Months after the completion of the March 2024 Core Update, its aftermath is still strongly felt. A lot of website owners, SEOs, content creators are still scrambling with making changes to their site to regain their lost traffic and rank. Some do not know where to start, some have made changes but are still not seeing any effects from it. All these are causing some to lose hope on ever regaining back their lost rank and traffic.
Our weekly roundup this week talks about statements provided by Googlers on what to do when it comes to recovery, how long it takes, and some core update information.
Time and time again, when asked how to go about getting pages and sites ranked, Google has answered to create helpful, reliable content that is designed for users and not search engines. There are even documentations on it that provides guidelines on what they consider helpful, people-first content, which is a must-read.
Early this week, Danny Sullivan – Google’s Search Liaison, responded in an X thread about what can be done and what should be focused on to regain lost traffic. The user is frustrated as it seems like the more effort she puts in, the more her traffic seems to go down. Sullivan responded:
As I’ve said before, I think everyone should focus on doing whatever they think is best for their readers. I know it can be confusing when people get lots of advice from different places, and then they also hear about all these things Google is supposedly doing, or not doing, and really they just want to focus on content. If you’re lost, again, focus on that. That is your touchstone.
If you look at what @iPullRank wrote recently, after reviewing all the stuff that we’re supposedly doing (or not doing) I though one of his concluding points was excellent advice: https://ipullrank.com/google-algo-leak
“Make Great Content and Promote it Well – I’m joking, but I’m also serious. Google has continued to give that advice and we balk at it as not actionable. For some SEOs it’s just beyond their control. After reviewing these features that give Google its advantages, it is quite obvious that making better content and promoting it to audiences that it resonates with will yield the best impact on those measures. Measures of link and content features will certainly get you quite far, but if you really want to win in Google long term, you’re going to have to make things that continue to deserve to rank.”
As to the off-site effort question, I think from what I know from before I worked at Google Search, as well as my time being part of the search ranking team, is that one of the ways to be successful with Google Search is to think beyond it.
Great sites with content that people like receive traffic in many ways. People go to them directly. They come via email referrals. They arrive via links from other sites. They get social media mentions.
This doesn’t mean you should get a bunch of social mentions, or a bunch of email mentions because these will somehow magically rank you better in Google (they don’t, from how I know things). It just means you’re likely building a normal site in the sense that it’s not just intended for Google but instead for people. And that’s what our ranking systems are trying to reward, good content made for people. I
It also means you’ve built a site that’s not dependent on any single source of traffic, which in my nearly 30 years of being involved in some way with online marketing, is a healthy good thing.
Sullivan highlights the importance of focusing and doing whatever is best for your readers – and not what search engines wants and rewards. Focusing on your readers and what they are looking for, what they want, and satisfying those is what a site and its content should focus on. As he says, this is your touchstone.
Another important point mentioned is to not focus solely on Google Search and to look beyond it when it comes to traffic. There are many venues to gain traffic from that is not limited only to Google. There’s social media, email marketing, ads (gasp. lol), etc.
Overall, importance should be given on your brand, audience, and marketing efforts. Know your target audience, what their needs are, what they are searching for, create a site and content that are able to meet those needs, build a brand, and market yourself in different venues and formats. This should not only be beneficial for search, it goes beyond that – it focuses on your business, growing it, and not just relying on one egg in a basket.
Read the full X thread here.
At SMX Advanced, Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable was able to interview Elizabeth Tucker, Google’s Director, Product Management for Search. She was asked questions about the March 2024 Core Update, the recent Search API data leak, and a whole lot more. Here are some notable information gathered during the interview:
On the March 2024 Core Update
*The March 2024 Core update took 45 days to roll out because it was a lot of work and Google carefully changed “a lot of different core systems”. According to Tucker, they actually had a mini war room where they did live monitoring of capacity and latency in their data centers because it is unusual for them to roll out so many different changes at once. They were able to do the update successfully, however, there were a few times when they noticed hiccups. They paused, slowed down, and made sure things rolled out smoothly. They have to be careful when we’re rolling out changes to these large-scale systems that have to operate around the world for billions of queries a day in all languages. There’s a lot of hard engineering needed to do to make sure that Search works successfully.
*The March Core update was its largest core update in Google’s history. When she was discussing the update with executives, she was told “not to break Google”.
*The Core update completed on April 19, but it took Google a week to announce the completion of the roll out – on April 26. This was because it was a pretty complex operation and they wanted to be absolutely certain that everything has rolled out. Hundreds of people were involved so just answering the question of “are we done yet?” involved so many different pings and discussions. There was a little bit of uncertainty at one point whether they were finished.
On Creating Content
*Google’s North Star is getting people to satisfying and helpful results. Tucker mentioned – “Think about what we are trying to do … and where we are going and aim for that. … Think about content that’s helpful, satisfying and has good experiences.”
*There is no one-size-fits-all solution to making great content because great content comes in many flavors, shapes and sizes. Focus on the big picture – “is this helpful satisfying content [and] are people gonna have a great experience?”
On the Google Search API Documentation Leak
*Tucker has declined to discuss the signals mentioned in the leak. According to her – “There are bad actors. You know when we release a lot of information about how specific signals work, it becomes a vector for abuse. That’s frustrating for me, too…I’m a total search quality nerd. I would love to be able to share more but we have to be incredibly careful.”
The full interview can be accessed by registering here. Search Engine Land also published their 13 SEO Takeaways from the interview.
When it comes to search, Apple has partnered up with Google to use the search engine as its default search engine in its Safari Browser. In exchange for this privilege, Google pays them around $18 Billion a year.
Things seem to be shaking up as Apple has made another deal, this time with Open AI to bring ChatGPT to Apple’s products under Apple Intelligence. The deal allows users to access ChatGPTs expertise without the need to switch between tools. Siri can tap on its expertise when helpful and Siri presents the answers directly. ChatGPT will also be available in Apple’s systemwide Writing Tools that helps users generate content on what they are writing about. With Compose, they can also access ChatGPT image tools to generate images.
ChatGPT will come to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year, powered by GPT-4o. Users can access it for free without creating an account, and ChatGPT subscribers can connect their accounts and access paid features right from these experiences.
While collaboration between the two should not fully affect Google and Apple’s relationship (they are being paid billions a year!), this certainly brings about some discomfort since Google and OpenAI are rivals when it comes to the AI race. Let’s wait and see how this all plays out.
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