Search Insights, Big Acquisitions, and AI Enhancements: SEMantics November 2024

In the latest SEMantics newsletter, Aimee Jones unpacks Semrush’s acquisition of Search Engine Land, new AI-driven changes in Google Shopping, and the impact of Google’s ranking volatility.

It’s time for another newsletter, where I bless your inboxes with another SEO round-up. This round-up is designed to help with knowledge sharing and ensure we’re all kept up to speed on everything happening in the SEO world. 

Now let’s dig into some more search updates and news covering the top things that happened in October.

Semrush has acquired Search Engine Land

It was announced in the middle of October that Semrush, a leading online visibility management and content marketing SaaS platform, acquired Third Door Media, the parent company behind Search Engine Land. 

In an article published by SEL themselves, they’ve stated that “Search Engine Land’s mission to inform and educate you on all the latest developments in search marketing will remain the same.”

Whilst this is likely to be very true, this acquisition does raise other questions: What happens when a large search marketing industry player buys a prominent media outlet focused on the search marketing industry?

Some other top questions include:

• Will the publisher's content remain impartial and unbiased? Will its authoritative and heavily relied on guides cover a wide range of tools, platforms, and services, including those that directly compete with Semrush?
• What will happen to the extensive library of existing content on Search Engine Land—such as articles, white papers, ebooks, and videos—that references Semrush competitors? (not to mention the backlinks to competitors!)
• What about credible perspectives from respected authors that may contradict the new corporate narrative? Will those voices continue to be published, highlighted, and quoted on SEL, or will they be muted?

What this does mean is there is likely going to be a HUGE conflict of interest and many SEOs are wondering how this will play out and whether or not we will see a significant change in SEL’s content.

You can read more about this from Search Engine Land’s perspective here or an article from Search Engine Journal covering this topic.

Google is discontinuing the Sitelinks search box

Ten years after it was initially implemented, Google has announced that it will be retiring the Sitelinks search box. Google has stated over time, they’ve noticed that usage has dropped. Alongside this, to help simplify the search results, they’ll be removing this visual element starting on 21st November 2024.

Example search result showing a sitelinks search box.

Google has also said “this change will apply globally across all search results, in all languages and countries. This doesn't affect rankings or the other sitelinks visual element, and won't be listed in the Search status dashboard.”

An important note here: there’s no need to remove associated sitelink search box structured data, Google will simply ignore this.

You can read more about this from the Search Central blog.

Google announces AI-powered Google Shopping

Being rolled out in the US, Google is introducing a transformed Google Shopping — rebuilt from the ground up with AI.

The new Google Shopping experience uses AI to intelligently show the most relevant products, helping to speed up and simplify the search experience. 

The new Google Shopping home page also has a personalised feed to inspire with shoppable products and videos based on users' preferences.

This signals yet another AI introduction to the SERPs from Google and as this is only rolling out in the US and is largely experimental to begin with, it's hard for us to say whether this is here to stay and how users are responding to the new introduction. 

You can read more about it here and see some more visual examples of how this new feature looks.

Google’s new releases: AI-organised Search, Google Lens, and more

Google has introduced more capabilities to Lens to make it even easier for people to search the world around them. 

Alongside this, Google is rolling out search results pages organised with AI in the US — beginning with recipes and meal inspiration on mobile. This means that users in the US will now see a full-page experience, with relevant results organised specifically for the individual. People will be able to easily explore content and perspectives from across the web including articles, videos, forums and more — all in one place.

If you want an idea of the changes made and how this will look, you can see a preview within Google’s blog announcing these changes.

Google introduces Ads in AI Overviews and Google Lens in the US

Alongside some of the other releases for AI and Google Lens, Google announced in early October that ads in AI Overviews are now available for mobile users in the US.

According to Google, “people have been finding the ads within AI Overviews helpful because they can quickly connect with relevant businesses, products and services to take the next step at the exact moment they need them."

You can read Google’s blog announcing this here, as well as some visuals on how this looks within the AIO. 

The above preview shows the AIO result, including ads, for the term ‘how do I get a grass stain out of jeans?’.

Many SEOs have been anticipating the addition of ads within AI Overviews so it’s only a matter of time before this hits the UK - most likely after Google tests the impact within the US SERPs.

Ranking volatility continued throughout October

Google Search's recent ranking volatility continued throughout October. Following the latest core update, there has been a lot of volatility noticed on the SERPs from SEOs within the industry.

This marks the longest period of "heated search volatility" ever recorded despite the fact that the August 2024 core update was completed in early September.

In an article published by SEO Round Table, this is discussed in more detail if you’d like to learn more about this. 

Google has published a Google Trends documentation page

Google has published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to better understand your market and find information that can help you as you're developing your content strategy and refining how you talk to your audience.

Check out the Google trends documentation.

Google now recommends using higher-resolution favicons

Google Search Central updated its favicon documentation to recommend higher-resolution images, exceeding the previous minimum standard.

Below is an example of a favicon for those who need the refresher - A favicon is a small image displayed next to the page title in the browser tab.

The previous minimum recommended size was 8x8 pixels and the updated recommendation is 48x48. This likely ties to recent experiments with larger favicons in SERPs, as well as Google’s dedication to keeping their documentation up to date.

Favicon guidelines

New GA4 feature: Segmented Explorations

You can now save segments in Explorations on GA4. 

Once a segment has been created and saved, it can be used by all users within a property. This is a handy new feature as it will save a lot of time compared to creating segments from scratch each time.

Google introduces CrUX Vis

CrUX Vis, a new Core Web Vitals tool that visualises your site performance, was launched in early October and is the work of an intern at Google, Jamison O’Keefe. CrUX Vis allows users to track the bigger picture of a site's performance across devices and network.

So there you have it, another fabulously relevant newsletter full of SEO updates for you. I hope you've enjoyed the latest edition of SEMantics, and keep your eyes peeled for the next - there’s already been a lot of juicy stuff happening in November!