SEO News Round Up – August 2024

We’ve pulled together all the news you need to know on what’s been happening with Google, and search more generally, in August– so you can keep up to date!

Covering:

• AI Overviews
• August’s Core Update
• Reddit’s continued rise
• Google Lens has arrived in Chrome
• Who’s dominating Google’s Top Stories feature
• Where the web’s traffic is going post-search

Google AI Overviews now appearing in the UK search results

• As discussed in last month’s blog post, AI Overviews were on the horizon for UK searchers, and on August 15, this came to fruition.
• They’ve also been rolled out for users in India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, making it seven countries now that have access to the feature, with the US having had access since May.
• From a user experience perspective, I find the AI Overviews quite effective. The content is noticeably more accurate than earlier iterations, citations are clearly presented and users get more information than a Featured Snippet.
• However, unlike Bing’s Copilot, there is currently no option to interact or ask follow-up questions, which would enhance usefulness and uptake, but I imagine this will be introduced before long:

• As to how much they are currently appearing, data shows between 7-13% of searches, but this seems to vary with every new study.
• A positive update comes from seoClarity’s analysis of 36,000 keywords which showed that 99.5% of AIO results include at least one of the top 10 organic search results.
• This marks a significant shift from earlier AIO results, which rarely aligned with traditional search rankings.
• The change likely reflects Google’s response to criticism of AIO inaccuracies by incorporating more traditional ranking factors, so good SEO = increased chances of being featured here.

The August Core Update has started rolling out

• Google rolled out another Core Algorithm Update on August 15, just five months after the previous one.
• March 2024’s Update was met with wide derision by independent publisher websites whose share of voice was further eroded by a combination of giant publishing houses and/or Reddit.
• The hope (and chatter from Google) was around improving the quality of the search results and promoting legitimately useful websites to Google users:

• Early signs following this most recent update are that for many of these smaller “real world” websites and businesses, traffic is recovering… just not immediately to the place it once was and probably deserves to be – but a step in the right direction.
• See organic traffic screengrabs from https://housefresh.com/ below – one of the most discussed examples of websites doing everything “right” and then being penalised for no apparent reason:

House Fresh – Last month’s recovery versus the organic traffic cliff drop from March’s Core Update

• Bear in mind that Google’s systems do effectively target websites that are genuinely breaking the rules.
  • For example, a competitor of one of our clients has been mass-producing AI-driven content in an attempt to rank for anything remotely related to their core topic, all while leveraging the authority of an expired domain name.
  • These tactics clearly violate Google’s spam policies as outlined in the March 2023 Spam Update, which has resulted in a 95% loss in traffic.
  • They’ve no-indexed much of the offending content – a tactic that can sometimes aid in recovery – but it’s clear this isn’t sufficient for Google at the moment. 

Reddit continues to be rewarded by Google

• Since the August 2024 Update started, Reddit’s visibility growth has continued at speed.
• In August 2023, the BBC website received more traffic than Reddit.
• Fast forward to today and Reddit now picks up around 400% more clicks from Google than the BBC (source: ahrefs data as seen below) – a staggering shift in such a short period:

Google Lens has come to Chrome

• We now have the ability to search by screengrab from any page on the internet via Google Lens in Chrome.
• The functionality is simple to use and should provide users with more information about specific items perhaps not linked to or mentioned from the pages they are browsing.
• If the results are accurate, this feature could significantly enhance the overall Google user experience, however, I imagine uptake to be slow. Certainly one to watch.

There are 5 companies behind ~20% of Google’s ‘top stories’ share of voice

• A new report from Detailed, shows 5 media companies control ~20% of what Google users see at the top of their search results when searching for news-related content.

• Across 45 million keywords, this year’s top 20 most visible websites appearing in the ‘Top Stories’ feature are:

• These are primarily sites you’d expect to see and from a Digital PR perspective. Getting featured on them could come with this secondary benefit of more eyes on your stories via this avenue.

• If this kind of thing interests you, you can read here ‘how 16 companies are dominating the world’s Google search results’ in another great report by Detailed. Well worth 10 minutes of your time.

~37% of Google searches end up on the ‘open web’

• A new study from Sparktoro show that 60% of searches now end up with no further clicks to a website.
• And of the remaining 40%, 75% (EU) and 70% (USA) go to organic, non-Google owned websites.
• Overall, only ~37% of searches on Google end up on the open web, which is quite a staggeringly low number.

• The EU/US difference is due to the EU’s curbing of Google’s preference to promote Google products (flights, hotels, YouTube, etc) over rival commercial websites.
• The data has imitations but still gives a great overview of user behaviour in search, and shows that:
  • Nearly half of all searches on mobile end with no clicking through to other websites (vs 20% on desktop)
  • 1% of all searches end on an ad
  • Searches on Google continue to rise (contrary to what many say regarding the eroding of Google’s share of the search pie to new competitors)
• I recommend checking the study out for a more detailed analysis of the state of search in 2024.

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