Googles Latest Core Update Finishes Rolling Out

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If your website has seen a big drop in traffic within the past month, there is a chance you’ve been hit by the latest Google core update. The update started rolling out on November 11 and has now been confirmed to be finished as of December 5, 2024. 

Compared to other core updates, this one does not seem to be the most impactful. Early analytics as the core update rolled out did not show the level of volatility in search results typical of most core updates. Still, Google confirmed that this was a core update aimed at improving search results quality and decreasing the prevalence of irrelevant results across the platform. 

As Google said about the update:

“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.”

Interestingly, Google specifically emphasized in private communications with Search Engine Land that the update would not be restoring rankings to pages affected by the September 2023 helpful content update. 

What To Do If You’ve Been Hit

Google didn’t provide much information about the core update, so currently it is difficult to gauge what types of sites are likely to have been affected or what specific steps can be taken to remedy your site if you’ve been hit.

The search engine does provide some broad advice about responding to loss of rankings following core updates generally:

  •  Avoid doing “quick fix” changes (like removing some page element because you heard it was bad for SEO). Instead, focus on making changes that make sense for your users and are sustainable in the long term.
  • Consider how you can improve your content in meaningful ways. For example, it could be that rewriting or restructuring your content makes it easier for your audience to read and navigate the page.
  • Deleting content is a last resort, and only to be considered if you think the content can’t be salvaged. In fact, if you’re considering deleting entire sections of your site, that’s likely a sign those sections were created for search engines first, and not people. If that’s the case for your site, then deleting the unhelpful content can help the good content on your site perform better.

It will likely be months until Google releases another core update, so any changes to search results in recovery from this update may take a while to occur. This goes to emphasize the importance of staying on the good side of Google, using approved SEO strategies, and trying to avoid any potential penalties before they occur.

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Google Now Supports The AVIF File Format Making It The Best Format For SEO

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This week Google announced that it now supports the AVIF file format, making the format eligible to be shown in Google Search and Google Images. Now that the search engine can index and display the popular file format, it will likely become the standard for lightweight high-quality images online quickly. 

What Is The AVIF File Format?

AVIF (AVI Image File Format) is a relatively new open-source file format used for images, that can deliver the same quality images as JPEGs or PNGs in remarkably smaller file formats (up to 50% smaller than a comparable JPEG). 

Notably, the format seems to combine all the most notable features of other popular image formats. AVIF supports the use of transparency like PNG and even has a higher dynamic range level, allowing for deeper blacks in images. Like GIFs, also allows for the creation of animated images.

What About WebP?

Another newly popular image file format, WebP, might seem like a competitor to AVIF but both formats offer their unique benefits which make them suited for specific needs. 

WebP is an ideal format for lossless images – typically used when an image must be of the absolute highest quality possible. On the other hand, WebP is not nearly as small as AVIF, so it is not ideal for those focused on maintaining fast loading speeds. 

Why The AVIF File Format May Help SEO

Over the last few years, Google has increasingly emphasized website speed as a major factor it considers when ranking websites.

The search engine has begun using a selection of metrics that measure different aspects of site speed, known as Core Web Vitals. 

Because the AVIF file format allows for smaller image sizes, it can help reduce loading speeds on web pages and potentially improve your online rankings. 

In an environment where any edge against the competition can be the difference to help you get the top spot, sites will quickly be moving to adopt the format now that Google supports it.

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Google’s New Core Update Targets Content Quality

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Google’s August 2024 core update started rolling out yesterday and is poised to turn up the heat on sites providing flimsy, irrelevant, or unuseful content.

Google Search Advocate John Mueller confirmed the update and said that the update is aimed at improving content quality delivered by the search engine based on feedback Google received since launching the September 2023 helpful content update.

In the announcement, Mueller wrote:

“Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. 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 that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”

In particular, the search engine is trying to improve on the September update by reducing the negative impact it had on small and independent publishers.

As Mueller explained:

“This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including ‘small’ or ‘independent’ sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches. This is an area we’ll continue to address in future updates.”

