INSIGHTS & PERSPECTIVES
When Google speaks, does your SEO strategy need to change?
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Tom Dempster
- Published on
Last week, SEOs on social media, subreddits and online publications spent time, energy and no shortage of words poring over the meaning of three sentences.
On October 1, Google issued an update on its guidance for using generative AI content in content published on the Internet, adding the following details:
“When creating content for the web, focus on accuracy, quality, and relevance, especially when automatically generating the content. Keep in mind that generative models don’t retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words based on their training data. Because of this, generative AI outputs may contain inaccuracies (also known as hallucinations).”
As is often the case when Google publishes anything, it didn’t take long for the opinions and analysis to emerge. Is this the death knell for AI-generated content? Has the ubiquitous nature of AI slop meant that Google is now penalizing AI content published at scale? Or is it business as usual, and nothing has changed?
I will not be performing a forensic dissection of that 52-word excerpt. Instead, I wanted to take a moment to write about the SEO industry’s fascination with Google communications, and how I recommend handling them. This advice applies whether we’re talking about an update to existing documentation (as occurred last week); an announcement about a core algorithm update; a comment or response from a Google representative on social media; or anything in between. Different announcements warrant different levels of attention, but my philosophy broadly remains the same.
Why Google announcements attract so much attention
For as long as I can remember, there has always been a certain amount of interest generated across SEOs whenever Google has published anything that could indicate a change in the way that its search algorithm operates. This is always most prevalent when a major algorithm update is announced, but it also applies to industry events or even isolated social media posts where Google representatives say something of mild interest, and SEOs spend weeks fixated on the possible meaning.
Now, it is obviously natural that SEOs – whose job it is to improve website visibility – would pay attention to updates from the dominant search engine. Curiosity is important. Staying informed is important. A proactive approach is important. There’s also an obvious urge to gain a competitive advantage by looking for clues in Google updates, so that you can pivot your strategy accordingly and be one step ahead of your competitors. These are all compelling reasons for a heightened interest in Google’s announcements.
Where the problems arise is when this heightened interest influences an SEO’s decision-making process based on very little concrete evidence – no data, no analysis, just a sense of what might be changing and a desire to be first rather than be correct. SEOs often like to say they are being proactive around algorithm updates or Google communications. Unless they can demonstrate clear evidence (and remember, correlation doesn’t always equal causation in the world of SEO), then a strategy pivot based purely on an algorithm update or a Google employee’s tweet means they are actually being reactive to the noise.
Why I’m cautious about Google’s updates
In my early years as an SEO, I was definitely more sensitive to Google’s updates. I fell into the ‘what will this update mean for these sites?’ trap several times. Then, I would share events like core updates with my clients, trying to keep them informed of what was happening in the SEO world; their follow-up to this was inevitably, “what will this update mean for our website?” Evidently, without a crystal ball and with no data to work with, any response I offered involved an element of guesswork.
As time progressed, I started to become immune to some of these updates. I would still read the Google documentation. I would still be aware of the tweets, and the articles, and the Reddit discussions, but I started to become less influenced by them when it came to my overall strategies. I thought about why this might be the case, and here are a few of the reasons:
- You need data – and plenty of it – to justify a change of strategy. If your SEO strategy is no longer working, there are usually signs of declining performance that are easily visible – slower traffic growth, fewer conversions, reduced visibility, a drop in revenue, and so on. This is the data that you should be relying on to make decisions on your SEO strategy. What works (and what doesn’t) for other websites may not be the case for yours. There’s a treasure trove of your own data to work with – it’s just sitting there in Google Analytics and Google Search Console, waiting for you to explore.
- You have time. A Google update or announcement doesn’t automatically create a reason for you to change course with your SEO strategy. There is no need to rush and make immediate changes because of an imminent deadline. It is better to take time and see what the actual effect of any updates are on your site before taking action.
- It’s difficult to link cause and effect in SEO. SEO has so many components. To name just a few, there is your on-page content; your technical infrastructure and crawlability; your backlink profile; your competition; and Google’s ranking systems. You have control over some of these factors, and no control over others. Especially in the immediate aftermath of an update to Google’s ranking methodology, trying to link cause and effect is particularly difficult.
- Google isn’t always correct. As strange as this may sound, you simply can’t take Google at its word every single time. On occasion, their reps get it wrong, whether through a misinterpretation or simply outdated information. For example, in December 2018, John Mueller said that rel=next/prev tags were “a great idea to tell us how these pages are connected” (hat-tip to Marie Haynes’ Dec 11, 2018 Hangout notes, timestamp 22:45). Three months later, it transpired that Google hadn’t used these tags for years. It makes sense to pay attention – so my instinct nowadays is simply to acknowledge what is said, but not treat it as gospel.
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What you can do after a Google update or announcement
So what are the practical things you can do after you hear about a Google update to its Search methodology that can help your SEO strategy in the long run?
First things first, a mindset shift is helpful. Rather than hearing about an update and thinking you must do something in the name of being proactive, take a breath. Patience is always the key (a good philosophy for approaching SEO in general). You really need to wait and see how any update affects your site, and even then, it can be difficult to determine whether it was the algo update or something else that is causing the performance change. Regardless, I’m not sure I can recall too many occasions when trying to run ahead of an algorithm update has yielded positive results.
I believe it is useful to understand what has changed in the update itself, and get some context on what it could mean. Bigger Google updates like the September 2023 Helpful Content Update (HCU) or the recent spam updates will warrant some further reading. But I would consider this falling into the realm of improving your overall understanding of what Google is trying to achieve with these updates – not necessarily updating or changing an existing strategy immediately, simply based upon the news.
I also think that if, based on what you have read, you have a feeling that your site could be impacted by a Google update, it makes sense to pay closer attention to your key SEO metrics in the following weeks and months. Perhaps schedule a deeper dive a month after the rollout of the update is complete. But, again, I must stress that you should be led by the data – don’t go looking for problems that don’t exist because you have read the update has affected other sites.
Whether you work at an agency or in-house, it also makes sense to reframe the discussion around Google updates. These are often not the Earth-shattering changes that the narrative portrays. I would be especially wary of how you communicate any Google updates to those who are on the fringes of the SEO strategy and do not have intimate knowledge of how SEO works. In these situations, I think it’s okay to say “there is a Google update, and as usual, we’ll be monitoring any changes in our key metrics over the next few weeks and months”; any further speculation, especially when you have no data to work with, simply invites questions that you will struggle to answer.
Final thoughts
There are obviously times when you need to act as an SEO. It isn’t always possible, but if you’re on top of your strategy and KPIs, you will have a better chance of seeing the warning signs long before it’s a five-alarm fire. That is actually what defines a proactive approach, and the important principle is that you’re acting on evidence and data as opposed to noise and speculation. A core algorithm change or documentation update may be a part of the overall picture, but paying too much attention to it can distract you from making progress in other areas.
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