🔨

​Google's "site reputation abuse" update began rolling out yesterday, Sunday 5th May, which will consider low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight to be spam.

🤕

​You may have to wait for another 'update cycle' for your website to recover its Google traffic if it has been a victim of 'some bigger effects', according to Google Search Advocate, John Mueller.

📄

​The State of Technical SEO Report 2024 was published last week, with almost 400 people from the SEO contributing to the report highlighting trends from both in-house and agency teams.

🌎

​Google's reported market share drop of 4.4 percentage points in a month which was wildly discussed is more likely an erroneous data point with the source, StatCounter, only having a sample of 0.15%

💬

​Google is looking for feedback on how to improve the hreflang implementation that will work on small and mammoth sites while delivering the same amount of information.

✅

​The Helpful Content Update system is being retired as a 'standalone' system and integrated into Google's core ranking algorithm alongside other systems, meaning it could run continuously.

🛍️

​Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) rarely appears by default according to a new report by STAT, with a full appearance happening in only 6% of cases and a "generate" button appearing in 86% of tracked SERPs.

Are you fixing Soft 404s?

If Google determines a page is a "Soft 404", a page that returns HTTP 200/OK but Google thinks it looks broken, then not only will it not rank - my tests show Google won't even follow links on this page!

This means aside from not ranking, Soft 404 pages will negatively impact your internal links and potentially how other pages rank.

Check this in Google Search Console under Pages > Page Indexing to see what Soft 404s you have.

Free SERP comparison script

​Here's a free script that allows you to compare two SERPs instantly. This gives you an idea if you could target the same keywords on a single page, or if you're better off making a different page.

👟 The first search shoes that "running shoes" and "running trainers" show very similar results, meaning Google understands them to mean roughly the same thing. You could target both these terms on a single page.

​

🏃‍♀️The second search shows that "cross country trainers" and "track trainers" show completely different sets of results. Making two separate pages to target these terms would likely be best.

Why you haven't recovered from the HCU

It's not your fault you haven't recovered from an HCU hit, nobody has and here is why ⬇

🖥️ We know Google has a 'core' algorithm, which takes a long time to run and takes in thousands of signals. We also know Google has other, smaller programs which 'orbit' this algorithm. For instance, we know Google has the "Twiddler framework" - lots of small, independent programs which are siloed and can quickly re-rank results.

🛠 We've seen Google develop systems 'outside' of the core algorithm (such as Penguin v1, 2 etc), and these systems are run once and have an impact on search results. As with the original Penguin system, we had to wait until this system was re-run before results were re-ranked and I think we are now in a similar situation with the HCU.

🐧 We have been told the HCU is 'going away' as it's going to become part of the core algorithm. I think this makes it a fairly solid conclusion that the HCU was run once, it re-ranked a bunch of sites and nobody has seen a recovery because, quite simply, it has not been re-run since.

♻️ Just as we were told Penguin would be run "continuously" once it was integrated with the core algorithm, the same is true of the HCU. Recovery will be possible once it is re-run periodically as part of the 'core' algorithm.

Making a ranking hypothesis

If you’re coming up with your own hypothesis about something Google does or doesn’t consider as a ranking factor, it’s worth considering how the measurement of that thing might scale to validate your idea. ⬇ 🤔

For instance, I saw some discussions with someone saying they believed Google uses interaction with forms on a page as a ranking factor. The next questions that are worth asking are:

❓ How would Google measure this?

🖥 Can they do it for all websites?

📣 Does it directly conflict with something Google has told us?

In answer to these questions, they believed Google would measure form interaction through Google Analytics, and then apply this to ranking.

I would disqualify this as a “non-starter” personally, because:

❎ There are billions of pages and sites that don’t use Google Analytics. So it would be tough for them to use this effectively as a generic ranking factor.

❎ Google has stated multiple times they don’t use Google Analytics data for ranking. Now, while it’s no secret Google is very careful about how they word things, and sometimes they are tricky with meaning - I have never seen them outright lie about ranking factors. So this would make me very sceptical as to whether it was a thing.

There are a bunch of these quick mental tests you can use, but I find these basic checks stop you going on wild goose chases!

Search Console URL impressions not from your domain

Google Search Console URLs can sometimes confuse as they can be URLs that aren’t even “on” your site. 🤔

Any clicks of unique URLs will get data within GSC:

📍 In the highlighted example, I can specifically track clicks from Candour’s GMB profile because I’ve added utm parameters, which will appear in the “Pages” report.

😎 Fun fact: You’ll get impressions for Pages anytime your URL appears in the SERP, even if it’s not your site ranking! This could mean if I tweeted your URL and my tweet appeared in an unrelated search, that URL would get impressions, even though your site doesn’t rank!

Not many people know that!

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)

🥈 Lidia Infante (LinkedIn / X)

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Got any feedback?

Hey did you read this far? Fuuu.. Thanks! If you have any feedback, I'd always love to hear it - just hit reply and I'll be sure to read it.

~Mark Williams-Cook