What To Expect

As usual, Google isn’t sharing too much about the specifics of the update, however, the search engine has updated its help page for core updates to include specific guidance for those impacted by the update.

For now, Google says the update is expected to take around a month to fully roll out. This means search results are likely to be volatile until then, with some gaining and losing ground temporarily. 

Until then, it is best to monitor your website’s performance for signs of big changes. If you are impacted, it is likely time that you should evaluate the type of content you are delivering and find ways to improve its value for your site’s audience.

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Google Rep Says A New Core Algorithm Update Is Coming Soon

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Google is ramping up to release its next core algorithm update “in the coming weeks”, likely signaling a major shakeup coming to search results in the near future. 

The reveal that a core algorithm update is coming came from Google Search Liaison and well-known SEO journalist Danny Sullivan who posted a lengthy message about the coming update on his website, Search Engine Roundtable.

When Is The Algorithm Update Coming?

In his message, Sullivan says that the teams at Google haven’t figured out exactly what day the core update is coming because there is still testing being done. Despite this, Sullivan felt confident enough to say that he expects the update to roll out in the coming weeks even if it takes tweaking after testing.

Notably, Sullivan says he had considered posting similar updates before the release of past core algorithm updates but did not because of the potential for them to be pushed back. In this instance, he is apparently more confident the update will pass through testing relatively quickly.

Sullivan’s full post reads:

“We’d tell you when the next core update will be if we knew. But we don’t know exactly yet, that’s all. These aren’t scheduled to a particular day. The ranking team makes changes, tests those, evaluates those and eventually we get a launch date. There have been many times I could have said “Core update next week!” because everything was on track for that to happen, but then there’s a need to do a bit more work or other things that might cause a pushback. I would expect we’ll see one in the coming weeks, because that fits in with our general cycle. But precisely when, that’s just not known yet.”

Past Major Algorithm Updates

This upcoming core algorithm update will be the first since one which began rolling out in March 2024 and completed in April. The reason for the longer-than-normal rollout is that this update was the largest core algorithm update to date. 

Before that, Google released a slew of smaller updates in August, October, and November of 2023. 

Sullivan did not give any insight into how big the upcoming update might be or what might be targeted by the update. For now, we can only assume that this update is aimed at reducing spam and improving the relevance of search results. 

We will update you as more information about the upcoming core algorithm update is revealed or when it begins rolling out to the public. 

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Menu Items and Store Traffic May Help Local Google Rankings – A LOT

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Listing menu items in your Google Business Profile and having a busy shop seem to be powerful ways to help your business’s local Google rankings according to a newly published set of tests by SEO expert Claudia Tomina.

Google Business Profiles are the central way local shoppers find new and nearby businesses, so keeping your listing up to date and as full of information as possible is crucial. 

Though officially unconfirmed, Tomina’s test gives strong evidence to support the idea that menu items and how busy a business is are ranking signals for local Google searches. 

How Menu Items May Impact Rankings

According to the report, adding specific menu items on Google can help your restaurant rank for searches for those foods. 

In one example, Tomina added “caesar salad” to the menu items for a restaurant’s account and clearly saw an uptick in search position for the query “best caesar salad near me.” The addition didn’t just give her a small bump in the rankings. The restaurant went from search position 71 to the very top position.

How Busier Locations May Impact Rankings

Tomina’s tests also found that busier stores or restaurants during the Google popular times window tend to rank busier than less busy establishments.

As she wrote in her report, “My research shows that if a business is busier at a specific time of day then they outrank their competitors.”

In the charts below, you can see how rankings for the keyword “caesar salad near me” tended to rank better during popular times during the day.

The Big Picture

Local search results can be a highly competitive area for many businesses. Any edge that you can get on your competition can be the difference between getting a lead or missing out on it to another local business. 

If you haven’t updated your menu on Google, now is the time to do so.

