August 2024 SEO Industry Updates

Conductor is back with our recap of industry news from the past month of website optimizations. The conclusion of the August 2024 Core Update from Google, AI Overviews appearing for more users, and a change to Google’s page title documentation.

Google’s August 2024 Core Update completed on September 3rd

The what

Google officially completed the August 2024 Core Update on September 3rd, 2024—19 days after it rolled out.

John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, emphasized that this Core Update was a little different than other Core Updates.

This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months.

This is in reference to the September 2023 helpful content update, which was not so helpful for independent and small publishers, as many of them lost significant amounts of visibility and traffic.

The why

This could be big news for smaller publishers as many of them have made changes to their websites after being hit by the September 2023 Helpful Content Update and the March 2024 Core Update but have yet to see any positive results.

Since the August 2024 Core Update began rolling out, many of these websites started to see an increase in visibility. They haven’t come close to the visibility levels they had before those previous updates, but it’s definitely a good sign.

However, recent polling from SEORoundtable revealed that many sites actually saw a drop in visibility resulting from the August update. It’s too soon to say which holds true, but we’ll continue to monitor the results now that the update is officially over to see if these websites gain more of that visibility back.

Remember, you need to make sure you are creating content that is helpful for users, provides them with reliable answers, and is high quality. If you create content for humans and not search engines, you should have nothing to worry about.

For Conductor customers

Review organic traffic data:

The Pages feature in Conductor integrates web analytics data from your Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics with Google Search Console, so it’s a great place to review any potential impact from the latest algo update. A smart annotation marks the start and end of the August Core Update, making it easier to pinpoint when changes in performance occurred and correlate them with the update's impact.

Remember to select the Year over Year view to account for any seasonality.

If you notice a decline in Sessions, continue your analysis in the Pages table below. Sort your metrics decreasingly to view pages that may have been impacted. For critical pages, click into the Page Details report to view changes to your keyword rankings.

Review Keywords data:

• The Keywords report offers holistic, aggregated keyword reporting, and features the Visibility Distribution chart, which shows trended visibility zone data. This is a great place to spot any major changes to your organic visibility. Use the time period selector in the top-right corner to compare the week ending with August 10th vs. the week ending with September 14th. Apply the quick filters “Moved into Top 10” and “Fell from Top 10” to generate a list of keywords for further analysis.
• Review Market Share data to identify any significant gains or losses in your keyword visibility.
  • Market share lets you see who owns the most results in the 1st place, top 5 results, or 1st Page of the SERP. Select 1st Page to get the most comprehensive view.
  • Apply a keyword group to narrow down the data. It’s essential to review changes to your non-branded visibility.
  • Use the devices and locations drop-downs to narrow down specific areas/devices.
  • If you have set up local tracking, go into Locations (under Mesure > Locations) to see an overview of keyword performance by location.
• Review Result Types (under Measure>Result Types) to understand how the Core update may have changed the visibility of SERP features and rich results.

For everyone else

• Monitor your website's traffic and keyword rankings in Google Search Console to understand if you have been positively or negatively impacted by this update.
• If your site was negatively impacted, review Google’s Core Updates help page for resources on how to assess your site’s content.

Google AI Overviews appear for signed-out users in the U.S.

The what

AI Overview results are now appearing for users in the U.S., whether or not they’re signed into a Google account . Prior to this announcement, AI Overview results were only available to users who were signed into their Google accounts.

After receiving plenty of criticism since rolling out AI Overviews back in May, this announcement signals that Google is more confident in the quality of results that AI Overviews provide. Google is committed to AI Overviews playing a significant role in its organic search experience, and people should expect this rollout to continue expanding to additional users in other regions of the world over the next few months.

The why

Conductor published our 2024 State of SEO Report at the end of last year. An interesting takeaway from that report was that 71% of respondents believed SGE would result in some type of disruption to their SEO strategies.

With AI Overview results increasing in frequency, it’s important to start discussing with your SEO & content teams how to better structure and position your content to earn real estate within this new result type. You can start by learning how to adapt your content for Google’s AI Overviews.

For Conductor customers

With AI Overviews, the top of the SERP may have changed, but your goal of creating high-quality content that ranks at the top should not. Conductor’s Writing Assistant can help you secure a place within AI Overview results by providing you with on-demand recommendations—as you write—to help ensure the content is optimized for success from the start. Insights are sourced from the top 15 ranking pages for any search query to ensure your content stacks up against other top performers.

