Google has started rolling out the latest major core algorithm update to its search engine, according to an announcement from the company yesterday. This update is expected to take approximately two weeks to fully finish rolling out.
In a LinkedIn Post from Google Search Central, the company said:
“Today we released the March 2025 core update to Google Search.
This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites. We also continue our work to surface more content from creators through a series of improvements throughout this year. Some have already happened; additional ones will come later.”
Unlike the last few core algorithm updates, Google has given very little information about what to expect from the latest rollout. This makes it hard to know what areas of search rankings are likely to be most affected by the algorithm update.
That said, Google has given broad advice in the future about what to do if your rankings or traffic see a significant decline following a core algorithm update:
Avoid doing “quick fix” changes (like removing some page element because you heard it was bad for SEO). Instead, focus on making changes that make sense for your users and are sustainable in the long term.
Consider how you can improve your content in meaningful ways. For example, it could be that rewriting or restructuring your content makes it easier for your audience to read and navigate the page.
Deleting content is a last resort, and only to be considered if you think the content can’t be salvaged. In fact, if you’re considering deleting entire sections of your site, that’s likely a sign those sections were created for search engines first, and not people. If that’s the case for your site, then deleting the unhelpful content can help the good content on your site perform better.
For more information about recovering from a core algorithm update, Google suggests reviewing its advice for creating content that is reliable and helpful for your users.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/GoogleRisingProductCategories.png400800Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-03-14 18:24:472025-03-14 18:26:22March 2025 Core Algorithm Update Starts Rolling Out To Google Search
After years of speculation and debate among SEO experts, Google has finally clarified that audio versions of blog content are unlikely to help SEO or directly improve search rankings. Despite that, representatives from the search engine suggest it may still be worthwhile to provide audio versions of blog content for users’ sake.
What Google Says About Audio Versions of Blog Content
In a recent SEO office hours video, Google Developer Advocate Martin Splitt was asked whether providing an audio version of a blog post might improve its search rankings.
Splitt’s answer was straight to the point; it is very unlikely that audio versions of blog content would help rankings.
“I don’t think it will… I think it is a good thing for the user, though, so I would definitely do it – but not, for SEO reasons.”
What About Indirect Benefits?
While Splitt states plainly that audio versions of content won’t help existing blog posts’ SEO, they do still provide positive value to your site.
By providing audio versions of content, you are making your page more accessible to those with visual impairments, providing a secondary way for users to interact with content, and giving users a reason to stay on your pages longer.
In other words, while audio versions of text blog content don’t improve SEO directly, they DO give good opportunities to indirectly boost your SEO.
Perhaps more importantly, it also provides a better experience for users, sets you apart, and helps make a lasting impression on those who come to your site.
Where User Experience and SEO Meet
While audio versions of blog content may not directly improve your rankings, they contribute to providing the best user experience possible—and Google’s rankings consider that.
If you are considering adding audio versions of your blog content to your website, first ask yourself whether they will be valuable to your visitors and customers. If yes, there is a good chance your website (and your rankings) will benefit.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GoogleRankings.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-02-28 21:46:442025-02-28 21:46:46Google Says Audio Versions of Blog Content Won’t Help SEO
In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he expects that search will “change profoundly” in 2025 led by advancements in AI and increasing competition from AI search, social media, and hardware advancements.
Below, we’ve collected highlights from the interview that may give us a peak at Google’s plans for 2025 and beyond.
Google Aims To Be a Leader With AI Development
When asked about where Google is today in comparison to the rest of the market, Pichai emphasized that the company is in the early stages of developing radically powerful new AI tools. Additionally, he emphasized that AI developments that may not seem connected to the company are largely built on the back of research and development made possible with Google’s open-sourced technologies.
“Look, it’s a such a dynamic moment in the industry. When I look at what’s coming ahead, we are in the earliest stages of a profound shift. We have taken such a deep full stack approach to AI.
