SEO UPdate #8 28/01/2022

Welcome to yet another eighth SEO update. Let’s start right away.

FLoC, the replacement for cookies, is a FLoP

FLoC would use about 300 categories to categorize the audience you target your ads to in this. So if someone often went to websites about sports, ads relevant to this would also be shown more often to this searcher.

Now FLoC is being replaced by Topics API. One advantage of Topics API is that the searcher, if you are working with Chrome of course, can turn the topics on or off themselves. So you can decide which categories you fall into and what you want to see ads for. You can also choose to turn it off altogether.

One advantage of this, compared to cookies, for example, is that a website does not need to know who you are to show you targeted ads. See video from Google here.

From the privacy sandbox to Google’s darkroom

Do you also sometimes have that you can’t get out of Google’s dark mode? Me too. Now Google is addressing this bug. Personally, I find it especially troublesome when I take several screenshots for a presentation in the SERP and the first screenshot is in color, and the next one is in dark room.

Google and page experience in the SERP?

Google planned in November 2020 to place an icon in the SERP for websites that do well in terms of performance. See the image below for an example.

Now, a year later, this has not been done. And someone at Google says about this: if Google wanted this, it would have happened a long time ago. So chances are this is not going to happen for now (or at all).

Multiple GSC properties

I think most SEO specialists know this, but it’s OK to have more GSC properties. A common way is to use HTTPS, HTTP, WWW. and NON-WWW. versions to use. I personally use domain authentication whenever possible, but I still see this coming up a lot.

“People Search Next”

This is mega interesting. Google is testing a “people search next” section in the SERP in America. See image below.

A stimulating question to conclude

SEO specialists believe full transparency leads to worse results in Google. What do you think?

Senior SEO-specialist

Ralf van Veen

Senior SEO-specialist
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I have been working for 12 years as an independent SEO specialist for companies (in the Netherlands and abroad) that want to rank higher in Google in a sustainable manner. During this period I have consulted A-brands, set up large-scale international SEO campaigns and coached global development teams in the field of search engine optimization.

With this broad experience within SEO, I have developed the SEO course and helped hundreds of companies with improved findability in Google in a sustainable and transparent way. For this you can consult my portfolio, references and collaborations.

This article was originally published on 22 November 2023. The last update of this article was on 22 November 2023. The content of this page was written and approved by Ralf van Veen. Learn more about the creation of my articles in my editorial guidelines.