Search Engine Land » SEO » SEO Review 2022: E-E-A-T, ChatGPT, Search Essentials and More
As 2022 proved once again, SEO is never boring.
Was 2022 the year of AI, or perhaps the official start of the age of AI? Over the past month, it’s been hard not to read or resist the temptation to spend hours playing with ChatGPT.
We also had our usual share of algorithm updates, new tools and features, acquisitions and many more changes.
One constant through it all? For 16 years, Search Engine Land has covered all the biggest stories, just like we did again in 2022.
Here’s our look back at the biggest SEO news of 2022 – from Google and other search engines, tool providers and the community.
Google news
Contents
Google Search Essentials and more documentation changes
Google made a major update to their webmaster guidelines from 20 years ago and also renamed them Google Search Essentials. The updated guidelines were streamlined, simplified and updated “to ensure people have clear guidance on how to create sites that serve people well.”
While Search Essentials was the biggest of Google’s documentation updates in 2022, there were many more.
Google has updated several feature guides help documents:
Also, not long after a study by SEO tool company Ahrefs showed that half of GSC’s clicks were for hidden terms, Google removed the language from its performance report help document (search) and called Search Console’s hidden query data “very rare.”
In other documentation changes, Google:
E-E-A-T and the QRG
Google’s Quality Ranking Guidelines (QRG) for search have been updated twice this year: once in July and once in December.
Lily Ray provided her usual excellent details of what changed in both QRG updates.
For the July update (Google Search Quality Assessor Guidelines Update: What’s Changed), Google reworded its definition of YMYL, revamped its definition of low-quality pages, and much month
And as Ray discussed in the December update (E-E-A-T and major updates to Google’s Quality Ranking Guidelines):
“The addition of ‘expertise’ indicates that content quality can also be assessed through the lens of understanding the extent to which the content creator has first-hand experience of the subject matter.”
With this rethinking of E-E-A-T, Google also claims that “trust” is at the heart of this concept and is the “most important member of the E-E-A-T family”.
Before E-A-T became E-E-A-T, we learned from Google that E-A-T stands for “good content quality.”
“E-A-T is a template for how we rate an individual site. We do it on every query and every result. It’s pervasive in everything we do,” according to Hyung-Jin Kim, vice president of search at Google, who spoke at SMX Next in november Dig deeper: 7 takeaways from the SMX Next keynote with Hyung-Jin Kim, VP of Search at Google.
While it’s definitely not new, it’s always good for SEO professionals to understand why Google does the things it does.
Continuous scroll, multisearch, featured snippets and more search feature changes
Google is constantly testing its SERPs, all in the name of making sure users have a great experience and find the information or answer they’re looking for.
One of the biggest changes was that Google brought continuous (don’t call it infinite!) scrolling to the desktop earlier this month. Yes, it’s officially time to retire the term “Google Page 2” and focus on position when talking about rankings.
Another significant change was multi-search: search by image and then add text to that specific image search.
Google played around with featured snippets this year, testing “From the web” and “Other sites say” in featured snippets, as well as showing two or more featured snippets.
For feature snippets, Google now uses MUM to determine if there is general consensus for the information. Google also reported that MUM helped reduce false premise results by 40%
Also worth noting: A SERP analysis found that People Also Ask appears 10 times more than Featured Snippets. PAA was also in the news because people also ask that it appeared half as often in Google Search, but then it went back to normal.
Rich FAQ results also gained significant Google SERP visibility.
Oh, and if you’re ever having trouble keeping track of all the parts that make up Google’s user interface, Google released a visual gallery documenting 22 elements.
Here are even more features that were added or tested in Google search results in 2022:
Algorithm updates
In 2022, there were 10 confirmed Google algorithm updates:
At SMX Next, we learned from Google’s Kim that Google’s Panda algorithm evolved into a new algorithm called Coati. While this was new information about something quite old in the world of Google’s algorithm, it was still an interesting discovery.
Also, Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google no longer uses the 2010 and 2018 page speed signals. They were replaced by Core Web Vitals.
We also learned from a document Google released to the US Copyright Office that Google’s pirated update can cause an 89% drop in search traffic for offending sites.
In November, Google published a paper on its remarkable ranking systems, which included algorithms that are no longer used for ranking or have been incorporated into new systems.
Google also introduced a new “algorithmic improvement” to how it selects titles for search result snippets for multilingual or transliterated titles or when the title element is written in a different language or script than its content.
Read Barry Schwartz’s recap for an in-depth look at the year in algorithm updates. And be sure to check out our Google Algorithm Update History page for all our latest news and guidance on the latest algorithm updates.
AI & machine learning
ChatGPT was all the talk in the SEO world in the final weeks of 2022. And you can bet we’ll be hearing more about the (and other) exciting AI technologies in 2023, especially with GTP-4 not far behind.
No doubt many sites will try to mass produce content using AI tools. Just be careful: Google warned earlier this year that Google doesn’t want your content to spam AI-generated SEO.
