Weekly SEO Updates June 17 - June 23
Google has launched a new report within Google Search Console to see how well you perform with the INP, Interaction to Next Paint, Core Web Vital metric. As a reminder, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace First Input Delay (FID) as a metric for Core Web Vitals in March 2024.
Google launched this new report today to allow site owners to prepare for the upcoming change.
What the report looks like. Here is a screenshot of the report:
INP (interaction to next paint): A metric that assesses a page’s overall responsiveness to user interactions by observing the time that it takes for the page to respond to all click, tap, and keyboard interactions that occur throughout the lifespan of a user’s visit to a page. The final INP value is the longest interaction observed, ignoring outliers.
A recent small study by Joy Hawkins showed that if you remove the address from your Google Business Profile listings your rankings in the local pack and in Google Maps will significantly suffer.
The kicker is that Google's own advice and guidelines specifically state, "Important: If you don't serve customers at your business address, do not enter an address under the "Info" tab in Business Profile Manager. Leave the "business location" field blank."
So Joy did that for one of her clients and the rankings dropped off almost completely. So Joy added the address back and the rankings returned.
On June 14th Google Search ranking algorithm update was reported and since then the Google search results have not stopped with its larger than normal volatility.
Since the 14th, the Google search tracking tools have been way hotter than normal and the chatter has not died down in the SEO community.
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Google's John Mueller said it "reduces some risk" to launch a new domain prior weeks before migrating your site to it. John said this helps both with internal site risks and also external site risks (like from Google's side).
Gary Illyes from the Google Search team said on LinkedIn that you should avoid using LLMs and AI for diagnosing potential SEO issues or other issues with your site. Gary wrote, "don't use them for diagnosing potential issues with it."
Gary wrote, "LLMs have a very high wow factor, but they have no clue about your website; don't use them for diagnosing potential issues with it."
"Also remember that LLMs will hallucinate; pressed in the right way, they WILL give you information that's completely detached from reality because the predictions on the word order make sense," he added.
"Can they give you factually correct information in general? Yes! Can they give you information that has nothing to do with reality? Also yes!" "Use LLMs at your own risk and be very picky about what you accept from their output, otherwise you'll be in for a very disappointing ride," Gary warned.
I am sure you all have seen it, a slew of AI tools or AI added to existing tools, backed by LLMs, to try to give you advice on how to improve your site.
These are tools, and just like any tool, do not blindly just take their tips and advice and implement them. Review what they say, and think about if it makes sense to implement or not. Just like when you use Bard or ChatGPT or Bing Chat, you know when the responses seem off, do your research before just implementing these suggestions. And if you are new to SEO, then it probably makes sense for you to avoid using these tools completely until you really know SEO well.
Google is suing an online marketer for violating its terms of service and to prevent the defendant from causing additional harm to Google as well as to business owners and consumers.
The person being sued was a member of a public Facebook group called, Rank and Rent – GMB Strategy & Domination.
The lawsuit claims that the company has been misleading users, engaging in activities that violate both federal and state laws, and violating their contract with Google as laid out in their terms of service.