Google AIO 24: Threats And Opportunities via @sejournal, @Kevin_Indig

Google I/O 2024 was all about one thing: the launch of AI Overviews (short: AIOs). You might know the Gemini-powered direct answers as AI Snapshots from Google’s public beta environment Search Generative Experience. Now, they’re here, ushering in a new era for Search.

Google’s stunning first quarter and the softening of the ChatGPT hype led me to believe that Google had no reason to launch AIOs. Clearly, I was wrong.

So, why did it launch AIOs? A few possible reasons:

1. Optics.
2. Google wants to disrupt itself before someone else does.
3. AIOs massively improve the experience for long-tail queries.
4. Higher pressure from Perplexity, ChatGPT & Co. than we thought.
5. Google might as well give the answer itself, given the low quality of open web content.
6. AI results allow searchers to do the actual thing instead of reading about how to do it.

Are AIOs the end of Google Search as we know it? Yes. Is that good? Also, yes. Every tech advancement bears threats, but also opportunities.

Image Credit: Lyna ™

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From Queries To Prompts

We’re entering a new era of Search because AIOs are a new playing field with new rules. They look like 18-year-old Featured Snippets on ‘roids, but they’re not. Classic ranking factors don’t apply.

Instead, Google blurs the line between searching and doing.

Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, calls the capabilities of AIOs “agentive,” referring to their role as agents who can do things for you. Giving answers to questions is just one task of many.

In their full glory, agentive AIOs expand to what Google calls “AI-organized search results.” Instead of blue links, Gemini composes a personalized feed of local results, short videos, and forums based on your prompt.

Google plays into its competitive advantage of owning Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. AI-organized SERPs are rolling out for inspirational queries, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t appear for commercial queries as well.

Instead of giving you answers, AIOs are the gateway to AI in Google Search that does things for you. The future of Search isn’t keywords but prompts.

AIOs show up for complex queries where Google attempts “… to make an algorithmic value judgment behind the scenes as to whether it should serve up AI-generated answers or a conventional blue link to click.”

“Complex queries” sounds much like long-tail queries, where Google’s search experience has traditionally been horrendous despite “using AI for years.”

AIOs and classic search results are powered by different systems. Proof: Sites that were punished by Google penalties can still appear with content and sources in AIOs.

AIOs use multi-step reasoning, which breaks searches (prompts) down into parts, answers each one, and puts the answer back together. This approach sounds a lot like chain-of-thought prompting, where a large language model (LLM) explains each step when giving an answer.

In Search, users might be able to give feedback on single parts of an answer and fine-tune Gemini’s understanding of user intent and personalization capabilities.

New technology introduces costs and benefits. I admit, AIOs improved a lot in SGE just before they launched. I also think AIOs are a better experience for users and a long desired update to how Google works. It’s our job to figure out how they work and how to gain visibility.

Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly of AIOs.

The Good

1. Early data shows that AIOs appear for only 0.48% of desktop and 0.57% of mobile search results.

Early data shows very few AIOs in Search. (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

Rank trackers measure SERP features based on the logged-out experience, which might be different from personalized user results.

For now, it seems you have a higher chance of getting audited by the IRS than seeing an AIO.

Early data shows that Google doesn’t shy away from giving AI answers in sensitive spaces like health, science, pets, and law. It’s questionable whether that’s a good way to start.

Verticals like people, beauty, and sports would forgive mistakes so much more.

The majority of AI Overviews on desktop show up in health, people & society, and science verticals. (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

The majority of AI Overviews on mobile show up in people & society, health, and science verticals. (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

2. What I’m most excited about: AIOs could be a massive opportunity to match searchers with the right site – better and faster.

According to Sundar Pichai, SGE led to longer queries. Assuming engagement with AIOs follow suit, longer queries reveal more about what users really want (intent), similar to how social networks measure behavior.

As a result, AIOs likely shrink organic traffic, but bring more organic conversions – more juice, less squeeze.

3. Lower cost-per-click (CPC).

CPCs are high and getting more expensive. But if AIOs and AI-organized SERPs can connect users with the right company faster, CPCs go down because fewer advertisers compete with each other for the same searcher.

Google could significantly grow monetizable queries in the long-tail queries. Win-win.

The Bad

1. Misinformation. 

Examples of AIOs contaminated with misinformation or questionable answers are easy to find. It’s clear that Google tolerates some degree of misinformation or poor results.

Of course, Google needs to fix misinformation as fast as possible, especially in sensitive areas like health or law. But AIOs also magnify an uncomfortable fact: The web has been full of misinformation for a while.

