This week, I interviewed Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, with the goal of better understanding where Google Search quality is at right now, where it is going in the future, and what we, as content creators and search marketers, need to know.
The interview primarily focused on the latest core updates, including the infamous September 2023 helpful content update and the August 2024 core update. We spoke about the devastation and horror some site owners went through over the past 11 months and what Google Search is doing to mend some of that hurt.
This is an unusual story for me, in that it is an interview and super long – so I apologize for the length but I wanted to get it all in here. Feel free to throw it into ChatGPT or Gemini to summarize it for you – I did – and it didn’t come out perfect (so not using the summary here).
Purpose of Google Core Updates:
Sullivan explained that the purpose of these core updates are to improve Google Search for everyone, he did mention the official documentation from Google on core updates but added some more insight.
Sullivan equated these core updates to larger software updates you’d see on your mobile phone. “Your phone gets updated from time to time,” and “typically you don’t notice it,” Sullivan explained Google Search does the same thing, about 5,000 times per year he added. But when it comes to core update, “occasionally your phone gets a bigger update,” he said – and that is what core updates are about, those bigger updates. Sullivan said, “core updates are like those sort of bigger updates for Search.”
Changes from March Core Update to August Core Update
One big question many of us in the SEO industry had was what were the big changes made by Google between the March 2024 core update and the most recent August 2024 core update. Google told us initially that the March core update was one of there largest updates, and many of us expected to see sites hit hard by the September 2023 helpful content update would see changes there but most, if not all, did not see any improvements. Then with the August core update, we did see some minimal movement there, so what changed?
Sullivan wasn’t able to tell me about any specific changes, instead he said there were “regular incremental kind of changes we seek to do,” he told me. What does that mean? “Like you do a core update, you look at different ranking systems, you try to understand how to make them better, you test them, you experiment with them and ultimately you send them out to human raters who go through and say yes, we think that’s improved the search results overall and we push those updates out,” Sullivan said as he took me through the process.
Nothing is perfect, as Sullivan explained, so you go through the process again and “do further evaluations further testing and you try to look at different things and see how to make those better,” he told me. But one of those things was to look at how to do better with great “smaller independent sites.” In fact, he said “we have made some changes that we think are helping there.”
But he said Google is not done with those changes, more improvements in those areas will come with future core updates.
When I questioned Google’s efforts on some of those smaller and independent sites, Sullivan agreed that some of those are “really good sites, they’re producing good content,” he said. “We want them to do well and search as well,” he added. The action Google is taking is to “keep adjusting the ranking systems to reward that kind of content, which is ultimately the goal,” he added.
So it seems like Google’s efforts from the March core update to the August core update was to reward more of these smaller and independent publishers and Google is far from done, so expect more there with future core updates.
Future Core Updates
As mentioned above, Sullivan said Google will continue to do work to reward content, content from small independent publishers. When I questioned those efforts, Sullivan said that there are “definitely improvements that we can make, should be making, and want to be making,” around this.
In fact, he said to publishers that are creating great content but are not seeing that content being rewarded in Google Search, that they should not give up. “No one who is creating really good content, who doesn’t feel that they were well rewarded in this last update should think well, that’s it. Because our goal is if you’re doing good content, we wanted you to be successful. And if we haven’t been rewarding you as well as we should, that’s part of what we hope this last update would do better on,” he told me. “We want the future update to continue down that path,” he said.
Will Google Rank My Site Better in the Future
As I continued to question and bring up some examples, Sullivan told me “I think the changes have helped some of those sites but generally have not brought those sites all the way back up to the level they were back to say last September or so.” Some of those, Sullivan implied, may continue to see ranking improvements over time. That the surges, be them small or large, will hopefully continue to grow for those sites over time. “I do think that some of those sites will continue to see good gains if they’re good sites, producing good content for people. I hope that they continue to go that way,” Sullivan told me.
