Manual Action Warnings, AI Advances, and PR Shifts: SEMantics December 2024
Bring's Aimee Jones leaves plenty of SEO presents under the tree in this Christmas bumper edition of SEMantics, with guest contributions from Ben Magnall , Imogen Gee , and Leila McGrorty .
The November 2024 Core Update is underway
On 11th November, Google released the November core update, the latest in a long list of 2024 algorithm updates.
This update, as stated by Google, “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.”
The latest core update is still rolling out, despite Google saying it may take up to two weeks to complete. Let’s see when the finalised roll-out is announced.
AI Overviews have expanded to more than 100 countries
At the end of October, Google announced its further expansion to AI Overviews. With this latest expansion, AI Overviews will reach more than 1 billion global users every month.
As part of this update, Google has also extended language support across the board. If you’re in any country with AI Overviews, you can now get them in any of the currently supported languages, including English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. So, for example, if you’re in the United Kingdom and you speak Spanish, you can now see AI Overviews in your preferred language.
This expansion proves Google's commitment to AIO, despite mixed feedback from users and the SEO community.
OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT Search
At the start of November, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search, a feature for the Plus and Team users.
As articulated in OpenAI’s announcement blog, “chats now include links to sources, such as news articles and blog posts, giving you a way to learn more”.
As part of ChatGPT Search, ChatGPT can now search the web and provide fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, using Bing's index as well as other third parties. The ChromeGPT extension also launched alongside this update.
ChatGPT will choose to search the web based on what you ask, or you can manually choose to search by clicking the web search icon, as per the below:
Below is a visual of what a response from ChatGPT Search looks like.
What does this mean for SEO? OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search has an opportunity to challenge Google’s search monopoly with a much different user experience (for example, less clutter on the SERPs, less search features, and no ads). While it’s too early to tell what impact ChatGPT search will have on Google, it’s something for us to keep in mind.
Will Google give warnings before implementing manual actions in the future?
This question is sparked off the back of a recent LinkedIn interaction between Vlad Melnic & John Mueller, as per the below:
John Mueller’s response here is interesting. He’s stated that whilst he is in favour of notifying publishers before implementing manual actions, it would make Google’s goal of cleaning up the SERPs a bit more challenging.
In my opinion, this is potentially something that could be looked into in the future, particularly with Google now providing insights and recommendations in Search Console.
However, I’m doubtful if they’ll ever provide clear warnings before a manual action, particularly as Google doesn’t just hand out manual actions for no reason.
Fun fact of the day: I met John Mueller at BrightonSEO in October this year and we discussed all things Google algorithm updates on a panel, alongside some other great marketers.
You can still catch the recording of the Google algos & updates panel within your BrightonSEO video package if you’ve got it and would like to watch our discussion!
Google updates its crawl budget documentation for large sites
Google added a new best practice in its crawl budget documentation. It now recommends you ensure all links are present on the mobile version of a page, as it is on the desktop version.
As highlighted below, Google added a new bullet point to this section of the crawl budget documentation page:
Why does this matter? If a large site uses both a mobile and desktop version of the site and the links on some of those pages do not match, it can cause discovery issues for new content.
You can read more about this on Google’s Search Central blog.
The Core Web Vitals documentation has been updated
The official documentation for how Core Web Vitals are scored was recently updated with new insights into how Interaction to Next Paint (INP) scoring thresholds were chosen and offers a better understanding of Interaction To Next Paint.
The main change to the documentation is to provide an explanation for the speed performance thresholds that show poor, needs improvement and good.
Here is a screenshot showing the INP score through Page Speed Insights:
You can read more about this change in SEJ’s article here.
AI has been spotted within the People Also Ask SERP feature
AI has been spotted within the US People Also Ask feature.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Since the majority of answers have been featured snippets in the past, it's no surprise that AI Overviews are sneaking in. This new appearance within the SERPs appears to be an evolution into a relationship between PAA and AI Overviews. It’ll be interesting to see if this evolves further and AIOs continue to move into new spaces on the SERPs.
Google Maps launches product search feature
Google has announced some new features which includes real-time product availability and searching for specific products local to you. The key to this new feature is to make sure your product schema, GBP and Merchant Centre are up to date!
💡 Now for some insights from our Senior Digital PR Executive, Leila!
