Are you pressed for time and would love to catch up on all the marketing news in less than 5 minutes? We are back with our monthly round-up where we cover the latest developments in Digital Marketing. This month’s highlights include major changes to Mobile Search, September core algorithm update, form tracking improvements in Google Analytics 4, local search updates to enhance the way people search for restaurants, explore cities/landmarks and more.

So, let’s dive right in to see all that has transpired in the world of Marketing during September month.

New Search Console Merchant Listings Report released by Google

Sites which use structured data will also benefit from rich product experiences in Google search results, therefore you no longer need to be in the Google Merchant Center.

Google is extending the usage of Product structured data to individuals who are eligible for improved product experiences in Google Search. Google has also provided new Search Console tools to track the effectiveness of your structured data and detect any anomalies.

Why should we care?

Your products may now appear in more places and in a richer way than they used to be, if you sell products but do not use Google Merchant Center. To take advantage of this, make sure you utilize product structured data and/or Merchant Center.

Seven Local Search Updates Released by Google

Google’s released seven updates pertaining to local search at its annual Search On virtual conference. These changes will substantially improve how people use Google Search to discover cities, organizations, and food courts.

The upcoming local search changes will be comprising these changes:

• Restaurants can be searched by dish, restaurant specialties can be identified, more assistance with virtual menus, Google Maps Live View improvements, aerial shots of well-known landmarks, Explore neighborhood and immersive view.

Google Launched the Broad Core Update September 2022

The September 2022 wide core update, the second broad core update of 2022 (the first was the May 2022 broad core release), is now complete.

Do we need to worry?

Every time Google makes changes to its search ranking algorithms, your website’s performance in the search results may improve or deteriorate.

Any update that Google releases allows us to use it as a reference point to check whether changes made to our website prior to the update are yielding results or not.

We now know that Google will be launching a core ranking update, so over the following few weeks, keep a close eye on your metrics and positions.

Google Released the New HTTPS report in Search Console

This updated report now explains why certain pages are not addressed via HTTPS. Within the Google Search Console, Google has released a new HTTPS report which not only lists the URLs that are served over HTTPS but also explains why the webpages that are not being served via HTTPS are experiencing problems.

How the report appears? The number of non-HTTPS URLs and the number of HTTPS URLs are shown in this snapshot of the HTTPS report, with the non-HTTPS Pages shown in red and the number of HTTPS Pages shown in green.

Source: https://developers.google.com/

How can it benefit us?

We appreciate newly updated reports, and this one definitely qualifies. We can not only view which of our webpages Google is providing through HTTPS vs. HTTP, but we can also find out why Google isn’t using HTTPS for all of your pages. Following that, we can explore more to identify the solution.

Major Changes Coming to Mobile Search Results Released by Google

Google said that it will be updating the mobile search bar in the next months with improvements that will make it easier for users to get more pertinent results at its Search On conference on September 28.

With Google Search Shortcuts, Enhanced Query Refinements, Results in The Search Bar, & Google Web Stories, the way Google serves results on mobile devices is going to change, becoming ever more visual with a stronger focus on photos & videos.

Online Discussions & Forums Are Now Being Highlighted in Google Search Results

Google is introducing a new feature that spotlights what users are discussing about a subject in web forums and discussions in search results.

English-speaking mobile users in the US will soon be able to use a new search option that includes links to several forum postings. You will now see links to other posts and articles with users sharing their individual experiences in addition to the existing web results.

According to Google, when it discovers which recommendations are most helpful to users, it may improve the discussions and forums functionality in the future.

Google is attempting to use machine translation to offer translated news reports. The introduction of machine translation for news content is planned for 2023 on desktop and mobile devices.

September 2022 Product Reviews Update Launched by Google

On 20, September 2022 at approx. 4 am ET, Google launched the fifth iteration of the Google product reviews update, which is titled September 2022 product reviews update.

A change to the search ranking system that ranks web pages with product reviews in the order is most beneficial to searchers. The Google product reviews update seeks to highlight product review content that is superior to most of the generic reviews which we encounter online. According to Google, it will prioritize these product reviews in the order of search results.

Why should we care?

If the content on our site includes product reviews, we should check our rankings to determine if they have changed. Moving forward, our product review articles need to feature far more effort and insights so that it stands out from the others on the internet.

Google Product Review & Broad Core Updates Finish Rolling Out

The September 2022 core update started to roll out a couple of weeks ago on 12th of September. A week later, on September 20, the product review update was released.

On 26th September 2022, both updates finished rolling out, which was great if you want to quickly evaluate their effects.

What are we supposed to do now?

It’s time to evaluate our website’s positions and traffic stats in order to evaluate the impact of the updates. If there are any minor/ major changes, one or both the updates can probably be the cause of it.

Google Analytics 4 Update: New Enhanced Measurement option for Form Interactions

GA4 also received an update last month and this was a welcome one. You can now see when a user first started to interact with a form during a session in addition to previously available form submit event that captured when a form had been submitted. Following events would be available in our reports if we enable ‘Form interactions’ enhanced measurement option:

‘form_start’: the first time a user interacts with a form in a session

‘form_submit’: when the user submits a form

You can read the announcement from Google here and the detailed description of the events and configurable parameters on this page.

And, with this, we have covered all the Significant SEO industry highlights for September 2022. We hope you found this month’s roundup useful. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletters to receive all the latest updates on emerging SEO industry news delivered to your inbox.

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