February SEO Update

February of 2023 has been dominated with the talk of artificial intelligence or AI, advances in content writing, and the emergence of ChatGPT. While such discussions have calmed down somewhat from their peak late last year, they still dominate the SEO world in terms of what changes might take place.

One of the most interesting is search responses that are generated from AI. With the emphasis on high quality content for Google being one of the dominant factors, the introduction of AI may change that emphasis somewhat at least in terms of who is creating the content.

Good Content Remains Important

Perhaps because so much has been invested in emphasizing good content in the search algorithms on Google, that in and of itself will not change much in the foreseeable future. With Google emphasizing transparency on who writes the content, we will see Google shine a light on whether a person has written the content or if the AI has cobbled it together.

AI written content with the emphasis on manipulating the search rankings will be considered spam and may blacklist your site. Keep in mind that having AI written content alone does not bring about the blacklist, but rather it is the intent of why it was written that will make the decision.

Product Reviews Rankings

One thing that many may have noticed is how product review rankings have fluctuated over the first part of February. This is due to Google’s introduction of its update for product reviews. The results have been unpredictable in some cases. The emphasis is still on overall quality and amount of pertinent information, so thin reviews may be punished the most.

OpenAI GPT-4

With Microsoft Bing embracing ChatGPT and AI, the introduction of the OpenAI GPT-4 model in February allows for search results with an artificial intelligence generation. Needless to say, the traffic on Bing is higher now than it has been in a decade. While all the bugs have yet to be worked out, the excitement level over the introduction of this new model is quite high.

Users will see traditional search results on most of the screen with the AI generated results on the right side. The new Edge browser by Microsoft automatically incorporates the AI generated results on the right sidebar. There are still some issues with the AI generated results, but that is being worked out as you read this article.

Bard

In response to OpenAI GPT4, Google has introduced Bard to a select group of testers. Eventually, Bard will be released across Google so that users can see the AI results of their searches. The goal is to allow natural speech to be used to find the information that users want to see.

As of now, Bard is not designed to replace traditional Google searches, but it merely augments them by giving users another way to scan results. This also means that the Google algorithm will remain in place for traditional searches. The result is that Bard is very similar to OpenAI GPT-4 on Bing, but it will not fully be released until all the issues have been ironed out.

For more information on how changes to SEO may affect your online business, trust the professionals at WebSuited. They have what you need to help you make the biggest impact on the web.