This Month in SEO

Google September 2022

Product Reviews Update Rollout Complete

This update impacted English-language product reviews and overlapped with Google's September 2022 core update.

Google's September 2022 product reviews update is now fully rolled out. Google said this update only applied to English-language product reviews.

It took six days to complete, beginning Sept. 20 and concluding Sept. 26.

This marks the end of a flurry of Google algorithm updates that started with the helpful content update (Aug. 25 to Sept. 9), continued with the September 2022 core update (and Sept. 12 to 26) and concluded with the fifth version of the product reviews update.

Rollout complete

According to Google's search ranking update page, "The rollout was complete as of September 26, 2022.

Google's July 2022 product reviews update also took six days to fully roll out.

There has been some discussion within the SEO community about the September product review update. Barry Schwartz covered that in What We're Seeing From The Google Product Reviews Update #5 over Search Engine Roundtable.

Google's Product Review Updates

These algorithm updates are meant to reward high-quality product reviews (in the form of insightful analysis and original research). Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.

In short, if you were impacted, that means you probably need to put more effort into improving your product review content. Figure out how to make it unique so it stands out from the competition.

Why we care

Staying on top of Google's multiple algorithm updates is important. This is a bit unique because Google rolled out overlapping updates this month - roduct reviews and a core update. Google says the product review update should only impact product review content. But having overlapping algorithm updates could complicate things - especially if you're trying to diagnose ranking or visibility changes (positive or negative).

Rollout complete

According to Google's search ranking update page, "he rollout was complete as of September 26, 2022." The page seems to have been updated about an hour ago.

September 2022 Core Update impact

Based on data from tracking tools, the September 2022 core update hit fast, but was less impactful than previous updates. While there was some rank volatility, the consensus was that it was weaker than past Google core updates.

What to do if you are hit

Google has previously given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update. Google has said you can see some recovery between core updates, but the most significant changes will come following a future core update.

Product Review Update sill rolling out

As a reminder, the September 2022 Product Review Update, released Sept. 20, is continuing to roll out now. We'll let you know when it's finished rolling out so you can see what impact, if any, it had on your site.

Why we care

Although the overall impact of this Google core update seems less widespread, sites have been impacted. Now is the time to start digging into your analytics data to see if any pages have lost visibility or rankings - and figure out a plan of action to improve those pages to regain any lost rankings over time.

Google launches New HTTPS report in Google Search Console

This new report now shows why some pages are not being served as HTTPS.

Google has added a new HTTPS report within Google Search Console that not only shows which pages are being served under HTTPS but also why the pages not being served under HTTPS are having issues. "One of the common requests we heard from you was to provide more information regarding the HTTPS status of the site and make it easier to understand which pages are not served over HTTPS, and why not," Google said.

What the report looks like

Here is a screenshot of the HTTPS report that shows the number of non HTTPS URLs and the number of HTTPS URLs, with the non-HTTPS URLs in red and the number of HTTPS URLs in green. Google also shows the issue on why pages are not being served over HTTPS, including but not limited to these errors:

• HTTP marked with canonical tag
• HTTPS has invalid certificate
• Sitemap points to HTTP
• HTTPS has redirect
• HTTPS URL is roboted
• HTTPS not evaluated
• Other issues

Google launches September 2022 broad core update

This update will take about two weeks to complete and follows the helpful content update that completed last Friday.

oogle announced this on Twitter and updated its search updates page saying "Today we released the September 2022 core update. We'll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete." Google added, "The rollout could take 2 weeks to complete."

Rollout complete

Google started this broad core update rollout at about 11:26 a.m. ET. And Google will update us when this update is done rolling out.

This comes after the helpful content update finished

Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your website or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm.