AI Overviews Aftermath, New Local Ranking Factor & Auditing Large Ecommerce Stores
SEO TL;DR #24 - 20/05/2024
AI
A 1-week review of Google’s AI Overviews
Google’s new AI Overviews in search results have sparked frustration among users, with thousands of people taking to Google help forums to ask how to disable them.
“They just get in the way of what I'm looking for and often aren't that helpful.”
“I don't mind AI overviews typically, but I want a way to turn them off so I don't have scroll to see real results.”
“This super annoying ‘AI Overview’ thing keeps popping up... It is so annoying.”
There is currently no opt-out for AI Overviews. They will be enabled for all US users in the coming days, with a global rollout expected later this year.
AI Overview and Site CTR
Many SEOs are worried that AI Overviews will hurt traffic, just as they did when featured snippets were introduced in 2014. After all, if you can get your query answered directly in the SERPs, there's no need to visit a site.
However, Hema Budaraju, Senior Director of Product (SGE) at Google, told Search Engine Land that the link cards within AI Overviews generate a higher click-through rate than traditional web search results.
Google hasn’t disclosed exact CTR figures and does not separate impressions and click data for AI Overview links or regular links.
Turning off AI Overviews
If you don’t want AI Overviews to show, thank Avram Piltch from Tom’s Hardware for creating the Bye Bye Google AI Chrome extension, which does exactly what it says on the tin. You can also use it to hide other search features, such as videos and shopping blocks.
How to stop your content being used in AI Overviews
If you want to stop your content from appearing in AI Overviews, Glenn Gabe tested adding the "nosnippet" tag to the content used in the AI Overview and discovered it successfully removed his content and link card.
However, this also removed the snippet description from the standard search listings, so maybe don’t do this!
Content SEO
Potential recoveries from Google’s Helpful Content Update?
John Mueller provided insights on when sites affected by the September 2023 Helpful Content Update (HCU) might recover. According to Mueller, assuming all necessary fixes have been made, significant improvements should be noticeable with the next core update.
Sites can not only recover but also grow after addressing issues from the HCU, but recovery may take longer than anticipated despite initial suggestions that it could only take weeks or months.
Google is evaluating how to better reward high-quality content sites in the next core update and demonstrating a genuine commitment to helpful, high-quality content is the best strategy for improving search rankings.
Mueller stated:
“I imagine for most sites strongly affected, the effects will be site-wide for the time being, and it will take until the next update to see similar strong effects (assuming the new state of the site is significantly better than before).”
“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.”
General
New Web-Only Filter in Google
Google has introduced a new ‘Web’ filter, which allows users to show only text links, excluding videos, images, and other non-text content, reminiscent of the pre-2007 Google Search experience.
This new feature offers a streamlined search experience for those who prefer text-only results.
Local SEO
New (unconfirmed) Google Local Ranking Factor
In a post on X, Darren Shaw shared what he thinks might be a new local ranking factor: service areas. While this previously had no impact on your Google Business Profile’s (GBP) rankings, there has been some reasonably convincing data to support the idea.
Local Falcon (a local rank tracking tool) showed how one user ranked around his GBP pin but not in the main area he wanted to target. He updated the service areas in GBP to be more tightly focused around the area he wanted to rank in, and the updated scans now show him ranking better in that area!
If you’re not specifying your service area in GBP, it’s simple enough and worthwhile if it can boost your visibility in your target areas. If you service a specific area, try not to spread yourself too thin and focus on the cities and towns you can serve well.
Ecommerce SEO
How to Optimise Sitemaps with 1M+ Pages
This recent Whiteboard Friday by Stevy Liakopoulou shows you how to optimise (very) large ecommerce sites, but it’s definitely worth a watch for all ecommerce managers, as it covers the same issues I see crop up repeatedly.
It covers six main areas.
Hierarchy & organisation: using sub-sitemaps and separating sitemaps for each language you serve.
Reducing thin content: merging or removing collections with 0-1 products.
Improving low-quality content: add helpful content for important pages first.
How to handle out-of-stock products.
How to handle products with multiple variants.
Error handling: 404s, 301/302s, soft 404s etc.