by Rajeev R | Last updated Feb 4, 2023 | Published on Feb 3, 2023 | Blog, Google Algorithm Updates, SEO
Google has updated the search bar at the top of Google Analytics with three search options to analyze streams, accounts, and properties in eCommerce business accounts. These updates will allow users to find information about your current property or account, and to navigate to other Google Analytics 4 properties that they have access to.
Google Analytics 4, the next generation of Analytics is designed to collect both website and app data to better understand the customer journey. Marketers can use this tool to effectively analyze important customer usage metrics. The Universal Analytics (GA3) will be stopping collecting data from July 1st, 2023, and users were requested to upgrade to Google Analytics 4. GA 4 now provides advanced tracking and reporting features using the machine learning model. It allows website owners to analyze their site performance across different platforms more accurately. A properly managed Google Analytics account has become a critical business tool for ecommerce sites to enhance their business growth.
With this update, the search box at the top of Analytics now allows advertisers to search for –
- instant answers
- reports, admin pages, or insights
- account or property configuration, and
- help content
This tool provides search in all languages. There are many differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics. GA4’s powered predictive metrics can make data-driven decisions on a large scale.
GA4 New Updates
New GA4 updates introduced by Google include the following.
- Web Data Stream Details
The following search terms allow you to open the details for a web or app data stream in the property you are using:
- the keyword “Tracking”
- a web stream measurement ID (i.e., “G-XXXXXXX”)
- an app stream ID (i.e., “XXXXXXX”)
- Current Property and Account Settings
The following search terms allow you to open the settings for the property you are using:
- the keyword “Property”
- the current property ID or property name
The following search terms allow you to open the settings for the account you are using:
- the keyword “Account”
- the current account ID or account name
- Go to other Google Analytics 4 properties
The following search terms allow you to navigate to a different Google Analytics 4 property from the one you are using. Analytics shows you up to 7 properties that match the search query.
- the property ID or property name of the other property
- a web stream measurement ID (i.e., “G-XXXXXXX”) in the other property
- an app stream ID (i.e., “XXXXXXX”) in the other property
Other GA4 Updates
On January 10, 2023, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), also introduced 12 new ecommerce dimensions and metrics that allow marketers to analyze information about their products or services and separately. With this update, Ecommerce advertisers and brands were able to view which items were added to cart, purchased, clicked, and more.
The new ecommerce dimensions and metrics added in Explorations and the Data API are:
- Item affiliation
- Item variant
- Items added to cart
- Items checked out
- Items clicked in list
- Items clicked in promotion
- Items viewed
- Items viewed in list
- Items viewed in promotion
- Shipping amount
- Shipping tier
- Tax amount
Google has also renamed several metrics such as –
- Add to carts (previously called Add-to-carts)
- Item-list click events (previously called Item list clicks)
- Item-list view events (previously called Item list views)
- Item view events (previously called Item views)
- Items purchased (previously called Item purchase quantity)
- Promotion clicks (previously called Item promotion clicks)
- Promotion views (previously called Item promotion views)
Google has also noted that “When you use an item-scoped dimension in an exploration, such as “Item ID” or “Item category”, be sure to use item-scoped metrics such as “Items purchased” rather than event-scoped metrics, such as “Purchases”. The former will give you the count of items. The latter will give you a count of purchase events.”
Ecommerce SEO involves analyzing important ecommerce interactions. Google Analytics tracking is an essential component of any online store. Online retailers as well as companies providing affordable digital marketing services need to be up to date with these changes. The additional information in GA4 will help to analyze streams, accounts, and properties in the specific account.
Need support with eCommerce SEO? At MedResponsive, our eCommerce business services are not limited to SEO, responsive web design and development, content marketing, email marketing and social media marketing. Talk to our team at (800) 941-5527 to schedule a FREE consultation with our senior solutions manager and find out more about our services.
by Rajeev R | Last updated Jan 10, 2023 | Published on Dec 19, 2022 | Blog, Google Algorithm Updates, SEO
Links are an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages. Google comes up with link spam updates that aim at broadly identifying unnatural links and preventing them from affecting search quality. Google rolled out a December 2022 Link Spam Update recently on December 14 and this revised update will take about two weeks to roll out. It is a global update that affects all languages.
Google highlights that links that are obtained primarily for artificial manipulation of Search rankings are link spam. With this update, Google is using the power of SpamBrain to neutralize the impact of unnatural links on search results. SpamBrain is Google’s AI-based spam-prevention system. Besides using it to detect spam directly, it can now detect both sites buying links, and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links. This is the first time that Google is using its AI-based spam detection system – SpamBrain, for link spam purposes.