Consensus is easier for some topics than others. I do have hope that AI, in general, makes it easier to identify misinformation.

We’re also facing a denominator trap in the debate about how much wrong information is okay: We don’t know how many AIOs deliver correct vs. factually wrong results. It might just be a tiny fraction, but misinformation sticks out like a sore thumb.

The same is true for good vs. bad experiences with AIOs. There is a chance the absolute majority of experiences are good.

2. Traffic loss.

Travel sites, publishers, and affiliates will suffer from the launch of AIOs, especially AI-organized SERPs cut deep into the flesh or sites that help with creative tasks, information gathering, and product reviews.

The winners are brands, vendors, and creators who don’t make money from advertising but sell “products.”

3. AIOs break the old contract between Google, searchers, and content creators.

People and companies created content that Google could run ads against and received traffic in return.

Now that anybody can recreate Wikipedia’s content with basic LLMs, Google might as well give the answer itself and send traffic only when users want to explore more.

The old contract between Google, content creators, and searchers is void. (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

AIOs still have links, and we’ll soon figure out how much traffic they actually send out. But links in AIOs have another important mission: Create trust with users by showing where the information comes from.

The Ugly

People have already used AI Overviews billions of times through our experiment in Search Labs. They like that they can get both a quick overview of a topic and links to learn more. We’ve found that with AI Overviews, people use Search more, and are more satisfied with their results.

1. Baseless claims.

Google claims that AI Overviews lead to more searches and better satisfaction. Isn’t that a paradox? Shouldn’t a better experience result in fewer searches?

Pichai also mentioned an “increase in engagement.” Again, what does that mean?

With AI Overviews, people are visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions. And we see that the links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query.

The announcement sounds like “top results get more traffic,” but what it actually means is that Google shows different sites in AIOs than in classic web search, which get more traffic since they don’t rank well in classic search but now get featured in AIOs.

2. Data loss.

The worst part about AI Overviews is that Google doesn’t provide telemetry to understand their impact. Clicks and impressions for AIOs will not be separable from classic results. I couldn’t imagine an easier way for Pichai & Co. to prove that AIOs are better for the web than letting sites measure referral traffic.

“Google CEO Sundar Pichai suggested that offering granular AI preview traffic data might encourage website owners to manipulate the system.

He believes providing detailed metrics could result in publishers designing their content specifically to game Google’s search engine, which may lead to a worse user experience.”

The future of organic visibility tracking is a combination of first-party data (Google Search Console) enhanced with third-party tools that fill the gaps.

AIOs might surface more personalized results, but we can leverage technology to solve this problem.

AI bots could be trained on human search behavior and emulate personas to search and scrape Google’s logged-in experience to give us an approximation of personalized human search results. Google is not the only one that benefits from advancements in AI.

3. No opt-out.

In classic Google fashion, you can’t really opt out of AIOs. It’s not a great look, given the bad image AI answers already have.

You can use a nosnippet meta tag but cripple yourself in the process because you also lose your description and rich snippets.

Searchers can’t opt out of AIOs either and have to install Chrome extensions to get rid of them.

Moving Forward

We will deal with this change like any other change before: SSL encryption, mobile, SERP features, Helpful Content Update (HCU), etc. Like every other time, we’ll measure, test, learn, and adapt.

Besides ranking algorithms, we now also need to stay on top of Google’s AI models because they define what’s possible for AIOs and AI-organized SERPs.

For example, Gemini 1.5 Pro will have a 2 million-token context window by the end of the year. That’s the equivalent of 2 hours of videos, 22 hours of audio, and 1.4 million words.

Capabilities matter because they impact user behavior. For example, AIOs lead to a lot more long-tail queries (as confirmed by Sundar Pichai) and voice searches.

We need to start paying attention to training tokens, multi-modal capabilities, zero-shot tasks, speed, etc., and talk about new models like new ranking algorithms.

It’s the End of Google Search As We Know It

Google Won’t Commit To AI Search Traffic Data In Search Console

Google’s generative AI can now analyze hours of video

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

How To Recover From A Google Update (A Checklist) via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW

Historically, Google has rolled out core algorithm updates two or three times a year – but last year, we saw a record four updates.

We’ve also just experienced a 45-day record rollout with the March core update.

When I first started in SEO, the industry was experiencing the later Panda updates, the Exact Match Domain update, and Penguin.

These updates were, in part, designed to counter tactics deployed by SEO experts.

Google updates have evolved over the years, in line with how Google itself has evolved as an information finder, classifier, and retrieval system.

