The dreaded Google Update: When to worry

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha and Mahalo. Thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happened in SEO. I am Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, the one, the only, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Aloha.

Mordy Oberstein:

I've never been to Hawaii, by the way, so I feel like such a fraud.

Crystal Carter:

I lived in Hawaii. I was a [inaudible 00:00:37].

Mordy Oberstein:

Did you really? Oh, that's okay. So now we're not a fraud anymore. Okay.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wait, how long did you live in Hawaii? I didn't know that. How long did you live in Hawaii?

Crystal Carter:

I lived in Hawaii. I lived in Hawaii when I was in junior high school. I was in the May Day Pageant as the Princess of O'ahu. I learned how to do hula stuff. I used to eat pu pu platters and wear muumuus.

Mordy Oberstein:

Really?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, and Spam musubis and the whole thing. Like, come through.

Mordy Oberstein:

So for your birthday, I'm going to buy you a hula hoop.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. I have a hula hoop. I'm very skilled on a hula hoop. I used to live on the leeward side.

Mordy Oberstein:

I can't do a hula hoop.

Crystal Carter:

I'm sorry, Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

I can't. I tried. Anyway, the SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can add five structured data markups to your Wix pages, whether they be your main Wix pages, your about page, your home page, or product pages, blog pages, booking pages, all sorts of pages. We're structured data friendly here at Wix.

As usual, an enormous amount to cover on this episode of the podcast.

[00:01:38] What's On This Episode of SERP's UP?

I'm just going to start off by saying, scary voice time, nothing scares us more than the dreaded Google update.

Crystal Carter:

Buh-huh-huh.

Mordy Oberstein:

There we go. But have no fear, Crystal and I will tell you what you should and shouldn't worry about when Google moves your URLs up and down the SERP with all sorts of rank volatility madness. And we'll do it with a little bit of help from our friends in specific, I call him the godfather of SEO, although he's not nearly as scary as Marlon Brando, as Barry Schwartz drops by to talk about Google updates. We'll also get into tools of the trade.

We'll give you some tools that will tell you the SEO weather and how to know when there's pending doom, the pending doom of a Google algorithm update. And you'll know when it is upon thee. It is nigh. It is nigh. Plus we'll share something new on the SERP subdomains. Is it really new? Hey Barry. And of course some snappy SEO news for you and who you should follow for stupendous SEO knowledge. It'll be our follow of the week. 1, 2, 3, let's go. So Crystal, with that introduction out of the way.

Crystal Carter:

Hi.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hi there.

Crystal Carter:

When you said Barry's the godfather, all I could think was, you come to me and you ask me if this is new.

Mordy Oberstein:

Anyway, it's gotten nuts out there in case you have not been following the SEO world lately, which is fine. That's why you're here. It's been nuts. Google has been updating its algorithm literally more than ever. That means your rankings on the SERP are changing more than ever. And it's not hyperbole. This is fact. So some SEMrush data that I pulled a while back shows that over 50%, this is no joke, over 50%, over half. That 50% is half. Over half of all of the days in 2021 exhibited showed some sort of high levels of rank volatility. The majority of the days in 2021 had sites moving up and down the SERP. All around, up and down here and there. And that is crazy, which by the way, some more data for you. That's a 65% increase relative to 2020. Meaning Google is making more and more and more and more updates and it's really kind of crazy. So should you be worried?

[00:03:57] Focus Topic of the Week | When to Worry About a Google Algorithm Update

When Google messes with your ranking? When to worry, when not to worry about a Google algorithm update, let's dive in. Where do we start with this madness?

