SEO News Digest: SERP volatility, Desktop crawlers, Double snippets, and AI Overviews Research
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New week, new round of news! Before we dive in, we’d like to share our latest AI Overviews research with you. Our team analyzed over 100,000 keywords to see how the feature has evolved since the rollout. Check out all the insights we’ve gathered!
Updates
No official updates.
However, there was regular SERP volatility, for example, on Father’s Day.
SEO
A couple of weeks ago, Google announced that starting from July 5, they would for sure switch to mobile-first crawling and indexing. Some people took these words too literally with one user asking John Mueller:
“Can I ignore the desktop version of a website due to mobile-first indexing?”
In response, Mueller put out a gentle reminder that there are other search engines besides Google out there. Moreover, there’s actually a whole army of user agents that isn’t just there for indexing purposes (but for advertising and such as well). Note that all of them might still pay attention to desktop versions.
So, what’s the verdict? Do your best to respect responsive design and keep paying attention to your desktop version – it’ll serve you well.
SERP / Interface
As you know, Google conducts thousands of tests and experiments in search results on a daily basis.
On the Search Off the Record podcast, Gary Illyes mentioned that sometimes two experiments conflict when interacting with each other – for example, during tests of certain SERP features.
This can give off the impression that the SERPs where the experiments clashed are of lower quality. While people often blame updates for this, as you can see, that’s not the only ones to blame.
Similarly, if there was some sort of “data push” (e.g., a doodle update), and something went wrong afterward, both types of cases are identified and responded to ASAP.
Interesting notice that appeared today for definitions/translations as a tip for users. Have been able to use this feature for a while and Google is now trying to push it more. Have seen similar notices appear in the past for AI-related features.
Double snippets consist of two features (e.g., one half is a text quote, the other is an image block).
Split featured snippets have been in search for quite a while now (first noticed on mobile SERPs in 2020), but the ‘from sources across the web’ feature hasn’t been seen there before.
This was mentioned at Google I/O. Search results appear to be broken down into “parts,” where results are organized/grouped by categories.
The search colossal is already testing this.
GSC
To see these reports, you need to set the following filters:
Recommended by LinkedIn
Search type: Images
Search appearance: Merchant listings
And voilà!
Local SEO
Google continues to experiment with local queries.
About a month ago, it was mentioned that Google ran a test for “near me” queries, where they showed only business listings in search.
This time the changes aren’t as radical. The block with local businesses was expanded from showing 3 to 5 companies, which provides more opportunities for businesses to get noticed by users.
Unfortunately, I was not able to get the new 5-pack working for me.
Tidbits
We are talking about having your profiles with your reviews on “movies, books, video games, and albums” right in search. These profiles are publicly accessible and indexed (available in search via the site: operator query).
If you’re curious, you can check your own profile by following this link: profile.google.com
The announcement was made a week ago. The entire set of new AI capabilities was dubbed Apple Intelligence. Here’s a snippet of the presentation on the development.
It’s really cool and mind-blowing but also a bit scary at the same time. All because this new Apple Intelligence (including the upgraded Siri) can now do everything on your devices and dig into any digital corner of your personal life. For example, AI can prioritize some of your messages and downplay others. Or even generate summaries instead of the original message texts that were sent to you. Is this okay? That’s up to each person to decide.
And although Apple assures us that our conversations are not logged, users have concerns about the privacy risks involved and the internet has stirred up quite the storm as a result.
By the way, Apple has already trained its AI on internet data. The documentation kindly states that you can block Applebot-Extended from your site, but surely you understand that this won’t delete the data that is already in their database.
For example, it uses the images you post. Artists reacted so sharply to the news that they ended up creating their own social network dubbed Cara, which has managed to attract 650K subscribers within a week and is now rapidly approaching the one-million-users mark (recently reported to have 900K users).
And the cherry on top of our news cake:
…where Marissa Mayer (former VP of Search Products) explains how Google prioritizes its own products in search and only then ranks other links.
“Because it’s our search. We do what we want.”
This material will serve as evidence in yet another antitrust lawsuit against the company.