Impact of Google Updates on Organic Traffic

While I am personally most excited about the AI virtual teammates coming from Google, the implications of AI shifting to search will have the most immediate impact on marketing teams: "The new AI-powered search will have a “profound impact on organic search traffic,” Natalie Lambert, founder and managing partner at GenEdge Consulting, an AI consulting company, told PYMNTS. “For example, when researching a new topic or a new desired item, people tend to ask basic questions like, ‘What is a mirrorless camera?’ or ‘What is the best mirrorless camera for traveling?’ Lambert added. “There is enough data on the internet to enable AI to answer these questions with authority. “Unfortunately, it is these questions that companies have built their SEO practices around. This is why [management consultant] Gartner has stated that ‘by 2028, brands’ organic search traffic will decrease by 50% or more as consumers embrace generative AI-powered search.’ I think it could be higher than this if Google starts rolling this out now for all users.” Lambert emphasized that companies must update their strategies due to changes in search behavior. They need to ensure that search engines have the latest information, possibly using AI to refresh content summaries regularly. To stand out in searches, businesses should target precise, long-tail keywords that closely match specific consumer needs, like “The best mirrorless camera for beginners with great autofocus for wildlife.” Moreover, since visitors now arrive at websites better informed, companies should focus on converting these well-prepared prospects into customers."

Google is rolling out a core algorithm update now (August 2023). These changes typically roll out to organic search over a week or two. Algorithm updates can be exhilarating and also incredibly frustrating. In the past, I've had my website's organic search traffic go up by 40% overnight and down 35% overnight. Recovering from an algorithm update isn't typically a quick fix. Instead, you want to try to identify which pages on your website were impacted, if there is commonality in those types of pages, and to look more broadly at the winners/losers in your category for clues as to what might be happening. In any case (positive/negative/unchanged), algorithm updates are a great time to reset as a team and to be extremely critical of the work we are doing and for opportunities to improve the quality of our results for searchers.

AI Overview Data Study: This analysis compared SEO performance of websites after the launch of Google's AI Overviews. The results aren't as bad as we think: Ross Hudgens from Siege Media analyzed how 46 different sites performed when looking at their traffic, impressions and CTR. Since AI Overviews launched on May 14th, he compared how they performed on May 15th - 18th vs May 8th - 11th. He then segmented the data across different verticals: All Websites: - Organic traffic improvements of +4% - CTR improvement of 3.75% Ecommerce: - Organic traffic improvement of +3.2% - CTR improvement of 2.10% SaaS: - Organic traffic improvement: 4.42% - Average CTR: 3.02% Since AI Overviews aren't impacting a large number of queries yet, it's hard to tell if looking at total site data can fully represent how much they fully impact organic traffic for a given query. However, what's clear is that they aren't fully hurting SEO performance to this point.

A decline in search traffic often prompts the internal ask for an increase in content production. ❌ The problem with that? Creating more content to try and make up for declining traffic and conversions isn’t usually the best way to fix stagnating or declining growth. ✅ An alternative strategy, often overlooked by SaaS content marketers, is conducting a content refresh. A content refresh involves revisiting and updating existing content to boost traffic and kick inbound back into high gear. Conducting a content refresh can help to drive a surge in organic traffic leveraging the existing content assets you already have in place. ..But that’s not all. There are other benefits that come into play as well: 🔵 1. Maintain Website Authority While most companies focus on acquiring new backlinks, retaining the existing ones is equally crucial. Building new backlinks consistently over time can be a challenging task, and therefore, we want to ensure we keep as many of our existing links as possible. How can this be done? Keeping content updated, timely, and relevant makes it challenging for competitors to take away your backlinks since you continue to own top positions in the SERPs. 🔵 2. Improve CTR Older content and pages may experience a decrease in traffic due to outdated headlines and descriptions. The meta description and meta title of your pages are always extremely important since those are the core factors that are shown in the SERPs. By modifying them to reflect current dates, CTR (clickthrough rate) can be increased. 🔵 3. Please Google’s QDF Ranking Factor Google seeks to provide content that is relevant, authoritative, expert-driven, and trustworthy. Freshness is also a key factor in its algorithm, as evidenced by its QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) component. Query Deserves Freshness (QDF), is a Google re-ranking function. Translated to plain English? QDF means searches that deserve up-to-date search results. Updating older content can fulfill this requirement, resulting in a boost in search engine rankings. 🔵 4. Fight Back Against Keyword Cannibalization Owning multiple pages ranking for the same keyword may seem advantageous, but it leads to self-competition, a phenomenon known as keyword cannibalization. Refreshing content can resolve this issue, resulting in increased cumulative traffic by preventing keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization will most certainly hurt your SERP rankings, and cause traffic drops over the long term. --- Struggling with declining rankings, and content that's dropping from top positions of the SERPs? We can help. Rock The Rankings - SaaS SEO Agency is a 100% SEO-focused partner for SaaS companies. If you've been seeing a drop in rankings, send me a DM - I'll get you set up with a quick content refresh strategy to bring those previous rankings (and conversions) back to where they should be. Follow me for more: Justin Berg

