4 Search Trends from Google Marketing Live, Google's Next Core Update, GA4 Update & More
SEO TL;DR #25 - 28/05/2024
General
4 Trends from Google Marketing Live 2024
Philipp Schindler led the talks at the event, showing off Gemini 1.5 and Project Astra. He also gave insights into four key trends in search - all powered by AI and all linked to Google Ads - which is, let’s not forget, where 78% of Google’s revenue comes from.
Trend 1: The exactly what I want search
The volume of searches with 5 or more words grew 1.5x as fast as shorter queries.
Instead of searching for:
“Men’s running shoes”
People are searching for:
“How to pick the right men’s running shoes, for beginners with high arches”
Trend 2: Complex search made easy
Searches like:
“What are good options for days out in Newcastle, with the kids, with ice cream on the way”
This typically involves several searches, but Google will summarise everything on one AI-generated page.
Trend 3: Search beyond words
People search more visually with features such as Google Lens and Circle to Search (with video search to be supported soon).
There are 12 billion visual searches a month using Google Lens
Research showed how Gen X take screenshots from platforms such as TikTok and upload them to Lens.
Trend 4: Search beyond answers
AI-organised pages will serve queries such as “outfit ideas”, “best places to eat with the kids”, and “rainy day activities”.
For example, searching for “things to do in Newcastle Upon Tyne” will feature top landmarks, the best places to eat, the best music venues and local delicacies (anyone for a saveloy dip?).
PPC
TL;DR New Products Coming to Ads
AI stole the rest of the show, emphasising creative enhancements with Ads, data integration, and delivering what consumers want directly from Search results.
Performance max (PMax) Upgrade:
Allows mass AI creative asset production: rapid and scalable high-quality creative asset production
Generative AI for faster ad creation, brand-customised ads, advanced image editing and automatic showcasing of product feeds
AI-Powered Shopping Ads:
Introduction of video and virtual ad types
Integration of short-form product videos, virtual try-ons, and 3D show spins for retailers
Enhanced consumer engagement with creatives and products before landing on the page
Visual Storytelling for YouTube, Discover, and Gmail:
Target potential customers with vertical videos, stickers, and automatically generated animated image ads
Ads in AI Overviews:
Relevant Search and Shopping ads will appear in "sponsored" sections within AI-generated overview boxes on the SERP
Existing Search, PMax, and Shopping campaigns are eligible
First-Party Data Unification:
Ads Data Manager available to all for centralising and activating first-party data
New Brand Profiles and AI Branding Tools for Merchants:
New tools to showcase brands and create visual content
Brand profiles to highlight key merchant information on Search
Product Studio includes brand alignment features and video creation from a single product photo
AI-Powered Ads for Complex Purchases:
Testing interactive experiences based on user needs and context
AI provides tailored advice and recommendations
Aims to improve user experience on the SERP and ready consumers to convert on brand landing pages
Overall Impact:
Updates focused on reducing consumer effort to click through sites
Long-awaited functionalities like reporting introduced
Enhanced ability for brands to showcase creativity
📺 Watch Google Marketing Live 2024
Content SEO
Google Plans to Highlight More Genuine Content
Google is working on boosting the visibility of ‘heartfelt content’ from websites affected by last year's helpful content update. John Mueller shared on X:
I can't make any promises, but the team working on this is explicitly evaluating how sites can / will improve in Search for the next update. It would be great to show more users the content that folks have worked hard on, and where sites have taken helpfulness to heart.
In March 2024, many sites hit by the September 2023 update expected some recovery but saw none. This was a massive blow for many publishers, both emotionally and financially. The core issue might be that Google's helpful content signal is too broadly applied.
💡 Actions
We know the HCU was intended to work mainly at the page level, but sitewide signals might be dragging down your more valuable content.
So, if you haven’t already done so, ensure your sitewide quality signals are on point.
Reduce pages with high similarity - a potential sign of low quality. Either improve content to make it more unique, consolidate, block, or remove it.
Remove redundant pages. I searched a sitemap for the word ‘test’ the other day, which returned six different test pages! Not something you want indexed.
Sort your pages by content length. While word count alone is not a ranking factor, it can help you determine pages of low quality. Remember that random update you wrote 5 years ago? Is it still relevant?
Specific advice for ecommerce sites:
Remove empty collections - collections with 0 products in them
Consolidate low-stock collections, AKA thin collections: collections with 1-3 products in them
Remove dated collections: collections which were set up for email campaigns, for example, or Spring/Summer 2021 edits.
Remove duplicate collections - collection set up in error. Search your sitemap for any URLs ending in ‘-1’ to find these fast.
General
Google Tests Special Reddit Search Result Snippet Interface?
As highlighted in Search Engine Roundtable, Google is testing a special search result snippet interface for Reddit - showing the number of upvotes and comments on the Reddit thread.
Technical SEO
Upgrade to WordPress 6.5 for Better SEO
Google and Bing recommend upgrading to WordPress 6.5 for native support of "lastmod" dates in sitemaps. This helps search engines know when to crawl your site, improving the visibility of your latest content.
Gary Illyes from Google and Fabrice Canel from Bing stress that accurate lastmod dates boost SEO by ensuring fresh content is indexed quickly. For WordPress users, this update is essential for maintaining optimal search performance and can significantly enhance your site's SEO.
Additionally, consider using IndexNow, supported by Bing, for realtime indexing of your pages alongside your updated sitemaps.
Technical SEO
What file types can Google Index
Google Search can now index epub, the Electronic Publication filetype.
Here are the other most noteworthy file types Google can index:
Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf)
Comma-Separated Values (.csv)
Electronic Publication (.epub) NEW
HTML (.htm, .html, other file extensions)
Microsoft Excel/PowerPoint/Word (.xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .doc, .docx)
OpenOffice (.odp, .ods, .odt)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)
Text (.txt, .text, other file extensions), including source code in common programming languages
See the complete list of file types indexable by Google
💡 Action
While all these file types are technically indexable, they rarely surface in the SERPs - except for specific, long tail searches - as Google massively favours web pages.
When auditing your site content, it’s a good idea to convert up-to-date, helpful PDFs into a well-structured web page so Google can better understand and index the information.
You can find your ranking PDF content by Googling:
site:https://yoursite.com/ filetype:pdfAnalytics
‘Users in Last 5 Minutes’ added to GA4
Google Analytics has updated its realtime report to include data from the last five minutes, providing more granular insights.
Previously, it only displayed user activity for the last 30 minutes.
AI
AI Overview: Gag Reel
Funnily enough, Google’s Marketing Live event failed to mention the many failures of AI Overviews, but fear not; we have the hashtag #GoogEnough for a quick lol:
A genuine quote from Google Marketing Live:
“People who use AI Overviews actually use search more and are more satisfied with their results.”
Meanwhile…
Google also stated:
“When people click from AI Overviews these clicks are higher quality with more time on site”.
Meanwhile…
Take these Tweets with a pinch of salt. The internet is full of trolls and people looking for attention by doctoring answers, but many are, unfortunately, legit.
Hopefully Google will improve the quality of AI results, and quickly! Casting my memory back ten years ago, the same thing happened with Featured Snippets, which started pretty shakily.
And let’s not forget the first week of ChatGPT when people could ask how to build bombs and hide bodies 😬