Crystal Carter:

I mean, I think if I can just, again, let's just get us all on the same page, just for the noobs out there, just doing it for the noobs. If anybody's unclear, when we're talking about an algorithm update, essentially what we're talking about is when Google changes the criteria that they set for ranking pages. So sometimes this can be a big thing, like a core update, but sometimes this can be a smaller thing. They might change one part of the SERP. A really good example is when COVID was happening, they changed a lot of the different criterias around things like face masks or around COVID updates, or COVID things where they changed, which results they change. So they make a decision about what they're going to change. And that's when we say volatility, we mean that things are moving around. So they're changing their mind about lots of different things.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And what's crazy is that now you have machine learning making those changes, well automatically basically. Even Google doesn't really know what's going on, which is built in on purpose. I'm not saying that they don't know what's going on, that's by design.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. And sometimes they have to roll that back. Like title tag geddon, they changed lots of things. And people were like, "This doesn't make sense, Google" and Google was like, "Oh yeah, you're right. That doesn't make sense." And then they have to go back and correct it. But they're dealing with lots of different searches across the thing. And when we're talking about core updates, that's essentially when they do something at all across the board and it normally has to do with the sort of quality and the general approach of SEO. Sometimes with algorithm updates, it might be something very targeted. Sometimes they'll do product review updates, or sometimes they'll change something on the SERP and it has a knock on effect for the positions across the...

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. Cause when Google says, "Hey, you're a product review page," a product review page is also shown on the same results page as shopping pages. So if this product review page went from ranking number, I don't know, nine to ranking number three, what was ranking number three can no longer rank number three. That's not how it works. It's either got to go up or it's got to go down. And that might not be a product page, that might be a place where you can buy whatever product it is that's in discussion.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. So when all of these changes happen, then you have to figure out what to do because you have a client, you have a website, you have money and bills to pay and all of that sort of stuff. So when you're thinking about what's going on, you have to think about what kind of update you're actually dealing with. So we talk about confirmed, unconfirmed. Confirmed is like Google has said, "We have made an algorithm update. We have changed things." And they'll normally publish a statement on Twitter or somewhere else. And then unconfirmed is the volatility you're talking about, where it's just like, things are really spicy out there.

Mordy Oberstein:

Rank is constantly moving and by the way, so it's a really good point about the unconfirmed updates versus the confirmed updates for a few reasons. One is the confirmed updates, once the updates finished rolling out, which generally takes a week or so, although for the product review updates that can take upwards of a month, which is really interesting. At the end of the day, whenever the update is finished, the ranking changes. If you went up or down, if you went from number two to number 20, you went from number 20 to number two, those usually stick for the most part. You might go up and down a position or two, but that's the new trajectory. So if you see you've lost rankings month after an update's, whatever it is, is fully rolled out, that's not going back until Google does another update. And that's when it might be time to worry as opposed to the unconfirmed updates, which is basically in my opinion, machine learning recalibrating how it understands things, trying something new out.

And there you'll notice in your ranking patterns that you went down in the rankings one day for a key... Let's say you're trying to rank for the keywords, I don't know, best place to go on vacation. You were ranking number one and now you're ranking number 20. Well, you might notice a week later that you're back up to ranking number two, and then a week later back down to ranking number 700, and then you're back up to ranking number one. Those kind of things you need to not freak out about because that's just the name of the game now. And also understand that certain kinds of keywords are more volatile than others.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right. So I think we mentioned medical can be a very tricky vertical because Google is going through a lot of the different medical SERPs and they're deciding this is a particularly important medical SERP and we are going to take this. So we're going to curate this and make sure that this has the most authoritative like CDC, Mayo Clinic, the NHS, that sort of thing. They'll put that there. And then there's stuff that's a little bit more freeform. If I had a blog about quilting, that's probably not going to be that volatile. Quilting isn't a very spicy topic. So, I think one of the things I always look at with those testing changes that you're talking about, is checking whether or not it's across the vertical or whether it's just you,

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

So there's a couple...

