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September 2022 SEO News Recap

Hennessey Digital
September 30, 2022

by Brian Harnish

Brian Harnish

Brian Harnish

Brian Harnish is Lead SEO at iloveseo.com, Hennessey Digital’s sister site and leading source for SEO industry news, tips, editorials, and more.

Read More About Brian
Contents
  1. Google might remove word count reference in Google Search Console errors
  2. Microdata growth is stagnant overall, reports Google
  3. Google can determine site quality from specific sections
  4. Google's helpful content update: only 20 percent of SEOs noticed ranking changes
  5. Danny Sullivan corroborates the above poll stating that HCU had no real shake-up
  6. Google helpful content update finished September 9th
  7. Google review guidelines update: no incentives to remove negative reviews
  8. Local search ranking update on Google around September 7th
  9. Google reiterates that word count is not a sign of thin or unhelpful content
  10. Google's new HTTPS report adds confusion, could prevent site indexing
  11. Periodic, unannounced product review updates still happening
  12. No, Google is not going to penalize for URLs that are keyword-stuffed
  13. Google releases statement on expertly written content
  14. September product review and core updates finished roll outs on September 26th
  15. Insights from Hennessey Digital's VP of SEO on September Google updates
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This month we return with another Search News Recap, featuring all the news and happenings surrounding the search space in September, 2022.

In September, as expected, we saw the proliferation of additional updates, including product reviews, and core updates, but surprisingly, also we saw the rollout of the unanticipated Google Helpful Content Update.

The HCU is meant to target helpful content in Google’s search results, and we have all the updates and insights here in the Hennessey Digital blog.

So, go ahead and grab that cup of Joe and let’s get rolling with the September 2022 SEO News Recap.

Google might remove word count reference in Google Search Console errors

On September 1st, Barry Schwartz reported that Danny Sullivan reiterated, yet again, that word count is not a ranking factor.

The reference that sparked this question discussion is one in the Google Search Console section with a Google News specific article content error.

This error says that you should ensure that your articles have more than 80 words.

A Sistrix article mentioned this particular word count limit, to which Danny Sullivan retorted that they are incorrect on these recommendations. He recommended evaluating how claims on Google ranking are backed up, and if you find that they are dubious, you may want to reevaluate whether you believe a claim.

Microdata growth is stagnant overall, reports Google

In early September, on the 1st, Ryan Levering, a Googler for over a decade explained on Twitter that Microdata growth has been pretty stagnant.

But, he also said that there was still more visibility of microdata until around last year.

Clearly, Schema.org microdata is not going anywhere. If you find that someone is not taking advantage of it, and you need to convince people to add this to your implementation, this should be a great conversation to reference.

Google can determine site quality from specific sections

Gary Illyes, a highly prominent Googler, hosted a Search Off The Record podcast where he explained that certain sections of your site could be judged for overall site quality.

Glenn Gabe was watching the podcast and reported this over on Twitter:

“Starter Signals -> Via @methode: Google can infer from a site overall which areas they might need to crawl more frequently. E.g. if there’s a blog subdirectory & there are signals that it’s popular/important, then Google might want to crawl there more.

And it’s not just update frequency, it’s also about quality. E.g. if G sees a certain pattern is popular (folder), & people are talking about it & linking to it, then it’s a signal that ppl like that directory.”

Google’s helpful content update: only 20 percent of SEOs noticed ranking changes

Over on seroundtable, Barry Schwartz reported that per a poll from Alyeda Solis, the Google Helpful Content Update was minor. It was not the earth-shattering rankings armageddon that everyone expected.

At the time of the poll, around 20 percent of SEO professionals surveyed said they saw rankings changes after the Google Helpful Content Update.

At the time of this writing, however, the poll’s percentage has increased to around 63.1 percent of SEO professionals who have noticed nothing from the Helpful Content Update.

We can corroborate what Barry says, based on our own review and reading of the search forums out there.