Which was kind of ironic, considering you could theoretically use Google Docs to write your meta descriptions. And surprisingly, they weren’t that bad.
Google also detailed how it uses artificial intelligence in Google Search. Another way Google was considering using AI was to update business hours on local listings. Google also formally introduced SpamBrain, its AI-based spam prevention system, which launched in 2018.
And despite the many positive and exciting ways AI can be used, there’s always a dark side, as we reported in Beware of Fake DMCA Link Requests by AI-Generated Lawyers.
Local search
Lots of local search news in 2022: New attributes, review issues, Google Business Profile changes, and scams were among the top headlines:
Google Business Profile, Maps and Reviews:
More Google news
Microsoft Bing
IndexNow
Microsoft Bing continued to push its IndexNow initiative, adding joint URL sharing with Yandex, and announced in August that more than 16 million websites were using it (publishing more than 1.2 billion URLs per day in the IndexNow API), as well as adding multiple new integrations:
More Microsoft Bing news
In case you missed all the thousands of reminders to adopt Google Analytics 4 so far, now is the time to adopt GA4. Because Universal Analytics ceases to exist on July 1, 2023. I hope you’re ready.
In a bit of a rebrand, Google Data Studio was renamed Looker Studio. Google said it was “unifying” Google’s business intelligence products, including the popular Google Data Studio product, “under the Looker umbrella.”
Google Search Console
Google Search Console got a lot of new features: tools, features, and reporting improvements. Here are the links to our coverage:
Back in December, we reported on an experimental feature called Content Ideas. Days later, we learned that the Question Hub was closing. Coincidence? Maybe we’ll find out in 2023.
GSC also had its fair share of bug reports and other issues in 2022:
We also said a final goodbye to the URL parameters tool, which Google said had a “low value,” the old message board, and the international targeting report.
And have you received one of those intrusive GSC interstitial warnings?
Acquisitions in the SEO space
At the start of 2022, it looked like we were in for a busy year of acquisitions. Things slowed down towards the middle of the year, but check out the top changes we saw this year with some of the biggest SEO tech companies:
Moz deindexed
A DMCA request removed the Moz SEO tool from Google search for just under 12 hours. Getting removed from Google search for your brand term is the stuff of SEO nightmares, no matter how long it lasts.
Zero-Clicks: an alternative view
Semrush published an interesting study on zero-click searches. It found that 25.6% of desktop searches and 17.3% of mobile searches were zero-click, much lower than the previous, let’s call it “suspicion” – zero-click research.
Other search engines
Ahrefs made big news when it revealed details about its own general-purpose search engine, Yep. While not a Google killer, more alternative search engines is a good thing.
Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo, the best-known privacy search engine, seemed to continue its steady growth, finally surpassing 100 billion searches in January. Until April. That’s when DuckDuckGo fell below 100 million average daily searches per day. And in the months since, DuckDuckGo has been unable to return to that level.
In memoriam
In 2022, we lost influential SEO pioneer and expert Bill Slawski on May 17th. He was best known for helping the community make sense of search patents, primarily at SEO By The Sea. Fortunately, this treasure trove of information lives on, after being briefly taken offline. After his death, we also discovered some Google search results for [Bill Slawski obituary].
Another incredibly sad loss was Tatiana Perebeinis, SE Ranking’s Chief Accountant, who was one of four people killed in a Russian attack in Irpin, Ukraine.
SMX Advanced & Next
This year we held two digital events: SMX Advanced in June and SMX Next in November. Both shows were full of actionable SEO tips and insights.
Below are links to our coverage of the Advanced SEO track.
And you can expect to read a lot of coverage of the SMX Next SEO track in the coming weeks in Search Engine Land.
SEO in 2023
As we look ahead, here’s what we know:
Unless you plan to abandon Google Analytics, you need to fully accept and adopt GA4, because the current GA is going away in July. What if you haven’t migrated yet? It will cost you more to compare year-on-year data. Also: Make sure you save all the historical GA data you need, because Google will delete it all. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Should I be excited or terrified about ChatGPT? Yes. I mean, it depends. Just remember that ChatGPT is only useful for stuff until 2021. But GPT-4 is coming soon.
With the rise of AI tools, it will be interesting to see how Google responds to what could be a flood of AI-generated duplicate content. If that happens, spoiler: it won’t go well for these sites. Because there are many tools that are good at detecting AI content, and Google is well aware of what’s going on.
We also know that there will be updates to Google’s algorithms. Google has confirmed 10 major updates in 2021 and 2022. We know there will be core updates and probably more with the useful content update. And when it happens, Search Engine Land will be the first to report it.
Danny Goodwin is the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land & SMX. In addition to writing daily about SEO, PPC and more for Search Engine Land, Goodwin also manages Search Engine Land’s list of subject matter experts. He also helps schedule our conference series, SMX – Search Marketing Expo.