Mordy Oberstein:

If you see your competitors doing the same thing, everyone's bouncing around, there's probably not much you can do. Google's having either a hard time understanding what people actually want when they search for, what is whatever, whatever. Or something like news content, which it literally changes every single day. So there's obviously going... What was ranking number one day, a week later would make no sense for it to rank number one anymore.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which is why I think trends matter the most. If the trend is, this is a normal trend, there might be nothing you can do about it. If it's a normal trend that you go up, that you go down, then look at the overall trend. Look at the larger picture. Don't focus, "Oh, this week I went down, oh no." This is just the trend.

Crystal Carter:

Particularly with algorithm updates. It's not good to panic. It's not good to suddenly just, "Oh, let's throw everything at this keyword. Let's throw everything at that." And then I've seen clients do that. And it just doesn't... You end up wasting a lot of time and effort. So algorithms are like a slow burn. If you think about a soap opera, there's the immediate drama of, so-and-so did this or so-and-so did that. But then there'll be the long burn drama that goes across the whole series that's like, oh, who's the mysterious person who has been hiding in the attic.

Mordy Oberstein:

Who's been murdering and/or sleeping with so-and-so's white husband's daughter.

Crystal Carter:

Is it an evil twin? I'm not sure. And that will go all the way across the series. They'll drag that story out. That's the algorithm. The algorithm is the long-term information and you have...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And you definitely want to look at the long-term performance of your keywords and you also want to make sure that... Look, there are keywords where you're ranking. Well, I'll be honest with you. I've had this. Yeah. I'm ranking for a great keyword, but guess what was four positions above me? A massive featured snippet. And guess how much traffic I was getting out of it? Not much. So if you lost that keyword, I lost my ranking. I was ranking number five and now I'm ranking number 20, but I wasn't bringing any traffic in way.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Don't get lost in the vanity of this. Ranking is a vanity metric. It really is.

Crystal Carter:

I think that sometimes it can be important if you are that feature snippet and you lose it.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm asking across the board.

Crystal Carter:

It depends. So I think that there's sometimes where you worry, it's mission critical. You've built your business around ranking for that keyword, for instance, that does happen. And if that happens, then you need to make sure that you aren't putting all of your eggs in one basket. Obviously I'm in SEO. I think organic's super, super important. And I think it's super valuable and I think it's fantastic and great. However, sometimes with algorithms they'll change what the SERP looks like. They'll like, oh, we added Drops by Google. Oh, we added a three 3D model of the tower of London or something. And that will change the SERP. And that will change how people approach your site.

Mordy Oberstein:

Either they already found the content or that new box that Google added has pushed your site off of the first page. And now you're on page two. You're ranking exactly the same, which is another point for another podcast.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. So, I think that it's important to make sure that if you have an algorithm change, because as you said, they'll change and then they might change back. But if you've got your PPC set up, you've got your social setup, you've got your content distro, your emails, all of that sort of stuff. And if your SEO is HQ, but is supported by these other channels, then that can help. I've seen clients who've been hit by an algorithm update. They got slammed on a really important keyword for them. And they pushed out. They did a big PR push out of this and that's a really good way to do it because you get more links. You get more exposure, you get more visibility generally as well. So when they do come back around, Google does another pass around your site to see whether or not they should bump you up for an algorithm. Then you've got that as well. So you've got the algorithm update and you've got the PR as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which is why it's not only important to try other channels as well, but also diversify your keywords. In other words, if you're ranking for one keyword, what happens if you lose it? Right? So you want to make sure that your keyword portfolio, if you want to call it that is diverse. You're not just relying on one keyword for all of your traffic. Now, let's say you do get hit by a core update, you see this is a demotion, I've gone down in the rankings, this is going on, this is not changing. What do you do? (singing)

Crystal Carter:

So I said, I think looking at other channels is super useful. I think it's also important to isolate what traffic changed, what actually changed.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