…we do world class research. We are the most cited, when you look at gen AI, the most cited… institution in the world, foundational research, we build AI infrastructure and when I’m saying AI infrastructure all the way from silicon, we are in our sixth generation of tensor processing units. You mentioned our product reach, we have 15 products at half a billion users, we are building foundational models, and we use it internally, we provide it to over three million developers and it’s a deep full stack investment.
We are getting ready for our next generation of models, I just think there’s so much innovation ahead, we are committed to being at the state of the art in this field and I think we are. Just coming today, we announced groundbreaking research on a text and image prompt creating a 3D scene. And so the frontier is moving pretty fast, so looking forward to 2025.”
Using AI To Enhance Search Instead of Replace It
Increasingly, AI is viewed by many as a competitor to traditional search, leading the interviewer to ask what Google is doing to protect the “blue link economy” in order to not “hurt or cannibalize” its search engine and the market around it.
In response, Pichai discussed how AI has been a major part of Google’s development for longer than most people realize. Going back as far as 2012, AI has been part of Deep Neural Networks used to identify speech and images. Since then, artificial intelligence has been a core part of the search engine’s development.
“The area where we applied AI the most aggressively, if anything in the company was in search, the gaps in search quality was all based on Transformers internally. We call it BERT and MUM and you know, we made search multimodal, the search quality improvements, we were improving the language understanding of search. That’s why we built Transformers in the company.
So and if you look at the last couple of years, we have with AI overviews, Gemini is being used by over a billion users in search alone.”
Where Is Search Going In 2025?
Looking forward, Pichai says he believes Search will be radically changing – and soon. While he says that advancement is becoming more difficult because the easiest innovations have already been done, he still believes that people will be surprised at how much is coming in just the first part of 2025.
“And I just feel like we are getting started. Search itself will continue to change profoundly in 2025. I think we are going to be able to tackle more complex questions than ever before. You know, I think we’ll be surprised even early in 2025, the kind of newer things search can do compared to where it is today…
I think the progress is going to get harder when I look at 2025, the low hanging fruit is gone.
But I think where the breakthroughs need to come from where the differentiation needs to come from is is your ability to achieve technical breakthroughs, algorithmic breakthroughs, how do you make the systems work, you know, from a planning standpoint or from a reasoning standpoint, how do you make these systems better? Those are the technical breakthroughs ahead.”
Will AI Replace Traditional Search?
As increasing numbers of people seem to be relying on AI tools to get quick answers instead of using traditional search tools, some have suggested that AI could eventually replace search as we know it. At the same time, there are concerns that AI may be delivering less reliable or accurate answers, which Pichai believes will ensure that Google’s search tools remain relevant if not more valuable.
“In a world in which you’re flooded with like lot of content …if anything, something like search becomes more valuable. In a world in which you’re inundated with content, you’re trying to find trustworthy content, content that makes sense to you in a way reliably you can use it, I think it becomes more valuable.
To your previous part about there’s a lot of information out there, people are getting it in many different ways. Look, information is the essence of humanity. We’ve been on a curve on information… when Facebook came around, people had an entirely new way of getting information, YouTube, Facebook, Tik… I can keep going on and on.
…I think the problem with a lot of those constructs is they are zero sum in their inherent outlook. They just feel like people are consuming information in a certain limited way and people are all dividing that up. But that’s not the reality of what people are doing. “
The full interview touches on several other questions including potential upcoming regulations, how the search engine views its responsibility towards creators, and other Google platforms like YouTube’s future direction. You can watch it here or below:
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GoogleRankings.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-12-20 17:30:372024-12-20 17:30:39Google’s CEO Gives Wide-Ranging Interview On The Future of Google and Search
If your website has seen a big drop in traffic within the past month, there is a chance you’ve been hit by the latest Google core update. The update started rolling out on November 11 and has now been confirmed to be finished as of December 5, 2024.
