SEO News Digest: DOJ vs. Google, August 2024 core update, Ranking bug now resolved and more

This week has been full of updates and announcements, so let's dive in together:

Updates

• August 2024 core update

The rollout began on August 15 and is expected to continue for about a month.

To recap, since this is a core update, it affects all geographies, languages, search types, and content varieties.

Now for the drumroll please: Sites that were hit by the HCU back in September 2023 are finally starting to recover. This is being actively discussed online, and we’re also seeing confirmation of this in the projects we track.

On top of that, Google Search Central has expanded its documentation on core updates to include:

📑 A section on conducting your own analysis when experiencing significant drops in rankings. Plus, they've specifically referenced questions for self-assessing content three times (!!!).

📑 A section on things to keep in mind when making changes:

• Don’t make quick changes like adding or removing something just because someone said it’s good or bad for SEO.
• Make changes that make sense, like rewriting or adding new sections if it’s better for your users.
• Deleting content should be a last resort because if you’re deleting something, it probably wasn’t created for your users but for SEO purposes.

Some changes might show results within a few days, while others could take a few months. But if there’s still no effect after that, you’ll have to wait for the next update.

Search

• Ranking bug now resolved

On August 15, the Search Status Dashboard reported: There’s an ongoing issue with ranking in Google Search that’s affecting a large number of search results.

John Mueller mentioned that the bug didn’t have anything to do with the core update.

On August 20, it was reported that the bug was fixed.

AI Overviews updates

• Some links will be embedded directly into the generated response text (available in Search Labs for 120 countries).
• You can now save a generated response so that the same text is provided the next time you ask the same query (only for English queries in the U.S.).

You can find all your saved responses by clicking on your profile → Interests.

• AI Overviews have been rolled out to 6 new locations: United Kingdom, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil – along with local language support for each country.

Interface

• (test) “You may also need” section

Unfortunately, there’s no additional info besides the screenshot. 

However, it seems like this feature is intended for e-commerce for recommending related products.

Tidbits

• DOJ vs. Google: Potential penalties reported by Bloomberg 

As we already know, Google has been found guilty of monopolizing the search market.

So, what consequences could this have for the company?

One option being considered – though no decision has been made – is to break up agreements that make Google the default search engine on Android devices (2.5 billion devices) and in the Chrome browser, where Google is not just the default option but it cannot even be removed.

A slightly less severe option could be forcing Google to share its data with competitors.

As for Google Ads, the word is that: "If the Justice Department doesn’t call for Google to sell off AdWords, it could ask for interoperability requirements that would make it work seamlessly on other search engines."

But there will be a separate hearing on ads in September.