One of the things that I've observed, one of the things that you've observed, Mordy, one of the things that Aleyda recently observed, Aleyda Solis, is that there's a lot of junk traffic and Google recently in the last few updates has been pruning a lot of this junk traffic. I've had clients who were ranking for other people's logos. So they had a client, we worked with these clients and they were ranking for that logo. They don't need to rank for that logo. They're not those people. So they lost that position in the algorithm update and so. Aleyda said, if this happens to you, the queries that dropped were not really queries that your site was meant to rank for, and they're not bringing any business value, so you shouldn't have ranked for them. And so you shouldn't do anything in that case.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And I've been saying this forever, I've been saying this literally since the Medic update in August 2018, that Google's profiling your site. That's how machine learning works. It works by profiling. And it's saying, okay, this is who you are, then why do you have this content here if this is who you are? And if you have this content and this is who you are, why do you have this content in here? What does that say about you? Should we trust you? Should we rank you? For the keywords that do matter to you. The example I always give is about, you're going to the doctor and you go to the reception and say, "Hi, I'd like to see the doctor." And they answered back, "About what? About your health or about your car insurance?" Why is a doctor selling car insurance? Would you use that doctor?

No way.

Crystal Carter:

Okay, everybody.

Mordy Oberstein:

Why would Google rank that site? And if you're talking about one thing and something totally different at the same time, you're just killing your profile, which goes back to our first episode of this podcast. Your homepage is your identity, and that's really important. But also my general suggestion is to take a look at the pages that lost ranking versus the pages that gained ranking and profile them. What is the pages that gain ranking doing differently? Do they take a different tone? Are they less market-y? Do they add some informational content? Do they have an FAQ on there? I'm not saying you have to add an FAQ and just copy what they're doing, but what does it say about what Google's looking for out of this keyword?

Crystal Carter:

And I think it's also important when you do that to think, not just on their website, but also-

Mordy Oberstein:

But across.

Crystal Carter:

...a whole digital profile.

Mordy Oberstein:

This quality is a domain level metric.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. So let's say this other doctor or whatever also has a YouTube account where they explain everything about, I don't know-

Mordy Oberstein:

Heart attacks.

Crystal Carter:

...gluten-free diets or something like that. Let's say they've got a YouTube that's got all of this different really good content on there. Google's going to know they perform really well on this channel, they perform really well on that channel, they've got back links here, they've got this there. If a user is looking for content on this, they will find good content from this source. Right?

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly.

Crystal Carter:

And this website is a source for this content. And I think that that's important to think about. Google's trying to serve information. So they need to know that you as a general source are a good source for good quality information.

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly. And you could hit by an update and you're really down on the rankings, the best thing I could tell you is, I'll quote, Glenn Gabe was a world renowned SEO, throw the kitchen sink at it, look at what's happening and you see this problem, fix that problem, but you never know what's going to move the needle. So find as many problems as you possibly can and try to fix them, because you never know what's going to move that needle and what's going to stick. Now, you know who knows a lot about algorithm updates?

Crystal Carter:

Who's that?

Mordy Oberstein:

The godfather of SEO. That's my Marlin Brando. That's right.

Crystal Carter:

Hey, did you bring the cannoli? The cannoli?

Mordy Oberstein:

You came to me on the day of my Google algorithm update.

[00:15:40] Focus Topic Guest: Barry Schwartz

That's right. The one, the only, RustyBrick himself, Barry Schwartz is here to tell you which Google algorithm updates you should learn more about.

Barry Schwartz:

So one of the most important Google update folks should know about in research and why. So there's a bunch of Google updates that have happened over the past, I don't know, two decades or so. Probably the most significant one that really sets the tone was the Florida update probably 20 years ago, like 2002, 2003. It really shook the SEO community. It was the first time a Google did an update where it basically said, "Hey, SEOs, stop trying to manipulate us. We know about you and our algorithms will detect what you're doing and you're no longer going to be able to just fool us with easy SEO." And that really kind of shook the industry a lot and it really set a tone for what was going to come next. So then we had many updates after that. Obviously I've written about almost every single update, confirmed or unconfirmed, but then you kind of fast forward to the Panda update and the Panda update, I think in 2011, was probably one of the most significant updates that affected websites out there.

