This year, with the help of Search Central's efforts, 2022 has been an eventful year for webmasters, video publishers and online sellers. From launching new reports and features within Search Console such as the Video Index Report in July and reports designed for online sellers and product review publishers in September, to cleaning up legacy tools such as the URL Parameter Tool in March, this year has seen a lot of changes. Additionally, Google Search Central also introduced a new API for URL Inspection at the start of the year. To end off the year on a high note, Google Search Central is looking forward to what 2023 brings.
This year, Daniel, a member of the Search Console team, provided new ways of visualizing and thinking about data from Search Console with his guide on Monitoring Dashboard. Additionally, he taught us how to connect Search Console to Looker Studio and shared strategies for search performance data visualization.
The team also released a WebSpam review post featuring SpamBrain. The post was well received by the search engine ecosystem. Following this, Danny and Alan blogged about various ranking updates such as the [May 2022 Core Update](/search/blog/2022/05 / may - 2022 - core - update), the [Product Review Ranking One Year On]( / search / blog / 2022 / 03 / product - review - ranking - one - year - on ), and the [Helpful Content Update]( / search / blog / 2022 / 08 / helpful - content - update ){rel="nofollow"}. These blog posts were later translated into their own help documentation titled Guide to Ranking Systems.
Lizzi and Cherry have been hard at work revamping the old Webmaster Guidelines into a more manageable version and replacing the old Search result screenshots with abstract diagrams that will help with localization. This was followed by a 15MB update to our documentation which created quite a stir on the internet.
We have also returned to in-person events, and it's great to see our community face-to-face once again. Martin has attended many conferences, John and Lizzi even recorded a podcast at an SEO conference! We now have over 50 podcast episodes available for people to enjoy.
Revamp of Webmaster Guidelines | 15 MegaBytes Update | Podcast Episodes
The Google Search Relations Team has established itself on multiple social media platforms in the past year. In a recent announcement, team member Gary Illyes revealed that most of the team can now be found on Mastodon and LinkedIn, in addition to the already established presence on Twitter. With these new accounts, fans of the team can engage with them more directly than before and suggest comments, ideas, or share funny cat pictures.
Gary encourages everyone to reach out via Twitter if they have any questions or suggestions and looks forward to a fantastic 2023! You can follow Gary Illyes at garyillyes.com. You can follow the rest of the Google Search Relations Team on Twitter and other platforms such as Mastodon and LinkedIn.