Long Updates, Short Videos, and SGE: SEMantics May 2024

Bring Digital’s Aimee Jones reflects on another hectic month in the world of search, in which Google stirred up trouble with its comments on links, teased new video features, and brought us new visions of how SGE could change search forever.

Google’s March algorithm update is finally complete

I am pleased to announce that the Google March 2024 core update is finally over. The announcement came on 26th April that the rollout finally finished on 19th April, 45 days after it began on the 5th March. Google announced this via their Search Status Dashboard, where Google keeps track of all ranking incidents and changes.

As far as updates go, this was a doozy. Google said that this core update was more complex than previous deployments and involved changes to multiple core systems. It also ended the standalone Helpful Content update.

A brief recap of the March core update: The update was designed to improve the quality of Search by showing less content that feels like it was made to attract clicks and more content that people find useful. Google also said this update will help reduce low-quality and unoriginal content in search results by 45%.

It’s worth noting that with this March 2024 core update, Google will stop announcing new Helpful Content updates. This is because the Helpful Content system has been incorporated into all future core updates.

A big update to Google’s “ranking drop” documentation

Google has updated documentation that advises SEOs how to diagnose the cause of ranking drops — and how to fix them. Crucially, Google has changed five recommendations on debugging a ranking drop.

The below screenshot shows an example of the kind of updates Google has made:

The documentation in question is linked here and this article will highlight in more detail what specific changes and updates have been made. It’s worth having a read through this.

Manual actions coming for site reputation abuses

On the 6th of May, Google started its enforcement of the new site reputation abuse policy by de-ranking or even de-indexing portions of websites from the Google Search index. Google told us this change was coming in March, when it announced multiple search enhancements, including the March 2024 core update.

What is site reputation abuse? 

Site reputation abuse is when third-party sites host low-quality content provided by third parties to piggyback on the ranking power of those third-party websites. As Google told us in March: “A third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefit from the site... Such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”

Under Google’s new policy, site reputation abuse is defined as “third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner” and “intended to manipulate Search rankings” will be considered spam.

Google announced its new Search spam policies about reputation abuse on its developer site. You can view the new policies in full here.

Below is a screenshot of the early insights from Google’s site reputation abuse update - showcasing a sample of what has been seen so far.

The impact has been increasingly visible in the days since. Sites in the US as large as CNN, USA Today, Fortune, and LA Times have seen their “coupon” directories no longer ranking for coupon-related keyword phrases.

Some other sites — such as Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and others — manually blocked these directories from Google’s spiders before this new policy was enforced.

Gary Illyes' flip-flop commentary on the value of links

In mid-April, Google went on record as saying “backlinks aren't that important”... and some in the SEO world went a bit crazy about this.

Here’s a quick summary of what happened: 

Gary Illyes, a senior member of staff at Google, made a comment about how Google needs very few links to rank pages at a search conference and that it has intentionally made links less important. 

A few attendees mentioned that on social media, to the point that Gary Illyes replied that he probably shouldn't have talked about it. It’s not the first time that Gary has come out with things that cause a flurry within the SEO community.

The point is that while Google still uses backlinks as a ranking factor, there are many other factors at play. Twenty years ago, the more backlinks you could get, the higher you'd rank—until people started abusing and cheating the system with spammy “link farms.”

Today, it’s clear that quality is far better than quantity. As we promote to our clients, you’ll get more benefits from a high-quality, relevant backlink than hundreds you've paid for from dodgy spammy websites.

So, are links still important? The answer is: absolutely.

Websites just need to build up their backlink profile with care, and consider other ranking signals too.

Google starts testing short videos in the search menu bar

Google has been testing adding a "short videos" option in the search menu bar so you can filter your search results to show YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikToks. 

Brodie Clark spotted this and wrote on X: "Google is now testing a 'Short Videos' menu item on mobile, directing users to a feed of short videos published to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more."

A new featured snippet variant spotted in the wild

As ALSO spotted by Brodie Clark. Google is now testing out a new featured snippet variant on mobile that provides alternate answers under a 'People also say' heading.

While this featured snippet format is new, it does resemble a test documented in 2020. That test had a section titled 'See what other sites say' that also appeared on mobile.

While this all appears to be at the testing stage, it’s interesting to note that Google is changing things up on the SERPs—could this be related to SGE? Let’s wait and see.

Google’s SGE is coming

Now, SGE has been mentioned in previous newsletters, but after attending BrightonSEO last week and seeing how prominent a theme that was, I thought I’d provide a top-level overview of what SGE is for those who are unaware.

SGE stands for “Search Generative Experience,” a new feature that attempts to combine all the steps in a user’s journey into one interface by placing an AI-generated overview right at the top of the search results.  

This could have a huge impact on businesses. SGE will affect a brand's visibility, potentially limiting the volume of traffic coming to a website by instead keeping customers in the SERPs.

As it stands now, Google’s Search Generative Experience has been in testing as a Google Labs experiment in the US since May 2023 and has not been available in the UK. However, Google’s AI overviews are beginning to appear in search queries for a “small slice” of logged-in users in the UK.

Apparently, you can sign up for Google Labs and try to test it for yourself. Sadly, I can’t seem to get this to work for me.

It has been widely speculated that there would be an announcement regarding SGE at Google I/O this month. As of 14th May 2024, Google will be rolling out AI-Powered overviews to US search results.  Expect more to come on this in the next edition of SEMantics.

Previously, Elizabeth Reid, Google VP of Search, has indicated there likely won’t be a “light-switch moment” when SGE replaces Google Search as we’ve known it. Instead, it looks like we’ll be getting a much slower rollout with plenty of room for gradual iteration.

Whilst the overall feedback so far hasn’t been positive, SEOs still need to chart a course that incorporates both SGE and standard SERPs. The industry continues to evolve, but so do we!

That's all for now. Make sure you subscribe to catch the next edition of SEMantics as soon as it comes out. See you then!

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