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Everything You Need To Know About Canonical URLs And Your Google Rankings

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Every brand wants to put their best foot forward. If you want to do that online, you need to understand what canonical URLs are. So, today we are going to talk a bit about what canonical URLs are, why your pages may have a canonical version, and how Google chooses which page is the canonical page. 

What Are Canonical URLs?

A canonical URL or web page is the version of a page selected to be indexed by Google when there are multiple versions of the page. 

This version of the page is used by Google to rank the web page and be displayed in search results in order to prevent duplicate search listings. 

As the owner of the website, you have some control over which pages are chosen to be canonical URLs. As we will get into further down, though, Google doesn’t always select the page you believe should be the canonical version.

Before we get to that, let’s take a moment to talk about the legitimate reasons why you may have duplicate versions of a page.

5 Reasons For Having Duplicate Web Pages

According to Google’s official documentation and guidelines about canonical webpages, the search engine believes there are five legitimate reasons a webpage may have multiple versions. 

  1. Region variants: for example, a piece of content for the USA and the UK, accessible from different URLs, but essentially the same content in the same language
  2. Device variants: for example, a page with both a mobile and a desktop version
  3. Protocol variants: for example, the HTTP and HTTPS versions of a site
  4. Site functions: for example, the results of sorting and filtering functions of a category page
  5. Accidental variants: for example, the demo version of the site is accidentally left accessible to crawlers

How Google Chooses A Canonical Webpage 

Until very recently, it was unclear exactly how Google selected canonical pages. Website owners and managers could signal which version they wanted to appear in search results using the rel=”canonical” tag in the code of the page. 

However, this version wasn’t always the one that Google went with.

Gary Ilyes from Google cleared the mystery up (mostly) in a recent Google Search Central video. 

The process starts with finding the content and identifying the main content or “centerpiece of a page”. Then, it groups the pages with similar content in duplicate clusters. 

Then, Google uses a handful of pages to essentially rank each version of the page like it would a listing in search results. The page with the best ranking is selected as the canonical version and included in most search results. 

While he doesn’t list exactly what signals are used, Ilyes did say this:

“Some signals are very straightforward, such as site owner annotations in HTML like rel=”canonical”, while others, like the importance of an individual page on the internet, are less straightforward.”

Notably, this doesn’t mean that Google only indexes one version of the page to be used in all contexts. There are situations where Google may decide to show users a version of the page other than the canonical version.

“The other versions in the cluster become alternate versions that may be served in different contexts, like if the user is searching for a very specific page from the cluster.

To hear Gary Ilyes himself talk about the process, check out the full Google Search Central Video below:

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Google To Replace a Core Web Vital Ranking Signal In March

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Google is making a big change to its Core Web Vitals ranking signals soon, as the company announced that the new Interaction to Next Paint (INP) signal will replace the First Input Delay (FID) on March 12.

The new INP metric measures the amount of time between when a user interacts with a web page (for example, by clicking a button) to when a browser begins rendering pixels on the screen.

Though FID measured a similar time between user input and browser rendering, Google says INP captures interactivity in ways that were not possible previously.

The History Behind FID and INP Metrics

FID has been a metric used by Google to rank sites since the debut of Google’s Core Web Vitals in 2018. However, Google quickly began to see that this metric didn’t fully capture user interactions as they had hoped. 

This led to Google introducing INP as an experimental or “pending” metric in 2022. Now, almost 2 years later, Google has decided to fully replace FID with the INP metric in March.

What You Should Do

Before March, it is recommended that website managers ensure their site is meeting the threshold for a “good” INP performance. 

If you do not meet this mark, Google suggests optimizing your site with these strategies:

  • Evaluate your site’s performance using tools such as PageSpeed Insights or the Google Chrome User Experience Report.
  • Identify issues that may be slowing down INP, like extended JavaScript tasks, excessive main thread activity, or a large DOM. 
  • Optimize issues based on Google’s optimization guides for the specific issue.

