September news was mostly about the aftermath of the August Core Update. Google search results continued to be volatile, and, for some, positions gained in August were lost again in September. Google’s Danny Sullivan was on a public relations mission to explain the unpopular Helpful Content and Core updates. He insists that Google is changing for the better. New wording in Google’s spam policies spotted by Marie Haynes may also point to the direction the next official update will take.
Continued turbulence after August Core Update
As we reported last month, the August Core Update was launched on August 15th and finished rolling out on September 3rd. However, volatility seen late in the update, carried through into September well after the update had finished rolling out. These post-update tremors seem to be becoming a regular occurrence. They make it difficult for website owners to know whether ranking changes are really related to the recent update or something to do with an entirely new change to ranking algorithms.
Writing for Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz reported in volatility in tracking tools and in webmaster chatter on September 6th, September 10th, September 18th and September 25th.
He also reported on September 23rd that Google Search Ranking Increases During Core Update were Wiped Out Post Update. This article goes through claims by people on social media that the improved rankings they had seen during the August 2024 Core Update were now being lost.
Glenn Gabe, the SEO consultant who has been tracking 390+ sites heavily impacted in the September 2023 Helpful Content Update, shared data on X and then on YouTube that shows that some sites that surged back during the Core Update have dropped a bit since then, but he concludes that it is “nothing like a reversal”. He also gives the good advice that site owners should set up rank tracking on important keywords to see more significant information on how updates affect them.
Interviews with Danny Sullivan
Perhaps in reaction to the negative response to recent Core Updates, Google’s Danny Sullivan gave two long interviews recently, one to Barry Schwartz and another to Aleyda Solis. He seems to be on a public relations mission to address the frustration that many SEOs are expressing about the state of Google search results in 2024.
Barry Schwartz published the details of his interview as a blog post on September 6th, on Search Engine Roundtable. The original 5000+ word article covered a lot of topics and was later completed with another 1000 words from Danny himself.
Barry said that it was difficult to summarize the article (even ChatGPT failed to do a good job of it he said). My summary would be that Danny repeats timeworn advice from Google, “make sites for your users, not for Google”. The modern twist is that Google tries to reward the best content (giving even small sites by small businesses a chance to rank), it is not perfect and is open to criticism.
Aleyda Solis published her interview on YouTube on Sunday, September 29th. In this interview, Danny goes back over a lot of the things mentioned in the Barry Schwartz interview: being a big brand is not a ranking factor and that Google ranks forums (like Reddit although the site was not named) because research shows that users value this type of authentic content when it is relevant – even for medical queries.
Aleyda and Danny finish their interview by looking at AI Overviews and the future of SEO. Danny shares the bad news that there are no plans to add statistics for AI Overviews to Google Search Console. He also insists on the fact that AIOs (the shortened term he uses for AI Overviews) are very much a work in progress and draws a lot of parallels between them and Featured Snippets that were released ten years ago. Featured snippets caused a lot of similar concerns when they were first released but are now an accepted part of search results that SEOs optimize for.
Anti-Spam guidelines updated
On September 26th, Marie Haynes blogged about 4 interesting changes made to Google’s Spam Policies page the previous day. Google mentioned the documentation changes in the What’s New section of Google Search Console, saying it had “Clarified some wording” but Marie sees the changes as more significant.
Firstly, Marie notes that the new definition of spam “In the context of Google Search, spam is web content that’s designed to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems in order to rank highly” could refer to a lot of content that is created for the web today.
The second change she has spotted is the removal of the sentence “Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages”. Does removing this sentence mean that Google no longer uses links to measure page relevancy?
The third change she spotted was to Google’s new Site Reputation Abuse policy. This policy was first published in March 2024 and resulted in manual actions on some sites in May 2024. She feels that the new wording clarifies the conditions for receiving a penalty. The site must be working with a third party who publishes content on their domain with the primary purpose of manipulating search results. It is not simply a newspaper publishing coupons or reviews with affiliate links on a subdomain.
The final change she noted was to the section on actions that may be taken by Google on sites that repeatedly violate spam policies. This now includes the explicit warning that Google may remove sites, or sections of sites from Google Search. This type of removal is normally achieved by a manual action from a Google employee. Does this new wording suggest that removal may be done algorithmically and without the possibility of appeal – site owners hit by manual actions can request a review.
Search Off the Record – Let’s talk products
Google released 2 Search Off the Record podcasts in September, the first released on September 5th is of interest for ecommerce site owners. In this episode, Let’s talk shopping markup, John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman invite Irina Tuduce from the Google Shopping team to talk about how Google finds product info
They talk about where product information will show up in Google search results: in rich snippets, in product carousel features and in AI Overviews. Performance reports are available in Google Search Console.
Ecommerce site owners can give lists of products using Product Schema.org markup on their site, but Irina also recommended they open a Google Merchant Center account and set up a product feed. This gives more control over the product listings and is especially useful if you need to change prices quickly.
SEOPress PRO offers some extra features to manage Product Schema correctly. See our article How to Optimize Product Schema in WooCommerce to get more details.
Search Off the Record – Is My SEO Working
The second Search Off the Record released on September 19th deals with the question, “How do I know if my SEO is doing a good job?”
In this episode, John and Lizzi invite Erika Varangouli, head of Branded Content at Riverside.fm. Erika was invited to the podcast after a comment she made on John’s LinkedIn post asking how a small business owner can know whether their SEO is doing something useful.
In her answer on LinkedIn, she worked on the assumption that business owners would be unable to find and understand ranking and traffic KPI or attribute sales correctly to SEO. She gives 7 questions the business owner could ask such as “does your SEO ask questions”, “does your SEO try to educate you”, “when was the last time the SEO broke something”, and “what does the SEO report on”. In the podcast she insists on the fact that working with an SEO should be a long-term relationship based on regular reporting and discussions on objectives and results.
An interesting listen for small business owners, but also for SEO experts and agencies who offer SEO services to small businesses.