As a result, how we talk about updates, understand them, and approach them also needs to evolve.

It’s also worth highlighting that not all Google updates are designed to be punitive; a number of updates in the past 24-36 months have been aligned with Google’s “core algorithm” and adoption of different technologies.

What Is A Core Update?

As Danny Sullivan (via the SearchLiason X account) defines, a core update is when Google makes a “notable” change to one or more of its core systems.

These updates change how inputs (our content, links, etc.) are processed and weighed.

The systems are continuously running, so once updated, they begin to process and refresh based on the new criteria.

Not all updates are reported on, as, according to Sullivan, it would just be a continuous notification feed and not helpful outside of the current narrative that Search is not a static product and is always updating.

Read more: History of Google Algorithm Updates

Have I Been Impacted By An Update?

Understanding whether you have been impacted by an update is crucial in determining the appropriate course of action.

In 2023, Google made 9 official updates – all logged via the Google Search Status Dashboard – as well as thousands of ongoing smaller updates that aren’t registered or declared.

While most confirmed updates take 3 to 4 weeks to complete (the last core update officially took 45 days at the time of writing), significant changes can usually be seen within the first 24-48 hours of rollout.

During the rollout period, you should expect volatility and fluctuations, but from experience, the “danger zone” for the most trafficked and searched-for queries is in the first couple of days.

It’s also key to remember that not all losses in traffic and rankings are related to updates.

As the Google Dance is now a thing of memory and Google processes in real time, changes in your performance could be due to your competitors’ efforts and improvements in their value propositions—such as improving content or benefitting from valuable press coverage.

When this happens, Google tends to perform keyword tests and try different websites in different positions to gain user feedback before establishing a “new” more stable results page.

This can be frustrating, but it further affirms that SEO isn’t a “one and done” activity, and refining and proving value proposition for specific search queries is an ongoing exercise.

Unfortunate Timings With Transformation Projects

As core updates aren’t predictable, many websites undergo a major transformation at the same time an update is announced.

Anecdotally, these tend to be ongoing transformation projects, such as migrations that tend to accidentally coincide with core updates.

Migrations themselves can take time to complete and be processed by Google, so adding the complexity of the unknown change variables makes it harder to discern if performance changes (or lags in returning to previous performance) are caused by the migration processing or the core update.

Recovering From An Update

While it is possible to recover from an update before the next broad core updates are released, most sites tend to see the biggest changes (and recoveries) during subsequent updates – if they have better aligned their content with what Google is looking for:

“Content that was impacted in Search or Discover by one might not recover—assuming improvements have been made—until the next broad core update is released.”

The same Google document also outlines another truth: Making improvements doesn’t guarantee recovery if “more deserving content” exists, as Google will continue to rank it highly within its search results.

Recovering from a Google update typically means improving one (or more) of the following:

Recoveries can look different because there are different types.

Some recoveries are fast, and due to the recovery activities you’ve been implementing, traffic is almost back to pre-update levels, if not higher.

This usually happens when a search engine update revises and amends a variable that was changed in a previous update.

Other recoveries take longer.

This means Google has likely seen positive user data from the variables changed in the previous update, and the impetus is on you to better align your website and content with what Google is looking to reward.

Read more: Google E-E-A-T: What Is It & How To Demonstrate It For SEO

Update Recovery Checklist

Before getting to phase one, asking questions in this initial “phase zero” can save a lot of time and concerns across business stakeholders:

Where are we seeing the traffic drop?

• If via a third-party tool, is this consistent with our proprietary data?
• Has the third-party tool updated its own data sets and traffic forecasts?
• If in our proprietary data, are all tracking codes implemented and triggering correctly?

Answering these questions first can prevent resource wastage and potentially bring calm back to the situation.

Phase One: Assess The Impact

By identifying which pages have lost traffic you can establish the drop affects only certain pages or the entire site, you narrow down your scope of where to look next in diagnosing the potential causes for your traffic drop.

• Data collection: The first step is to collect and pool as much data as possible that is available to you, ideally at the keyword and URL level. This can come from your Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and other analytics platforms and data sources.
• Data segmentation: Segment your data by page cluster, keyword cluster, demographic, persona, device, or your own custom categorization to determine which areas have been most affected.
• Data comparison: Comparing against historical data is vital to understanding any potential correlations between seasonality and previous traffic/buyer behavior.

Read more:

Phase Two: Review The SERPs

Evaluating what has changed in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your primary search terms and term clusters is an important next step.