As Google’s ranking algorithms evolve, this and other ranking signals will likely be updated or replaced. This emphasizes how important it is to use the latest optimization standards and to ensure a smooth user experience if you want your business to be easily found online.

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What’s Changing The Updated SEO Starter Guide From Google?

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The Google SEO Starter Guide is designed to help individuals and organizations quickly learn the most important steps necessary for getting their websites ranking within Google Search. 

While the guide reportedly maintains a 91% approval rating, it has largely gone without updates for several years but that will be changing soon.

In a recent episode of Google’s “Search Off The Record” podcast, the company’s Search Relations team discussed plans to update the SEO Starter Guide, including talking about what would and would not be included in the revised document. 

Discussions like this are great for seeing how SEO is talked about within the search engine and learning what the company prioritizes when ranking sites along with identifying SEO myths that might lead you astray when optimizing your own site. 

So, what’s changing in the revised SEO Starter Guide?

HTML Structure

One topic the group discussed was the importance (or lack thereof) of HTML structure when it comes to online rankings.

While the team agreed that using proper HTML structure can help with online rankings, they indicated the guide will clarify that these are not all that important in the grand scheme.

As Google’s Gary Ilyes said:

“Using headings and a good title element and having paragraphs, yeah, sure. It’s all great, but other than that it’s pretty futile to think about how the page… or the HTML is structured.”

Branded Domain Names vs Keyword Rich Domain Names

SEO experts have been increasingly debating whether it is better to focus on your existing branding when establishing a domain name, or if domains perform better when including specific keywords.

According to the Google team, the new guide will clarify this by indicating that brands should focus on including branding in their domains over using keywords. The thought process shared by those in the discussion was that establishing a memorable brand will have a more long-term impact than trying to optimize your domain specifically for search engines. 

Debunking SEO Myths

Lastly, the group said one thing they want to improve in the document was how it addressed widespread SEO myths and misconceptions. 

For example, everyone agreed that the SEO Starter Guide should specifically debunk the idea that using Google products while creating or optimizing your site will improve search rankings. 

They indicated they would address this myth and several others to prevent people from optimizing their site based on misinformation found elsewhere online. 

For more from the discussion, listen to the entire episode of “Search Off The Record” here.

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Google’s Danny Sullivan Responds To Claims That Rich Results Steal Content

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A lead Google spokesperson gave a surprising response to claims that the search engine stole content from a publisher without providing any benefit to the publisher’s website. 

Google’s rich search results have been controversial since their launch, as some feel that these results simply copy information from other websites instead of sending users to that content where it was originally posted. 

The search engine has largely ignored these criticisms by saying that rich results improve the search experience and include links to the original content. 

That’s what makes it so surprising that Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan recently publicly responded to one publisher’s complaints directly.

The Original Complaint

In several recent tweets, a representative for travel brand Travel Lemming posted:

“Google is now stealing Travel Lemming’s own brand searches (even via site search).

They take our list — INCLUDING MY ORIGINAL PHOTOS 📸 — and present it in a rich result so people don’t click through.

I am literally IN that Red Rocks photo!…”

They are doing this across all travel searches – unbranded and branded alike.

Example: “Mexico Travel Tips” – they have an AI answer & also a rich result that basically just re-creates an entire blog post, including our stolen photos.

Again, I am IN that Mexico packing photo!

Like how is it legal for Google to just essentially create entire blog posts from creators’ content and images?

I literally have a law degree from the top law school in the world, and even I can’t figure it out!

Fair use does NOT apply if you’re using the content to compete directly against the creator, which they clearly are.

I can’t sit outside a movie theatre, project the movie on a wall, earn money from it, and claim fair use.

I spent SO much time taking those photos in Denver.

It was 10+ full days worth of work for me and partner Clara, going around the city to photograph everything. $100s of money spent in attraction admission fees, gas, parking.

Now Google just gets to extract all that value?

How much does Google get to take before creators say “enough is enough”?

How hard does the water have to boil before the frog jumps?

The comments show it is a prisoner’s dilemma as long as Google has a monopoly on search …”

Google’s Response

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, provided a lengthy response that delves specifically into what is happening, why, and ways they are hoping to improve the situation. 

Not only does Sullivan give insight into the company’s perspective, but also their own opinions about the function. Importantly, Sullivan doesn’t disregard Travel Lemming’s complaints and is sympathetic to how rich search results impact publishers:

“Hey Nate, this got flagged to my attention. I’ll pass along the feedback to the team. Pretty sure this isn’t a new feature. Elsewhere in the thread, you talk about it being an AI answer, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, either. It’s a way to refine an initial query and browse into more results.

With the example you point out, when you expand the listing, your image is there with a credit. If you click, a preview with a larger view comes up, and that lets people visit the site. Personally, I’m not a fan of the preview-to-click.

I think it should click directly to the site (feedback I’ve shared internally before, and I’ll do this again). But it’s making use of how Google Images operates, where there’s a larger preview that helps people decide if an image is relevant to their search query. Your site is also listed there, too. Click on that, people get to your site.”

If you don’t want your images to appear in Google Search, this explains how to block them:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/prevent-images-on-your-page

I suspect you’d prefer an option to not have them appear as thumbnails in particular features. We don’t have that type of granular control, but I’ll also pass the feedback on. 

I appreciate your thoughts and concerns. I do. The intention overall is to make search better, which includes ensuring people do indeed continue to the open web — because we know for us to thrive, the open web needs to thrive.

But I can also appreciate that this might not seem obvious from how some of the features display.

I’m going to be sharing these concerns with the search team, because they’re important.

You and other creators that are producing good content (and when you’re ranking in the top results, that’s us saying it’s good content) should feel we are supporting you.

We need to look at how what we say and how our features operate ensure you feel that way.

I’ll be including your response as part of this.”

I doubt Sullivan is going to change many minds about Google’s rich search results, but this rare interaction is revealing to how Google sees the situation and is trying to walk a tightrope between providing a seamless search experience while sustaining the sites it relies on.

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Google Updates Bring More Personalized Results and More First-Hand Knowledge

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Google is making some big changes to how it ranks results that aim to deliver more personalized search results and increase the prevalence of “first-hand knowledge”.

The search engine announced the changes earlier this month while spotlighting two specific updates that have recently come to users. 

Cathy Edwards, Vice President of Search at Google, says these updates will better connect humans with the topics and content that are most relevant to their interests and needs:

“Search has always been about connecting human curiosity with the incredible expanse of human wisdom on the net. These advancements will help users find the most helpful information just for them, no matter how specific their questions may be. 

Bringing First-Hand Knowledge To The Surface

Google has made adjustments to its ranking algorithm to show more first-person perspectives higher in search results. While the company didn’t tell us exactly how it tweaked the algorithm, Edwards emphasizes that it will help people find new individual experiences, advice, and opinions when searching. 

With this change, the company says it will hopefully show fewer repetitive pieces of content that don’t bring new perspectives or opinions in the first pages of results. 

The announcement says:

“As part of this work, we’ve also rolled out a series of ranking improvements to show more first-person perspectives in results, so it’s easier to find this content across Search.”

Follow Topics For More Curated Results

Google is giving you the ability to curate your own search results by following topics that are important to you. 

By following topics in search results, such as a favorite football team, style of restaurant, or genre of music, you can stay in touch with these topics naturally while you are searching. 

Follows not only impact what you see in typical search results but help highlight important topics in Discover and other areas of Google.

You can see an example of how this can shape your search results below. The first image shows what search results looked like before this update rolled out, and after.

Like most changes to the search results, however, it is unclear exactly how this affects optimization strategies going forward. We will know more as we get more data in the coming weeks.

Personalization Is The Future

Google has been increasingly customizing search results for users based on numerous factors including location, age, gender, demographics, and more. These latest updates continue this effort to ensure that the search results you see aren’t just the most relevant sites for anyone. They are the most relevant search results for you.

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