Google said that,”Our launch today, which we refer to as the December 2022 link spam update, will take about two weeks to fully roll out. Ranking may change as spammy links are neutralized and any credit passed by these unnatural links is lost. This launch will affect all languages.”
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What Is Link Spam?
Here’s how Google defines link spam,”Any links that are intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site”
Some examples of link spam are –
- Buying or selling links for ranking purposes (Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links, Exchanging goods or services for links or Sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link)
- Excessive link exchanges or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
- Using automated programs or services to create links to your site
- Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of qualifying the outbound link
- Text advertisements or text links that don’t block ranking credit
- Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit, or links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites
- Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
- Keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites
- Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites
- Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature
Google’s algorithms and manual actions aim at nullifying these unnatural links at scale. In its 2021 Webspam report, Google said that it caught 200 times more spam sites in 2021, using their AI-based spam-prevention system called SpamBrain. This helped in a major reduction in hacked spam (70%), which was a spam type commonly observed in 2020, and gibberish spam on hosting platforms (75%). Another notable feature of SpamBrain is that it is built to be a robust and evolving platform to address all types of abuse. SpamBrain’s ability to identify disruptive and malicious behaviors among billions of web pages has allowed Google to keep more than 99% of searches spam-free.
The December 2022 Link Spam Update will “neutralize” links that it detects as being spam. Detected links won’t be counted and may show a decline in rankings. As this is not a manual action, there’ll be no notifications. Big drops in Google visibility and traffic for a couple of days indicate that a website is hit by this update.
Preventing Link Spam Issues
To prevent link spam issues, it is important for site owners to –
- make sure they are following the best practices on links, both incoming and outgoing
- focus on producing high-quality content and improving user experience
- promote awareness of their site using appropriately tagged links, and
- monetize pages with properly tagged affiliate links
Other Worthy Updates
Google frequently launches spam updates to broadly identify unnatural links and prevent them from affecting search quality. The recent spam update was in October 2022. With this update, the company announced that it will penalize spam techniques that are against their spam policies.
Other spam updates are –
Along with the December 2022 Link Spam Update, the December 2022 helpful content update that was rolled out a week earlier is not yet completely done. Google recommends that marketers or readers coming across sites that engage in inorganic link building can report them. If you have specific feedback with regard to this update, feel free to post in our help community.
An experienced search engine optimization company in the U.S., MedResponsive is up-to-date with all the Google updates and guidelines. For professional SEO link building and content marketing support, marketers can rely on us. Talk to our team at (800) 941-5527!
by Rajeev R | Last updated Oct 26, 2022 | Published on Oct 26, 2022 | Blog, Google Algorithm Updates, SEO
Google Search Central announced the release of their October 2022 spam update on Twitter. This global spam update improves Google’s spam detection strategies, and affects all languages.
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This update started rolling out on October 19, 2022, at about 11 am ET and was expected to take about a week to fully roll out. However, it was completed on October 21, 2022, at about 5 am ET. It took just less than about 42 hours. Search Engine Land says that if websites notice large ranking or traffic changes in their organic Google search results, they may have been hit by this spam update.
With this October 2022 spam update, the company will penalize spam techniques that are against their spam policies.
The previous update was on November 2021, 11 months ago (rollout completed as of November 11, 2021. Other spam updates were on July 26, 2021(rollout completed as of August 24, 2021), June 28, 2021 (second part of the June 2021 spam update, rollout was completed same day) and June 23, 2021 (rollout was completed later that same day).
With each update, Google aims at providing each user with the most useful and relevant information. The major focus is to maintain the quality of its search results.As spam sites can harm or mislead people, Google invests in automated systems to ensure that sites don’t rise in Search results through deceptive or manipulative behavior. Google has reported that in 2020 alone, its systems found 40 billion spammy pages every day.
Spam updates are designed to improve Google’s automated systems that are constantly running in the background to detect spam in search results. Spam updates also target phishing scams on the web that try to rank in search results by posing as highly relevant pages.
What Google Says About October 2022 Spam Update?
Google says that, “While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.
For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam.
Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.”
Spam sites try to reach the top of Search results through diverse techniques such as repeating keywords over and over, or showing Google content that’s different from what users see.
Google Search Essentials will provide details on the spam policies. This category covers behaviors and tactics that can lead to a page or website getting ranked lower or de-indexed from Google Search.
Google’s spam policies include cloaking, doorways, hacked content, hidden text and links, keyword stuffing, link spam, machine-generated traffic, malware and malicious behaviors, misleading functionality, scraped content, sneaky redirects, spammy automatically-generated content, thin affiliate pages, user-generated spam, copyright-removal requests, online harassment removals, as well as scam and fraud. Other types of spam include phishing scams and websites disguising themselves as other reputable sites.
