Google Search News July 24: What’s happening on Google?
The last episode was as far back as last December, and it almost seemed as if the series had gone into oblivion. Instead, somewhat surprisingly, John Mueller is back to tell us about the latest news in the Google ecosystem with the newest installment of Google Search News. Between updates on Search Console, structured data, and SEO documentation, there is also room to delve into the newAI Summaries and their applications in Google Search, as well as on EPUB format support for search content. Small spoiler: there is no mention of the controversies that have plagued Google in recent months, let alone references-directly or implicitly-to the sensational Google leak of a few weeks ago; but that surprises us far less!
Google Search News Topics for July 2024
The latest updates on structured data for e-commerce sites, finding information faster and easier with AI overviews in Google Search, as well as changes to the official documentation, Search Console, and the overall Search system: covering a rather long time span-as mentioned, the previous episode was published in late 2023! – it was inevitable that the episode of Google Search News on YouTube would be rather dense in content.
As usual, our host is John Mueller, Google search advocate located in Switzerland, who takes us with his usual irony to discover the many news from the world of Big G.
The introduction of AI Overviews
The most relevant news is the introduction of AI Overviews – in Italian translated at the moment as Riepiloghi dell’AI or even literally as Panoramiche AI – within the search engine’s classic SERP starting in May – at the moment still only for users in the United States and the United Kingdom, although it is expected to be extended to more countries and languages, with the goal of reaching one billion users by the end of the year.
It is actually the evolution of Search Generative Experience, or SGE for short, the experimental Search Labs feature announced at Google I/O 2023 that, in essence, ” bring the world of generative AI into Google Search when appropriate,” as Mueller puts it.
What AI Overviews (AI Overviews) are.
Google’s AI Overviews (AI Overviews) are AI-generated answer boxes that provide a preview of a topic or search query based on a variety of sources, including web sources. These snapshots, automatically created by Gemini ‘s advanced model, bring together relevant content pulled from pages already indexed by Google, offering key information and links to further explore the topic.
This technology is designed to help users find quick answers without having to go through all available information.
AI Snippets are especially useful for answering complex questions where they can add value to regular search results, and they basically resemble super featured snippets – although it has been clarified that featured snippets will not disappear. Google tested this feature by serving billions of queries and found that users click on a greater variety of websites because of AI overviews. These summaries do not require specific actions by content creators to be taken and are reserved for queries where Google believes they will add significant value.
According to initial observations, Google tends to show AI overviews for informative queries, particularly for YMYL (your money, your life) domains; furthermore, the appearance of the box does not make the ads disappear, and they will continue to appear in dedicated spaces throughout the page, with clear labels to distinguish between organic and sponsored results.
Summaries and AI and SEO: what will be the impact?
AI Snippets are already showing a significant impact on SEO as, according to Google, link tabs within Snippets generate a higher click-through rate than traditional web search results, similar to what has been observed with featured snippets.
This means that pages included in the Featured Snippets can get more visibility and traffic – of course, on the other side of the fence are site publishers and content creators, who instead fear a further drop in clicks, because the user will see his or her intent fulfilled already in the introductory screen of the SERP, with no need to continue his or her search (except in rare cases of deepening).
However, Google stresses that it will continue its efforts to send valuable traffic to publishers and creators through these new features as well.
From a technical perspective, there are no special optimization strategies for appearing in AI Summaries in addition to creating high-quality and useful content. That is, “no action is required on the part of publishers to be eligible for AI Ovierviews,” Mueller says. As with other Search features, site owners can use traditional snippet controls on a page or section level if they wish to limit the information shown in Search. Therefore, you cannot turn off the display of your site only in AI Summaries, but must use standard controls such as robots.txt and meta tags that block the page in its entirety.
Other minor changes for Search
But there is more than just AI in the present of Google Search, which has undergone (relatively minor) changes in recent months.
First, a web filter for simplified results was introduced: basically, this is a filter that allows information to be limited to only and classic links, removing the other formats and features that clutter SERPs.
Quick mention then to the broad core updates and spam updates launched in recent months-actually, so far we have only had the March 2024 Core Update launched along with the March 2024 Spam Update, plus another recent update to the anti-spam mechanism. Mueller reveals that these updates gather “feedback from site owners, which we have reviewed with the search quality and ranking teams and have been very helpful in evaluations and discussions.” Meanwhile, the community is looking forward to the next core update: will there be the traditional August update again this year?
What’s new about Search Console and structured data
Google’s tg then moves on to cover the new features affecting Search Console and structured data, areas where there is never a shortage of tweaks and changes!
Specifically, in Search Console there has been a specific addition for e-commerce sites, which can now view business listings that appear in Google Images in search performance reports. This makes it easier to control the visibility of products in Search.
In terms of structured data, however, Google has just added support for organization-level return policy information. As Mueller makes clear, “consumers appreciate knowing these policies,” which become a method for choosing where to purchase products. The new markup makes it easy to specify policies at the organization level. Also recently launched for e-commerce sites is another special markup for product variants, which makes it easier to link all product and page variants to avoid confusing crawlers.
Documentation updates
Another point Mueller dwells on are the changes to Google’s official documentation, which is useful support for those who manage sites and also for digital marketers, of course.
First, the Search Advocate reminds us that an “SEO Starter Guide” was created earlier this year, a kind of short and concise SEO guide for beginners, which has received quite a lot of acclaim among site owners.
Then, Google announced the latest phase of mobile indexing, or the activity of crawling and indexing the web with a smartphone crawler. Mueller reports that the last exceptions have now been removed and all sites are indeed being crawled this way for Search. That said-and contrary to the first rather “threatening” message from the search engine team! – this does not mean abandoning the other variants, because “many people also use laptops and desktops, so don’t neglect those either!” clarifies Mueller.
Again, there has also been a refresh to the documentation of structured product data, particularly for information about e-Commerce sites, which have now been broken down into separate pages to make them more digestible.
Finally, the last piece of news is perfect “for those looking for interesting trivia”: recently, in fact, Google Search supports the EPUB e-book format and, as Mueller jokes in closing the video, “Googlebot just discovered Kafka’s Metamorphosis on Project Gutenberg. What’s next?”
