Keep a closer eye on the ever-changing SERPs

Julia-Carolin says: “For 2024, I recommend keeping an even closer eye on the SERPs. They are dynamically changing, especially with the integration of AI. Google is testing a lot and I expect to see a lot more changes coming.”

What are we specifically looking for in the SERPs?

”We already know about the knowledge graph and featured snippets, and we’ve seen fancy widgets over the last few weeks like tiles and images that link directly to content.

I recommend keeping an eye on all of these things because it will have an impact on your click-through rate and the data that you get out of Google Search Console. If Google suddenly displays an image, that’s still an impression for you, but it might not be displayed as your actual content.

It is also becoming more important to look at things like intent. Is it informational or commercial? What is Google showing the user? You can look at the SERPs to explain why somebody is clicking or not.

At the same time, Google seems to be doing a lot of testing, and I expect this to continue until they find the best way to integrate AI in the SERPs. I’ve seen lots of things appearing and disappearing a few weeks later, and then something else comes up and disappears again. Over the last three months, I’ve been showing screenshots to my clients and saying, ‘This is what I’m seeing right now in the SERPs, but hold off. Don’t do anything yet because Google might change this again.’

In some of my recent research, I put in a query like ‘best internal communication tools’, and the SERP had this grid of tiles showing the logos of different communication software. When you clicked one, it gave three options of articles to read.

How do users really interact with these new things appearing in the SERPs? What can we expect? Do they see a company logo, open a new tab, and then search for that company name? Do they click on the image and then click on one of the articles? Do they just scroll over it because they think it’s an ad and go to the first organic result? We don’t know, and Google doesn’t know either. This might impact why Google is changing things every few weeks.”

Is Google going through testing to land on something more consistent or do you see this constant flux being the new norm?

“I think it will be a bit of a mixture. There is a lot of testing going on at the moment, but we already have things like personalisation and geography embedded in the SERPs. When I search for something, I might see something completely different than what you would see for the same term – based on search history, personal interests, and so on.

In my opinion, this won’t go away. It is what makes Google the most used search engine; the fact that the search results are so relevant to the individual.

It will never be static, with 10 links that come up for every search query. There will always be the featured snippet and different elements being pulled out for different individual users. However, I expect that the recent heavy testing will stop once Google has a bit more clarity on how to integrate AI and machine learning into the SERPs.”

Do you need to optimize your pages based on intent and incorporate different elements relating to that?

“That is already the case. That doesn’t seem like a new tip to me because I’ve been recommending this for the past two years. Look at the intent behind the keyword and what type of content you should create to serve that intent.

What I’m seeing lately, with the changes in the SERPs and the heavier use of featured snippets and knowledge graphs, is that informational queries get fewer and fewer clicks. We look at the data for a website and clicks are going down, but we’re still ranking in position one, and we have the featured snippet. This is something we have been discussing in the SEO industry for years, but now it is really starting to have a heavy impact on the data.

When I am reporting this to my clients, they ask, ‘Shall we stop producing this informational content?’ I think it is still important to have that informational content and brand visibility on the SERPs. It’s what makes the internet perceive you as an expert in your field. If you explain certain terminology in a glossary, for example, it makes the whole package of what your website offers more authoritative.

If you have the featured snippet, even if nobody clicks on it, at least half of the people who see it will recognise your brand name there. Then, if they see it coming up again for another query they search a few days later, it stays in their memory.”

What is good informational content? How broad can you go with your informational content?

“It really depends on the industry, what you’re trying to achieve, what products you’re selling, what your speciality is, and who your target audience is. A big industry I’ve been working with over the past few years is cyber security. I also have a client in threat intelligence, and we see a lot of overlap there. Threat intelligence, though, is not only about cyber security. So, how many cyber security-related terms should we really target on the website?

If we focus too much on cyber security and not on other threats like protests and war – which are threats that need to be embedded in threat intelligence – then the internet will see us as an expert in cyber security and not threat intelligence. These are the things you always need to consider, and they are specific for every industry.”

What does the potential move towards an AI-driven SERP mean for changes in consumer behaviour and how do SEOs need to adapt?

