Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

We are starting to see a blip of life from sites hit by the September helpful content update after the August core update but there is also a ranking bug going on. Google is also starting to show thumbnails for some sites now. Google is testing snippet hover over background colors. Google is testing mentioned in key answers. And John Mueller uploaded an audio based robots.txt file for some reason.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• 
  Some Google Helpful Content Update Resurrections With August Core Update
  
  
  As you know, Google released the August 2024 core update on Thursday and then shortly after confirmed a ranking bug impacting a large number of search results. During that time, we have seen many reports from SEOs and site owners that they are starting to see positive movement for sites hit by the infamous September 2023 helpful content update.
• 
  Thumbnails Back In Google Search Result Snippets For Many
  
  
  For the past several months, many sites have been complaining over and over again that their image thumbnails for their websites were not showing up in the Google Search result snippets. Well, with the release of the August 2024 core update, many small publishers are starting to see their images show up in the search results again.
• 
  Google Testing Search Snippet Hover Background Colors
  
  
  Google is testing adding a dynamic blue colored background highlight color when you hover your mouse cursor over a search result snippet. The whole background just behind that specific search result snippet will change from white, to a highlight blue color.
• 
  Google Search Mentioned In Key Answers Box
  
  
  Google Search has this new feature named “mentioned in key answers.” This shows you which personalities, entities, within Google’s knowledge graph, are mentioned in the search results in Google.
• 
  Google’s John Mueller Uploads Audio Robots.txt File
  
  
  John Mueller from Google did it again with his site and this time uploaded an audio file, in wav format, for his robots.txt file. You can go to it and listen to him read out his robots.txt rules in his own voice. It is a valid robots.txt file but I suspect zero search engines can understand it.
• 
  GooglePlex Structures Explanatory Tiles
  
  
  We have seen the various Google structures at the GooglePlex, the mediation women, the bear and the orb. I did not know there were tiles on the ground near them that explained what they are.

Other Great Search Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

• Follow Along My SEO Content Creation Process: How I Rank #1 on Google, Ahrefs
• Google Algorithm Leak Decoded: 11 Key Takeaways from Rand Fishkin, Mike King, and Joy Hawkins, Sterling Sky
• July 2024: Refining AI Overviews for Maximum Impact, BrightEdge
• 11 essential on-page SEO factors, Compass Digital Strategies
• Google Search Console Bulk Data Export, Mike Ginley
• Icons Gone from Google Search Results: Impact on Major Brands, Guerrilla Buzz
• Query found to be the biggest predictor of CTR delta., Dejan Marketing
• How To Use ChatGPT & AI To Support Your SEO, Koozai

PPC

Feedback:

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The time has finally arrived; the day you all have been waiting for is here – the Google August 2024 core update started rolling out on Thursday at 11 am ET. Yea, you all saw it coming, Google told us it was near and now it has finally landed. It will take about a month to fully roll out and “useful” small and independent publishers will see their rankings improve with this one – at least that is what Google implied.

Google announced, “we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search.” “This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search,” John Mueller of Google added.

John specifically said that this “latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months.” Meaning, “This update also aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to surface the best of the web.” This includes, “small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches,” he wrote.

Note: Google confirmed a search ranking bug affecting a large number of results this morning – so I’d disregard any ranking changes we saw in the past 24-hours. This update will take a month to roll out anyway…

Google August 2024 Core Update Quick Facts:

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:

• Name: Google August 2024 Broad Core Update
• Launched: August 15, 2024 at around 11 am ET
• Rollout: Will take about four weeks to roll out
• Targets: It looks at all types of content
• Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
• Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
• Impact: The normal core update stuff around helpful content but this one should also reward small and independent publishers.
• Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more.
• Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google’s core update advice.
• Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates.

Google August 2024 Core Update Details

Google wrote on its blog:

Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.

This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including “small” or “independent” sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches. This is an area we’ll continue to address in future updates. This update also aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to surface the best of the web.

We’ve also updated our help page about core updates, which includes more in-depth guidance for those who may see changes after an update.

I should note that most of you did not send in feedback for Google on these updates.

Google posted on its search status dashboard at 10:87 am ET, “Released the August 2024 core update. The rollout may take up to a month to complete.”

Google also posted on social at X and on LinkedIn:

Today we released the August 2024 core update. It continues our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.https://t.co/T6Qt0JUoWt

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 15, 2024

Core Update Documentation Changes

Here is what Google changed in its core update help documentation. It was vastly re-written to explain how core updates work, how to see if there was a traffic drop, what to keep in mind and how long it takes to see results.

Google said it “restructured the core updates documentation so it has clearer sections and includes information from other docs (such as traffic drops and the self-assessment guidance).

Here is the new version (click to enlarge):

Here is the old version (click to enlarge):

Here is a summary:

Great catch by Marie. Google updated its documentation for its page on core updates. Marie provides a breakdown of the changes in her blog post.

Like this: “In fact, if you’re considering deleting entire sections of your site, that’s likely a sign those sections were created… https://t.co/7AA522PJy1

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 15, 2024

Google also reduced duplication with the helpful content FAQ and redirected that page and then moved the helpful content system section to the archived section of the ranking systems guide.

Previous Broad Core Updates

Here is a list of the most recent core updates we’ve seen since Google started to confirm them. Previously we nicknamed them Phantom updates or unconfirmed updates.

