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 March 2023 issue of The Featured Snippet:
The March 2023 Google broad update started on March 15, 2023 and finished rolling out on March 28. This is the first core update of 2023, and it focuses on improving the relevance and quality of search results by attempting to understand user intent. For users that were affected, Google offered a list of questions to consider to ensure that your site is meeting quality guidelines.
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On March 28, Google announced that it was rolling out 3 new features: āAbout this resultā, āPerspectivesā, and āAbout this authorā, in addition to providing easier access for āAbout this pageā. āPerspectivesā now appears as a carousel below āTop Storiesā, and it showcases journalistic insights. āAbout this resultā gives users information on where the information comes from. āAbout this authorā offers information about the background and experience of the author of a particular search.
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On February 7, 2023, Microsoft launched the new version of Bing, with aspects of the AI chatbot ChatGPT incorporated into the search engine. Since then, Bing traffic has increased by 15.4% while Google traffic has dropped by 2.4%. Google continues to be the dominant search engine.
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Between March 3 and March 27, 2023, Bing Webmaster Tools reported losing a weekās worth of data in its reporting tool. The error has since been fixed, and users can now download the missing data for the Bing Webmaster Tools API. Users who rely on Bing Webmaster Tools may want to check on whether their data was affected.
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On March 21, 2023, Google added a new ranking section to the search status dashboard to include information on ranking updates, both historical and current. According to Google, the new section āwill show the active March 2023 core update, plus history up to 2020ā.
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As of March 6, 2023, Google launched blue highlights in its featured snippets. The highlights are meant to help users easily identify the source of the featured snippet content. Not every featured snippet is currently getting blue highlights, but the feature is prevalent.
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On March 8, 2023, Google rolled out 3 new search result features: site name, favicon, and sponsored labels. The feature was originally tested in October 2022, but it is now available widely. Google has provided instructions on how to control these three features for your siteās SERP result, including site name structured data and favicon guidelines.
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Bard is Googleās version of a chat solution like ChatGPT that users can now sign up to join the waitlist at http://bard.google.com/ if you are based in the US or UK. Itās not yet clear on when itāll be released to the public.
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Google has launched a new portal for Google Trends. Some new features for the update to the Google Trends portal include real time trends that show on the homepage, as well as links to published news articles to help you learn more about that specific trending topic.
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Google Search Console breaks out Merchant listings and Product snippets appearances
Google announced that in Google Search Console, Merchant listings and Product snippets have been split into individual sections where you can view clicks/impressions for each. Previously both were merged and listed only as āProduct listingsā, and you werenāt able to dive deeper for more detailed information. Making these separate allows users to get more information and analyze what they can do better.
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Core Web Vitals report within Google Search Console updated
Google announced that more URLs will be reported on in the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console. Due to a change in the URL grouping,URLs that were previously not reported on will now be shown in this report. Users may see a change in the number of URLs due to this addition, however it will provide more opportunities to help you analyze and provide a better user experience.
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