The Featured Snippet is the official SEO newsletter of Performics, dedicated to keeping you up to date with the latest SEO industry news, trends, and events. See below for the latest version of The Featured Snippet:
In the January 2023 issue of The Featured Snippet:
In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an AI language model that responds to questions with human-like answers. ChatGPT can execute a number of tasks, such as answering questions, creating long-form content (such as an email or essay), marking up code, or even changing formatting. Additionally, ChatGPT has a number of implications for SEO, including the ability to create AI generated content, perform keyword research, and create code for technical SEO. However, ChatGPT’s AI generated tasks still require substantial oversight by SEO professionals.
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In response to the popularity of ChatGPT, Google reached out to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin so they could approve plans to add chatbot features to Google. ChatGPT is forcing Google to explore new methods of incorporating AI into its search algorithm, due to the potential impact that ChatGPT could have on how people search for information.
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Following Google and Microsoft’s efforts, Chinese search engine Baidu plans to release its first AI chatbot in the near future. The search engine plans to launch first as an app, with plans to merge it into search by March 2023. Deep learning model ERNIE will serve as the foundation for the new chatbot.
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NeevaAI launched on January 6 as an alternative AI chatbot to ChatGPT. NeevaAI promises to deliver “Powerful AI, Cutting-edge LLMs”, and it also promises to deliver authoritative answers as a competitive edge to ChatGPT. This new chatbot is now live.
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Microsoft Bing announced that it will be integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology into its search engine Bing in March. The integration will allow Bing to answer questions with complete sentences instead of providing a list of links.
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The Google Chrome Team has announced that they have made new recommendations for optimizing Core Web Vitals. The new recommendations will help users prioritize which Core Web Vitals would be best to fix, while considering “real-world impact, and what would be realistic for most developers.”
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Gary Illyes, a member of the Search Relations team at Google shared valuable insights on robots.txt, semantic HTML, and rel-canonical. The highlights from these insights are that robots.txt files should be kept under 500KB, website redesigns can cause your site’s rankings to be unpredictable, and relative paths should not be used in your rel-canonical.
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Apple Maps has relaunched a service called Apple Business Contact, that’s similar to Google’s Google Business Profile service. Apple Business Contact is a free tool where businesses can customize how their information shows on Apple Maps (photos, hours, logos, offering promotions, etc.)
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Over the past couple of weeks, Yahoo has been posting hints that they’ll return to search. Via tweets and job listings, Yahoo search is making a comeback. However, there is no hint on a date when they’ll fully come back.
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There has been a leak of Yandex’s ranking factors. There are almost 2,000 factors included in this leak, including number of unique visitors, text relevancy, and more. However, just because these factors show on Yandex, Google’s are different.
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