With the ever-changing landscape of SEO, each new month leads the way to news and updates from the SEO industry and these affect your business in various ways. To stay up to date with the latest SEO trends, you either need to read a lot or subscribe to various newsletters.

If you haven’t been able to catch up with the most recent updates, we have compiled a comprehensive roundup of all the important news & updates around Search Engine Optimization from the month of July’22

Also visit our SEO series for detailed insight into SEO updates [like a core algorithm update or indexing anomalies], tips, actionable strategies, and step-by-step guides.

For now, let us discuss the most recent updates as we share our take on them.

Product Reviews Update July 2022 released by Google

The new iteration of Google’s product reviews update has now started to roll out. This release to the search ranking algorithm aims to rank product review-related information on the web which is most beneficial and valuable to users.

Implications:

In case the content on your website includes product reviews, you should check your current positions to determine if they have changed. In the future, you shall invest much more consideration and work into the products review data to make them distinctive and differentiate yourself from other sites.

Now Verify your Property in Google Search Console using CNAME DNS verification

A new method of verifying your website property in Google Search Console was announced by Google. Google Search Console will now support DNS CNAME verification method as well, the search engine acknowledged on Twitter.

In case your websites require you to use canonical name records, then moving forward you’ll be able to verify your site using this method too, along with all the other verification methods.

A Large Number of Websites are Getting Affected by Indexing Issues – Google Confirmed

If you are not getting much traffic for newly published posts, you’re not alone. In the middle of July, Google acknowledged that it was experiencing trouble indexing fresh content and showing it in Google News and Google Search. These indexing problems were addressed on 16^th of July and declared fixed by Google:

We fixed the issue with indexing. There will be no more updates. ^gi

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) July 16, 2022

However, as Barry Swartz first noted on 9^th of August, Google had an outage caused by a data center fire on 8^th of August which has led to various complaints regarding indexing issues and old pages, once in prominent positions, not ranking anymore.

According to individual accounts, things are coming back to normal, though it may take some time.

Title Tag Guidelines Clarified by Google

Google has recently revised the Search Central rules which govern how title tags are displayed in search results. The update clarified and eliminated numerous inconsistencies in the terminology which made the guidelines difficult to understand without altering the guideline itself.

Issue Affecting Ads & Analytics Reporting is Confirmed by Google

According to Google, there is an issue which is affecting the reporting for all Ads & Analytics services. There is no information as of now, on a fix being forthcoming for the bug. The issue was confirmed by Ginny Marvin from Google’s Ads Liaison, on July 15 and declared fixed for the most part on July 16^th with an exception of GA4 data.

The issue with Google ads products is resolved: There were reporting delays, but ads continued to serve & performance data is now available. Advertisers using Smart Bidding should not apply data exclusions. Also, UA data is fully restored; GA4 data will be fully restored soon.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) July 16, 2022

Google Search Console Insights are Now Available for GA4 Properties

By enabling Google Analytics 4 (GA4) properties compliant with Search Console Insights, Google eliminates a constraint of GA4 property.

Search Console Insights gives you a comprehensive insight of how users find your content online by analyzing data collected from Search Console and Google Analytics.

Have a GA4 property but couldn’t use it with Search Console Insights? Now you can! We are rolling out GA4 support, check it out! https://t.co/XTwC0VhfIW— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) July 6, 2022

Revised Guidelines for Course Structured Data Requirements by Google

Google revised the guidelines for featuring in the Course rich results using structured data. If the standards are not met, you might not be eligible for the rich results.

Review Your Structured Data

Reviewing the present structured data on the sites to confirm the presence of at least three courses marked up and that the Carousel markup is also utilized may be beneficial if the Course structured data has previously failed to appear in rich results.

Tips for Ecommerce Search Results by Google

Google has recently released a video with some suggestions for how to qualify e-commerce websites for enhanced search result displays.

Three crucial components that make e-commerce product pages shine out were first highlighted in the video:

• Images assists website users in understanding products
• Star ratings foster confidence
• Price & availability aids buyers in choosing among the sellers.

To qualify for enriched listings, some of those components need product structured data, while others need Google’s Merchant Center Feed.

Return Period Now Appears in Search Results Snippets

The specified period you must return the goods to a seller once you buy them, is now shown by Google right in the rich results snippet. It will appear in search results as “x-day returns” and can be found just under the primary rich snippet.

Performance Max & Smart Shopping data will now appear in GA4 Property

Under the Cross Network channel grouping, marketers will be able to monitor and track on Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns.

Why should we care?

A major part of digital marketers is not very excited about the GA4 launch. This combined with Performance Max’s ambiguity will leave marketers feeling rather disappointed. Though the introduction of this data brings us closer to having complete visibility, we still need to watch how the data is collected and presented.

And with that our July’22 SEO news round-up comes to a close, hope you found this month’s round-up of latest news & updates from SEO industry useful. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to get upcoming updates from the search engine optimization industry delivered directly to your inbox. Contact our team with any queries, for in-depth website assessment, and 1 on 1 consultations to discuss your digital strategy.

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