continue to have a large impact on SEOs and anyone running professional and commercially orientated websites. Search Engine Optimization is becoming more and more important and it becomes more and more dangerous for businesses to miss out on the current developments in this field so it should be considered necessary for anyone with a profit-orientated web presence to be aware of the latest and upcoming updates and know how to make use oft hem as well as what to avoid and where to adopt new strategies.
The number of significant algorithm updates on Google keeps steadily increasing, especially since the fall of 2021. While actually daily there are smaller updates being done on the world´s leading search engine, the mentioned larger updates are a reason for large excitement and discussion among SEOs and anyone professionally running websites.
After the Product Reviews Update in December 2021 and the Page Experience Update for Desktop in February 2022, there also happened to be both a larger Spam Update as well as another Core update in November 2021. The next big thing in this field was the Products Review Update that was rolled out in March 2022, but there already may be other developments ahead. On the list of highly interesting updates also ist the MUM update.
Another major update was the desktop version of the Page Experience Update in March 2022. Probably it is the case anyway that SEOs are only able to prepare themselves for new developments in the long term. Whenever a new update is rolled out, it will show how well sites are actually rated. From the perspective of Google itself, the target of all updates is always to make the user experience as good as possible and make it easier for users to find relevant content that might be of interest to them.
While this is very convenient and practical for users and potential customers, the ones on the other side of the table, meaning the ones trying to e present to the customers sell their products and content are under more and more pressure to keep in touch with the latest developments and to constantly update and improve their content to make themselves be the ones first and earliest perceived in Google searches
Through the Google Page Experience Update, both positive and negative changes can occur in desktop search rankings and they may be traced back directly to the update. The Google Search Console offers a function for rating the criteria of the page experience on the desktop versions of websites.
That way it can be determined whether the update has a direct impact on a website. The ranking factors for desktop search contain a lot of factors from the algorithm that was introduced for mobile search in the previous year already. After the Page Experience Update for mobile in 2021 led to a lot of delays, users hope that the Desktop version of the Page Experience Update will run more smoothly. It´s based on almost the same signals as the mobile version:
2. PRODUCT REVIEWS UPDATE
On the 23rd of March 2022, Google announced the rollout of the Product Reviews Update 2022 for English from 2021 in April and December. It will be revealed if this will now be content. The focus of this algorithm is on websites with product reviews. A lot of affiliate websites were negatively affected by the related updates continued.
Google will focus mostly on the following points in terms of product reviews:
Implementing these guidelines means a whole lot of additional effort for the ones running affiliate websites. Websites that simply scrape product data from Amazon, reshape them a little bit, and present them as their own product information will have more difficulty in the future of organic search.
Probably this update is one of those that will put the most pressure on websites to improve their content and align it with the current developments that will certainly bring about further changes in the market. If the criteria don´t match today, it will become even more difficult in the future to catch up with further updated versions that will put an even larger demand on the producers of websites and content creators.
One of the main topics this year is the MUM (Multitask Unified Model) update. As in previous Google Core Updates MUM is supposed to bring a lot of changes with it. MUM is supposed to make the search more multimedia and can be considered a successor to the BERT model.
Due to MUM being multimodal, it will be able to comprehend pictures as well as audio and video data and offer adequate information in the various formats for the users. MUM was trained in 75 languages and is supposed to enhance the search experience internationally to a similar level.
With new KI technology, the update will improve especially the visual search. Users will have the possibility to combine pictures and text in a search with Google Lens. If for example a fashion item with a specific print is looked at, the search can be started with one click on the lens symbol.
This makes it possible to find out the name of the print and where it´s possible to buy items with similar patterns. SEO content writers and website runners who previously put their focus on content will probably feel the changes first. Those who rank well today will not see a sudden decrease in traffic and visibility overnight. Still, it becomes visible through the update that besides good content also pictures and videos will become more and more important, which should be considered in the SEO and content strategy. How exactly the search will change through the update is something that will be revealed in the future.
4. SERP 2.0
Following the MUM Update also the subject search intent will become more and more important. Improving the user experience is one of the main goals of Google’s Core Update. Indeed the user shall get the reply to his question or the solution to his problem primarily already at the first outcomes of his search, meaning the trend is going more and more towards zero-click search.
For advertisers, this trend may induce some insecurity at first, as in online marketing the main role was usually on organic traffic, and also it was causing fewer costs. But in fact, established rankings aren´t likely to be lost overnight just like that but it will become more and more important to constantly keep improving content according to SEO developments.
The current updates are very interesting and can be expected to have a large impact on the future of online marketing search and seo content marketing strategy. It is also very much likely that in the future years, there may be an ever-increasing number of significant Google updates that will make SEO even more dynamic but will also put more pressure on content creators to keep in line with the developments taking place to not fall behind in the market.
Probably even the bigger names that have generally a huge amount of organic traffic simply due to their name and their established position on the market will have to e careful not to lose shares in the market by falling back in their SEO and therefore becoming less visible to customers.
Websites will also be more dependent on Google itself using its position as the main search engine, basically being able to dictate the course of SEO and indirectly forcing websites to keep track of their optimizations. The users on the other hand will benefit from all this, having it less and less difficult to find the content they are interested in and the products they are looking for in a more and more precise and convenient way.
