The search engine giant finally wrapped up its August 2023 broad core update on September 7, 2023, 16 days and three hours after its initial rollout.

Here’s Google’s announcement from X: “The rollout is now complete as of September 7, 2023.”

To check the status yourself, you can also visit its Google Search Status Dashboard here.

This broad core update is crucial for companies leveraging their Google Search visibility regularly to gain leads and customers. So, if you experience a change in rankings, Google recommends ensuring stellar content quality. 

Here are some strategies you can do to recover from a core update:

• Audit your rankings drops: What elements do pages that overtook yours have that yours don’t?
• Self-assess your website: Are you providing enough helpful content for Search to rank your website higher?
• Consult a third-party opinion: You might be biased about your website, so having a fresh set of eyes helps assess its quality.

This is the second core update for this year, and we’re seeing other significant updates being rolled out. For instance, Google recently announced the initial rollout of its September helpful content update, which includes an update on third-party content treated for the overall helpfulness of your website.

How did your rankings turn out after the broad core update? We suggest checking them out and implementing a holistic approach when enhancing your website and content.

Read Google’s full help document for core updates to know more.

More SEO News You Can Use

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Content To Be Disclosed on Political Ads: To prepare for the 2024 elections, Google’s recent move aims to prevent fake news and misinformation by requiring political advertisers to flag AI-generated content. According to Bloomberg’s report, “Google will soon require that all election advertisers disclose when their messages have been altered or created by artificial intelligence tools.” This includes anything created or edited with generative AI – tools that function via prompts. But you don’t have to flag your content as AI-generated if you’re just resizing photos, adding visual elements and brightening images. Check out Search Engine Land’s article for the whole story. If you know more about Google’s political ads policy, click this.

Google Updates Its Language Matching Systems: You should see more relevant content from your local language today. This is after it “released a series of updates to improve our language matching systems.” These updates aim to match search engine results to your language better. The company also promised to “keep improving how our automated systems determine the language of results to show” so they can keep displaying relevant content in the user’s preferred language. To know more about how Google handles multilingual search, read the help document. For the full story, read this article from Search Engine Land.

Google Sites Are Not SEO-Friendly, Says Google: When asked about why a Google Site isn’t being indexed properly, Google’s John Mueller admitted that “the URLs used in Google Sites are a bit hard to track since the public version can be different from the URL you see when logged in.” So, does that mean Google Sites are not indexed? Of course not. Mueller said they’re still indexable but are not ideal for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. He further suggests that you use your own domain name instead of using sites.google.com because it would be easier for you to migrate to another hosting provider should you wish to do so. “If SEO is your primary consideration, it might be worthwhile to explore other options,” said Mueller. While Google Sites is great as a portfolio site and for personal purposes, based on Mueller’s response, it’s not a viable option for large organizations and companies that need better search engine visibility. Watch the full episode of Google’s SEO Office Hours here.

Integrated Reports Are Coming to Google Search Console: Last September 11, 2023, Google announced it’s improving Google Merchant Center accounts by introducing two new reports. The first report sends you a notification when your products don’t appear on the Shopping tab. The second report shows you opportunities to increase clicks and improve your product rankings in Google. You must associate your Search Console property with your Merchant Center account to enjoy these updates, though. Since Google is slowly rolling out these reports “over the next few weeks,” it’s crucial to keep tabs on your Search Console so you won’t miss out once these updates become available. Read Google’s full announcement here.

AI-Generated Amazon Listings Are Coming to Amazon: The AI fever continues in Amazon as the eCommerce giant launches its generative AI tool for listing content. According to Amazon, most of their early adopters use its generated content for their listings. Robert Tekiela, VP of Amazon Selection and Catalog Systems, claims that the company’s models “can infer, improve and enrich product knowledge at an unprecedented scale.” For instance, its model can detect a round object with a specified diameter or a shirt’s collar style from an image. We also covered another AI tool from Amazon that summarizes customer reviews, which means both sellers and buyers in the marketplace can now enjoy a faster, more streamlined trading experience. While these tools cut back your time spent creating listing content, it’s still essential to ensure accuracy before submitting your listing to Amazon’s catalog. Will you try this tool on your own products? Read Amazon’s full announcement here.

Editor’s Note: “SEO News You Can Use” is a weekly blog post posted every Monday morning only on SEOblog.com, rounding up all the top SEO news from around the world. Our goal is to make SEOblog.com a one-stop-shop for everyone looking for SEO news, education and for hiring an SEO expert with our comprehensive SEO agency directory.

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