But he can’t promise this will happen for all sites or that there will be full recoveries for all sites because it is a different algorithm, and there are different websites and webpages on the internet. “But you can’t predict that every site will recover to exactly where they were in September because September doesn’t exist anymore,” Sullivan said. “And our ranking systems are different, and among other things, our ranking systems are also rewarding other kind of content too, including forum content and social content, because that’s an important part of providing a good set of diverse results,” he added.
You may need to wait for the next core update to recover but “what you do need to do is just make sure that you’re doing the right thing by your audience,” and Google should reward you in the long run. “Our ranking systems are trying to reward that kind of content,” he added. “That’s what we’re chasing,” Sullivan added. But if you “are chasing our ranking systems, then you’re kind of behind,” he added.
In March, Google urged patience with the March core update, Google did the same with the August core update. In May, John Mueller from Google said Google was working on surfacing more heartfelt content, the week prior, Danny Sullivan said Google was working on better promoting these sites. Google even said that these sites not only can recover but surge past those pre-September results.
I mean, we can even go back to last November with Google’s non-buckle up statement about improvements coming to Google Search. We dug into that statement 6 months later.
Before that, Google communicated around helpful content update recovery times, saying it can take weeks but then months and now we are at over 11 months for some sites. Later Google told us these changes can take much longer than originally discussed.
So now, we are here 11 months later and Google is still telling us it is possible to recover and keep producing great content. But many can’t afford to do so financially or emotionally anymore, and waiting for Google to ‘get it right’ is not possible, as we saw with the Hardbacon and other sites.
Understanding Ranking Changes and Traffic Changes
Ranking well doesn’t always mean that it will result in traffic to your website. Different ranking positions will send very different levels of traffic. Plus, of course, you have the ads and then infinite search features and interfaces, pushing down the organic results, leading to less traffic headed your way from Google Search.
You should feel validated that your content is great, if you are on the first page of Google, even if that is not sending you traffic. Google Search values your content if you are ranking well. “Creators producing really good content, and you are ranking on the first page of our search results, you should be feeling pretty validated that you’re doing the right things.” “But if you move from first to second, that can be a notable traffic impact,” Sullivan added.
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t like your content, we clearly do like your content,” because you are ranking well. But searchers are not clicking on those results, because maybe they are lower, or maybe a Reddit or other forum search result is showing above it now. Google tried to explain this to content creators in its debugging search traffic help document, Sullivan told me.
What Happened With the Helpful Content Update
With the March 2024 core update, Google stopped announcing new helpful content updates, since the helpful content system has been incorporated into the core update system. The classifier for the helpful content system was overhauled and is now baked into the March 2024 core update. We covered this back in March, over here.
Sullivan said because there is no longer a helpful content update, it is “difficult when people keep talking about the helpful content system.” Now, and instead, “we have a core ranking system that’s assessing helpfulness on all types of aspects,” he explained.
Of course, when you look at sites that were demolished by the September 2023 helpful content update, what else should they reference? Sullivan admitted this and said “I’ve seen those sorts of examples.” In fact, he called them “heartfelt examples.” In fact, in some of those examples, Sullivan said “I wish we could do a better job by those sites as well like that, that these, these are really good things in our systems need to improve.”
But not all. Some sites that thought they were hit by that update were not. Maybe they were hit by an earlier core update, maybe they were hit by a later core update – heck, Sullivan even said he saw examples of sites that “actually have gone up in traffic and still think that there’s something wrong,” when there is nothing wrong. Sullivan looked at many examples through that feedback form.
Was Something Wrong With the Helpful Content Update
I then pressed the question on if there was something wrong with the helpful content update. Why did some sites get hit so hard in September 2023 and then some saw some lifts only with the August 2024 core update? Did the classifier get stuck? Was there a bug or some kind?
Sullivan said “no,” there was no bug. The reason the helpful content update is no longer is because “We integrated the helpful content system into a broader ranking system that assesses helpfulness in a variety of different ways,” he told me.