“That is exactly what we need to keep an eye on: how much of it is AI? I have a friend who is also an SEO consultant and they say that the only thing tools like ChatGPT is going to achieve is taking rubbish and creating more rubbish out of it. There’s some truth to that. It is demotivating content writers. Why write good content and invest a lot of time and research if somebody else is just taking ChatGPT-created content that is essentially taken from existing sources?

One question is, how is Google going to remove that barrier? How will they convince content writers and website publishers that it is still worth producing quality content by doing individual research, doing surveys, using data, etc.? That is in Google’s best interest, but how are they going to do that?

With that in mind, I don’t think the SERPs will ever be 100% AI-generated. There will always be a link to individual content. The extent to which Google is already using machine learning (by pulling featured snippets out of content, etc.) might stay. However, original content will always be featured somehow because that’s what provides quality and originality.”

If Google doesn’t change significantly, in terms of how the SERP operates, are younger audiences more likely to turn to other platforms for answers?

“I think it depends on the industry and the topic. TikTok, for example, is a video-heavy platform. It lives on video. We already see that appearing in the SERPs. For certain how-to queries (like ‘how to clean your kitchen sink’), you get a list of YouTube videos displayed in the SERPs. Video is already there.

I think it will be similar to the discussion we had 6/7 years ago about voice search. Everybody was saying that the whole industry would move to voice search, and everything would be voice search-driven. Now, that is only true for certain queries. If you’re on the street and you need directions from Google Maps, voice search is handy. If you’re at home on your laptop and you need in-depth information about something, people are still reading content.

There will be a bit of a shift. There might be more video for certain things, but there will still be written content as well. I don’t think platforms like TikTok will completely take over from the older, more established platforms and shapes of content.”

What impact does the amount of content being produced by AI have on copyright and protecting your IP?

“That is another reason why I think Google is being quite cautious and testing so much. There have been big lawsuits over the last few weeks, especially regarding copyright.

That was one of my big concerns right from the start. When everybody was excited about ChatGPT and saying that it would take over the web and everything would be AI-generated, I had a feeling that there would also be legislation coming, at some point, that might prevent that.

A few months ago, Italy banned ChatGPT for a few weeks. I was surprised that it was Italy and not my home country of Germany because we’re usually big on things like data protection. That is another thing to keep an eye on. I’m sure Google has had the technology for years. They probably could have been the first to release something like that, and there must be a reason why they didn’t. I think it is exactly because of all the legal questions that are still unsolved and a bit of a grey area, at the moment.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing so they can spend more time doing what you suggest?

“I see too many people still obsessing over title tags and meta descriptions. I’m not saying that they’re not important, they are, but if you get a list of 200 URLs from your website where the title tag is too long or too short, or there’s a meta description missing, and focus on rewriting them – that, in my opinion, is a waste of time. That won’t get you the results you’re trying to achieve. In most cases, Google is now dynamically overwriting title tags and meta descriptions to better match the user’s intent. If Google overwrites these, it doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong with your current title tag; it just means that the algorithm decided, in the moment, that the content could be more relevant for another query and that it has more to say than just what the title tag contains.

If you do pull a list of 200 URLs, then check it. What are these pages? Maybe there’s something else that’s wrong. If a page doesn’t have a title tag, it might not have any content at all, it might have a noindex tag, or it could be canonicalized. Take a look at that first.

Then, if some tool tells you that something might be wrong with the title tag, check if there actually is something wrong. A page can rank without an optimized title tag and, if it ranks well for the right keywords, why spend time updating the title tag and meta description if there is nothing else that you can improve? In my opinion, and based on my experience, if something is really wrong with the title tag and the meta description, and the page doesn’t rank, you need to look at more than just the metadata. There might be outdated content, there might be images missing, or so many things that could be wrong with that page as well.

In a way, I always use these lists of URLs as something to look at. What are these pages? What is their purpose? Do they even need to be there? Then, see what you need to update on these pages. Instead of going through a list of 200 URLs and updating the title tag, go through a list of 200 URLs and say, ‘These pages need attention. Let’s prioritise.’ Work on the pages that actually have value in terms of the keyword, the traffic they could bring, and the value for the business if you get traffic to this page.”

Julia-Carolin Zeng is an SEO Consultant at Charlie on the Move, and you can find her over at charlieonthemove.com.