I’ve received several messages from my network asking for my take on Google’s rollout of AI Overviews (AIOs). And, I've noticed a few common threads in the questions I’ve been getting: 💀 “Is SEO dead?” If I had a dollar for every time SEO was declared dead in my career, I’d have already retired comfortably. No, SEO is not dead. It’s evolving as it has been since its inception. AIOs represent to me a new battleground for SEO. It’s time to test, learn, and implement. Something that seasoned SEO teams are used to doing. 📉 “Am I about to lose my organic traffic?” Maybe some of it (varies by industry). But, it’s the wrong question. What we should be asking is, how will AIOs impact the value of my organic traffic? I like Kevin Indig's perspective from his most recent Growth Memo newsletter. Yes, AIOs may reduce the total traffic opportunity, but they could be huge in improving results for longer-tail queries with more specific search intent. If your SEO strategy is focused on what your customers actually want, then you’re poised to see increased organic conversions. Or as Kevin put it, “More juice, less squeeze.” 😫 “WHAT DO I DO?!” Be patient. Change in SEO always comes a bit slower than we think. There’s a lot we don’t know yet, like how prevalent AIOs will be, how searchers will engage with them, or how they may be monetized. Anchor your SEO strategy in your business outcomes, create content that genuinely serves your target audience, and be prepared to adapt as we learn more. That said, I do think this move by Google puts certain approaches to SEO one step closer to extinction: ❌ Checklist-driven SEO “strategies” ❌ Keyword-first tactical planning ❌ Siloed SEO teams that aren’t integrated with your broader marketing strategy Change brings about opportunity. Get excited about AIOs, it's another exciting chapter in the evolution of SEO.

Google just wrapped up its latest core update. It ran for 16 days and, like usual, shuffled the deck. Some sites that got hit back in 2023 saw a bit of a bounce back. But the real story isn’t rankings. It’s what’s replacing them. AI Overviews are showing up more often, especially on news and informational queries. In some verticals, they appear nearly 70 percent of the time. And most of those searches end without a single click. If your content isn’t being cited or quoted in those overviews, it doesn’t matter where you rank. You're not getting seen. This is the shift that’s catching a lot of marketers off guard. SEO isn’t dead, but it’s not the only visibility channel anymore. AI is rewriting the rules. I’ve been teaching founders and other marketers how to adjust for this in my AI Visibility (GEO) System course at the CMO Growth Guide. It’s not about chasing keywords, it’s about being the source AI tools pull from. Time to start thinking that way.

“Future of Search” - new cartoon and post (link in comments) The future of search is ask. The future of results is answer. I like how Carl Holden at Zellus Marketing described the shift in how we’re all going to be navigating the Internet: “Since the turn of the millennium, the verb "search" has dominated our interaction with the internet—inputting keywords into a box and sifting through a list of results. In the last year, AI has catalyzed a move towards a new verb that will redefine our digital experience: ‘Ask.’” This shift in verbs from “search” to “ask” has major implications (and downstream consequences) for anyone using the Internet. “Ask” is different for everyone, so it implies a deep understanding of user-intent, personalization, predictive analytics, and contextual filtering. I think it also risks contributing to what Ian Whitworth described as “The Great Same-ening.” Some of this shift has been underway for a while, with the rise of zero-click search — where users use search engines to surface an answer, rather than clicking through to a website. In 2022, Semrush found that 25.6% of desktop searches and 17.3% of mobile searches were zero-click searches. This was a year before ChatGPT shuffled the entire playing field and Microsoft and Google kicked off a new search engine arms race. Some predict that web site traffic will drop 15-25% in 2024 as the search engine landscape changes and directs fewer people to individual web sites. Insight Partners recently demoed what Google Search Labs is calling “Search Generative Experience (SGE)” for a preview of the next evolution of search. While the current Google results page gives a majority of real estate to organic links, the new SGE has far less space for organic results. One of their takeaways: “It is likely that organic traffic will be fighting for space in a world where there is much less available than in the past.” What’s more, Insight Partners found that only 57% of links cited by Google’s new Search Generative Experience are from the current first page of organic results. So sites that currently perform well in SEO won’t automatically get traction in the new world. Marketers have learned to weather every algorithm change at Google. As I drew in a cartoon once, “the algorithm giveth, and the algorithm taketh away.” Yet this shift feels different. AI Optimization is becoming the new Search Engine Optimization and no one really knows how this will play out.

Google's AI updates have expanded to search, but will they undo years of SEO? Called AI Overviews, Google's search engine is now powered by its LLMs: MUM, PaLM2, and a customized version of Gemini. Foundation Capital portco Jasper published a helpful breakdown of the updates and their impacts on users, traffic, and SEO. From a user perspective, the changes are great. AI will help locate relevant information faster in three ways: 1 - Understanding complex, nuanced, and descriptive queries 2 - Displaying results through quick summaries that may not require a website click 3 - Guiding users to relevant follow-up questions However, there are challenges for marketing teams on the traffic and SEO front: If Overview summaries are valuable, website clicks may decrease (emphasis on “if” because issues of inaccurate information are not going away, for now). Users may develop “Overview blindness,” eventually ignoring AI summaries, much like banner ads. Regardless of which hypothesis is realized, I believe that AI Overviews will demand better content from companies and improve users' search experiences. Do you agree? Check out Jasper's guide for more info: https://lnkd.in/gc7U92Kd