When looking at the SERPs, you need to be objective, remove any biases, and avoid thinking things like “my content is better than that,” as the data currently suggests otherwise. This data collection is your first part in performing a GAP analysis.

• How much has Google changed the SERPs?
• Is Google now preferring websites targeting a different search intent?
• Is Google rewarding websites that are a different source type?
• Have your direct competitors been affected in a positive/negative way?
• Has Google introduced new SERP features?
• Has Google removed SERP features?
• Is Google double-listing any domains in the top 10?

Read more: What’s In A SERP? Google Search Results & Features You Need To Know

Phase Three: Review Your Website

Now that you have the data from reviewing the SERPs, you can perform a GAP analysis on your own website.

Over the years, I have found two areas important to examine in depth: evaluating your content’s depth and relevance and how aligned the content is to the search intent and user expectations for the query.

• Comprehensive Coverage: Assess whether your content fully addresses the topics at hand. It should provide all the necessary information that a user might be looking for when searching for the query and provide relevant supporting content and logical next steps for the user on their various journey paths.
• Data & Information Accuracy: Make sure that the content is up-to-date with the latest information, especially in industries that have high levels of interest or rely heavily on statistics. Updating statistical data tables and examples to the most recent available data helps build the integrity and validity of the content in the eyes of users
• Keyword Intent Matching: Each page’s main content should clearly address the search intent behind the keywords it targets.
• Beneficial Purpose Alignment: Each piece of content has a beneficial purpose. There is no right or wrong beneficial purpose, but it should align with user expectations. For example, an informational piece of content titled “the best X software for Y,” which unsubtly positions your company as number one with a review three times the length of the others, doesn’t have a beneficial purpose that aligns with the keyword intent.

Read more: How to Do a Content Gap Analysis for SEO

Phase Four: Develop & Implement Recovery Strategies

Now that you’ve collected and analyzed all your data and understand the differences between your content and what Google is currently rewarding, you can begin to devise a strategy to address these differences.

Defining the strategy first is crucial, as it allows you to communicate expectations around activities and your recovery plan with wider business stakeholders.

From experience, far too many fall into the trap of immediately jumping to tactics (as they differ greatly).

Strategies are designed to provide a broad framework and guide decision-making over the longer term, ensuring that all efforts are aligned with the business’s core objectives.

This aligns your SEO efforts with the business objectives and helps steer conversations away from metrics such as rankings and keywords towards more important business metrics such as leads and revenue.

Read more: How To Improve SEO: Strategies To Try First

Recovering From Google Updates Is Difficult

Google won’t tell you why your rankings drop. Understanding the reasons for a reduction in your traffic or SERP performance requires an objective look at your website.

You must abandon your assumptions about your content and website’s worthiness to be at the top and ask yourself: do my pages deserve to rank?

Once you have a clear assessment, you can move forward. Recovering from a sudden ranking drop takes time, patience, and effort. Good information is your best tool.

More resources: 

Featured Image: ra2 studio/Shutterstock

How To Use Header Tags: SEO Best Practices via @sejournal, @amelioratethis

Header tags are a fundamental element of web design and SEO, influencing user experience and search rankings.

While often overlooked, these HTML tags provide a hierarchical structure to content, enhancing readability and navigation for human visitors.

At the same time, header tags offer semantic signals that help search engines better understand context and key topics.

Google’s guidance reinforces the need to use header tags strategically.

John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate, has stated that header elements are a “really strong signal” that informs Google’s understanding of a page’s topics.

As Google emphasizes rewarding high-quality user experiences, optimizing header tags presents an opportunity to align with best practices for human visitors and search crawlers.

This article outlines how to use header tags, from enhancing content structure and scannability to targeting opportunities for featured snippet displays.

We also explore techniques for incorporating relevant keywords and maintaining consistent formatting.

By implementing these recommendations, websites can provide a better experience while potentially boosting visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).

What Is A Header Tag?

Header tags are HTML tags that tell a browser what styling it should use to display a piece of text on a webpage.

If we looked up the HTML for the heading above, it’d look something like this:

What is a Header Tag?

Like headings in print content, header tags are used to title or introduce the content below them. HTML header tags follow a hierarchy from

to

.

• H1 tags denote the most important text, such as the central theme or title.
• H2 and H3 tags are commonly used as subheadings.
• H4, H5, and H6 tags provide further structure within those subsections.

Header tags are helpful for users and search engines. For your users, they give them a preview of the content they’re about to read.

For search engines like Google, header tags provide context and a hierarchy for your page. Think of header tags as chapter titles in a book.

Give them a quick scan, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it’s about.

How Many Header Tags Are Supported?