In spam updates like the October 2022 spam update, hacked spam or intentional spam are all the same. Hacked websites aren’t treated any different.
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As Google said, “Search is a powerful tool. It helps people find, share and access an amazing wealth of content regardless of how they connect or where they are located.” It added,”We work hard to ensure that you see high-quality Search results and not spam. We’re continuously improving our spam-fighting technology and will continue working closely with webmasters and others to foster and support a high-quality web ecosystem.”
When it comes to content spam, it is negative SEO method. It refers to any unauthorized use of content from one’s own website on third-party websites. Spammers often target strong websites in certain niches. Content spam can be identified by analyzing ranking losses, and conducting SEO audits.
Fighting spam to keep any website’s search results safe is a challenge. Professional digital marketing support would help.
One of the leading digital marketing outsourcing companies in the U.S., MedResponsive is up to date with any changes in the SEO standards. Need spam-free content? Talk to us at (800) 941-5527.
by Rajeev R | Last updated Oct 6, 2022 | Published on Sep 29, 2022 | Blog, Google Algorithm Updates
Google has confirmed in its search ranking update page that they have completed rolling out a recent core algorithm update and product reviews update, as of September 26, 2022.
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While the product reviews update took six days to complete, beginning Sept. 20 and concluding on Sept. 26, the core update took 15 days to roll out, starting Sept. 12 and ending on Sept. 26.
Any significant changes for web traffic and ranking can be likely the result of one or both updates. As the rollout is complete, it’s time to assess the impact of the updates by analyzing the website’s rankings and traffic patterns.
Is Your Website Impacted? Read here..
Core Update Impacts
According to Google’s John Mueller, when recovering from a broad core algorithm update, it is important to improve your website’s content rather than implement technical fixes.
Google’s John Mueller, during the Search Central SEO office-hours hangout recorded on October 8, 2021, said that “With the core updates we don’t focus so much on just individual issues, but rather the relevance of the website overall. And that can include things like usability, and the ads on a page, but it’s essentially the website overall.”
Based on this quote, changes to search rankings across a majority of your website’s pages indicate the core update impacted you.
Impact of Product Reviews Update
Only websites that publish product reviews are likely to be impacted by product review updates.
Any changes that are limited to product review pages can be because of the impact of product review update. Keep track of page rankings to know the impact.
However, ranking changes across your entire site are more likely the result of the core update.
The Golden Tip – Focus on Content
Once your site is impacted by a core update, it won’t automatically regain its previous rankings. So, you need to rectify the issues.
Mueller says that, “It’s not so much that we would consider it a situation where you have to fix something. But rather, when it comes to relevance, if you work on improving the relevance of your website, then you have a different website, you have a better website.
So it’s not that we would switch back and say oh, it’s like the issue is fixed, and we will change it back to the previous state.
But rather, you’re saying well this is a better website now, and we look at it and say oh it’s a better website. It’s not the same or comparable to before, so it would be kind of tricky to expect that it changes to the state it was before. But it’s a new website, it’s a better website.
I think, especially with core updates, when you’re talking about recovery, it’s not so much you’re recovering but rather Google is seeing that you have a better website and reacting to that.”
Make some major adjustments to the content. What can be done is – Never neglect the on-page content, while focusing on technical fixes and user experiences. Though correcting the technical issues help to a certain extent, more improvements can be achieved by making major changes to content. Work on the content side helps Google to see your website as something significantly better.
Tips from Google to Improve Your Content
Make sure your content provides
- original information, reporting, research or analysis
- substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic
- insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious
Check whether the headline and/or page title
- provides a descriptive, helpful summary of the content
- avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature
Comparing Google September 2022 Core Update and Product Review Update
Here’s a brief comparison between Google’s core update and product reviews update
|
Google September 2022 Broad Core Update |
Google September 2022 Product Reviews Update |
| Launched on |
September 12, 2022 |
September 20, 2022 |
| Rollout completed on |
September 26, 2022 (Two weeks) |
September 26, 2022 (Six days) |
| Targets |
All types of content |
Product review content |
| Recovery tip |
Focus on content and check Google’s core update advice |
Focus on content and check Google’s core update advice |
This year’s Google algorithm updates that started with the helpful content update (Aug. 25 to Sept. 9), have come to an end with the rolling out of these latest updates.
