✅

​The December 2024 core update completed its rollout on 18 December 2024. It lasted 6 days, the fastest official core update on record, and was quite volatile. And it's 100%, definitely the final Google update of 2024...right?

🔄

​The December 2024 spam update began its rollout on 19 December 2024. Yes, the spam update launched just 24 hours after the December core update finished. We hope that this really is the last update of the year.

⚖️

​Google has posted its own solution to its 'search monopoly'. These are far less drastic than the DOJ's proposal and include the option to change partners (such as Apple) to change its default search provider every 12 months.

🤖

​Google is introducing an 'AI Mode' in Google Search. This feature, spotted in beta tests from various sources, allows users to quickly access AI Mode via a Filter. The interface is likely similar to that of the Gemini chatbot.

🔍

​ChatGPT Search is now available to all free users. Users must have an account but the previously premium search is now available for free. It is also predicted by some to reach 1% search market share in 2025.

✨

​Google has updated its documentation for faceted navigation. This document highlights common issues such as overcrawling which is when search engines waste resources crawling URLs that aren't valuable to users.

⏩

​Bing has updated its LLMs and SLMs used for search. Bing has integrated Nvidia's TensorRT-LLM to reduce latency for users, improve results accuracy and reduce operational costs.

🐛

​AI crawlers crawl approximately 28% as much as Googlebot. The combination of just GPTBot and Claude accounts for nearly 1 billion requests per month compared to Googlebot's 4.5 billion requests.

⚠️

​Former Google CEO warns about the trajectory of AI in search. Eric Schmidt warned about the potential massive scaling of AI vs the usual scale we're used to from previous computing technologies.

Understanding users beyond 'keywords' with live data and intent clustering by Google

AlsoAsked allows you to quickly mine live "People Also Ask" data, the freshest source of consumer intent data, for understanding what users are searching about beyond 'keywords' and what you should be writing about.

Get 90 searches per month with no account creation, for free.

How does Google understand the "user journey"?

Understanding the "user journey" is often talked about in marketing, but how does Google attempt to do that algorithmically? This is where the patent "Evaluating an Interpretation for a Search Query" comes in ⤵️
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​In this episode of The SEO Patent Podcast, NotebookLM summarises this fascinating patent that looks at how Google uses multiple AI models (think like a "student" and "teacher") to understand how queries progress over time, and how they relate to other people's searches.
​
Understanding the basics of patents like this hones your thinking around the concept of "intent" over "keywords" and why having an actual content strategy based on your real user needs and not a list of things you should maybe rank for is 🧠

Don't forget to compare raw vs rendered

Many problems lay between the 'raw' HTML and the rendered DOM of a web page. 🐉
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🔍 Clicking 'view source' will show you the 'raw HTML' that Googlebot will first see. Inspecting the DOM will show you the rendered HTML that Google's Web Rendering Service will see.
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💻 There's a great Chrome extension called 'view rendered source' which allows you to compare the rendered and non-rendered source. Love using it to spot check what is happening on specific pages.

Don't use site: for checking indexing

Warning ⚠️

You should not use the site: operator to check indexing - it can return URLs that are "Not Indexed" in GSC and won't appear in regular searches.

Think about your FAQ structure

You don't have to lump of all your FAQs into a single place on your website.

You don't even have to be too strict with answering a particular question only on one page.

Put the user first: where might this question and answer be useful in context?

Search engines are more than capable of seeing the context of a page and you don't have to worry about "duplicate content" in scenarios like this.
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Remember: No SEO change should be detrimental to the experience of the user!

You're probably using People Also Ask data wrong

Most people are using PAA (People Also Ask) data wrong, by simply adding FAQs onto their website 🤦‍♂️

🧠 The data given by Google’s People Also Ask boxes is fantastic and is telling you what the user’s next most likely question will be.

🏠 Looking at the example below, which explores the search term “What is meant by remote working”, Google knows people are likely to ask about the difference between home and remote work and look for examples of remote working.

📈 Intent is multi-layered and if Google can see that your page has the best probability of fulfilling a user’s search intent, then you’ll be rewarded with better rankings.

✍ This means the way to produce the best possible content is to make sure that you understand and answer these queries within your content - not just tacked onto the end as an FAQ!

This is the main reason we built AlsoAsked!​

Top Core Updates referrer leaderboard

A big thank you to our top referrers, who have signed up over 10 people to the Core Updates newsletter, go follow them!

🥇 MJ Cachón Yáñez (LinkedIn / X)

🥈 Nikki Pilkington (LinkedIn / X)

🥉 Lidia Infante (LinkedIn / X)

Season's greetings 🎅

That's a wrap for 2025! Jack and I will be taking a break and you can expect your next Core Updates newsletter on Monday 6th January 2025.

There are no breaks for the Search with Candour podcast, though! We've got scheduled episodes going live every week, including the big one with Arnout Hellemens, Yagmur Simsek, Begum Kaya, myself, and Jack, talking about 2024-2025 in SEO.

Happy holidays to those that celebrate and see you next year.

~ Mark and Jack