We unveiled Google’s 45.46 and the new rules of SEO
New location, same enthusiasm and same passion: the We Make Future 2024 took place in Bologna instead of Rimini, and as is now tradition SEOZoom “occupied” a nice space in the exhibition area, where we welcomed (and hugged!) a lot of users and friends. But, above all, our Ivano Di Biasi stirred the waters a bit with his speech, which officially “introduced” the new magic number on Google: 45.46, which will change everything we thought we knew about SEO!
The 45.46 on Google and the new rules for SEO
We start right from Ivano’s talk, entitled “Data Driven SEO. SEO seen from a different perspective, that of Big Data,” which basically continues and deepens the analysis on the recent trends of Google SERPs, which confirmed the feeling that the search engine was always choosing the same sites at the top, attributing a huge specific weight to the brand and an almost total trust to the pages of these “lucky” sites.
Ivano went further, analyzing with SEOZoom millions and millions of keywords, domains and URLs on Google – to be precise, a sample of 120,000,000 keywords, which required almost a month of SEOZoom data processing and the creation of a specific software, which ran non-stop for a full 27 days on his PC! The goal was not to discover the secrets of the algorithms, but to identify the search engine’s behavior in selecting the top of the SERP (TOP 3) and how many traffic opportunities were given to small websites on long tail keywords.
“The result really left me speechless,” Ivano said from the WMF stage, because for the first time “it was possible to precisely identify a number of recurring patterns on Google, which also highlight a bias in the algorithm, which seems to have become lazy and positions pages in a practically fixed way.”
Most importantly, the magic number 45.46, which represents “the percentage of traffic that a web page generally gets if it ranks first on Google for a keyword, but also the Traffic Share figure on an entire cluster, which means that the page always ranks first for any related search,” emerged powerfully.
So, translating into concrete insights, 45.46% is the wall most sites break against if they do not adopt new SEO techniques or, with a targeted strategy, it becomes the goal to achieve to gain visits and visibility on Google.
What 45.46% means on Google: SEOZoom’s analysis
The research, performed using SEOZoom’s big data, specifically leveraged the Traffic Share tool, with which it was possible to study the overall search volume of all keywords that Google considers related to a user’s search intent, going beyond the classic search volume of a keyword.
This offered much truer insights into actual site returns and, more importantly, brought out some recurring patterns on the search engine. Ivano highlighted three in particular:
- Google always places the same sites in the top three. The TOP 3 on Google is always identical over time and the positions do not change. In contrast, the ranking of those at the bottom is extremely unstable and rotates dizzily, every day, resulting in changes in visibility and clicks.
- The top three sites together capture about 77 percent of all user clicks. In practice, more than seven out of ten users end up on one of the first three pages shown by the search engine. All other sites are then forced to share just 23% of the entire search volume.
- Sites in the TOP 3 gain the same positions not only for a single keyword, but for all keywords related to the search intent. And it is here that the value of 45.46% over entire clusters emerges, which is precisely the share of traffic that signals that the page always ranks first on any keyword! This also includes long tail keywords, which used to be the “hope” of smaller sites looking for visibility.
This trend is very evident in the food sector, as revealed by Ivano’s in-depth analysis: here, for example, the first three positions are practically always manned by GialloZafferano, Cucchiaio.it and Fattoincasadabenedetta, usually also in that exact order.
This means, in Google’s view, that for all searches involving recipes and cooking, GialloZafferano’s content is always better than everyone else’s on everything, Cucchiaio.it’s content is always slightly below, and then Fattoincasadabenedetta’s content is always below the top two, but still better than all the others in existence. There is clearly a bias, because there is certainly better content in lower positions, but that is penalized by Google’s algorithm bias.
But, changing perspective for a moment, this behavior of Google also explains a frequent case we can come across if we work for a small (or at least not “top”) website. In fact, how many times has it happened that we write excellent content, working on a topic not covered by larger competitors, and initially reach the top positions on the search engine? Then, competitors write a similar article, and we lose the ranking instantly: but if we analyze the competitor’s article, however, we realize that ours is 100 times better, and we don’t get over Google’s “decision.”
Without being a diatribe or necessarily going back to the sandbox revealed by the Google leak, we now know that this happens almost scientifically, because precisely there really is a kind of “bias” and predetermined order in SERPs.
The implications for SEO: what is the way to emerge?
Please note: Ivano made it clear that his revelations should not lead us to think that “SEO is dead” or to resign ourselves to the impossibility of competing. There are still some ways to make excellent content emerge, but it is not “well seen” by Google’s algorithm.
Getting results requires a different approach to SEO, one that starts with understanding a few key aspects:
- Domain authority is the main ranking factor.
- SEO can make a difference, but only when integrated with other off-site activities dedicated to increasing authority (Link Building, TV, Digital PR, Events, Social, Mentions and Citations on UGC sites, Print, Books and other publications).
