Welcome to our roundup of the latest SEO News. These are the stories that have caught our eye over the past month.
Google AI Overviews lead to 61% drop in organic CTR for queries with an overview
Search Engine Land is reporting that according to recent research that the click-through rate (CTR) for informational queries where a Google AI Overview is featured has dropped by 61% since the middle of 2024.
Interestingly, they are reporting that on queries where there is no AI Overview, organic CTRs have fallen by 41%. This appears to show that users are clicking less in general.
It should be stressed that this research is focused on informational queries and transactional or commercially focused searches where users still need to click through to a website to make a purchase.
It is understandable when people see these numbers that they think why create or optimise informational content? Firstly, you have to remind people that informational content is important for users, you need to think beyond creating content purely for search engines. Informational content can play an important role in the purchase circle.
Informational content is one of the most effective ways to establish your site’s E-E-A-T credentials. You can use your content to demonstrate your expertise and experience.
It can also be used to support your transactional content. Create links through to your transactionally focused pages and use the anchor text to help in targeting key search queries.
You have to think beyond measuring the success of informational content by clicks alone.
Google AI Overviews are for research, not buying
On a similar theme, Search Engine Land reports on recent research by BrightEdge showing that Google AI Overviews are being used for research before users switch back to traditional search for bottom of the funnel queries - the query that ends with a purchase.
This highlights the importance of continuing to optimise for informational queries. You might not get the direct click from the content, but you still want to appear in Google’s AI Overview. You want to capture users at the discovery stage of their purchase journey.
We need to think beyond measuring the success of informational queries by clicks alone.
How to perform a technical SEO audit according to Google
In a recent video posted on the Google Search Central YouTube channel, Google Search Relations team member Martin Splitt outlined an approach for performing technical SEO audits.
In the video, he warns about an over reliance on using automated tools and placing too much emphasis on the scores they produce. The scores can, in his opinion, be misleading and potentially harmful if they become the goal instead of a diagnostic tool.
On a personal note, one of the best performing sites I have worked on also had the lowest health score I have seen on one of the leading SEO tools. Another leading SEO tool, the last time I checked, still score meta descriptions as an SEO ranking factor.
A technical SEO audit should, in his view, primarily focus on making sure that there are no issues crawling or indexing a website. After that they should focus on the specific site.
This is something that sounds like it would be common sense, sadly it is not. We have encountered audits on Shopify sites that never mentioned any of the issues that are specific to this CMS.
Technical SEO audits require the experience and expertise of the SEO both to interpret the results produced by the tools and to devise the action plan for addressing the issues identified.
Gary Illyes on rebranding
Gary Illyes, the Google Search team analyst, recently responded to a tweet that asked why after a business rebranded does Google continue to show their old brand name in the search results. They are rewriting title tags and meta descriptions using the old brand term.
His answer is that if everyone else continues to call a business by their old name, then Google is likely to do so as well. That cannot be an easy conversation for an SEO to have with their client or boss. Why after doing everything right, does Google decide to ignore everything and still use your old brand name?
He does not offer any advice on how you could rectify this or what could be done to speed up the switch.