It affected sites that were trying to build quality content that were not really building quality content and so forth. And that update really kind of set a tone where Google's like, "You know what? We really want unique, valuable content, not regurgitated or replicated, copied content that doesn't really help the user." And then Google, the next update probably was the penguin update, which kind of focused on links. And that really affected the SEO community more than anything else because SEOs were into buying links and trading links and so forth. And Google's able to go off on off page topics and be like, "Nope, I'm sorry, those links no longer count. They're done in a way that try to manipulate our algorithms and try to boost us artificially." So we have, again, the Florida update then probably 10 years later, the Panda update and a year or two later the Penguin update.

And since then, we've had many, many updates after that. Some were niche, some were SPAM specific, some were not. And then obviously we have these core updates, which kind of really do shake the industry, but not as much as the Panda or Penguin or Florida updates. Overall, the important part around these updates is to see where Google's going. Google obviously wants to have unique, useful, rich content that really helps the user complete what they're trying to do and trying to trick Google into other things or to try to manipulate Google, google's not going to stand for that.

They have their engineers and they're constantly working to make their algorithms and search results much, much better. And to serve us the best type of quality content. And of course, as the web grows, as more players get involved, that means there's going to be a lot more content on the internet and a lot more people competing for the same type of keywords and Google has that wealth of information on the internet, that wealth and their index and they're able to go ahead and be very, very picky about what they rank and their algorithms are able to handle that.

Ultimately you should be thinking about how, not what could I do to go ahead and manipulate the algorithms and why should I research the algorithms in order to try to do better, it's more about what could I do in terms of where do I want to be when the next algorithm update comes out? Where is Google going in the future with these algorithm updates? And what do I need to know about these algorithm updates in terms of making sure that I'm basically future proof with these algorithms and they're all going basically around making the best type of content that's better than your competitors that Google wants to rank because it's useful. And that's what you kind of need to think about it.

It's always funny listening to people talking about RankBrain, neural matching, whatever the latest and greatest AI that Google's coming out with. It's all for the basically Google understanding the search query, understanding the searcher and understanding the content on your page, so it knows what to rank better. So again, think about the user of course, and nobody wants to hear that, but think about the user and try to build the best type of website you can because that's where Google's algorithm is going in the future and that's what the history of Google algorithms updates have shown, that Google only cares about ranking the best type of content in their search results.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you, Barry. By the way, you can find Barry @rustybrick on Twitter. Also, please read his blog every single day, seroundtable.com. It's literally where I start my day. And he's so right, by the way, it's why I asked him to do this. When you understand the history of the algorithm and you can go... It's so important to do this, it adds so much context. You can understand where Google was, what they were able to do, what they were looking for. And as you understand the new different types of updates coming out over time, you can see where they're going and what they actually want now. And that's so important for you as a content creator to know that.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that he talked about Google wanting to reduce people gaming the system essentially. And the reason why people should do that is because people gaming the system aren't necessarily giving the best content, people who are just throwing loads of keywords in there aren't necessarily giving actual valuable content. They're just throwing keywords at a thing. So on all of their algorithms seem to be trying to find the best quality content based on actual metrics for content, not just keywords, not just new tools, but content that actually provides value to users. And they've got lots of metrics to see that.

[00:20:45] Tool Time: SEO Weather Tools

Mordy Oberstein:

And they are not perfect, but I track this really closely and they're able to do some really amazing things, understanding what's good and what's bad content. Which brings us to our next little segment where we're going to teach you how to track the SEO weather out there. That's right. Folks, it's tool time on the SERPs Up podcast.

