SEO Updates: Google Search Algorithm Updates 2023

Google updates its core algorithm in March 2023 and its reviews in April 2023. It also announces a helpful content update and other SEO Updates and news.

The Gist

Algorithm update:- The change to the Gist Algorithm. A key algorithm update in March 2023 caused Google's search rankings to change a lot.

Review revamp:- The Google update in April 2023 changed the reviews system and showed how important high-quality, E-A-T-compliant material is.

The ChatGPT contest:-. As ChatGPT becomes more famous because of its unique ways to search, it could hurt Google's ad revenue in a big way.

I last talked to you on March 16 to give you the latest news and information about SEO. I'm back now to talk about what has happened since then.

March 2023: Changes to the core algorithm

Google's Core Algorithm Update in March 2023 may have been the most important update so far.

The fix started rolling out on March 15, and it was done on March 28, 2023. It was aimed at all kinds of material in all regions and languages, and it promoted and rewarded high-quality, high-value web pages.

When the update first came out, there wasn't much information about it, so marketers had to sit back and keep a close eye on their data for a few weeks.

Google said that the update could have an effect on search results, and some marketers did report that their numbers went down or up after the update. Semrush found that the March 2023 update had more changes in rank than the September 2022 version. There were also more "drastic" changes in rankings after the March update.

Search Engine Roundtable says that John Mueller, a senior search analyst at Google, said that the March change "messed up the SERP a bit." He added, though, that he thinks the focus on quality will stay the same.

Review Update for April 2023

Google started rolling out its reviews update on April 12, 2023. It was done on April 25, and it could have an effect on search results.

This update is about Google's reviews system, which looks at articles, blog posts, web pages, and other pieces of content that stand alone and are written to suggest, give an opinion on, or evaluate something.

Reviews can be about just one thing, compare two things side-by-side, rank them, etc., and they can be about goods, media (like movies or video games), services, and businesses.

Google says that content affected by the update of the review might not be fixed until the next update, but "changes can happen at any time for different reasons."

The digital giant suggests that you look at its help page to learn how to write good reviews. It has suggestions such as:

• Show that you know what you're talking about.

• Show that you know what you're talking about by using images or audio.

• Look at the product, service, business, etc. from the point of view of the person who will use it.

• Add links to other helpful sites that will help the person.

The advice sounds a lot like what Google has been saying all along creating high-value, high-quality content for readers that follows the E-E-A-T principles is the best thing to do.

Google's Mobile Usability Report is going away.

Google also announced in April that it will stop using the "mobile usability" report, the mobile-friendly test tool, and the mobile-friendly test API by the end of the year, on December 1, 2023.

"This doesn't mean that mobile usability isn't important for success with Google Search," Google said in its statement. "It's still important to users, who use mobile devices more than ever, so it's still part of our page experience guidance."

Instead, Google says that other tools, like Chrome's Lighthouse, that are better at figuring out how mobile-friendly something is have come out.

Helpful Content Update Coming Soon

Google said on May 10 that it will update its helpful content system over the next few months to make it easier for searchers to "find and explore diverse perspectives."

In the next few weeks, some Google searches could bring up a Perspectives tab at the top of the search results. When a user taps this filter, they will see videos, images, and written material that other people have shared on forums, Q&A sites, and social media.

The idea is that useful information can often be found in places you wouldn't expect or that are hard to find. With this change, it will be easy for people to find these "hidden gems."

What does that mean for people who work in SEO? Google says that with this update, it is improving how it ranks material by putting more weight on how good and original it is. Pages that are based on personal experience or unique knowledge tend to rank higher.

The update for helpful content will also be able to move down content that it thinks is not helpful. When SEO expert Glenn Gabe asked about this on Twitter, Google's public liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan, said that the change will show more "hidden gems" on Search and that Google is still working to make sure that unhelpful content is not doing well.

Unconfirmed Update to the Ranking Algorithm?

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable wrote on May 12 that he thought there might be another update to the way Google ranks search results, which he calls the "Google I/O Search Algorithm Ranking Update."

Schwartz said that his ranks had changed a lot since the beginning of May. Others on WebmasterWorld saw the same trends and big drops in traffic. One person said he saw a lot of traffic from the UK but almost none from the US.

Schwartz said that the upset is not because of the new Google Search Generative Experience or the planned "helpful content" update.

On March 18, Schwartz wrote a blog post about another time of about three days when there was a lot of change, which he thought might be related to another unconfirmed update to Google's search ranking algorithm. Some people said that this update made the rankings go back to how they were before the last unconfirmed change.

Does ChatGPT make Google Search less useful?

Right now, Google Search is up against a lot of other search engines.

ChatGPT was used by a lot of people as a new way to find, and Microsoft added some of its features to Bing. As a reaction, Google made its own AI-powered chatbot called Bard, but it hasn't caught on like OpenAI's product has.

ChatGPT may be the biggest threat to Google's ad revenue since users can get information from the internet without having to open pages or deal with ads. So far, Google's only reaction has been to talk about its generative AI search, which is not yet available to everyone.