Canonical Chronicle 82
In this weeks meme infused SEO news we discuss:
- 🤖 AI Overview are Informational
- 😎 New AI features in Google Ads
- 📍 GMB accounts get suspended
- 🤷 CWV aren’t that important
- 🪲GSC Bug for Product Snippets
- 🏢 New SERP layout tests
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Google Tests Top Posts
Google is testing out a new SERP layout called “top posts” that surfaces UGC content at the top of the search result.
Whilst Google testing SERP layouts and features is nothing new, it’s always interesting to note their direction of travel to help move to where the ball will be.
The last few core updates have been centered around 3 things: content freshness and accuracy, UGC and forums, experience in EEAT.
Seeing these tests, it’s likely that this will continue to be the case. The question is how do you use this in your marketing mix to get ahead?
Simply put, working on easily codified “experience” signals in your content like expert quotes and personal stories and anecdotes that cannot be created by briefing a copywriter.
96% of AI overviews contain informational links
New study by Mark Traphagen shows that 96% of AI overviews contain informational links.
The most interesting thing in this study isn’t the fact that 96% of the links were informational it was how they decided on the intent of particular keywords.
For example, an SEO on Twitter, questioned Mark about the intent of the keyword “top car accident lawyers new york”, which is definitely a transactional term, not an informational term.
Mark highlighted that although the search term was transactional, the links in the AI overview were from informational blog posts and case studies.
This is interesting because it appears that the AI is providing reasons WHY they believe certain lawyers are the best. These included, compensation won, years of service, terms of business, etc.
All of which are not traditional SEO metrics but rather examples of EEAT that are being used in it’s reasoning.
Google says Core Web Vitals aren’t that big a deal
In their latest SEO Made Easy video, Google, alluded that site speed and core web vitals were not that important. Something that Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Round Table has been reporting on for quite a while.
The video itself, is very useful with some good tips to optimise site performance including
- Reduce the use of Javascript
- Avoid unnecessary Redirects
- Optimise your images
However, the downplaying of Core Web Vitals through out the video may make some SEOs stop amd think…….should I bother optimising speed if Google say it’s not that big of a deal?
The answer is….probably, yes. 😂
A fast site improves so may other non-SEO specific metrics like conversion rate. But let’s not obsess over getting perfect core web vital scores as there is always a trade off between a rich interactive site and a heavily performant site. Technically, a plain text HTML file is the best from a core web vitals point of view but I can’t see your customers being thrilled with a page that says “Hello World”.
Google suspends thousands of GMB profiles
The webmaster forums lit up this week with complaints of GMB profiles being suspended en-masse.
Diving deeper into this it appears that 3 niches in particular are seeing wholesale suspension of their accounts. Skip or Dumpster hire, Garage Door Companies and personal injury lawyers.
There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for the suspension but seeing as it’s entire categories it would suggest that those that have been banned are stretching the limitations of the categories they are being put in.
As always with GMB profiles you want to be careful not to over optimise them as that leaves you open to getting suspended or banned if Google thinks you are trying to manupulate your rankings.
Common things that get people suspended include inconsistent information, wrong or duplicate NAP details, virtual office addresses, multiple listings for the same business and keyword stuffing.
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GSC Spikes are likley a bug
SEOs have taken to twitter to report spikes in product snippet impressions and clicks that are rather mysterious.
They are mysterious because, the SERPs are not showing product snippets and in some cases the site’s don’t even have schema that would create product snippets. Very curious.
So why is this happening?
It’s likely a bug. We saw the same thing in May of this year which Google quickly fixed.
John Muller took to Twitter to confirm that they are looking into it saying that
” it does look like a bug on our side in Search Console reporting (and FWIW it doesn’t seem to be related to AI Overviews at all, but I can see how that would be tempting). Once we know more (and ideally have fixed it), we’ll likely add an annotation in Search Console & an entry in the data anomalies page.”
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