So wouldn't it be nice to know when there's an algorithm update, that's a-brewing? Well, there are plenty of tools out there that tell you. They're called SEO weather tools and there's literally a ton of them. The one I have personal affinity with, cause I used to work for them, is the SEMrush Sensor. So just Google SEMrush Sensor. And what these tools basically do, they're either a bar graph or a line graph and they'll show you like, ranking is pretty normal today. There's always going to be URLs moving up and down the SERP, that's normal, but is there a lot of movement in the rankings? That would indicate an update. And of course Google doesn't announce all of them. So is there nothing happening right now? Good to know, won't freak out if I see my rankings, all of a sudden go off the board. And the tools basically have a baseline and they see more rank volatility than normal, then it shoots up to red and then it shoots back down to green when it's all done. And there are all these tools that tell you this. And it's amazing and it's awesome.

Crystal Carter:

It's really useful. And certainly if you're trying to understand what happened to you in a Google update, I've recently posted a blog on this and it will be on our Wix SEO learning hub. These tools are really useful when you're trying to get context. So if you're trying to understand if it's just you or if it's the wider SERP as well, the SEMrush Sensor that you mentioned, they break things down into regions. So you can see whether it's the U.S. or the UK or Germany or whatever. They also break it down by verticals. So news or health or law or e-commerce or that sort of thing. They also give you information on SERP features. So for instance, if you had featured snippets and you suddenly saw all your featured snippets go, well if Google reduced the number of featured snippets overall, then that's important information to know. So it's worth checking that for context. MozCast also gives you information on different featured snippets and...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. That's our Moz.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. So, that one's really good. Another one that I use regularly is SISTRIX have a Google update checker where you can plug in your domain and they will tell you historically if the domain has had a lot of activity around Google updates. This is really good when you're crushing it. I had one client who was just like update, update, update. It was just like every time they got a boost like, boost, boost, boost, boost, boost. And then I had another client who, this is good if you're taking on a new client, you can plug in their domain and you can see if they tend to get slammed on Google updates. And that might tell you that there's something in the core of their approach that needs adjusting. So, that one's really useful. Lily Ray also uses SISTRIX to track lots and lots of algorithm updates. I said, Lily Ray there, who's a fantastic SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

We'll link her to the show notes. Don't worry.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. She tracks lots of different domains via SIZTRIX as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. The point is, there is a ton of these tools, like Rank Ranger has its Rank Risk Index. By the way, if you go to rankranger.com/rank-risk-index–history, you can see two years' worth of updates and see, hey, have the patterns changed? You can see the patterns have changed, which is really interesting. Whatever it is, all of you can use any of these tools, all of these tools, but it's good to know that you're in the middle of an update, even though Google didn't confirm it. So you could understand what's happening around your keywords and why you're losing or gaining rankings. And to understand if it's not an actual official update that whatever gain or loss you may have seen might go away in a week or two.

I wanted to mention really quickly. You might notice that the Moz's MozCast and SEMrush's Sensor and this one and that one, don't necessarily always align because they all work... I know this cause I used to work at Rank Ranger. Then I used to work at SEMrush and I used to talk to Dr. Peter Meyers about MozCast. They're tracking different data sets.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

They're tracking different keywords. So, for example, Moz tracks very high search volume keywords. So the keywords that they're tracking might see more volatility than the keywords that SEMrush is tracking in their database. There's no right or wrong database.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

So if you're looking at different tools like, wow, why don't they match up? They're not supposed to match up. They, in general, align.

Crystal Carter:

And I think this is the reason why if, like we mentioned Barry, whatever Barry talks about algorithm updates, he always pulls in data from multiple data sets because of this. It's really, really important. And I think he also mentioned the history of algorithms, and there's a few; I think Moz has a list of all of the different updates, which is useful to give you context for what could potentially come ahead as well. So it's important if your domain is targeted for errors in a vertical. So at the moment, e-comm seems to be seeing a lot of activity around most updates. For instance, if you're in that kind of sector, it might be worth spending some time going over that. Barry has a really good video, or he's got a really good talk he did for one of the SMXs about all of the updates that...