Professional digital marketing outsourcing companies stay on top of Google’s changing algorithm updates to serve their clients better. Content writing services provided by MedResponsive, are designed to engage your target audience and increase web traffic. Discuss your content and digital marketing requirements with us at (800) 941-5527.
by Rajeev R | Last updated Sep 27, 2022 | Published on Sep 26, 2022 | Blog, Google Algorithm Updates
This is an update to the blog July 2022 Google Product Reviews Update Finished Rolling Out
Google has announced on Twitter that it has released the September 2022 product reviews update. This update applies to English-language product reviews. The rollout could take 2 weeks to complete. This fifth version of the Google product reviews update comes soon after releasing its September 2022 core update and before completing it.
In August 2022, Google had said that it would soon roll out an update on fetching high-quality product reviews and this update was finally released on the 20th of September 2022.
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The previous update on product reviews was in July 2022. The first product reviews update was released on April 8, 2021, the second on December 1, 2021, and the third on March 23, 2022.
In tweets, Google has added that
If you see a change and wonder if it’s related to the core update or the product reviews update:
– If you produce product reviews, then it’s probably related to that.
– If not, then it might be related to the core update.
This update can impact your performance in Google Discover and aims to promote high-quality product review pages that share in-depth research. However, it’s not a core update that impacts all search results. Ecommerce sites and product review websites can consider writing reviews with details such as photos and videos, benefits and drawbacks, comparisons with competing products, and other first-hand observations. Google has stated that though the initial rollout will only affect English-language product reviews, this modification may affect people who create product reviews in any language in the future.
Among all these updates, the helpful content update is also taken into consideration. Google’s Danny Sullivan said earlier that the helpful content update will likely get stronger as other types of updates roll out.
Customer Reviews vs. Product Reviews
Feedback and product reviews can add value to businesses, but both are not the same. While customer reviews are feedback from customers regarding the buying experience, a product review is a review of the item purchased, not the seller or the purchasing experience.
September 2022 Core Update Impacts
The September 2022 core update has not fully completed but it’s mostly done. Reports now highlight that though this core update hit fast, it was not as impactful as the earlier May 2022 core update.
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Search Engine Land reports that the Semrush sensor data noticed increase in rank volatility with the September 2022 core update, relative to pre-update volatility fall off 53% as compared to the May 2022 Core Update.
Google updates make sure that websites create quality content for people and enhance user experience. Professional content writing services can support businesses in creating unique and informative content that can increase web traffic.
An experienced search engine optimization company in the U.S., MedResponsive stays up-to-date with all such Google updates and we provide services accordingly. Discuss your content and digital marketing requirements with us at (800) 941-5527.
by Juan Reyes | Last updated Oct 13, 2022 | Published on Sep 16, 2022 | Blog, Google Algorithm Updates
Following the helpful content update that finished rolling out on September 9, the search engine giant released the September 2022 broad core update on September 12. This rollout could take 2 weeks to complete. The official Google list of announced updates has stated that it will take up to two weeks to finish rolling out.
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This is the second broad core update for this year, following the May core update. After the May core update, websites witnessed high volatility and bigger swings. Expect the changes to the algorithm to be seen within the next few days as the changes are rolled out to data centers. Core updates impact Google Discover, feature snippets and more.
Does this core update strengthen helpful content update?
Google has not specified anywhere that the Helpful Content Update is a major part of this September core update. However, many marketers believe that this broad core update picks up the changes and trends after the helpful content update.
In his tweet, Danny Sullivan, public liaison for Search, said that the effects of the helpful content update might become more observable during a core algorithm update.
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The Search Community response generates hope that this update will make the search results better. It is expected that the update will get rid of all the really crappy results that rose to the surface.
Search results may bounce around for the next few weeks. The recommended approach is to be vigilant of any changes in search console but don’t react.
Google has not confirmed how the September 2022 core update impacts the search results (SERPs) around the world and in different languages. Most probably, it will affect search results across most languages, as such updates are more general.
Core updates are a few broad and significant changes to Google’s search algorithms and systems. During these updates, websites may notice gains or drops. These updates are designed to ensure that Google is presenting relevant and authoritative content to searchers. Google has said that the sites that experience drops need not try to fix the wrong things. Moreover, there might not be anything to fix at all. Often, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how Google’s systems assess content overall. These changes may cause some web pages that were previously under-rewarded to do better.
What marketers can better do is to check whether their site content provides complete and original information, and insightful analysis. They should also ensure that the headline and/or page title provides a descriptive, helpful summary of the content and that the headline and/or page title is not exaggerated or shocking in nature. While presenting, check for any spelling issues and check whether there is an excessive number of ads, and how it appears on mobile devices. Also, review Google’s search quality rater guidelines. Above all, benefit from professional content writing services, if you’re outsourcing the task. Experienced digital marketing companies will stay up-to-date with Google algorithm updates and make sure that your websites also meet such standards.