• August 2024 Core Update : April 15, 2024 for the next four weeks or so
• March 2024 Core Update : March 5, 2024 through April 19, 2024
• November 2023 Core Update : November 2, 2023 through November 28, 2023
• October 2023 Core Update: October 5, 2023 through October 19, 2023
• August 2023 Core Update: August 22, 2023 through September 7, 2023
• March 2023 Core Update: March 15, 2023 through March 28, 2023
• September 2022 Core Update: September 12, 2022 through September 26, 2022
• May 2022 Core Update: May 25, 2022 through June 9, 2022
• November 2021 Core Update: November 17, 2021 through November 30, 2021
• July 2021 Core Update: July 1, 2021 through July 12, 2021
• June 2021 Core Update: June 2, 2021 through June 12, 2021
• December 2020 Core Update: December 3, 2020 through December 16, 2020
• May 2020 Core Update: May 4, 2020 through May 18, 2020
• January 2020 Core Update: January 13, 2020 through mostly January 17, 2020
• September 2019 Core Update: September 24, 2019
• Google June 2019 Core Update: June 3, 2019 through June 8, 2019

Previous Helpful Content Update Impact

Here is the list of the previous Google helpful content updates:

Google Tracking Tools On August 2024 Core Update (So Far)

Note – these ranking volatility charts probably show the search ranking bug and not the impact of the August core update. But I am posting them anyway…

Semrush:

SimilarWeb:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Cognitive SEO:

Algoroo:

SERPmetrics:

SERPstat:

Accuranker:

Mangools:

Wincher:

Mozcast:

Data For SEO:

SEO Chatter

Most of the SEO community is trying to be hopeful, but there is just a lot of anxiety floating around. Many are super skeptical that they will see any positive movement from these changes. Some expect Google to rank their sites better soon. But again, most do not trust they will see any improvements to their rankings.

I am not quoting tons of people because there is not much out there that is useful, so I summarized what I have been reading across the SEO communities.

But these guys do not seem wrong:

Lots of folks honing in on Google’s “feels like” statement. How that might work:

1. Google uses humans to subjectivity score a bunch of sites if they are “made for SEO”
2. Those scores are fed into Machine Learning, which creates a classifier
3. The classifier works at scale

— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) August 15, 2024

This is what I was flagging months ago.

The HCU isn’t about “Helpful content”,
it’s about “over optimised” content,
that’s primarily for SE Traffic,
and that covers many of the MFA sites 🙁

— Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA) (@darth_na) August 15, 2024

And on the ranking bug, Google confirmed a search ranking bug affecting a large number of results this morning – so I’d disregard any ranking changes we saw in the past 24-hours. This update will take a month to roll out anyway…

As Glenn Gabe put it:

Heads-up, a core update, big AI overviews changes, and now a ranking issue impacting a large number of search results”. Stay tuned… -> “There’s an ongoing issue with ranking in Google Search that’s affecting a large number of search results.” https://t.co/yqurSemyON

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 16, 2024

Finally, we may be seeing some recoveries from some of the most vocal publishers hit by the helpful content update – or maybe it is the ranking bug? Who knows:

Good Morning Google Land! This is the first edition of “Core Update Notes” for the August 2024 core update. And man, are we starting off in an interesting way. First, Google announced a ranking issue last night impacting a “large number of search results”. So, what I present now… pic.twitter.com/YKViu0ws5q

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 16, 2024

I can confirm that I am seeing lots of fluctuations. I’m not sure what this means yet, but my fingers are crossed. Reddit is still dominating absolutely everything.

— Brandon Saltalamacchia (@iambrandonsalt) August 16, 2024

Lily Ray seeing it also?

Here’s an HCU-impacted site surging +590% where it was two days ago.

It’s still nothing compared to what they lost in the Helpful Content Update, but that’s how core update recoveries work. They take weeks. It’s been 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/oucv2VeMDe

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) August 16, 2024

I hope many of you see recoveries with this August 2024 core update – do keep us posted.

Forum discussion at X and on LinkedIn.

For the original iTunes version, click here.
It finally happened: Google released the August 2024 core update; this one should reward small and independent publishers more, should it? Google had another search ranking bug, today, this was a big one. There has been tremendous Google ranking volatility this week, maybe the core update, but it was the day before and the weekend before the official announcement.

• The Department of Justice may be considering breaking up Google.
• Google launched new links in AI Overviews, expanded them to more countries, and introduced new Search Labs features, which are also visible in incognito mode.
• Google Gemini Research now shows links as well.
• A report suggests Google may be sending more Discover traffic but less Web Search traffic to some publishers.
• Google Search Console may only show 35% of your data.
• Google doesn’t technically follow links.
• Google may improve its URL parameter handling.
• Google confirms it shows 10+ shopping ads as you scroll.
• Google Search lists Merchant Center tracking parameters, causing issues for some users.
• Google deactivated Russian AdSense publishers.
• Google Top Stories might be showing fewer stories about political figures.
• Google is testing mini knowledge panel cards.
• Google knowledge panels now include “connections.”
• Fake WhatsApp numbers are hiding in Google Home listings, and some hotels are marked as closed.
• Google highlights reviews in search result listings.
• The FTC officially banned fake reviews.
• Apple Business Connect expanded its showcase feature.

That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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