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh yeah, I remember that one. I got to find that for the show notes, if possible. I'm behind a gate, so I don't know if it's possible or not. Speaking of Barry, in case you don't know, if you're not from the SEO world or you're new to the SEO world,

[00:25:51] Is This New?

Barry helps people track all of the changes Google makes to the SERP. So they change fonts or they, this new feature that new feature now you can do. Now, Google's showing this, but they're not showing this Barry tracks all of us at seroundtable.com and people like myself will go on Twitter and say, "Hey Barry, I saw this new thing that Google added like a new line over here. Is this new?"

Crystal Carter:

Is it?

Mordy Oberstein:

Is it new? I have a whole website dedicated, isthisnew.com where you can check that out. I'll put that in the show notes. Sometimes it's just fun to see what Google's showing and is it new, but sometimes it has real implications. So welcome to the SERPs Up version of is this new.

I don't know if this one's new or not, but Crystal, you found something for us.

Crystal Carter:

So this is something that I mentioned, Lily Ray earlier. She's fantastic. She's amazing. She's super, super smart. And one of the things that she talks about a lot is indented results. And this is essentially when you go on the SERP, the search engine results pages, you type in a query and you see the plain blue link, and then you see an indent and you see another link and another link and another link and they're associated.

Mordy Oberstein:

Indented results.

Crystal Carter:

Indented results.

Mordy Oberstein:

So it's basically like, yeah, it's a result. And then from the same website, two more results.

Crystal Carter:

This is the thing that I find interesting. What I'm seeing, generally speaking, you see the indented results from the same website, but there's also subdomains. And what I'm starting to see is that Google is pulling the indented results from a mix of subdomains. So things like customer service pages and support notes and things like that. So I looked up like Wix app market, for instance, and Wix is a very big company and has lots of different websites and lots of different web properties. And there's a lot more companies that are like this. So a lot of people are using subdomains just for their menu, for the restaurant or just for their jobs board or just for their appointment scheduling thing. So lots of websites have lots of different properties. So if you look at Wix app market, it shows wix.com blog, which talks about the app market.

And then there's an indent that goes to support.wix.com, which talks about the app market. And then there's a separate one that goes to dev.wixs.com, which is our developer portal, which talks about all of the app market and how, if you were building an app, you would go into that. So what I think is interesting here is that Google is, again, this is going back to entities. And this is Google understanding that if I'm talking about the Wixs app market, that is an entity, that is a thing that exists and exists on these properties. And they're also understanding that all of those things are connected to the entity, which is Wixs and that all of those different URLs, all of those different domains are connected to that. And Google used to struggle a bit with subdomains, but I think that this is a really good example of them handling it really well so that they can serve multiple intents with a single sort of related service.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. My major takeaway of this whole thing is SEOs always talk about subdomains are separate from your website. And I always find that amazing though. John Mueller talked about, well, not necessarily, usually not. It depends when it makes sense to treat them separately, we do. You need to tell me, Google can make a self-driving car that knows the difference when a squirrel runs out in front of it and when a person runs out in front of it, but they can't figure out that travel.cnn and CNN are actually related to each other. That's mind blowing to Google. But I think it goes to show that the way Google's able to understand your website in totem to use a Latin word, which means total, which you obviously knew, but I'm going to say that anyway.

Crystal Carter:

Ergo.

Mordy Oberstein:

They know what your site is. They know what's related to your site really well. So, that's a great find Crystal. So from what's new to the news, how's that for a pivot, I get a gold star today. Here is the snappy news of the week.

[00:29:33] Snappy News

Here is the snappy news of the week.

Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Well, the helpful content update came roaring out of the gate, like a raging ball. Me, not really. In fact, that deal was like, what is this thing on to quote Matt's Southern from Search Engine Journal, Google on why helpful content update seems quiet. Google addresses reports that the helpful content update has a minimal impact on search results or mining everyone.

It's still rolling out. Now what's interesting is that this update was first presented as penguin or Panda level, meaning really, really big, but such does not appear to be the case as Google's own search liaison identity Sullivan said on Twitter. But updates don't necessarily mean a big giant shift. If you have good content, you're generally fine.

