Google Updates in UK Search Results During February and March 2022

Joaquin Morales 0 Comments

Google Updates in the UK During February 2022

February was a very active month for SEO updates at Google. Firstly on February 8^th, Google published an official document about the recent strengthening of their pirate update (which was originally put into place in 2012, and then updated in 2014). This update primarily impacts sites with an influx of Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests. According to TorrentFreak.com, in their official document Google has written: ‘we have added a “still-in-theatres/pre-release” flag for DMCA notices involving this category of content to enhance the Search demotion signal. When a site is demoted, the traffic Google Search sends drops, on average, by 89%.’

There were also a few more significant but smaller updates throughout February which we will catalogue here: Google created a new shopping tracking factor for shopping search, which is known as the shopping experience scorecard; there were new Google News and Google Discover manual action penalties, which Google both processed and put into effect quickly; Google experienced brief crawling issues, which were quickly resolved; Google started testing buyer guides in the search function and began testing messaging in Google Shopping for both customers and sellers; and lastly, a stirring update is that Google Maps has now become an interactive map in the local pack.

Google Updates in the UK During March 2022

During March so far, we have seen some more major SEO updates to note. On March 3^rd, the desktop version of the page experience was fully rolled out. This rollout began at the end of last month (February 22^nd), and so has been a 9-day rollout.

In September 2021, we first became aware of the Things To Know section in Google search results, at the ‘Search on Google’ event. A few weeks after this, we saw it appearing within mobile results. A recent update from March 2022 that is worth keeping an eye on (and has been generating a lot of SEO chatter), is that Google appears to be experimenting with displaying the Things To Know section in Google search results more frequently.

Lastly, beginning on March 18^th, Google appears to be releasing another Google search ranking algorithm update. Although this has not been officially confirmed by Google as of yet, established tracking tools are detecting this activity, and this is generating noticeable SEO chatter. This potential update consists of ongoing traffic and ranking changes on Google Organic search.

We hope that this article has given you a clear overview of the latest Google SEO updates launched in February and March 2022, and how they could affect your website. If you are interested to learn about other Google updates that have happened, be sure to check the Google SEO Updates section of our website, and if you are interested to learn about topics such as Digital PR and International SEO, you can also find this information on our page.