Compared to other core updates, this one does not seem to be the most impactful. Early analytics as the core update rolled out did not show the level of volatility in search results typical of most core updates. Still, Google confirmed that this was a core update aimed at improving search results quality and decreasing the prevalence of irrelevant results across the platform.
As Google said about the update:
“This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”
Google didn’t provide much information about the core update, so currently it is difficult to gauge what types of sites are likely to have been affected or what specific steps can be taken to remedy your site if you’ve been hit.
The search engine does provide some broad advice about responding to loss of rankings following core updates generally:
Avoid doing “quick fix” changes (like removing some page element because you heard it was bad for SEO). Instead, focus on making changes that make sense for your users and are sustainable in the long term.
Consider how you can improve your content in meaningful ways. For example, it could be that rewriting or restructuring your content makes it easier for your audience to read and navigate the page.
Deleting content is a last resort, and only to be considered if you think the content can’t be salvaged. In fact, if you’re considering deleting entire sections of your site, that’s likely a sign those sections were created for search engines first, and not people. If that’s the case for your site, then deleting the unhelpful content can help the good content on your site perform better.
It will likely be months until Google releases another core update, so any changes to search results in recovery from this update may take a while to occur. This goes to emphasize the importance of staying on the good side of Google, using approved SEO strategies, and trying to avoid any potential penalties before they occur.
This week Google announced that it now supports the AVIF file format, making the format eligible to be shown in Google Search and Google Images. Now that the search engine can index and display the popular file format, it will likely become the standard for lightweight high-quality images online quickly.
What Is The AVIF File Format?
AVIF (AVI Image File Format) is a relatively new open-source file format used for images, that can deliver the same quality images as JPEGs or PNGs in remarkably smaller file formats (up to 50% smaller than a comparable JPEG).
Notably, the format seems to combine all the most notable features of other popular image formats. AVIF supports the use of transparency like PNG and even has a higher dynamic range level, allowing for deeper blacks in images. Like GIFs, also allows for the creation of animated images.
What About WebP?
Another newly popular image file format, WebP, might seem like a competitor to AVIF but both formats offer their unique benefits which make them suited for specific needs.
WebP is an ideal format for lossless images – typically used when an image must be of the absolute highest quality possible. On the other hand, WebP is not nearly as small as AVIF, so it is not ideal for those focused on maintaining fast loading speeds.
Why The AVIF File Format May Help SEO
Over the last few years, Google has increasingly emphasized website speed as a major factor it considers when ranking websites.
The search engine has begun using a selection of metrics that measure different aspects of site speed, known as Core Web Vitals.
Because the AVIF file format allows for smaller image sizes, it can help reduce loading speeds on web pages and potentially improve your online rankings.
In an environment where any edge against the competition can be the difference to help you get the top spot, sites will quickly be moving to adopt the format now that Google supports it.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Google-Images.png4201200Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-08-30 19:59:072024-08-30 19:59:09Google Now Supports The AVIF File Format Making It The Best Format For SEO
Google’s August 2024 core update started rolling out yesterday and is poised to turn up the heat on sites providing flimsy, irrelevant, or unuseful content.
Google Search Advocate John Mueller confirmed the update and said that the update is aimed at improving content quality delivered by the search engine based on feedback Google received since launching the September 2023 helpful content update.
“Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”
In particular, the search engine is trying to improve on the September update by reducing the negative impact it had on small and independent publishers.
As Mueller explained:
“This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including ‘small’ or ‘independent’ sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches. This is an area we’ll continue to address in future updates.”
What To Expect
As usual, Google isn’t sharing too much about the specifics of the update, however, the search engine has updated its help page for core updates to include specific guidance for those impacted by the update.
For now, Google says the update is expected to take around a month to fully roll out. This means search results are likely to be volatile until then, with some gaining and losing ground temporarily.
Until then, it is best to monitor your website’s performance for signs of big changes. If you are impacted, it is likely time that you should evaluate the type of content you are delivering and find ways to improve its value for your site’s audience.