HTML supports six levels of header tags, ranging from

to

.

The

tag is typically used for the main heading or title of a page, while

and

tags are commonly employed for subheadings.

The remaining tags,

,

, and

, can provide further structure within subsections.

Now, let’s get to the best practices.

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1. Use Header Tags To Provide Structure

Header tags help create a logical structure for your content, making it easier for users and search engines to navigate.

Treat your H1 as the main title, H2s as chapters, and H3s to H6s as subsections within each chapter.

When planning your article or landing page, consider the main ideas you want your visitors to take away. These main ideas should form the basis of your header tags and help you create a clear outline.

2. Break Up Blocks Of Text With Subheadings

Break up long blocks of text with relevant subheadings to enhance readability. This makes your content more user-friendly and helps search engines identify covered topics.

A scannable article is positioned to perform well in search engines because Google rewards user-friendly content.

Additionally, scannable articles are commonly shared on social media, which can increase the likelihood of earning natural backlinks.

3. Include Keywords In Your Header Tags

Include your target keywords in header tags where appropriate, but avoid overusing them. Focus on creating informative and engaging headers that accurately reflect the content below them.

While keywords are essential, it’s important not to force them in at the expense of readability.

Google uses header tags to gather context for your page, so incorporate keywords naturally.

Always prioritize creating value and avoid keyword stuffing, which can lead to a poor experience and potential penalties.

4. Optimize For Featured Snippets

Carefully crafted header tags can increase your chances of winning featured snippets.

Here’s how.

Paragraph Featured Snippets

To optimize for paragraph-featured snippets, identify a relevant long-tail keyword and use it in your H2.

Then, directly below the H2, provide a clear and concise answer to the query, placing the text within

paragraph tags.

This structure helps Google identify and extract the information it needs.

For example, Search Engine Journal won this featured snippet for “How to remove default search engine in Chrome?” in part thanks to its keyword-optimized H2:

Screenshot from search for [how to remove default search engine in chrome], Google, April 2024

Screenshot from search for [how to remove default search engine in chrome], Google, April 2024

List Featured Snippets

To optimize for list featured snippets, use subheadings (H2 to H6) to outline different items or steps in a process.

Google can pull from these subheadings to create a bulleted or numbered list in the featured snippet, increasing your visibility and driving more traffic to your site.

Here’s an example.

When you search for [how to relieve migraine fast], Google creates a list of answers using the H2s from this WebMD article.

Screenshot from search for [how to relieve migraine fast], Google, April 2024

Screenshot from WebMD, April 2024

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5. Only Use One H1

While multiple H1s are technically allowed, using only one H1 per page is best. This maintains a clear hierarchy and avoids confusion for users and search engines.

Using multiple H1s can make your page appear disorganized. Instead, reserve the H1 tag for your main title and use H2 to H6 tags for subheadings.

To ensure your site doesn’t have multiple H1s, run your domain through a crawler tool like Screaming Frog and check the H1 tab to identify any pages with missing or numerous H1s.

Screenshot from Screaming Frog, April 2024

The same report is available for H2s.

6. Keep Your Header Tags Consistent

Ensure your header tags follow a consistent style and format throughout your website.

This includes using the same case (title or sentence case), keeping them concise, and limiting their length to around 70 characters.

Consistency in your header tags contributes to a better experience and helps establish a cohesive brand image.

When deciding on a format, consider your target audience and the tone of your content. Once you’ve chosen a style, apply it consistently across all your pages.

In addition to maintaining a consistent format, keep your header tags concise and to the point.

Treat them like mini-titles for the following section of text, and avoid using them to stuff keywords or write lengthy paragraphs.

7. Make Your Header Tags Interesting

Write interesting, engaging header tags that entice readers to continue reading your content.

Pay special attention to your H1, as it can decide whether visitors stay on your page or bounce back to the search results.

A compelling H1 should communicate the main topic of your page and align with the user’s search intent.

Take the time to brainstorm and refine your header tags, ensuring they accurately reflect the content and entice users to keep reading.

Why Header Tags Are Important For SEO

Header tags play a role in SEO by enhancing user experience, providing context to search engines, and increasing the chances of securing featured snippets.

This can potentially lead to better rankings, increased visibility, and higher engagement rates.

Descriptive headings allow readers to skim and jump to relevant sections.

For search crawlers, headers give semantic cues about the context and priority of page content.

Don’t underestimate the SEO power of header tags. Make them a top priority when optimizing your content.

[Free Download:] On-Page SEO Template + Guide

More resources:

Featured image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal