Google releases May 2022 broad core update, SEO toolset provider Ahrefs reveals its new search engine, and YouTube lifts some restrictions for mastheads ads.
Google releases May 2022 broad core update
After more than six months since the last core update (November 2021 core update), Google is now rolling out a new broad core update named May 2022 core update. The update took 15 days to roll out, starting on May 25, 2022, and ending on June 9, 2022. Core updates are changes Google makes to improve Search overall and keep pace with the changing nature of the web. While nothing in a core update is specific to any particular site, these updates may produce noticeable changes to how sites perform.
What that means is that, whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it can cause sites to perform better or worse in the search results, so it’s good practice to keep an eye on your analytics and rankings during the first couple of weeks after a core update has rolled out. Google has also published a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. But, as with any previous update, Google’s main advice for recovering from core updates is always the same: take a holistic approach to improve the website, starting with content.
Ahrefs reveals its new search engine: Yep
Most digital marketers know SEO toolset provider Ahrefs, right? But did you know that Ahrefs has built its own search engine? $60 million and three years of development later, Ahrefs presents you with the new Google competitor: Yep.
Yep is the brainchild of Ahref’s CEO Dmytro Gerasymenko and was brought to life by the Ahrefs team. Ahrefs runs an internet-scale bot (AhrefsBot) that’s been crawling the entire web 24/7 since 2010, storing, indexing and structuring massive amounts of information. With this data, they created one of the leading SEO toolsets worldwide. Yep’s search engine will use data that Ahrefs has been collecting for more than a decade to build its own web index and search service.
Yep’s plan is similar to YouTube’s ad revenue-sharing model, where profits are split between the platform and its creators. However, Yep will much more significantly favour creators.
According to the company:
“We offer an unbiased, private search experience that rewards and compensates the makers behind the content. To do this, we use a 90/10 revenue share business model where we pay 90% of advertising revenue directly to these makers.”
Additionally, Yep won’t collect personal information (e.g., geolocation, name, age, gender, etc.) by default, and your Yep search history will not be stored anywhere. What Yep will rely on instead to improve algorithms, spelling corrections, and search suggestions is aggregated search statistics, according to the company. That would be the searcher’s entered keywords, language preference and approximate geographical area at the origin of the search at the scale of a region or a city (deduced from the IP address).
YouTube lifts some restrictions for mastheads ads
YouTube masthead ads are the ads that users see at the top of the YouTube homepage across all devices. This type of ad is the most prominent (and most expensive) Google advertising placement available to advertisers, so YouTube masthead ad content requirements are usually more restrictive than the ad requirements for other platforms and surfaces. Google has recently announced that they are removing restrictions on some previously prohibited categories from showing on the YouTube masthead. More specifically, Google will now allow booking for masthead ads for the following categories:
- Sports betting (US only)
- Alcohol (where legal)
- Prescription drugs (US, CA, NZ)
Categories for (non-sports) gambling, as well as election and political ads, remain restricted.