In this week’s Canonical Chronicle, we discuss:
Ross: 00:00 Ah, ah, ah, ah. Ah, ah, ah, ah.
Ross: 00:04 We come from the land of the ice and snow,
New Speaker: 00:05 from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.
New Speaker: 00:08 Welcome to Canonical Chronicle, episode 17,065.
New Speaker: 00:13 Let’s get into it.
Speaker 2: 00:17 Ah, ah, ah, ah.
New Speaker: 00:19 We come from the land of the ice and snow-
Ross: 00:20 Last week, Google started to roll out an algorithm update
Ross: 00:23 that was pre-announced for the first time ever,
Ross: 00:26 which is always terrifying.
Ross: 00:28 It’s kind of like announcing that there’s a killer ghost in the room.
Speaker 3: 00:37 They’re here.
Ross: 00:37 In the aftermath of the update,
Ross: 00:38 there was a lot of web masters saying
Ross: 00:40 that nothing much really happened and we were all like,
Speaker 4: 00:44 “I told you, homeboy. You can’t touch this.”
Ross: 00:46 But then came the news that one of the biggest
Ross: 00:50 news sites in the world has experienced a 50% decline in search share overnight.
Ross: 00:57 Now, it’s too early to say why this drop has actually occurred,
Ross: 01:00 but early speculation points to a mixture of issues,
Ross: 01:03 all the way from thin content, to site speed, to overly aggressive advertising.
Ross: 01:07 As always, I’d recommend the all web masters out there ignore these headlines.
Rossr: 01:12 Regardless of what the cause of the drops are,
Ross: 01:15 it really doesn’t concern you and your unique website
Ross: 01:18 in sight of the search results.
Ross: 01:21 Just remember, make sure you’re following your own best practice
Ross: 01:25 and making your site better over time, earning more links,
Ross: 01:28 and building that brand.
Ross: 01:31 It looks like even Google’s search results have went
Ross: 01:33 through some sort of unconscious bias training at an attempt
Ross: 01:37 to provide more diverse search results.
Ross: 01:39 I never thought an inanimate object would be classed as woke.
Speaker 6: 01:44 If you were woke, then you would talk about blockchain technology
Ross: 01:47 over avocado toast and a 6 dollar coffee that
Ross: 01:50 you didn’t use the blockchain to pay for.
Ross: 01:53 I’m only kidding.
Ross: 01:54 Diversity in search results is referring to something stopping
Ross: 01:58 the same domain showing up in multiple positions for the exact same query.
Ross: 02:03 Glenn Gabe from G Interactive demonstrated
Ross: 02:05 a great example with the query “Cute drawings.”
Ross: 02:10 As you can see, Pinterest has 10 results in the original SERP
Ross: 02:13 and then only two in the new SERP.
Ross: 02:17 I can only see this as a good thing for users as well as SEOs,
Rossr: 02:20 it’s going to give us much more variety, which is going to lead to better results.
Ross: 02:25 Next up, advertising giant Leo Burnett came under fire recently
Ross: 02:29 for their guerrilla campaign that saw them replace all of
Ross: 02:32 the images on Wikipedia with beautiful mountains with
Ross: 02:36 the same images as people wearing North Face logos and jackets.
Speaker 7: 02:41 And, presto. You’ve got a huge logo in just seconds.
Ross: 02:45 A bunch of people have come out to kind of roast them for it,
Ross: 02:48 saying, “Oh this is advertising at its worst.”
Ross: 02:52 But if I’m honest, it’s kind of clever.
Ross: 02:55 The question is, does this type of activity actually drive results?
Ross: 02:58 Well, from an organic search point of view,
Ross: 03:01 as this graph from SEMrush shows us in the U.S.,
Ross: 03:05 nope. Traffic is as flat as a pancake.
Ross: 03:08 Okay, okay. But it’s for branding and advertising, right?
Ross: 03:11 So surely at least the brand impressions went up after this campaign.
Ross: 03:16 Ah, that’s awkward. Nothing.
Ross: 03:18 Well, maybe the agency Leo Burnett,
Ross: 03:20 done it to grow their own brand visibility and
Ross: 03:22 show how their creative thinking makes them stand out in a busy marketplace.
Ross: 03:27 Maybe not.
Ross: 03:31 Maybe it’s not SEO that stayed after all.
Ross: 03:33 Maybe it’s Ad agencies are artificially inflating media costs,
Ross: 03:36 selling in wacky, creative ideas to win awards
Ross: 03:39 rather than actually helping their clients.
Speaker 8: 03:42 Oh no she didn’t.
Speaker 8: 03:42 Oh, oh no this heffer didn’t.
