SEO News Round Up – September 2024

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

Covering:

• The latest stats on AI Overviews and reporting on AI-Chat referral traffic
• The August Core Update finished rolling out on September 3rd
• Google’s AI Image Labelling
• Penalties for fake reviews on Google Business Profiles
• Google now links to the Wayback Machine in the SERPs
• The curious case of Forbes Marketplace…

The latest stats on AI Overviews and reporting on AI-Chat referral traffic

• The most interesting data on AIOs I could find this month was from a new study by SEO Monitor stating that “96% of links contained in AIO citations are to informational pages”.
• There isn’t a huge amount for us to action from this, and as always we need more data to play with, but were this to continue there could be an argument for adding additional content to your commercial pages to try and pull your higher converting pages through to these AIO results. One for the test list!
• Currently, Google Search Console (GSC) doesn’t provide a way to differentiate AIO clicks, making it difficult to pinpoint specific terms generating traffic. However, there are workarounds for this.
• Tools like Semrush or Sistrix can help identify the search terms where you have AIO visibility:

• Setting up a GA4 referral report and filtering by AI Chat platforms provides instant visibility on which pages are being clicked on as cited by these platforms – feel free to reach out if you would like to see this data for your website – we can go to page level too.

• Interestingly, across the majority of our clients, it is Perplexity and Bing (Copilot) that top the list of the AI Chats that refer the most traffic. 
• And on the topic of Perplexity, Fortune 100 brands are now picking up more traffic from SearchGPT (the ChatGPT styled search engine which is in prototype mode), than Perxplexity itself according to recent Brightedge data, showing that OpenAI are listening to web publisher feedback perhaps?

The August Core Update finished rolling out on September 3rd

• The August Core Update wrapped up 19 days after launching and it was one of the more volatile ones.
• Whilst lots of legitimately high quality websites that had seen organic traffic erode over the past year’s worth of updates saw some positive reversals of fortunes, for many, Google then reversed the reversal later on in the month:

• As with most updates, it isn’t always obvious as to the why behind some pages ranking higher than others, but our advice at Distinctly is always the same – analyse how your site/page performs across technical, on-page, UX, content and authority versus the sites ranking in the top 5. Identify the gaps and address them.

Google’s AI image labelling

• In the coming months, Google will introduce an enhanced “About this image” feature in search results (Organic and Paid), which will inform users if an image was captured by a camera, edited using software like Photoshop, or generated entirely by AI tools.
• Much like Instagram’s content labels (though less shouty), this feature aims to boost transparency by indicating the origin and editing history of images, giving users clearer context on the authenticity of visual content they encounter.

Penalties for fake reviews on Google Business Profiles

• Fake reviews have been a big problem in local SEO since it became obvious positive reviews were a key ranking factor in the Map Pack.
• Google has just announced some new restrictions on profiles for anyone caught violating their Fake Engagement Policy. These include:
  • Inability to receive new reviews or ratings.
  • Existing reviews may be unpublished.
  • A warning may be displayed to notify users that fake reviews have been removed.
• Read more about what constitutes “fake engagement” here.

Google now links to the Wayback Machine in the SERPs

• A favourite tool of many SEOs, Google is now making it easier for people to see historic versions of pages, by directly linking to the Wayback Machine from the results themselves.
• Particularly useful when analysing why web pages may have increased or dropped in visibility or just to add more background to the general web user, this should hopefully give even more clarity and historical context to the pages being shown in Google.

The curious case of Forbes Marketplace…

• This was one of the best SEO-related reads of the month and it centres around a website piggybacking on the authority and reputation of an established business and monetising this via affiliate marketing tactics.
• Forbes Marketplace is the official entity, but they are marketed as Forbes Advisor (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/) and traffic has exploded over the past few years (current estimates are 16m sessions per month):

• By exploiting the powerful Forbes domain, the /advisor/ subfolder is able to rank highly in Google across many industries (insurance, health, betting, etc.) for many commercial (and therefore valuable e.g. “best”) related terms.

• The practice is known as “parasite SEO,” where the content on the pages is perhaps not what you would expect from the domain itself and each commercial page is full of affiliate links.
• At present, Google algorithms are rewarding this tactic, which to some, diminishes the quality of search results. Unaware visitors see the brand, know it to be of historical quality and therefore trust the content within.
• Forbes users aren’t being shown the “best” anything however – it’s the result that probably pays out the highest commission.
• It’s an excellent investigative read, with a part 2 exploring similar questionable practices involving the CNN and USA Today websites, which appear to be following the same tactics, potentially under the influence of Forbes Marketplace.

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