Interested in staying up-to-date with the latest SEO news? In the September round-up, I’ll discuss the latest happenings that have occurred in the world of SEO over the last month.
What's in the news for September?
1. Google Releases August 2024 Core Update
2. Confirmed Google Search Ranking Bug
1. Google releases the August 2024 core update
Here we go! After much speculation, Google finally confirmed on 15th August that they had commenced rolling out the latest Core Update, aptly named the "August 2024 Core Update."
The release of the August Core Update was announced along with the following statement: "This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search”.
Whilst this statement is open to interpretation, which is always the case with these announcements, many are speculating that it implies smaller, independent publishers should see their rankings improve with this one after years of traffic decline and suffering.
Google suggests that this rollout may take up to a month to complete.
Changes to the core update help page
At the same time as this update, Google updated their ‘How core updates work‘ guidance with more actionable steps for those who see changes after an update.
Notable additions:
Recommendations to check traffic drops in Search Console and what to do if drops have occurred as a result of a core update.
Guidance on things to keep in mind when making changes.
You can find the updated webpage here: https://developers.google.com/search/updates/core-updates
Quick Facts (pulled-in from from seoroundtable):
- Name: Google August 2024 Broad Core Update
- Launched: August 15, 2024 at around 11 am ET (4 pm BST)
- Rollout: Will take about four weeks to roll out
- Targets: It looks at all types of content
- Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
- Impact: The normal core update stuff around helpful content but this one should also reward small and independent publishers.
- Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's core update advice.
SERP volatility sensor
What does this mean for businesses?
As warned in the August SEO news, expect plenty of fluctuations and high volatility.
“Ranking fluctuations are common during a core update rollout as Google refine many different systems. Fluctuations during this period are extremely volatile as Google often rolls out core updates gradually to minimise disruption, help them to identify any issues quicker and allows them to refine based on real-world data and feedback.”
Whilst we can expect to see fluctuations and high volatility with this update, Google’s John Mueller alluded to the fact that this core update could make recoveries possible for sites hit by the Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update.
He states that the August 2024 core update “aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to surface the best of the web”.
This update caused widespread devastation and despite many webmasters working tirelessly to improve their website based on guidance given by Google, twelve months later these sites were still struggling and saw little to no recovery.
Whilst the rollout is still ongoing at the time of writing this article, there have been promising signs that websites have started to recover. Despite this, sites witnessing recoveries are still few and far between and it is still too early to tell, but we keep our fingers crossed!
2. Confirmed Google Search ranking bug between 15th - 20th August (now resolved)
As the August 2024 Core Update was being rolled out, an unrelated ranking bug had been causing problems with a significant number of search results. Google has since confirmed this is not related to the core update.
An official statement was released on 20th August confirming that the bug had been fixed.
What does this mean for businesses?
If your website saw fluctuations during this 5-6 day period, it will be hard to identify whether this was core update related or bug related. When reporting on data, we recommend highlighting that this bug could potentially have caused a major discrepancy to normal performance.
3. How to rank on Google’s AI overviews
With the emergence of AI overviews which are now appearing for more and more queries, there are patterns starting to appear which can help us to understand how we can drive traffic from links that appear in this SERP feature.
For one study in particular, they found that Google AI Overviews now match one or more of the webpages from the top 10 Google organic search results 99.5% of the time.
This study first appeared on LinkedIn and is based on seoClarity’s analysis of 36,000 keywords which was conducted by Mark Traphagen.
What does this mean for businesses?
For websites trying to appear in AI overviews, it should be business as usual. By following best practices and providing quality content, your website should start to appear in the SERP feature.
4. SERP Testing and Changes
a. Blue ticks appearing on Google SERPs in US
A blue tick similar to what social platforms use is now appearing as a test on desktop for organic listings.
It looks like the blue tick only appears for some eCommerce stores, with the test not looking to expand beyond this.
A notice appears when hovering over the blue tick, stating:
"This icon is being shown because Google's signals suggest that this business is the business that it says it is. Google can't guarantee the reliability of this business or its products".
b. Short videos carousel on Google desktop
Google has started testing the short videos carousel on desktop for the first time since 2021.
Read more, here.
