Search Engine Land » SEO » SEO 2022 in Review: 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 age of AI has officially dawned? For the past month it has been hard not to read or avoid the temptation to spend hours playing with ChatGPT.
We’ve 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 in 2022.
Here’s our look at the biggest SEO news of 2022 – from Google and other search engines, tool vendors and the community.
Contents
Google news
Google Search Essentials and more documentation changes
Google has done a major refresh of its 20-year-old Webmaster Guidelines and has also renamed them Google Search Essentials. The updated guidelines have been simplified, simplified and updated “to ensure that people have clear guidance on how to build websites that serve people well”.
While Search Essentials was the biggest update to Google’s documentation in 2022, there were many more.
Google has updated several Feature Guide help documents:
Also, shortly after a study by SEO tools company Ahrefs showed that half of GSC clicks go to hidden terms, Google removed language in its Performance Report (Search) help document calling hidden Search Console query data “very rare.”
In other documentation changes, Google:
E-E-A-T and the QRG
Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines (QRG) for search have been updated twice this year – once in July and then again in December.
Lily Ray provided her usual excellent overviews of what changed in both QRG updates.
For the July update (Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines Update: What’s Changed), Google reworked its definition of YMYL, overhauled its definition of low-quality pages, and more
And as Ray covered in the December update (E-E-A-T and major updates to Google’s QA guidelines):
“The addition of ‘experience’ indicates that content quality can also be judged through the lens of understanding the extent to which the content creator has first-hand experience in the subject.
With this reshaping of E-E-A-T, Google also states that “trust” is at the heart of this concept and that it 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 quality content”.
“E-A-T is a template for how we rate an individual site. We do this for every single query and every single result. It’s pervasive in every single thing we do,” said Hyung-Jin Kim, vice president of search, Google, speaking at SMX Next in November. Dig deeper: In 7 excerpts from the SMX Next keynote with Hyung-Jin Kim, VP of Search at Google.
While this is 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 answers they’re looking for.
One of the biggest changes was that Google brought continuous scrolling (don’t call it infinite!) to the desktop earlier this month. Yes, it’s officially time to retire the term “Page 2 of Google” – and focus on position when talking about rankings.
Another notable change is multi-search – searching by image and then adding text to that specific image search.
Google has played around with featured snippets this year, testing “From the web” and “Other websites 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 a general consensus for the information. Google also reported that MUM helped reduce false premise results by 40%
Also of note: SERP analysis revealed that people also asking appear 10x more than featured snippets. PAA was also in the news because people also wonder appeared half as often in Google search, but later returned to normal.
FAQ rich results also gained significant Google SERP visibility.
Oh, and if you ever have trouble keeping track of all the pieces that make up Google’s user interface, Google has launched a visual gallery documenting the 22 elements.
Here’s a look at even more features being added or tested in Google’s 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 has evolved into a new algorithm called Coati. Although this was new information about something quite old in the world of Google algorithms, it was still an interesting discovery.
Also, Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google is no longer using page speed signals from 2010 and 2018. They were replaced by Core Web Vitals.
We also learned, via a document released by Google to the US Copyright Office, that Google’s Pirate Update can cause search traffic to drop by 89% on offending websites.
In November, Google published a document on its significant ranking systems, which includes algorithms that are no longer used for ranking or have been incorporated into new systems.
Google also introduced a new “algorithmic improvement” to the way it selects titles for search result snippets for multilingual or transliterated titles, or where a title element is written in a different language or script than its content.
Read Barry Schwartz’s recap for a deeper dive into the year in algorithm updates. And be sure to check out our Google Algorithm Update History page for all our latest news and guidance around the latest algorithm updates.
AI & machine learning
ChatGPT has been the talk of the SEO world in the final weeks of 2022. And you can bet we’ll be hearing more about (and other) exciting AI technologies in 2023, especially with GTP-4 just around the corner.
No doubt many sites will try to mass produce content using AI tools. Just be careful – earlier this year, Google warned that Google doesn’t want your AI-generated SEO spam content.
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 thinking about using artificial intelligence was to update business hours in local listings. Google also officially unveiled SpamBrain, its AI-based spam prevention system launched in 2018.
And despite the many positive and exciting uses of AI, 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 headlines:
Google Business Profile, Maps and Reviews:
More Google news
Microsoft Bing
IndexNow
Microsoft Bing continued to promote its IndexNow initiative, adding shared URL sharing with Yandex, announcing in August that more than 16 million websites use it (publishing more than 1.2 billion URLs per day to the IndexNow API), as well as adding more 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 will cease to exist on July 1, 2023. We hope you’re ready.
In a strange little rebranding, Google Data Studio has been 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 has had many new additions – tools, features and reporting improvements. Here are links to our coverage:
In December, we reported on an experimental feature called Content Ideas. A few days later, we learned that Question Hub was closing. Coincidence? Maybe we’ll find out in 2023.
GSC also had its fair share of reported bugs and other issues in 2022:
We also finally said goodbye to the URL parameters tool, which Google said had “low value”, the old message board and the international targeting report.
And did you get one of those intrusive interstitial notifications from GSC?
Acquisitions in the SEO space
At the beginning of 2022, it looked like we were in for a busy year of acquisitions. Things slowed down around the middle of the year, but check out the top changes we’ve seen this year at some of the biggest SEO tech companies:
Moz deindexed
The DMCA request removed SEO tool Moz from Google search for just under 12 hours. Getting removed from Google search for your branded term is the stuff of SEO nightmares, no matter how long it takes.
Zero-Clicks: an alternative view
Semrush published an interesting study on click-free searches. It found that 25.6% of desktop searches and 17.3% of mobile searches were click-free, which is much less than the previous – let’s call it “suspicious” – click-free survey.
Other search engines
Ahrefs made big news when it revealed details about its own general purpose search engine, Yep. While it’s not a Google killer, more alternative browsers is a good thing.
Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo, the most famous privacy search engine, seems to be continuing its steady growth, finally passing 100 billion searches in January. Until April. Then DuckDuckGo dropped below 100 million daily average 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 come up with search patents, mostly on SEO By The Sea. Fortunately, that treasure trove of information lives on, after being briefly shut down. After his death, we also discovered some disturbing Google search results for [Bill slawski’s obituary].
Another incredibly sad loss was that of Tatiana Perebeinis, Chief Accountant of SE Ranking, who was one of four people killed in the 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 packed with useful SEO tips and insights.
Below are links to our SEO tape coverage from Advanced.
And you can expect to read a lot of content on the SEO trail from SMX Next on Search Engine Land in the coming weeks.
SEO in 2023
As we look ahead, here’s what we know:
Unless you plan to abandon Google Analytics, you must accept and fully adopt GA4 – as the current GA expires in July. And if you haven’t migrated yet? It will be extra difficult for you to compare data from year to year. Also: make sure you save any historical GA data you need, because Google will delete it all. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Should you be excited or horrified by ChatGPT? Yes. I mean, it depends. Just remember, 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 potentially be a deluge of duplicate AI-generated content. If it does happen, spoiler: it won’t go well for those sites. Because there are many tools that are good at AI content discovery – and Google is well aware of what’s going on.
We also know that there will be updates to the Google algorithm. Google has confirmed 10 big updates in 2021 and 2022. We know there will be core updates and probably more with useful content updates. And when it does, Search Engine Land will be the first to report it.
Danny Goodwin is 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 program our conference series, SMX – Search Marketing Expo.
