SEO Weekly Digest 17-21 July 2023

Google has fixed a bug with Google News indexing

Google has fixed a bug with Google News indexing and traffic to sites should have returned to the normal mid-July level.

Problems with indexing were discussed for the first time three weeks ago. News sites that were featured in Google News stated they had seen a significant drop in traffic, with fewer people going to their platforms via the aggregator. Google officially acknowledged the issue on July 10, and the problem was fully fixed by July 12.

Bing Chat introduces image search

Bing Chat now supports searching via image. Users can upload an image, for example a photograph, into the search bar, and Bing Chat will give a corresponding response. The feature is now available both on desktop and on mobile.

Image search is becoming more and more important when it comes to SEO, analysts have been saying so since 2018, when Google Lens first appeared. Google has also launched an equivalent image search feature in its Bard chatbot.

Google is developing a policy for AI-generated content

Google representatives stated at Google Search Central Live Tokyo 2023 that Google was preparing a policy regarding content generated using AI.

At the moment, Google follows principles of quality over quantity, recommending that generated content be refined, rather than be released as is. Google has lately encountered this problem, with site owners filling their platforms with AI-generated content of dubious quality en masse and such content even making it to the top of the search results from time to time.

There is currently no sign of any exact or approximate release date for the policy from Google.