We hope you are in good health. Here are some of the major SEO news updates of the week that you need to know:

Search Related News and Updates from Major Search Engine

Google: Avoid Common Site Move Mistakes, and Best Protect Your Rankings

Google’s Search Relations team understands the importance of minimizing risks and avoiding traffic loss when moving websites. They have highlighted that it is important to keep the changes to your website focused and break them into smaller useful pieces rather than combine everything into one larger, more complex move. Such large sites may experience a decline in their search rankings as they can be slow to react, going through all their coding mistakes, ensuring each step is completed correctly, and testing every URL as a reliable security measure. Common misconfigurations like incorrect redirects must also be avoided, which can lead to lost traffic during a domain change. Using basic troubleshooting techniques and testing at each stage, you can ensure all your site moves go ahead with minimum risks involved.

Google Treat Hashtags as Words in The Content 

Hashtagging has become a popular way of expressing ideas and connecting with people on social media. However, when it comes to SEO, it may not have the same effect. According to Google’s John Mueller, hashtags have no special meaning or impact on web pages appearing in Google search results. This means that this conventional habit many have adopted on social media won’t increase the chances of a page being highly ranked in keyword searches. Even though hashtags offer convenience for organizing content and providing succinct classification for topics, they carry no weight as far as Google is concerned for SEO purposes.

What did Google John Mueller Speak on the lastmod Tag in XML Sitemap?

Google’s John Mueller has offered advice on when to update the date in the XML sitemap. He suggests updating the date if you are introducing something new for search engines. However, it might not always be necessary in all cases. For example, although a page might have technically changed after an update, it may not warrant being prioritized by a search engine and therefore does not need to be updated in the last mod tag. Mueller has been an advocate at Google for improving website performance and providing better user experience as part of SEO. His suggestions follow his general principles of website optimization with clarity and purpose aimed at helping web admins increase their visibility on a search engine results page (SERP).

Bing Webmaster Tools Getting New Features: Bing Chat Integration & Index Coverage Reporting 

This past week, Fabrice Canel of Microsoft Bing announced two amazing new features during PubCon. The first is the Bing Chat integration, where website owners and publishers can easily access information about their impressions, clicks, and click-through rates on the performance report. This feature will offer much-needed insight into whether or not people are visiting websites via Bing chat tools like Bard. The second new addition is the index coverage report. This feature logs submissions made to Bing’s search engine to track any technical errors while offering direction on how best to fix them. With these two highly anticipated features launching soon from Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools, it’s sure to be a major boon for website optimization efforts.

Authorship, Links, and Disavows are Less Important Than SEO Think 

Gary Illyes from Google’s appearance at PubCon was an exciting event for online marketers and SEOs. His keynote focused mainly on topics that have been widely discussed, but the Q&A session afterward proved to be a much more interesting affair. It backed up what we have heard regarding authorship, links, and disavowing certain connections. With all of the changes implemented within Google over the last few years, his comments provide assurance and comfort for those who manage their sites or clients in understanding how best to use the search engine’s features.

Social Media Related News and Updates From Major Search Engines

Youtube’s New Lead Neal Mohan Announced Priorities for 2023 

The future looks bright indeed! YouTube, the leading online video streaming platform, is demonstrating its commitment to creators and artists by focusing on providing more money-making opportunities beyond just ads. Providing a larger range of monetization options is crucial. Still, their dedication towards progress doesn’t stop there – they have taken the extra step in exploring AI’s potential to improve the storytelling and production value for creators across all formats. By actively listening to creator feedback, YouTube continuously refined its services and created an ever-evolving space full of exciting opportunities.

5 New Features for Job Seekers by LinkedIn 

The ever-shifting job market makes it difficult for job seekers to stand out. Luckily, LinkedIn has recently released a series of updates designed to give job seekers an edge. These updates encompass Open-To-Work, Skills Match, Hiring in Your Network, and the ability to share resumes with all recruiters. With Open-To-Work and Skills Match, users can advertise their availability and unique skill sets to employers nearby. On the other hand, with Hiring in Your Network, they can tap into connections already formed within the vast LinkedIn community. By taking advantage of these new updates, users can gain more visibility in their search for employment.

PPC Related News and Updates From Major Search Engines

New Detailed Guide on Google Ads Keyword Matching Process 

With Google’s free insider information, creating perfect advertisements that capture your target audience has never been easier! During this year’s Search Ads Week, Google lets its users take a peek inside the system responsible for matching the best ad to each search query. Ambitious marketers and advertisers can use Google’s 28-page guide to gain insight into optimizing their campaigns and ensuring their ads are reaching the right audiences. Page seven of the detailed guide discusses keyword matching, offering information on accepted keywords and how to set negative keywords and tailor ads for certain languages or geographic locations.

Google New Update on Chrome FLEDGE  for PPC & SEO 

As the privacy revolution continues to gather pace, the issue of online user privacy is becoming more important than ever. In response to this trend, Google has unveiled a new proposal outlining their FLEDGE project, which promises to improve privacy while enabling online advertising and search engine optimization (SEO). This ground-breaking initiative is set to give PPC campaigns and SEO efforts more control over key factors such as targeting and relevance – all without compromising on data security. With the latest update from Google providing more detail on upcoming features and services within the Privacy Sandbox, PPC marketers, SEO firms, and Webmasters now have a clearer direction for ensuring effective campaigns in an evolving landscape.

Google Ads Announced New Changes to Location Targeting Settings 

This March, Google Ads is changing its location targeting settings to improve the advertising process. By unifying and streamlining the targeting process, advertisers are expected to have an easier time leveraging the platform’s capabilities in connection with local campaigns. The major change is removing “Search interest: People searching for your target locations,” which will impact how businesses can appeal to local customers through ads. Despite being a significant change, it has been designed not to disrupt user experience or performance. This alteration should be a welcome improvement for Google Ads users as they look forward to better targeting capabilities and more robust marketing opportunities.

Google is Here With New AI-Powered Search Ads 

Google has recently announced the use of AI to enhance search ads performance, giving businesses a major advantage when connecting with their audience in a meaningful and productive way. By understanding changing trends in search and consumer behavior, companies can create campaigns to reach their target customers more effectively than ever before. With automated bidding, faster ad relevance, and an optimized pricing structure, Google Ads ensures marketers get the most out of their campaigns. These new tools are designed to promote greater creativity in developing campaigns, providing time-saving solutions for businesses that previously had to spend hours optimizing ad settings manually. Thanks to these tools, companies can easily maximize performance from every search campaign they launch.

Author

Navneet Kaushal is the Editor-in-Chief of PageTraffic Buzz. A leading search strategist, Navneet helps clients maintain an edge in search engines and the online media. Navneet is also the CEO of SEO Services company PageTraffic which is one of the leading search marketing company in Asia.