Here is the actual poll, for anyone who might be interested:

Danny Sullivan corroborates the above poll stating that HCU had no real shake-up

The Google Helpful Content update was not without a lot of controversy, with many SEO professionals wondering exactly what Google’s main goal of this update really was. This bewilderment, coupled with the fact that a vast majority of SEO professionals did not see any movement whatsoever based on the above polling, had many SEOs wondering why Google would make a big deal about it.

Danny Sullivan spoke with Glenn Gabe on Twitter about this and had some great insights. He explained the following:

The Helpful Content Update is very big. Big in the sense that it includes guidance that SEO professionals need to pay attention to. However, Danny also clarified that big doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a major shake-up in the search results. He also explained that this is “not the same as everyone claiming it would be a huge shake-up that they didn’t say to expect.”

Additionally, Danny defined the HCU as a “classifier” of high-quality content, and that they would keep refining this “classifier.”

He also explained that “If you went through this initial release and had no change then 1) congrats, lots of content is helpful and that’s probably you or 2) if you do have unhelpful content, you shouldn’t think that we won’t figure that out and consider changing what you’re doing….”

Danny then added: “Maybe the helpful content signal alone wasn’t enough to tip the scales and produce a change in someone’s particular situation, but when we do other updates (core, product reviews), it might add into that and be more significant….”

He also finished up the discussion with: “Beyond that, as we said in our post, we’ll keep refining the classifier. I expect it’s likely if we do a big revision, we’d share about that, release about that and some new forms of unhelpful content would be identified. That’s why we’ve said this is a continuing effort.”

The big bottom line that Danny explained was that “Content producers should review our guidelines and advice about helpful content. If you’re not succeeding, and you’re not following these, that might be something to reconsider:” and he linked to the following page on Google’s search documentation on the topic.

Google helpful content update finished September 9th

The Google Helpful Content Update began its rollout on August 25th, and as Google estimated, took around two weeks to fully complete its rollout. It finally finished on September 9th.

Also, around this time, there were more widespread fluctuations in rankings among many websites, which could have been related.

However, there is no conclusive evidence to support this.

To make matters worse, there was a core update shortly after the HCU on September 12, 2022, which we discuss further on in this SEO News recap.

Google updated its ranking updates page with the fact that the initial rollout of this update actually completed as of September 9, 2022.

Google review guidelines update: no incentives to remove negative reviews

One interesting update that happened to the Google Review Guidelines is that they are barring a business from incentivizing negative reviewers to remove those reviews.

Basically, if you’ve been paying people to remove reviews (or offering some other kind of incentive) this is no longer allowed and could be considered manipulation of Google reviews).

This guideline can be found in the prohibited and restricted content section of their guidelines.

More specifically, this is now categorized as fake engagement and deceptive content that’s no longer allowed by Google.

Local search ranking update on Google around September 7th

Over at the Sterling Sky forums around September 7th, there is a thread of many SEOs discussing significant local search ranking updates on this date.

Joy Hawkins, one of the administrators over at these forums, explained the following about these updates thus far:

I’m hearing a few cases like this lately and I’m starting to wonder if it’s related to the algorithm updates. Analyzing ranking drops is really time consuming and needs a pretty in-depth knowledge of the site, business, and competitors so I’m hesitant to offer advice on this. I would suggest looking to see if their organic ranking dropped as well or if it’s just the local pack rankings.

She also noted:

I think this is the third thread I’ve seen saying they can’t find themselves anywhere.

Is the listing still live on Maps? If so, can you link to it?

Can you confirm the last date you saw yourself ranking for the keywords you’re referring to?

Joy also noted that she has seen these drops for Sterling Sky’s listing:

I wanted to add that I’m actually seeing this as well for Sterling Sky’s listing. We don’t really care about our GBP much because it’s not how we get clients so I don’t often pay attention to it. We had it get suspended a little over a month ago and what was odd was that when I filled in the reinstatement form, the support team acted confused when they responded to me and said the listing was live (but it absolutely was suspended – I have the email alert telling me so).

Google reiterates that word count is not a sign of thin or unhelpful content

Barry Schwartz reported that Google’s John Mueller explained – yet again – on Twitter that word count is not a sign that a page has thin content.