Google is ramping up to release its next core algorithm update “in the coming weeks”, likely signaling a major shakeup coming to search results in the near future.
The reveal that a core algorithm update is coming came from Google Search Liaison and well-known SEO journalist Danny Sullivan who posted a lengthy message about the coming update on his website, Search Engine Roundtable.
When Is The Algorithm Update Coming?
In his message, Sullivan says that the teams at Google haven’t figured out exactly what day the core update is coming because there is still testing being done. Despite this, Sullivan felt confident enough to say that he expects the update to roll out in the coming weeks even if it takes tweaking after testing.
Notably, Sullivan says he had considered posting similar updates before the release of past core algorithm updates but did not because of the potential for them to be pushed back. In this instance, he is apparently more confident the update will pass through testing relatively quickly.
Sullivan’s full post reads:
“We’d tell you when the next core update will be if we knew. But we don’t know exactly yet, that’s all. These aren’t scheduled to a particular day. The ranking team makes changes, tests those, evaluates those and eventually we get a launch date. There have been many times I could have said “Core update next week!” because everything was on track for that to happen, but then there’s a need to do a bit more work or other things that might cause a pushback. I would expect we’ll see one in the coming weeks, because that fits in with our general cycle. But precisely when, that’s just not known yet.”
Past Major Algorithm Updates
This upcoming core algorithm update will be the first since one which began rolling out in March 2024 and completed in April. The reason for the longer-than-normal rollout is that this update was the largest core algorithm update to date.
Before that, Google released a slew of smaller updates in August, October, and November of 2023.
Sullivan did not give any insight into how big the upcoming update might be or what might be targeted by the update. For now, we can only assume that this update is aimed at reducing spam and improving the relevance of search results.
We will update you as more information about the upcoming core algorithm update is revealed or when it begins rolling out to the public.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GoogleRankings.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-07-18 19:01:202024-07-18 19:01:22Google Rep Says A New Core Algorithm Update Is Coming Soon
Listing menu items in your Google Business Profile and having a busy shop seem to be powerful ways to help your business’s local Google rankings according to a newly published set of tests by SEO expert Claudia Tomina.
Google Business Profiles are the central way local shoppers find new and nearby businesses, so keeping your listing up to date and as full of information as possible is crucial.
Though officially unconfirmed, Tomina’s test gives strong evidence to support the idea that menu items and how busy a business is are ranking signals for local Google searches.
How Menu Items May Impact Rankings
According to the report, adding specific menu items on Google can help your restaurant rank for searches for those foods.
In one example, Tomina added “caesar salad” to the menu items for a restaurant’s account and clearly saw an uptick in search position for the query “best caesar salad near me.” The addition didn’t just give her a small bump in the rankings. The restaurant went from search position 71 to the very top position.
How Busier Locations May Impact Rankings
Tomina’s tests also found that busier stores or restaurants during the Google popular times window tend to rank busier than less busy establishments.
As she wrote in her report, “My research shows that if a business is busier at a specific time of day then they outrank their competitors.”
In the charts below, you can see how rankings for the keyword “caesar salad near me” tended to rank better during popular times during the day.
The Big Picture
Local search results can be a highly competitive area for many businesses. Any edge that you can get on your competition can be the difference between getting a lead or missing out on it to another local business.
If you haven’t updated your menu on Google, now is the time to do so.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Popular-Times.png9001600Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-07-05 22:38:092024-07-05 22:42:01Menu Items and Store Traffic May Help Local Google Rankings – A LOT
Every brand wants to put their best foot forward. If you want to do that online, you need to understand what canonical URLs are. So, today we are going to talk a bit about what canonical URLs are, why your pages may have a canonical version, and how Google chooses which page is the canonical page.
What Are Canonical URLs?
A canonical URL or web page is the version of a page selected to be indexed by Google when there are multiple versions of the page.
