What do we see when we look at the track record of SEO and search changes in 2022?
Let’s go through some of this useful information for webmasters, companies and other stakeholders.
An Analytics Approach
One aspect of change this past year is in measurable benchmarks represented by things like core web vitals.
Webmasters were scrambling to understand concepts like CLS (cumulative layout shift) and FID (first input delay) that have to do with page speed and other factors.
With that in mind, fast sites are top ranking. We saw a connection between speed and Google attention.
Multimodal Search
2022 also saw big increases in both voice and visual search.
The voice part is easy to understand, as you have things like smartphones and smart TVs accommodating new kinds of voice search, so that users don’t have to type on a labor-intensive keypad. The visual aspect is broader, as we look at how people access information, not just on the desktop, but on mobile devices and other new kinds of smart devices as well. After all, it is the era of the Internet of Things!
Organic Search and Search Markers
2022 also saw a different focus on organic search, which requires certain adaptations. Web designers should be able to sync title and content in a profound way, and involve themselves in the data more and more.
In fact, another big trend was the use of organic search as business intelligence. Changes in cookies and tracking are just part of the equation. Companies have to be able to use that aggregated data to their advantage in order to compete.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
You can’t go through the history of web search in 2022 without noting the rise of artificial intelligence.
One landmark here was Google’s LaMDA (short for “Language Model for Dialogue Applications”) rollout, and promotion of the idea that AI will continue to play an increasing role in search technology.
Big Events
We’ve also seen that as Google announces new things, SEOs move. New algorithms come out, and people quickly adapt. We had the September core rollout, for example, as well as multi-search announcement and other Google outreach that had an impact on the developer community.
That’s a little bit about how the industry fared in this past year. Let’s keep an eye on 2023 and in our next companion blog piece, we’ll go over predictions for next year as we get ready for the calendar year to commence.
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