- When one of our pages ranks better than big competitors, it means our content is superlative, not simply quality.
- Keywords no longer exist and neither does the long tail: if we want to rank, we have to rank for all the search intent around us.
In summary, we need to forget what we think we know about SEO and, above all, stop focusing on keywords and the illusion of the long tail, and instead analyze data about the entire search intent that revolves around us.
How to get visibility on Google today: tips and practical examples
In his talk at WMF24, our CEO also showed the effects of a test run on a site only active in the cooking field, with on-site optimizations to give authority to the best content.
The first attempt was rather “reckless”: the complete revolution of the internal link structure, and thus essentially a disruption of the entire site. In years past, this intervention would have caused an immediate impact: a huge traffic gain or, conversely, a net loss. Instead, in three months there was no change.
So another experiment was needed: strengthening the brand’s authority on a specific topic by going to improve internal references to the same site. Basically, Ivano identified all the pages on the site that talked about variations of carbonara or were related, for example as recipes from Lazio. On each page he linked the URL he wanted to place, using different anchor text, so as to create a thematic set of pages on the site that talked about the same topic, in short, a sort of internal mini-site on carbonara, to have more trust on the topic.
This work yielded immediate results: all the important keywords entered the TOP 10 within a few hours, even without, however, ever scratching the TOP 3. Even a site that generates millions of monthly visits, then, can appear small in Google’s eyes and fail to budge from the cumbersome dominance of fixed competitors in the top three positions.
But there is still a solution: thanks to SEOZoom, in fact, Ivano identified all the keyword clusters where the main competitors have a Traffic Share percentage below 20%, a sign therefore that they have left a space available. And this is exactly where we can gain organic traffic, because working on the clusters where all competitors are always first is a waste of time, while instead with a targeted strategy we can identify these “content gaps” in reverse and bring our site to gain 45.46% on Google!
Leveraging AI and SEOZoom for a multichannel strategy
Also “joining” Ivano on stage was Elisa Contessotto, who in the Content Marketing room covered a topic of very close relevance: her talk, titled “Content and AI: ready-to-use prompts and ideas for your multichannel strategy,” in fact provided a bit of advice on multichannel prompts and ideas, starting with “what should I say?” and the first, decisive steps to identify the buyer persona. At this point, using ChatGPT and with SEOZoom’s AI Writer we can prepare the editorial plan and articles.
Today more than ever, however, it does not make sense or serve the strategy to stop only on the blog in the strict sense: here then Dall-e can help us, to make images that will rank on Google Images, or Fliki to make short videos, maybe just videos designed previously by the AI. Again, we can put in newsletters our article for the blog and so on. To make it even more effective, we can use the Social Opportunities tool to identify opportunities in SERPs, thus having only our imagination as our only limit!
Wide space is also given to case studies on the topic, which offer interesting insights and advanced ideas: for example, Michela Parascandolo of Nail Artist Academy used AI in a creative way, as a spark of stimulation and comparison, automating the creation of a Nail Art that she then replicated for real, correcting the errors present. Our own Giuseppe Liguori, on the other hand, created a Chrome extension that integrates with OpenAI and allows for automatic or semi-automatic responses to messages on Instagram. Lastly, the case of Raresh who opened a YouTube channel where texts, images, audios, videos are all made with AI, with a resounding outcome: in the last 90 days he had one million views and almost 4 thousand euros in earnings! So, as Elisa concluded, “it is important to test, to be consistent with your voice, but also to dare!”
The lesson of WMF24: the human factor still wins!
Participating in such an important event for the world of innovation and technology as the We Make Future 2024 in Bologna was an extraordinary experience for the SEOZoom team.
It was an immense joy to be able to meet so many amazing people and share our ideas and projects with them, to have seen so many friends again with whom we discussed about SEO dying and being reborn for 20 years, AI that will subdue us, which food at the food truck was better and so much more.
Being here was a unique opportunity to grow, compare and build the future together. Every meeting, every discussion, every smile inspired us to do more and more and aim higher and higher, in a continuous exchange of ideas, experiences, and much satisfaction.
We have made a mysterious number our cornerstone at the event: 45.46. No, it is not the answer to the “fundamental question about life, the universe and everything,” but the result of yet another demonstration of Ivano Di Biasi’s exceptional insights and visionary ability, derived from a 27-day search using SEOZoom’s big data. This issue can help us better understand Google’s behaviors and shed light in finding a new SEO of the future.
A special thanks also goes to our customers, who show us their satisfaction with our software and especially their affection, which goes beyond anything.
These days experienced so intensely reminded us of the value of a fundamental lesson: the human factor still wins! Every day we work with millions of keywords, but the one we like best is “humanity.”
Artificial Intelligence can win us games, but it is emotional intelligence and teamwork that win us championships. This semi-citation perfectly encapsulates the spirit in which we experienced these days and also the “baggage” we brought home!
