SEO TLDR #17: Core Update News, Debugging Traffic Drops with Google Trends & New Head of Google Search
SEO TL;DR - 25/03/2024
Google’s March Core & Spam update
Google has now fully rolled out the spam update, which took almost 15 days.
The core update is still rolling out and will continue to do so for another week or so. In a post on X, Google’s search liaison Danny Sulivan urged people to be patient about any volatility they’re experiencing. The Modern Proper posted:
We’ve lost a lot of our long-standing rankings to this March Core Update (I’m assuming) and we’re not seeing them bounce back. Can you suggest a resource for non-wordpress SEO site auditing?
To which Danny replied
I would let the update complete before deciding if there are any fundamental changes you might want to make. There might not be any to do at all.
Your site seems clean and nice. Going through the site, I see [steak pie] as one of your featured recipes. You're in the carousel and second in web links for that. That's a pretty solid sign that we like your content.
If you were previously first, trying to move up from second by doing a lot of technical and content stuff wouldn't be something I'd recommend. Second is super successful. Rankings can also change for various reasons, so you might move back up.
You might also look to see if there's any seasonal change. IE: instead of looking at rankings, look at your traffic. If it was higher previously, what for? Perhaps you had some seasonal recipes a few months ago that people are looking for less. We have a page about debugging traffic drops that talks about seasonality here.
It’s important to remember that even if your site looks clean or nice on the surface, it’s worth digging a little deeper as there might be underlying issues which you’ll only learn about by performing a technical crawl of your site. Issues like having a high percentage of low-quality content or errors such as broken links or redirects are known to pull down your site if not kept in check.
Investigating industry trends with Google Trends
Off the back of Danny’s comment, I’ve never actually considered using Google Trends as a way to understand whether traffic drops are part of a broader trend or due to an update, as explained in debugging drops in Google Search traffic.
The section on seasonal trends states there are two leading causes for traffic shifts: search interest disruptions or new products and seasonality.
Google Trends can provide insights into how search queries change over time, reflecting shifts in consumer interest or behaviour. For example, food-related searches vary seasonally, with diets peaking in January, turkey in November, and champagne in December. You can use Trends to check if the queries driving traffic to your website have clear drops at different times of the year.
You can also discover insights that can help you with your Search traffic:
Check the top queries in your region and compare them to those you're getting traffic from in Search Console. If queries are missing from your traffic, check if you have content on that subject and ensure it's being crawled and indexed.
Check queries related to important topics. This might surface rising related queries and help you prepare your site for them, for example by adding related content to address those new topics.
Publishing content in bulk is not spam
As reported over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google's John Mueller said publishing content in bulk does not make the content spammy in the eyes of Google Search.
Content is generally not considered spam just from the way that you publish it. Some sites switch on a big batch of awesome content, and awesome is awesome. Some sites publish small amounts of junk, and well, it's junk not because of how it's published.
The bottom line is Google likes “awesome content”. Previously, publishing a mass amount of content over a short period was a red flag, but it’s clear nowadays that Google’s algorithms can (mostly) distinguish between mass-published AI content and content “written by humans for humans”.
Liz Reid: Google’s new Head of Search
While The Verge hasn’t been the biggest fan of SEOs for a while (aka the people who ruined the internet), there’s an interesting perspective on how the newly appointed Head of Search, Liz Reid, will drive the company forward.
Liz has been working at Google for over 20 years, recently heading up their AI efforts with Search Generative Experience, which Google 100% believes is the future of search.
In a LinkedIn post announcing her new role, Reid noted all these new search tools, including the new Circle to Search feature, Google Lens, and other new ways of thinking about search.
We are able to serve a wider range of information needs and answer new types of questions, including more complex questions, like comparisons or longer queries.
Let’s say you search, “What is the best lawnmower?” If you think about where you go further, you’d probably want to take a picture of your lawnmower and say, “best version of this,” but maybe you can take a picture of your lawn and get to the point where it’s like, “Okay, your lawn is hilly, and it’s really big, and so you want the super-automated one that does it for you.”