Happy New Year to you all! 2024 promises to be an eventful year for SEO with the expected arrival of AI-generated responses in Google search results based on the ongoing SGE experiment and Google’s Danny Sullivan warning us to Buckle Up. No need to panic, though, another Google spokesperson, John Mueller, has jokingly commented that SEO is not dead and that won’t die for at least the next 6 months. We are more optimistic and are convinced that search engines and search engine optimization still have a long life ahead of them. It is worth remembering that Google remains the primary source of traffic for the vast majority of websites and that the arrival of ChatGPT and Bing Chat have hardly made a dent in the popularity of Google as the number one tool for finding answers on the web.
But before getting too carried away about the future, let us have a look back at what happened in Google Search during December 2023.
Openness Update to local search results
As mentioned in our November 2023 news, local search specialist Joy Hawkins reported that the November Core Update coincided with massive volatility on local search results (i.e., the local pack of results shown in search results for some queries using Google Maps).
On December 7th, she posted findings of further research into these changes confirming that the she had discovered that ranking changes were caused by the opening hours of businesses. Businesses that were closed at the time of the Google search (according to opening times provided through Google Business Profile) were less likely to be listed at the top of local search results.
😱Well the news is out, the new ranking factor we are seeing that has a massive impact on ranking is HOURS. We're seeing that businesses literally vanish in the local pack when they are not open. We started seeing this with the November 2023 core update. This is also making… pic.twitter.com/kDzfrbNmB5
— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) December 7, 2023
In her post on X she solicited a confirmation from Danny Sullivan and he responded on December 15th via the @SearchLiaison to say “The team tells me we’ve long used “openness” as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries. This might change in various ways, as we continue to evaluate the usefulness of it, however.”
This update does not feature on the Google Search Status Dashboard and is therefore not considered as an official update, but it is very important for local businesses who may be worried that they are losing visibility in search results because of this change. Some businesses have set their opening hours to 24/7 to ensure that their listings remain visible all day.
No official updates but lots of volatility
Barry Schwartz reported in Search Engine Roundtable on volatility in search results at the end of the year in the articles Pre-Christmas Intense Google Algorithm Ranking Volatility and Google New Year’s Eve Search Algorithm Update. He noticed volatility in various tracking tools on December 22nd and then again from December 29th, peaking on Saturday the 30th. Although Barry is convinced that Google would not announce an update over the holiday season, he feels that the detected changes and chatter in forums have all the signs of an algorithmic update to Google search.
Users of the SEOPress Insights plugin can check their reports in WordPress to see if ranking was impacted over this period.
Mobile Friendly Test retired
On December 1st, Google removed mentions of the Mobile Friendly Test and the Mobile Usability report in Google Search Console throughout its documentation. As previously announced these tests are no longer available. The post “The role of page experience in creating helpful content” published by Google in April 2023 announced this change but stressed that this does not mean that mobile usability is no longer a ranking factor.
The post also suggests that website owners can continue to test for mobile usability using more robust tools including Lighthouse in Chrome.
Vacation rental markup
On December 4th, Google added a new structured data schema for Vacation rental to its list of supported structured data markup. Using this structured data on a page can help obtain visibility in rich features in search results.
The introduction to the new markup says that “When you add structured data to your vacation rental listing pages, Google Search can show your listing in richer ways. Users can see listing information, such as the name, description, images, location, rating, reviews and more right in search results.”
The illustration to the article shows a listing similar to the Hotel Search results that feature in Google searches and as a standalone search engine Google Travel.
It is interesting to note that this is one of a few structured data types recently added by Google. Other recent additions were the profile page, discussion forum, course info and vehicle listing. Google has also removed the How-to structured data documentation, following Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results in August 2023.
Search Generative Experience end date removed
As we demonstrated in the May 2023 Google News, Google is currently testing a feature to add AI-generated responses to search results. Microsoft had already done this earlier in the month of May 2023 by making Bing Chat (now Copilot) available for all users. Google’s test is called Search Generative Experience, or SGE in short and is available in 120 countries through Google Search Labs.
As reported by Search Engine Roundtable, when Google launched SGE it labeled the end date as December 2023 for the United States and February 2024 for India and other countries. On December 20th they noticed that the end dates had been removed from the Search Labs website. This is felt to suggest that Google won’t be releasing AI-generated results to all users very soon and that results from SGE testers have not been positive and need more work.
Year 2023 in review
To mark the end of 2O23, Google Search Central published an article entitled “This is over” on December 31st. The article has the URL https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/12/definitely-not-ai-generated-post (note the Definitely not AI generated post message permalink). It covers the events, document updates, podcasts, videos and live SEO office hours meetings provided over the year.
The article links to an accompanying YouTube video (featured below) and the Search Off the Record podcast End of Year Sneak Preview episode released on December 21st.