This version of the page is used by Google to rank the web page and be displayed in search results in order to prevent duplicate search listings.
As the owner of the website, you have some control over which pages are chosen to be canonical URLs. As we will get into further down, though, Google doesn’t always select the page you believe should be the canonical version.
Before we get to that, let’s take a moment to talk about the legitimate reasons why you may have duplicate versions of a page.
5 Reasons For Having Duplicate Web Pages
According to Google’s official documentation and guidelines about canonical webpages, the search engine believes there are five legitimate reasons a webpage may have multiple versions.
Region variants: for example, a piece of content for the USA and the UK, accessible from different URLs, but essentially the same content in the same language
Device variants: for example, a page with both a mobile and a desktop version
Protocol variants: for example, the HTTP and HTTPS versions of a site
Site functions: for example, the results of sorting and filtering functions of a category page
Accidental variants: for example, the demo version of the site is accidentally left accessible to crawlers
How Google Chooses A Canonical Webpage
Until very recently, it was unclear exactly how Google selected canonical pages. Website owners and managers could signal which version they wanted to appear in search results using the rel=”canonical” tag in the code of the page.
However, this version wasn’t always the one that Google went with.
Gary Ilyes from Google cleared the mystery up (mostly) in a recent Google Search Central video.
The process starts with finding the content and identifying the main content or “centerpiece of a page”. Then, it groups the pages with similar content in duplicate clusters.
Then, Google uses a handful of pages to essentially rank each version of the page like it would a listing in search results. The page with the best ranking is selected as the canonical version and included in most search results.
While he doesn’t list exactly what signals are used, Ilyes did say this:
“Some signals are very straightforward, such as site owner annotations in HTML like rel=”canonical”, while others, like the importance of an individual page on the internet, are less straightforward.”
Notably, this doesn’t mean that Google only indexes one version of the page to be used in all contexts. There are situations where Google may decide to show users a version of the page other than the canonical version.
“The other versions in the cluster become alternate versions that may be served in different contexts, like if the user is searching for a very specific page from the cluster.
To hear Gary Ilyes himself talk about the process, check out the full Google Search Central Video below:
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GoogleRankings.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-04-09 17:02:162024-04-09 17:02:18Everything You Need To Know About Canonical URLs And Your Google Rankings
Google is making a big change to its Core Web Vitals ranking signals soon, as the company announced that the new Interaction to Next Paint (INP) signal will replace the First Input Delay (FID) on March 12.
The new INP metric measures the amount of time between when a user interacts with a web page (for example, by clicking a button) to when a browser begins rendering pixels on the screen.
Though FID measured a similar time between user input and browser rendering, Google says INP captures interactivity in ways that were not possible previously.
The History Behind FID and INP Metrics
FID has been a metric used by Google to rank sites since the debut of Google’s Core Web Vitals in 2018. However, Google quickly began to see that this metric didn’t fully capture user interactions as they had hoped.
This led to Google introducing INP as an experimental or “pending” metric in 2022. Now, almost 2 years later, Google has decided to fully replace FID with the INP metric in March.
What You Should Do
Before March, it is recommended that website managers ensure their site is meeting the threshold for a “good” INP performance.
If you do not meet this mark, Google suggests optimizing your site with these strategies:
Evaluate your site’s performance using tools such as PageSpeed Insights or the Google Chrome User Experience Report.
Identify issues that may be slowing down INP, like extended JavaScript tasks, excessive main thread activity, or a large DOM.
Optimize issues based on Google’s optimization guides for the specific issue.
As Google’s ranking algorithms evolve, this and other ranking signals will likely be updated or replaced. This emphasizes how important it is to use the latest optimization standards and to ensure a smooth user experience if you want your business to be easily found online.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Google-Page-Experience-Desktop1.jpg343720Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-02-01 19:26:312024-02-01 19:26:34Google To Replace a Core Web Vital Ranking Signal In March
