SEOPress published a monthly Google News update every month of the year in 2022, so we thought it would be a great idea to recap the whole year to give you a quick overview of what subjects we covered. You will find a list of articles and their content below, as well as links to the eBooks we published this year and our first book!
Keeping an eye on updates to Google’s algorithms, changes to SERPs and changes to the official Google documentation can help you improve your ranking and get more traffic for your WordPress site. It can also help avoid indexing and ranking problems when Google changes its rules. It is important to keep in touch with changes to Google and follow your site’s ranking for your most important keywords. For your WordPress site, you can use SEOPress Insights to do just that.
Google also did a recap of their year in the article entitled Thanks, 2022 and recorded a Search Off the Record podcast Year in review 2022.
This year we have used 4 SERP tracking tools to detect global changes to Google’s search results:
- AccuRanker’s Google Grump Rating
- CognitiveSEO’s Signals
- RankRanger’s Rank Risk Index
- SEMRush’s Sensor
These tools track hundreds of thousands of keyword searches in Google and detect how much the results change from one day to the next to give us an index of volatility. Thanks to them for making this valuable data public.
Two notable things that we saw from following SERP volatility in 2022 are 1/ ranking changes happen when Google releases new updates, but also 2/ big ranking changes can happen periodically when no official update is ongoing.
Theories on why there is volatility in search results when no official update has been announced include the simple idea that they are real, but unconfirmed updates by Google to its ranking systems (i.e., Google makes important changes but wants to keep them secret). Another theory is that these fluctuations are “tremors” linked to official updates. Possibly when a ranking system uses machine learning which then recalibrates itself after evaluating its own performance after a defined period.
Over the year, Google has made it more and more evident that it uses new developments in artificial intelligence to improve search results. Could AI be making changes to the algorithms without humans being aware of them?
Google News in 2022 month by month
- January 2022 – Unconfirmed updates, changes to the Recipes schema, dangers of language quality, instant indexing for WordPress, Search Console URL Inspection API. We published our eBook International SEO with WordPress.
- February 2022 – Desktop Page Experience Update. More unconfirmed updates, piracy / DCMA requests, how artificial intelligence is used in Google Search, Google rewriting 61% of TITLE tags?
We published our eBook 10 Tips to Get the Most Out of SEOPress Insights. - March 2022 – Product Review Update. More unconfirmed Google Search updates, unconfirmed Local Search Update, (breaking news) Google does not use Meta Keywords tag, Universal Google Analytics to be discontinued in favor of GA4.
We published our eBook Keywords and SEO, everything you need to know. - April 2022 – Fluctuations in search results, unconfirmed updates. New featured snippets and other changes to SERPs, Google fights spam with SpamBrain AI, Google Lens and multisearch, Good SEO advice in Google in Data Studio tutorial, Search Central Lightning Talks about Google’s Site Kit plugin.
We published our eBook Optimizing WordPress for Speed. - May 2022 – Core Update. Fluctuations in search results, unconfirmed updates, death of Bill Slawski, Google videos releases in May, Google announces changes to sitemaps.
We published our eBook Improve your rankings with On-Page SEO. - June 2022 – End of the May 2022 Core Update, unconfirmed updates or Core Update tremors, Are Google updates global? Twitter removed NOFOLLOW links, Google Search News Video – June 2022, Ecommerce essentials SEO tips video.
- July 2022 – Product Reviews update (English only). Official Google Search ranking updates page, Google’s Guide to TITLEs, Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines update, new video from Google for Creators.
We published our eBook More Visibility with Image SEO. - August 2022 – Helpful Content update. Surprise end to July 2022 Product Reviews update, fire at Google data center in Iowa and outages, Google Images: Search by image using Google Lens in desktop search, Google Images: Image previews.
We published our first book: Master Guide: SEO for business. - September 2022 – Broad Core update and Product Reviews update. End of the August 2022 Helpful Content update, Google Search On 22 event.
- October 2022 – Spam Update. Unconfirmed update on October 13th, Google Search Essentials, Site names in mobile results.
- November 2022 – Unofficial updates, the end of Google updates? SMX Next keynote with Hyung-Jin Kim, VP of Google Search, new guide to Google Search ranking algorithms, Google Spam Update and policy circumnavigation.
- December 2022 – Helpful Content Update and Link Spam Update. Continuous scroll in desktop, introducing the Visual Elements Gallery, Google News December Video with Lizzi Sassman, Google cancel holidays after the release of ChatGPT.
We also published our eBook Analyze your audience with Google Analytics.
And January 2023? Subscribe to our newsletter to get SEO news in your inbox and be alerted to changes in Google’s algorithm, new eBooks, the latest innovations on our products and ideas to improve your conversions and traffic.
