In case if you missed Google’s last month’s updates, here is a short sum up of all updates.
October in Google webmaster and SEO news was pretty busy and full of events. Google had a Halloween search algorithm update that still seems to be creeping around.
The next update is related to the publishers who said it is hard for their content to be found in Google News. Google posted in the Google News Help forums that they plan on releasing an update to help resolve some of the issues.
Lisa Wang, the Associate Product Manager at Google, said,
“We are working on an update which should help resolve some of the issues that publishers have raised around finding their sites or particular articles in Google News. We estimate this will be ready in the next few weeks and will provide another update at that time,” she added.
What exactly this means is unclear. It sounds like Google may provide a better site command feature or something where news publishers can restrict Google News searches to just find content from their site. Although – that feature exists already.
Google+ is shutting down. Google admits that Google+ has failed to achieve broad consumer or developer adoption since its introduction.
The company revealed that the usage and engagement of Google+ are even lower than some might have guessed, as 90 percent of user sessions lasted less than 5 seconds.
With that said, it’s not likely that Google+ will be missed, although it’s certainly worth nothing that it’s shutting down.
Google launched their Home Hub at its MadeByGoogle hardware event. It is basically a 7-inch Assistant with a smart display. The company had already launched the Google Assistant Smart Display software earlier this year, and Home Hub is the hardware that will support it.
This device will be competing with Amazon Echo Show and Lenovo’s Smart Display — that wasn’t exactly a hit among in the market. But Google says that the Home Hub will help in creating a “more helpful, thoughtful home.”
We saw Google tried to address some of those who were hit. Google shared a bunch of SEO advice as well. The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread still has SEOs and webmasters chattering about the Halloween update, it seems very unstable right now and things are currently in flux there.
So, it always makes sense to keep track of big and important changes of Google Algorithm that could impact your digital marketing strategy and tactics.