SEO Roundup March, 2023

SEO Roundup March 2023: Latest trends and updates

Table of Contents

  1. Google’s March 2023 Core Update
  2. Google Enhanced Desktop Search Experience
  3. Google Updates Search Console With New Merchant Reports

 

Google’s March 2023 Core Update

In March 2023, Google began rolling out its latest core algorithm update, which can have significant implications for search rankings. This update, known as the “March 2023 Core Update,” is the first broad core update of the year, and it follows the previous update that occurred over six months ago. The update targets content types in all regions and languages, aiming to promote or reward high-quality and high-value web pages.

Google Algorithm Update: Impact on website rankings

The March 2023 core algorithm update serves as a reminder that SEO is an ever-evolving field requiring constant attention and adaptation. Website owners and businesses that prioritize user experience, content quality, and E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) are more likely to succeed in organic search rankings after the update.

The update began rolling out in March, and it may take several weeks for the full rollout to be complete. The update is expected to prioritize the ranking of pages providing more value compared to those currently ranking on Google, potentially leading to a significant reshuffling of search engine results pages (SERP) rankings.

 

Google is Enhancing Desktop search results. Helping easily identify information sources in Search

People come to Google to find information from a wide range of sources and formats, from big brands to individual creators, across text, images, and video. As Google has introduced features and design elements to help you explore information in new ways, Google also continued to bring greater context to the search results page, helping you make sense of the information you see.

 Google is making a few new updates to the search page that builds on this work, providing even more information about the sites that you see so you can feel confident about the websites you visit.

Google is adding site names to search results on mobile, so you can easily identify the website that’s associated with each result at a glance; also updating the size and shape of the favicon (a website’s logo or icon) that appears in Search to make it easier to see on the page. Google will extend these changes to Search ads to increase clarity and advertiser transparency at a glance.

A scrolling GIF of mobile search results featuring site names and favicons on search results and ads, including the word Sponsored.

Part of helping you make sense of the information you see is ensuring that ads are clearly labeled, which is why our label will now be featured on its own line in the top-left corner of Search ads. Google also wants the label to be prominent and clear across different types of paid content. That’s why when ads show on mobile search results, they will now be labeled with the word “Sponsored” in bold black text. This new label and its prominent position continue to meet our high standards for being distinguishable from search results and build on our existing efforts to make information about paid content clear.

This search page update is starting to roll out gradually on mobile, and Google will soon begin testing a similar experience on desktop, helping people more easily find what they’re looking for, no matter where they’re searching.

Google Updates Search Console With New Merchant Reports

Google Search Console introduces new clicks and impressions reports for product snippets and merchant listings.

Google Updates Search Console With New Merchant Reports

Google announced an update to the search console that provides merchants with the power to accurately gauge the search performance of their product listings and product snippets.

The search console has two new ways to see the SEO impact in the SERPs, providing impression and click data from the two different search appearances.

Google Search Console Search Appearance Report

Merchant listings and Product snippets.

These appearances let you see how many impressions and clicks you get from those experiences.

The new Merchant listings and Product snippets search appearances can be viewed in two places in Search Console:

  • Merchant listings and product snippets report as an overlay on top of the report charts
  • Performance report in the search appearance tab or through a filter
Screenshot of Merchant search appearance report

Expanded Eligibility Product Snippets Search Appearances

The Product Snippets Search Appearances is a feature that was opened up to all merchants using the Products Structured Data markup on their sites without having to submit a product feed.

Google announced the expanded eligibility for enhanced product experiences in search in September 2022.

The September 2022 announcement explained:

“For some time, Google has provided shoppers with rich product experiences in search results. To make these experiences more accessible to website owners, Google has expanded eligibility for websites that implement structured data. For website owners, there are two broad categories of experiences:

Merchant listing experiences for web pages that allow shoppers to buy a product on the site.
Product snippets for a broader set of web pages with product information (including pages that sell products, publish product reviews, and/or aggregate information from other sites).”

 

The announced update means that merchants can now track the impact of those two kinds of merchant search experiences.

 

Some experts that SEJ has interviewed commented on the following:

The ability to see product results in the search appearance report with clicks/impressions helps businesses understand where they are and where they can improve.

I would love to see the average ranking with this so that owners know where their product is and for what queries it was most commonly seen.

Product snippet is nice because it shows issues with formatting.

Think of e-commerce as like schema markup where you have tons of fields such at GTIN etc.

Google uses these search filters to sort merchant products.

This encourages business owners and devs to improve their more often than not unfilled fields.

Unfortunately, unfilled fields is an issue for even some of the very largest brands.