Google has recently been working on some updates in preparation for the Google Chrome third-party cookie deprecation that’s drawing closer.
Google has implemented the Privacy Sandbox – a series of proposals that outline everything that will put advertisers’ and consumers’ minds at ease regarding privacy. FLEDGE is one of the proposals in Privacy Sandbox, which was introduced in January 2021. This proposal is going to be important in 2023.
Fledge (First, Locally, Executed, Decision over, Groups, Experiment) is used to determine which users are relevant to display ads to. It uses interest groups to do so – each group has an owner, ad tech, or publisher.
According to Search Engine Journal, “FLEDGE is a proposal within the Google Privacy Sandbox to serve remarketing and custom audience use cases where browsers block third-party tracking across websites and apps.”
FLEDGE received an update, including features and timelines, regarding testing availability. These features include:
- Event-level auction win reporting.
- Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) usage for Key/Value service.
- Fenced frames
- K-anonymity
- Improved FLEDGE + Attribution Reporting integration
- Bidding and Auction services
In preparation for the Google third-party cookie depreciation next year, FLEDGE features give marketers more transparency and essentially ways to prepare.
More SEO News You Can Use
Google Suggests Not Combining Site Migrations With Other Significant Changes: In the latest Search Off the Record podcast, Google’s Search Relations team speaks about possible problems that could come up during site migrations to top-level domains. Gary Illyes, Google analyst, suggests implementing changes in increments over a few months. This is because implementing too many changes simultaneously could affect your rankings negatively or lose traffic. Illyes also suggests keeping domain changes separate from others, especially complex ones, to minimize the risk of losing traffic. Rushing website migrations increase the potential for misconfigurations that could result in traffic loss. Redirecting URLs from site to site lowers the risk of negative results; however, there is no timeframe for how long it will take for a full recovery.
Google Views Hashtags As Words in Digital Content: John Mueller, Google Search Liaison, responded to a tweet last week regarding hashtags. With regards to web pages, Google Search regards hashtags as words or content, with very little effect. Mueller said it is acceptable to utilize hashtags in meta descriptions, but it again does not have much of an impact. It is uncertain whether or not Google will be more or less likely to use web pages with meta descriptions with hashtags. If anything, it may only make the page more eye-catching, but this is not a certainty either, according to Barry Swartz of SERountable. When used in URLs, Google disregards anything after a hashtag, which is usually used to anchor a user to a specific section of the webpage.
Google’s Aims To Improve Online Shopping Safety With “Trust The Badge” System: In a Google blog post, three ways to ensure online shopping safety is mentioned. Firstly, using automated vetting processes can help. Before a merchant can list a product or service, they are comprehensively reviewed for safety. Google’s systems are automated according to Google’s policies. They can easily detect whether or not the product or listing complies with and meet Google’s standards. Secondly, Google also uses badges and other visual cues based on their Shopping Experience Scorecard to reassure shoppers that they can trust the store. Google rates performance based on four metrics: shipping, shipping speeds, return windows, and return costs, which are compared with other merchants in the same category to see if you’re eligible. Lastly, Google has automated and human review teams to keep an eye on activity that violates policies. Human teams are on hand to handle more intricate issues. Google’s vetting process, badge and shopping policies safeguard shoppers and create trust, as well as help to prevent fraudulent activity.
Developers Now Have Access to OpenAI’s Whisper API and ChatGPT: OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Whisper ****** are available on API. This allows developers to utilize AI-powered speech-to-text and language capabilities. OpenAI has optimized its system to reduce costs by as much as 90% in December 2022. This will allow more people to use the ******, which in turn helps to develop artificial intelligence (AI) ****** and applications. Gpt-3.5-turbo, OpenAIs group of new ChatGPT ****** being released, costs $0.002 per 1k tokens. This makes it 10 times more affordable than the current GPT-3.5 ******. These new gpt-3.5-turbo ****** utilize chat markup language (ChatML), its new format. An improved version, gpt-3.5-turbo-0301, is set to launch soon. This version will have support until about June 1. A new stable release version will then be released in April 2023. For more details, visit Search Engine Land here.
Insights on Bing AI Algorithm From Fabrice Canel’s Pubcon Keynote: In his keynote speech on search engine optimization (SEO), Fabrice Canel, the Senior Product Manager for Microsoft Bing, provided guidance on preparing websites for Bing’s new artificial intelligence or AI-driven search interface. Bing Webmaster Tools is soon set to include traffic data from Bing’s AI chat too. AI search is relatively new, which is why Canel suggests sticking to the recommended SEO strategies when optimizing content for Bing. He also suggests monitoring Bing’s statistics and communication to make adjustments as needed as the demand grows. In the keynote at Pubcon, Canel focused on how essential SEO experts are regarding directing Bing’s search crawlers toward high-quality content. Other topics he spoke about include Lastmod Tag and Index Now, among other topics. For more information, visit Search Engine Land here.
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