Basically, John said that as the expert on your site’s topic, you should be able to make a qualified call on what’s helpful for your users (or isn’t helpful).

This tweet was triggered by another tweet by someone who talked to another SEO pro who had removed 50 percent of their pages that were considered low quality.

The SEO’s thinking was that any page with less than 1,000 words was getting cut.

The end result of this removal of supposedly thin content was a 60 percent organic traffic loss.

Here is the conversation over on Twitter:

Google’s new HTTPS report adds confusion, could prevent site indexing

September also saw the release of a brand-new report in Google’s Search Console: the new HTTPS report.

You can read Google’s official announcement about the new report.

It’s worth noting that one of the warnings generated by this report is pretty confusing and could lead to your site not getting indexed if you follow the warning.

John Mueller explained that this particular warning is really only an FYI and not quite as scary as it’s presented.

There are many tweets and discussions on a wide variety of forums about this particular error.

John also clarified something about HTTPS, saying:

The following includes Glenn Gabe’s analysis of “HTTPS not evaluated” and what the error actually means. He also notes that this particular error is causing mass confusion for site owners and SEO professionals alike.

Periodic, unannounced product review updates still happening

Earlier in September, Danny Sullivan reiterated that product review updates are still periodic refresh updates.

Just like Core Updates, Google is going to run these frequently. And they are likely not to be announced like Core Updates, or like Product Review updates have been announced in the past.

No, Google is not going to penalize for URLs that are keyword-stuffed

Over on Twitter, John Mueller reiterated that Google will not penalize URLs for keyword stuffing.

John explained that, essentially, doing this is not going to have any effect, positive or negative when it comes to search engines.

However, it is still good practice to mention your keywords in the URL, but the effect is minimal. Focusing on keywords in URLs is oftentimes the wrong prioritization.

Google releases statement on expertly written content

Over on Twitter, John Mueller discussed the fact that if you’re unable to tell that your content is expertly written, then it’s likely not.

For further context: if your content does not look like it was written by an expert, then it very likely is not written by an expert.

Making sure that your content is expertly written helps search engines understand it even better.

And making sure that your content is of high enough quality is also part of that expectation.

So, if you’re writing content for users and search engines, make sure your content has that extra air of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness that’s worthy of being included in a search engine.

September product review and core updates finished roll outs on September 26th

Google launched the September Core Update shortly after the major Helpful Content Update. As predicted by our own iloveseo.com author Brian Harnish, it launched around September 12th:

Finally, the Core Update rollout was completed around September 26th.

The Google Product Review Update for September 2022 also launched around September 20th and took about six days to roll out. It was fully completed on September 26th as well.

These updates were pretty large updates by their nature, and many many sites were very likely impacted.

Twitter user Glenn Gabe had the following insights into the product review update for September:

Insights from Hennessey Digital’s VP of SEO on September Google updates

Steve reported on Google’s September 2022 updates in his post on the Hennessey Blog that “Hennessey Digital saw a few of our clients experience a slight dip in site rankings on or around the release of this update.”

Dip in organic rankings after the Sept. 12th Google Core Update

He also reported that in spite of the latest September updates, our client’s local SEO continued to remain in strong standings.

In addition, around September 12th, Hennessey Digital also noted significant increases in organic rankings for several clients after the Core Update rolled out:

Spike in organic rankings after the September 12th Google Core Update

As Steve notes:

“At Hennessey Digital, the SEO team monitors our clients’ organic search results daily to make sure no opportunity is missed to rank higher in search. Tracking algorithm updates matters because we need to know if (and when) any of our clients are affected. What’s more, it is crucial to understand how these changes will affect your business moving forward.”

As usual, September has seen a large quantity of search news and updates, and it’s not expected to end anytime soon.

That’s why you can count on us to keep you informed on the news that counts.

We will see you all next month for October’s Search News Recap!!

Brian Harnish

Brian Harnish

Brian Harnish is Lead SEO at iloveseo.com, Hennessey Digital’s sister site and leading source for SEO industry news, tips, editorials, and more.

Read More About Brian

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