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Core Update, Bugs, Anti-Trust and the Expansion of AI Overviews – Google News August 2024

Author Benjamin Denis
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Core Update, Bugs, Anti-Trust and the Expansion of AI Overviews – Google News August 2024

August was certainly not a holiday month for Google with the release of a Core Update and expansion of AI Overviews to a select number of countries across the World.  August also saw the release of a new feature in Google Search Console, several videos and podcasts from the Search Relations team and a bug that had a major impact on search results with very bad timing.

<a href="https://www.similarweb.com/serp/">SERP Seismometer</a> August 2024
SERP Seismometer August 2024

August 15th – Core Update

As we anticipated last month, Google launched the latest Core Update in August while many people were on vacation. The update was announced on August 15th and – at the time of writing – has not finished rolling out. If you are analyzing your ranking changes in August using SEOPress Insights or another rank tracking solution, be aware that there was also a bug in Google Search results from August 15th to August 20th (see more information about this below) that may make it difficult to ascertain whether any rank changes were caused by the Core Update.

The update was announced in the blog post What to know about our August 2024 core update and via the social accounts for Google Search Central on X and LinkedIn.

Core Updates affect the ranking of sites in Google by changing the algorithms used in the various core systems of Google Search. These core systems deal with a wide scope of signals, but Google’s description of the August 2024 Core Update seems to suggest that it involves a system previously known as “Helpful Content”. This system analyzes page content to assess its quality using AI. Google says “This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months” and this is interpreted as meaning sites that were hit by the September 2023 Helpful Content Update may see ranking improve with this update.

Glenn Gabe started tracking the performance of over 300 sites hit by the September 2023 Helpful Content update during the March 2024 Core Update expecting at least some of them to improve. None did improve during the March 2024 Core Update. On August 30th, however, he shared the news on his podcast that 88 of those sites had surged during the current Core Update, regaining a lot of visibility and traffic from Google.

Example from Glenn Gabe showing a site improving performance in August 2024
Example from Glenn Gabe showing a site improving performance in August 2024

This volatility from August 30th also underlines the fact that it is best to wait until the end of an update before interpreting the impact it has on your ranking. The August Core Update finished rolling out on September 3rd.

Google incident affecting ranking

With the Core Update released in the early morning (Pacific Daylight Time) of August 15th, a ranking bug was reported on the Google Search Status Dashboard late evening the same day.

The incident was described on the dashboard as “an ongoing issue with ranking in Google that’s affecting a large number of search results”. It also mentioned that it was unrelated to the Core Update.

The bug was officially fixed on August 20th. It is probable that ranking volatility shown in rank tracking tools – like SimilarWeb’s SERP Seismometer shown at the top of the page – on August 15th and 16th were linked to this bug and not the Core Update.

Screen shot from the Google Search Status Dashboard
Screen shot from the Google Search Status Dashboard

Decision against Google in Anti-Trust trial

Following a long anti-trust trial that started in September 2023, a US court has ruled against Google on August 5th, stating that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly”. The full 286-page ruling details how search engines work and how it considers Google has used anticompetitive distribution agreements (with browsers and operating systems including Apple) to exercise a monopoly and charge supracompetitive prices for general search text ads.

An article on August 13th by Bloomberg suggests that the US Considers a Rare Antitrust Move: Breaking Up Google. A likely breakup would be the separation of the Google search engine from Android and Chrome. The article also says that officials are looking at the possibility to force Google into selling Google Ads.

As we mentioned in November 2023, the trial caused a lot of secret information to be revealed about how Google search works. Mario Fischer compiled a useful summary and illustration on Search Engine Land of what we now understand about How Google Search ranking works thanks to revelations from the DOJ trial and other recent leaks of Google code. It is worth a read, but be warned, it is as complicated as it looks.

A graphical overview of how Google ranking works created by Mario Fischer
A graphical overview of how Google ranking works created by Mario Fischer

Google Search Console

On August 5th, Google announced the launch of Google Search Recommendations, a new report in Google Search Console that aims to give tips to website owners to improve their indexing and ranking. Recommendations are based on data collected by Google Search Console and it aims to highlight the most important actions you can take to optimize your site.

Why not log into Google Search Console now to see if you have this report? Not all users have access to it yet, it will be rolled out progressively over the next few months.

Example of a Recommendations report from Google Search Console
Example of a Recommendations report from Google Search Console

AI Overviews released in new countries

On August 15th, Google also announced that AI Overviews (AI-generated results shown at the top of search results) will be available in 6 new countries: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom. More importantly, this means that AI Overviews is also now available in more languages, not just English.

It is interesting to note that in responding to a LinkedIn post by SEO Nicolas McDonough, John Mueller of Google confirmed that AI Overviews are impacted by Core Updates or indeed any update to search algorithms.

The announcement from Google also introduced some new features to AI-Overviews, including an experimental view for links (illustrated below). The article also insisted on the fact that AI Overviews do generate traffic for websites and that these clicks are of better quality than clicks from other search features.

New look AI Overviews
New look AI Overviews
AI Overviews - Links are shown contextually to the paragraphs selected
AI Overviews – Links are shown contextually to the paragraphs selected

Videos and podcasts

The Google Search Relations team has been busy in the studio recently, releasing a number of videos and two new Search Off the Record Podcasts in August.

Search Off the Record episodes were Crawling smarter, not harder with John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman, and Gary Illyes and Working With Search Console API with guest Mihai Aperghis. Mihai shares experience about exporting data from Search Console into Google Sheets using the Search Console API.

Martin Splitt added a new video to the SEO Made Easy series on YouTube. In the latest episode, Help! Google Search isn’t indexing my pages, he explains why Google Search Console reports pages as “Discovered – currently not indexed” and what you can do to fix the issue.

Daniel Waisberg started a series of videos on the Google Trends tool that you may find interesting viewing. Google Trends data is integrated in SEOPress Insights. The first video is an Introduction to Google Trends data. The second is a walkthrough of the tool by Hadas Jacobi, a software engineer in the Google Trends team. You can watch that video below.

 

By Benjamin Denis

CEO of SEOPress. 15 years of experience with WordPress. Founder of WP Admin UI & WP Cloudy plugins. Co-organizer of WordCamp Biarritz 2023 & WP BootCamp. WordPress Core Contributor.