The Weekly Bulletin | September 26, 2023

Hi SODP community,

Let’s recap on what’s been happening last week, the new content, industry updates, tips, and more.

EDITOR’S NOTE

I’ve found myself wondering what the future of Google SERPs looks like following the rollout of Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Despite all the technical and design changes Google has implemented over the last 25 years, the general structure of 10 blue links has remained largely untouched. Can this continue with SGE’s launch? Answering that has left me torn between two camps of thought.

On the one hand, there’s a strong argument that Google wants to ditch the 10 blue links, with SGE and search ads coming to dominate the SERPs.

On the other hand, two-thirds of all traffic still comes from organic links and making a drastic change to how Google SERPs operate would simply open the door to other search engines to capitalize. Sounds unrealistic?

No matter how dominant a company might be, a competitor always has room to steal a big chunk of its audience. Just ask Microsoft, which has seen its share of the desktop OS market sink from 91% in 2013 to 70% this year.

Striking a Balance?

When SGE was unveiled in May, I wrote that publishers should focus on content AI couldn’t synthesize. Unique, in-depth and personalized content that AI couldn’t replicate.

While costing more, this content would be more valuable to audiences in the long run and should be promoted by Google. Search representatives seemed to echo this sentiment at Google Search Central Live in Bangalore last week, which SODP’s Mahendra Choudhary and Swapnil Pate attended.

Google's team expressed reservations about relying solely on AI for content creation, emphasizing that AI lacks the real-world experience that human writers bring. This makes sense to me, given that “it takes a body to understand the world”. At the same time, the team’s comments suggest AI content generation has a valuable role to play, which also makes sense, given the technology’s immense productivity potential.

Ultimately, however, I’ll admit my reasoning failed to address SGE’s long-term impact on SERP structure. Given that Google’s chatbot will sit at the top of informational and commercial SERPs, pushing organic links out of view, how will this not eat into organic traffic?

I can’t lie; I’m still struggling to answer this question, a task made more difficult by the background noise over Google’s most recent Helpful Content Update.

Update Outrage

Publishers and bloggers have accused the search engine giant of promoting AI-generated articles, while others are outraged that older forum posts are taking the top spot in some SERPs.

Google search advocate John Mueller has argued that forum posts gaining SERP traction makes sense in light of the search engine’s goal of drowning out AI spam. Add in Google’s move to rewrite its helpful content description to drop the distinction that it had to be written “by people”, and you have the perfect mess of mixed signals.

Google continues to argue that unique, high-quality content is essential to a healthy internet, blasting AI rehashing in the process, only to be criticized by publishers who claim its algorithm updates have helped AI and low-quality content rank higher. At the same time, Google continues to prepare for a global roll out of its own AI, which will repurpose all content while sitting at the top of the SERPs.

Unless Google implements SGE similar to Bing’s side panel approach for ChatGPT, it could have a far worse impact on publisher and brand traffic in the long-run than the generic AI content Mueller has complained about.

In such an outcome, publishers will likely have to invest more heavily than ever before in social media networks such as TikTok and newsletter ecosystems such as Substack to offset the losses they see in organic traffic.

SODP POSTS

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Join the October edition of Office Hours hosted by video content expert Emily Brennan from Ezoic and moderated by SODP's founder Vahe Arabian to learn how to set up video content strategies that deliver outstanding results.

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INSIGHTS FROM SEARCH CENTRAL LIVE 2023

Last week, our team members Mahendra Choudhary and Swapnil Pate attended Google’s Search Central Live 2023 in Bengaluru. Here are a few insights:

• Search: The central focus lies on Google's concerted efforts to enhance result quality significantly.

• GSC (Google Search Console): Anticipate a forthcoming transformation in the Page Experience Report within GSC.

• GSC: Notably, the Mobile-Friendly Test option is slated for retirement, making room for a more prominent role for Light House in the toolkit.

• Bard and SGE remain in the initial stages, and Google plans to incorporate citations into the snippet.

• AI: Amid the debate over AI-generated content, Google's team expressed reservations about relying solely on AI for content creation. They emphasized that AI lacks the real-world experience that human writers bring.

• The Helpful Content Update assesses the quality of your website's content as a whole, rather than on a page-by-page basis. Authority is a significant factor in this evaluation.

• Websites featuring authentic, user-focused content will prevail, especially impacting affiliate sites that publish untested product reviews. These sites could face significant challenges in upcoming updates.

• Incorporating video into content has a substantial impact on engagement and reach.

• Google's crawl budget for a website is largely influenced by the site's linking structure and the capacity for Google to crawl multiple pages without overloading server bandwidth.

• Once a domain expires, Google resets all pre-existing authority and link equity, rendering the expired domain unbeneficial.

• Google does not differentiate between subdomains and subdirectories, although some industry professionals have observed otherwise.

• For better ranking in specific countries, Google favors country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs).

• There's generally no need to worry about spam links affecting your site as Google is capable of ignoring such links. The Disavow tool should only be used in extreme cases.

• Google has no plans to reintroduce the FAQ Schema feature in the near future; it is officially retired.

JOB BOARD

➡️ Betsperts Media & Technology Group is looking for an SEO director (Remote). SEE MORE

➡️ News Corp Australia is looking for an audience growth editor (Sydney, Australia). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Google launches free and paid generative AI training courses on the Cloud Skills Boost platform. READ MORE

➡️ Beehiiv, a two-year-old newsletter startup, has acquired tech platform Swapstack. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Johnny Levy on LinkedIn:

This one is for my niche #publishers : Where is your GOLD?

The buzzword you need to know is "First Party Data." This is your proprietary data about your audience.

💰Your print subscriber list? GOLD.
💰Your digital subscriber list / newsletter databases? GOLD.
💰Your event registration database? GOLD.
💰Your CRM data? GOLD.
💰 Your nomination/awards databases? GOLD.
💰 The tracked behaviors of your site visitors? GOLD.

And when these data silos come together? SUPER GOLD! 💰💰💰💰💰

Let's set the record straight: Content isn't king. Data is. Challenge this perspective, but follow my logic.

SEE THE FULL POST

These are the highlights for last week.

Until next!

Andrew Kemp and the editorial team at SODP