Measuring the impact of AI Overviews and understanding where your content appears within this search result type is top of mind for most SEOs right now. Conductor’s product team is hard at work on bringing these capabilities to the platform. Before August, AI overview results only appeared for authenticated Google sessions, which limited our ability to collect data for it at scale.

Once this restriction was lifted, our team has had the ability to collect and analyze the AIO data. You can expect to see AI Overview result data in the platform in the near future, as it has recently reached the Alpha testing stage. We’re excited about this future release that will allow you to report on AI Overviews as a result type and recognize the impact they have on your site’s organic performance.

For everyone else

In addition to reviewing some of our previous content around AI Overviews, SEO professionals should continue to monitor the evolution of Google’s search generative experience to remain competitive for the keywords and topics most critical to your business.

Answering user’s questions with high-quality content is still crucial for ensuring that your content is valuable and has the chance to appear at the top of the SERPs, regardless of what the first result type is. Focusing on technical SEO elements such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, and proper use of structured data will significantly enhance your chances of landing one of the coveted ranking positions. Regularly monitoring performance through tools like Conductor Website Monitoring and remaining agile to adjust your strategies based on industry changes and insights from your performance are more critical now than ever.

As Google integrates more AI capabilities into its search results, understanding how AI Overviews influence search rankings and user behavior becomes paramount.

One key takeaway is that content strategies should continue to follow E-E-A-T guidelines to ensure visibility, as AI-driven snippets often prioritize the same characteristics as other universal result types like answer boxes and people also ask results. Keeping up with emerging trends and algorithm changes is essential for maintaining and improving your organic search performance. You can stay up to date on the most important industry topics by joining our monthly 30|30 webinar series, which recaps the latest updates in search, Google’s algorithm, technical SEO, and content marketing in the last 30 days—in 30 minutes or less.

Google Search may now use OG titles for title links

The what

Title tags describe the main topic of a page in one brief sentence or phrase. It's shown in search engine result pages and is a critical on-page SEO element. Google has updated its search documentation to add the “og:title meta” tags element as a possible source for your title tag link in Google search results. An og:title is the title of your object as it appears within the open graph tag of a page. There are now 9 potential sources Google can pull from when displaying a page. In addition to the og:title, Google sources title tags from the following sources to determine title links:

• Content in <title> elements
• Main visual title shown on the page
• Heading elements, such as <h1> elements
• Content in og:title meta tags
• Other content that's large and prominent through the use of style treatments
• Other text contained in the page
• Anchor text on the page
• Text within links that point to the page
• WebSite structured data

The why

To the dismay of many in the SEO industry, there’s no way to force Google and other search engines to use the title tag you define for your page. Search engines ultimately decide if your title tags are relevant for a user’s search query and will sometimes rewrite your title tags for your pages if they think they can provide a better experience for their users. This update provides an additional opportunity to indicate your preferred title to search engines.

For Conductor customers

Google recommends writing descriptive and concise text for your title elements. Conductor’s Writing Assistant can provide you with AI-generated title tags that include your primary topic and automatically pull in the best of Conductor’s content intelligence for inspiration and clarity on how to write the optimal title.

Want to know where Google is rewriting your title tags in the SERP? Check out this pro tip provided by Conductor’s very own Rachel Schardt.

Pro Tip: Knowing when Google chooses to rewrite titles can be tricky—but if you know which pages they are doing this for, you can update your affected pages' title tags to align more closely with what Google is suggesting. Doing so can improve title tags in Google's eyes, but keep you in control of the titles that appear on the SERP.

Because Conductor collects data for your pages directly from your page HTML, and data about your keyword rankings directly from SERPs, we can compare the titles reported for your ranking pages between the Pages and Keywords reports to identify where Google is rewriting your HTML title tags for their SERPs. You can review the step-by-step workflow by checking out our related Conductor workflow .

For everyone else

Google shares helpful documentation on best practices for influencing the title links selected for the search engine results page. It’s no surprise to see the first recommendation is to make sure every page on your site has a title specified in the <title> element. Google most commonly uses the title element to source your title link. You can also check out our article on title tags in the Conductor Academy for recommendations on how to write the perfect title tag.

Stay tuned

If you’re interested in driving sustainable growth on Google and beyond, consider attending Conductor’s Digital Transformation Summit on November 12th at 11:00 am ET | 8:00 am PT. Discover digital insights to fuel your website’s growth in the new generation of search and maximize your impact on ROI by registering today.