Weekly SEO Updates September 16- September 22
Google seems to be testing highlighting portions of text in the search result snippets. This seems different from the highlighting of featured snippets, people also ask, things to know or sections of the explore feature. This is Google using blue highlight on the normal search results snippets.
The removal of HowTo and FAQ rich results from Google Search is not in anticipation of the full launch of the Google Search Generative Experience, according to Google’s Gary Illyes.?
There has been some speculation by some SEOs that Google removed certain features due to the shift to AI-powered answers in SGE. Illyes said that is not the goal, adding that it frees up Google to experiment with “other things.”?
One of the three key points of emphasis in Illyes’ keynote was that Google has been removing SERP features that Google users didn’t use or find useful. That include the change to video thumbnails in April and then the recent removal of HowTo rich results and heavily reduced visibility of FAQ rich results.?
It seems like the Google Search feature for "things to know" has significantly dropped and is rarely showing now both on desktop and mobile.?
If you look at the RankRanger mobile feature chart, it shows Things to know dropped off Google on Saturday, September 16th:
If you look at the desktop tracker, that drop off was on September 7th:
Google is currently rolling out the September 2023 helpful content update and with that Google made several updates to its helpful content documentation. But just because Google updated its documentation, it does not mean that those changes are reflected in the actual algorithm that Google has released.
Gary Illyes from the Google Search team said at PubCon that those changes were just help documentation changes, and that they were not implemented into the helpful content system yet.
Google's John Mueller said on X that a compilation of ChatGPT output does not make your content unique or worthy of outranking other content on the internet. He posted on X that a site should instead "focus on unique, compelling, high-quality content that adds to the web. As you have it now, it looks like a compilation of ChatGPT output on topics that tons of sites have already covered."
He went on to add, "I suspect revamping your site to be significantly better than all the other "net worth" sites is going to be a lot harder than just focusing on something new (and deleting the old), where you know that you have new & valuable information to share."
Google’s Gary Illyes fielded several questions during an AMA at Pubcon Pro in Austin this afternoon from moderator Jennifer Slegg. Here are some of the highlights of the interview.
1. Does Google use user click data in ranking?
“Technically, yes,” Illyes said. This is because historical search data is part of RankBrain.?
2. Unlaunches happen ‘a lot’
Things change a lot (emphasis his) in search ranking at Google, Illyes said. What is true for ranking today could be wrong in two weeks.
3. Factors vs. signals vs. systems
The main difference between factors and signals is just language, Illyes said. At one point, they wanted people to differentiate between them.?
Ranking systems are more complex – this is when Google takes multiple signals (e.g., from crawling and indexing data) and ranks them. Ranking systems are also more “stable than signals,” Illyes said.?
4. Why Google doesn’t index everything
In short, the Internet is “insanely big,” Illyes said. “There is virtually no storage you can use to index all of them. It’s not possible to index it in a way you can serve it,”?
5. You don’t have to label AI content for Google
Labeling AI content is not necessary for Google search – “I don’t think we care” – Illyes said. But he suggested labeling it if your users would appreciate it.?
He reiterated once again that Google doesn’t care how content is created – by AI, human or both. “As long as I will learn from it, learn correct information, why would it matter?” Illyes said.?
6. AI content = no typos
One thing Illyes noticed while analyzing the output of ChatGPT and generative AI tools is that it doesn’t have typos.
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7. Why niche sites were impacted by helpful content update
When it comes to helpful content, niche sites often don’t fall into a category Google is looking to promote. To be clear, here Illyes was not referring to all types of niche sites, he was mostly talking about affiliate-type of niche sites that are heavily money-driven.
8. You can see gains between core updates
If your site is impacted by a Google core update, you should start working on things that could help your site improve and get pushed back up in Search results.
9. Comments could signal that a site has an active community
While many websites removed comment sections and forums in the past 10 years, Illyes said that comments can be good.?
Illyes didn’t say comments are a ranking signal. He was more saying this from his own perspective.?
10. Google will keep launching updates in December
Google will continue to release updates during the holidays – Google used to avoid doing this, but Illyes called that an “old thing.”?
11. Core Web Vitals = low priority
“If you don’t have anything better to do on your site, go do Core Web Vitals. Most sites won’t see benefit playing around with it,” Illyes said.
12. No voice data in GSC
Illyes said it was too difficult to get voice search data and doesn’t see a reason to add it to Google Search Console.
13. Expired domain signals are not inherited
If a domain expires, and somebody buys that domain, any signals the site had accumulated will not be transferred to the new domain owner. Google knows when a domain expires.?
So if you bought an expired domain and tried to rebuild it (e.g., by getting all the content from Wayback Machine), you would be building the site from scratch, as if it were a new domain.?
14. Use H tags for accessibility
From Google’s perspective, it would be “pretty stupid” to rely on H1-6 tags for understanding order and hierarchy of content, Illyes said.?
He suggested using a screen reader on your site to make sure the content doesn’t “read wrong.” Use H tags where you need to use them, where it makes sense, Illyes said.
15. Importance of links is ‘overestimated’
Links are not a “top 3” ranking signal and haven't been “for some time,” Illyes said, adding that there really isn’t a universal top 3.?
It’s absolutely possible to rank without links, Illyes said, citing an example of a page with zero internal or external links that he knew of that was ranking Position 1 on Porsche cars – and Google had only found the page via a sitemap.
Content continues to be the number one ranking signal.
“Without content it literally is not possible to rank. If you don’t have words on page you’re not going to rank for it. Every site will have something different as the top 2 or 3 ranking factors,” Illyes said.
There is a fun new Google Search Off the Record podcast to listen to with John Mueller and Gary Illyes from the Google Search team. The short is that quality impacts everything related to Google's search systems, from sitemaps, crawling, indexing, ranking and more. But they also go into large and old sites that may have had quality issues in the past or the quality bar is higher now than what it was 20 years ago.
Gary Illyes said that quality "affects pretty much everything that the Search systems do." He listed off sitemaps, scheduling, crawling, indexing and ranking at a higher level. And he said, "of course, different systems are affected differently" by quality but that is obvious.
Quality content is the top factor influencing Google's indexing and crawling decisions, per a discussion in a recent podcast.
Quality affects everything in search, especially indexing. However, quality content doesn't guarantee high rankings. Removing low quality content can help improve Google's perception of a site.
Google started to roll out the Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update recently and there are mixed signals about how strong and widespread this update is.?
There are definitely site owners and SEOs claiming some of their sites were hit hard but the tracking tools are reporting relatively calm weather since the update started.
There is a lot chatter and SEOs are claiming traffic drops (or gains) from Google Search after this began rolling out. But again, most of those tracking tools have been pretty calm.
Many are reporting drops in traffic and visibility from 40% to upwards of 80% after being hit by this helpful content update.