SEO Round Up Week 4/03/2024 to 10/03/2024
Google made changes to Rich results, impacting Events, FAQs, and How-To’s, potentially linked to a ‘Helpful Content’ March Core Update – or is it just a coincidence? Additionally, Google’s March Helpful Content Update aims to reduce unhelpful content by 40% in search results, emphasising the importance of quality and informative content over spammy practices. We’ve heard that one before right? Apparently there has been a lot of manual actions called this week.
Moreover, Google’s updates targeted spam practices like scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse. The focus is on eliminating low-quality content generated at scale and preventing the manipulation of search rankings through tactics like Parasite SEO.
These updates aim to enhance the overall quality of search results by cracking down on spammy practices and promoting genuinely useful content for users.
On the other hand, Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools received significant updates geared towards enhancing website performance. The new features include the IndexNow Insights report and top SEO insights report, providing webmasters with actionable insights to optimize their websites effectively. These updates empower webmasters to improve their website’s performance on Bing and other search engines, offering valuable resources for optimizing websites.
Rich Snippet Anomaly – Cutting Back At Rich Results – Events, FAQs etc
Google has been playing around with Rich results again. Remember Events and FAQ’s being devalued over the past six months. This week Google said “Google Search has changed the way event rich results appear in Search results. As a result, you may see a drop in clicks and impressions for your event search appearance reported metrics in your performance report. This doesn’t indicate a real drop in traffic, only in the way we categorize it in Search Console.”
Depending on the website you’re looking after you have likely seen a drop in Events, FAQs and How To’s. In addition to this being very close to a ‘Helpful Content’ March Core Update – coincidence?
Google’s March Helpful Content Update + Spam Updates
In combination with the core update, the spam updates of March 2024 will reduce unhelpful content by 40% in Google Search. This update is linked closely with various content spam updates, which – in a nutshell can affect normal SEO practice – especially with scaled content. However, I feel it is engineered in a way to stop forced low quality content from scoring as pages are designed to answer a question, not talk around the subject matter. It is not necessarily aiming at the use of AI.
There’s an interesting part on Reddit and Google’s hint at finding ‘niche’ content and serving that in the results. I for one know there’s tonnes of click bait answers on Reddit and I go not think Google does a good job at filtering that out. Perhaps in later incarnations.
The helpful content update – will, like every other ‘update’ be continuous. With these updates, Google will be enforcing new and updated spam policies through both automated and manual actions.
In order to improve the quality of search results, the updates target various forms of spam, such as scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, and site reputation abuse.
Spam from scaled content abuse
The scaled content abuse search spam update addresses the issue of content generated at scale with the primary intent of manipulating search rankings. Content generated through automation, manual efforts, or both, that provides little to no value to users, falls into this category. As a result of Google’s updated policy, a broader range of low-quality content created at scale will be able to be taken action against, thereby enhancing its previous stance against spammy automatically generated content. This will eliminate pages that offer answers to popular searches but fail to provide useful information.
Parasite SEO (Site Reputation Abuse)
The practice of site reputation abuse (also known as Parasite SEO) involves hosting low-quality content on third-party sites so that they can exploit their ranking power. According to Google’s new policy, third-party content that is primarily designed to rank is spam, without the website owner’s supervision.
This policy does not target all third-party content, but rather content that is hosted without close oversight and intended to manipulate search results.
Under this policy, native advertising or advertorial content, which typically does not confuse regular readers, is not considered a violation. I personally disagree with this, as it is low quality ‘sales copy’ and no different from using press releases for links when it comes to malpractice.
Rankings on Reddit and Google’s response
It is Google’s goal to surface content relevant to users’ queries by ranking content from Reddit and other user-generated content platforms. There is both high-quality and low-quality content on all types of websites, including forums and discussion boards, according to the company. Google’s goal is to surface the best content from the web, including high-quality discussion and forum content, where it is useful to users. Google’s stance is independent of any partnerships, such as the one with Reddit, and is part of its efforts to help users find helpful content.
I have seen a boost in Reddit answers in the SERPS. Given the news above about rich snippets, I do see a correlation between the preference to Reddit. A nod sometime ago was also given to TikTok appearing in SERPs.
In summary, the March 2024 updates by Google represent a significant effort to enhance the quality of search results bytargeting spammy practices and promoting content that is “genuinely useful to users”.
In short, it’s more ‘experience’ based. We are seeing more and more preference given to E in EAT!
Enhancing Website Performance: A Deep Dive into Microsoft’s Latest Bing Webmaster Tools Updates
Microsoft has recently bolstered Bing Webmaster Tools with a range of new features geared towards enhancing website performance on Bing and other search engines. These updates encompass the IndexNow Insights report, the top SEO insights report, and a revamped navigation interface, all aimed at providing webmasters with actionable insights to optimise their websites effectively.
IndexNow Insights Report – Keep and eye on the crawler and indexing
The IndexNow Insights report delves into the IndexNow protocol, which has witnessed a significant increase in submissions to 2.5 billion URLs, accounting for 17% of clicked web search results. This report offers detailed data on submitted, crawled, and indexed URLs, along with insights on the latest 1,000 submissions.
It also identifies URLs discovered through methods other than IndexNow, highlights missing URLs that were previously invisible in IndexNow but are being clicked on, and provides information on individual errors. Moreover, it allows for the export of indexing trends for further analysis.
Top SEO Insights Report – Great for Indexing and Coverage
The top SEO insights report is now prominently displayed at the top of the Bing Webmaster Tools interface. It covers essential aspects such as content quality, indexing coverage, structured data, and backlinks optimisation. Microsoft has streamlined the navigation of Bing Webmaster Tools by integrating the SEO section directly into the main navigation area. This update aims to simplify access to various tools and reports within the platform, enhancing user experience and efficiency.
Conclusion
I really like the updates – there again people who know me, know I love and actually prefer their interface and tool over Google’s. The latest updates to Bing Webmaster Tools introduce valuable resources like the IndexNow Insights and top SEO insights reports, empowering webmasters to enhance their website’s performance on Bing. It allows to reach to other search engines like Google.
By offering comprehensive insights into submitted URLs and highlighting key SEO issues, Microsoft aims to facilitate a more informed and strategic approach to website optimisation.
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