New journalist titles have just dropped
We've become accustomed to seeing the same journalist job titles in our databases over the years in Digital PR. Your run of the mill "Lifestyle Reporter", "Personal Finance Editor", "Senior Ecommerce Writer", but recently we've noticed a few new ones pop up:
1. "AI Assisted Reporter" - we're now seeing this job title pop up at a number of regional news titles in the Newsquest group, According to a job listing Newsquest have posted to the NCTJ, an AI assisted reporter's duties include helping the title to expand their use of AI by:
Here is a direct quote from the listing:
"The successful candidate will be at the forefront of a new era in journalism, utilising AI technology to create national, local, and hyper-local content for our news brands, while also applying their traditional journalism skills. This is an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about journalism and the potential for AI to contribute to the way we produce and consume news, without losing sight of the importance of quality reporting and writing."
Newsquest chief executive Henry Faure Walker told a Press Gazette event "the AI system reporter could pretty much hold the fort for the week filling the paper, and it freed the other reporters to go out and do really good investigative stuff, videos, and get behind the story".
It's super interesting to see this latest development between AI and journalism. From research, it sounds like the journalists simply feed a press release or a quote into an AI system which then produces the article.
It will be interesting to see how this new role might affect the way PR teams pitch to journalists moving forward. Will it be better to add more detail to pitch emails and press releases, rather than just directing a journalist to an onsite guide, if they are being fed into an AI tool?
2. "Under 35's Writer” - This is another journalist job title we've seen pop up recently. A recent piece of research presented to the London Press Club’s annual debate at Stationers Hall found that under 35's spent just 8 minutes on news websites per week during the recent General Election. This clearly shows that younger generations are disengaged when it comes to digesting online news and it could be that the "under 35s writer" is an attempt to improve that.
Looking more closely at a "under 35's journo" writing currently for Wales Online, her work focuses on shopping, popular television programmes, celebrity news, and general news from the local area.
Reach PLC actually have a "Head of Under 35s" and looking at their "2023 Full Year Results Statement", the renewed focus on a younger audience is part of their strategy to combat the deceleration of digital growth.
Here is a quote from the statement:
“We have launched the Secure Audience Strategy, which focuses newsrooms on increasing the number of page views which come from reliable sources - those built on intentional relationships with us by readers. Content is analysed by age profile to understand what will appeal to under-35s in particular. This was rolled out in August.”
If anything, this could make it easier for us to target the right journalists with our outreach. If we have a client with a known target audience of below 35 and even on the flip-side, if our client has an older audience this new job title definitely gives us more in-sight at a glance than just "Lifestyle Writer".
HARO will be shutting down in December 2024
HARO (now called Connectively) will be shut down on 9th December 2024. This comes just a year after HARO's acquisition and rebranding.
Why is it shutting down?
Connectively have said that “after assessing feedback from customers” and evaluating their product portfolio, they have decided to focus our attention on core offerings – namely their integrated, award-winning CisionOne platform.
CisionOne offers Print, Online, TV, Radio, Social, Podcast and Magazine media monitoring, analytics and journalist outreach tools – all within a purpose-built platform. However, it is important to note that CisionOne does not include features like journalist requests or media opportunities. However this tool is a solution for identifying and engaging with relevant journalists and media contacts.
💡 Next up, we have a couple of tech updates courtesy of Imogen Gee and Ben Magnall on the Tech SEO team!
Screaming Frog SEO Spider Update – Version 21.0
Screaming Frog version 21.0 has been launched and brings with it a load of new useful features! This update contains new features and improvements based on user feedback and some internal improvements.
Here are a couple of key callouts:
You can learn more about the new features and fixes in their announcement blog here.
You can now annotate traces directly in the Performance panel
Chrome's DevTools now allows developers to directly annotate performance traces in the Performance panel, streamlining debugging and collaboration.
This new feature enables users to highlight key areas, such as long tasks or unnecessary work, and save annotations within the trace file for easy sharing. Annotations include time range labels, entry labels, and connections between entries, helping developers add context and insights directly to the trace.
The panel also supports saving annotated traces, hiding annotations for uncluttered analysis, and persisting customisations like zoom levels and hidden call stacks.
Why do we care about this? This advancement eliminates the need for external tools and enhances workflows, making performance debugging and collaboration more efficient.
So there you have it—another fabulously relevant newsletter full of SEO updates. I hope you've enjoyed the latest instalment, and keep your eyes peeled for the next!