Those who have content with issues, there can be reasons why they might not want to be particularly vocal about a chain. What is interesting because the SEO tools that track algorithm updates haven't seen any shifts either. So I think it's less to do with, um, sites that have been hit being vocal or less vocal about a change.

It is still rolling. So by the time you're listening to this, the helpful content update might have more teeth on it. Personally. I doubt it. I'm recording this days after Google made its own statement and still nothing's really going on big things to the SEO, by the way, who was responsible for Google putting this statement out, you know who you are.

Article number two from Danny Goodwin over at search engine land, Google test quick, read five. Read labels is search results. So essentially Google has been testing, showing the label under certain results, saying that they are either a quick read or less than a five-minute read. And I am not a big fan of this.

Um, I wanted to say this test should not dictate how you write. So if you're worried, oh no. If Google's running this test with a five-minute or less reading read time label, that people will only click on results that have that read time. So I better make sure that my content's really snappy like this snappy news.

Don't do that. Don't try to get this label. Even if some speculate it will drive up CTR, which by the way, to me is all dependent on the search intent. For some things, I don't want a quick read. I want a piece that dives deeply into the topic that I can trust. I want a pi ece that I can dive deeply into a piece that I can t rust, even if it's just to pull out a quick bit of info, and with it, that is the snappy news.

[00:32:10] Follow of the Week

To keep your SEO learning going. Let's now move into who we think you should be following on Twitter this week. I say Twitter because the SEO community predominantly is on Twitter. So if you're not on Twitter, I implore you to create a Twitter account. You don't have to do anything. Just sit there and watch and interact with the one, the only, Aleyda Solis, queen of the SEOs, who Crystal mentioned earlier in the episode, who was literally, I think the unofficial leader of the SEOs, it's @aleyda A-L-E-Y-D-A, link IN the show notes. I don't know where to start

Crystal Carter:

Aleyda is a gift.

Mordy Oberstein:

True.

Crystal Carter:

She shares the best resources. She does an amazing podcast. She does amazing videos. She has a fantastic newsletter called SEOFOMO, which literally sets a tone for the entire week. So you Barry every day, I read SEOFOMO every week. I go through all of these things and she's also super nice. She's also very welcoming to new SEOs and she also runs learningseo.io.

Mordy Oberstein:

.io.

Crystal Carter:

And she also remotors.net. She also works with some fantastic clients.

Mordy Oberstein:

Crawling Mondays.

Crystal Carter:

Crawling... So many things.

Mordy Oberstein:

The Twitter space for the newsletter, SEOFOMO, the Twitter space on Mondays. I know what time it is. Hold on. It's Mondays at 12:00 PM Eastern time. I know cause I record EDGE of the Web at the same time. I can never go. And it's really, I have FOMO for SEOFOMO.

Crystal Carter:

I have FOMO as well, because I have...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes. So please, please. We implore you. Please check out... She's the most giving, most amazing,  awesome person in the SEO industry. Follow her on Twitter and learn some amazing things.

Crystal Carter:

[foreign language 00:31:37]. Aleyda also speaks Spanish. So if you are an English-speaking SEO, or you are a Spanish-  SEO, also follow Aleyda because she's also involved with Harrison SEO, Latinas en SEO. [foreign language 00:31:52].

Mordy Oberstein:

I'll go, the only Spanish that I really know [foreign language 00:31:55].

And on that happy note, thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back again, next week is an all-new episode as we get into the real deal around keyword research. Look for us whenever, wherever you consume your podcast, and on our SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. And obviously look at all the rest of the great content. Webinar's, blog posts we have around learning SEO. So you learn more about SEO. That's keyword stuffing, right there. Learn more about SEO, the wicks SEO learning hub. Keyword stuffing for you at the end of our podcast. So until next time, peace, love, and SEO.