Google has done this before, “That is a fairly typical thing that’s happened with other stand alone systems which you’re familiar with such as Panda.” Note, this happened in 2016 with the Panda update.
So why didn’t we see improvements until this last update for some of the impacted sites? He didn’t seem to know, basically saying it is “difficult” to say because the March core update was a “whole new system.” He added, “I wish that site that had improved, did better,” with that March core update but he doesn’t know for sure because there are a lot of different signals that go into these core updates. So what registered and when those signals were registered is hard to measure in general terms.
“I don’t know that it got stuck,” Sullivan told me. He said the way these updates were released were based on how the engineers who work on these updates at Google describe them to him. But of course, anyone who works with engineers, no matter how good they are, there can be issues, and I explained that in which Sullivan said again, “Yeah, I don’t know that the system somehow got stuck like that.”
Tremors and Adjustments During Core Updates
I asked about the ups and downs, the tremors, the ranking volatility we see throughout core updates. I asked if Google makes adjustments during the core updates, as it rolls out. Sullivan said no, they do not. He said, “there’s no while it’s going out, we start changing the ranking systems.”
Sullivan told me “before we roll anything out. It’s evaluated, it’s tested, there’s experiments and then it’s rater reviewed.” So there is no reason to have to change it mid-way through.
The only adjustment they may make is if the update is not rolling out to all data centers, but that is not a ranking or relevancy adjustment, it is just a bug in how it might roll out.
What About That Ranking Bug
As you may remember, there was a search ranking bug at the start of the August core update, it was fixed four days into that release. Sullivan reiterated that they were unrelated and said the core update had “Nothing to do with it.”
Did Sites Recover
While I shared some data of recoveries here, Sullivan was not able to share any data from within Google about recoveries. He said, “I don’t really have any data like that.” When I asked if he had any numbers or data on if or how many of “these small independent publishers are doing better since this update,” I asked.
Will Sites Recover or Is It Too Late
I then brought up the case of a site named Hardbacon having to file bankruptcy due to the Google Search algorithm, I mentioned a few of the other sites. How can a site with little to no Google Search traffic survive an extended period of time, 11 months, of this, and expect to keep producing great content, and continue to pay its payroll and keep the doors open.
Sullivan said in some of those cases, “Their hearts are in the right place and our ranking systems are not doing a good enough job for them, then they probably should do. And that’s what we’re continuing to work on.”
So if you are doing that, he said “And if that’s what you believe you’re doing, you’re producing really good content. It’s for your audience, you have it in mind, you feel you’re right with what people would want, then you should continue to do that.” And eventually “we’re gonna continue to try to reward that kind of content because we want that content to do.”
If “you feel like you’re doing the right thing, you’re in the great kind of content, you should keep on doing that and we really need to do a better job on rewarding it,” Sullivan said again.
Feedback Form and Insights
As mentioned earlier, with the March 2024 core update, Google released a feedback form. But with the August 2024 core update, Google did not. I asked why?
“We had a lot of feedback come from the last one and there’s plenty to go through on that still. I would like to get us through,” Sullivan said.
The last feedback form had 12,000 individual submissions with 1,300 unique domains submitted, Sullivan told me. Yes, many submitted the form multiple times with multiple examples, one submitted the form over 1,700 times for the same domain.
The form was available for about a month and only 1,300 unique domains were submitted over that time. Sullivan’s point was that it wasn’t tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of domains submitted, and he understood not everyone was willing to fill in the form, but still.
Sullivan reviewed it all, he said, “a lot of it was really, really helpful really, really useful.” “And I went through it all, I went through all those submissions by hand and I looked at all the things that people were saying,” he added.
He then wrote up his findings for the Google Search engineering team, with things they can try to improve the algorithm with. The write-up to the Google team said “here’s what I’ve learned, looking at all these types of things and some things came out like you have, as I said, these sites where their hearts are in the right place.”
“We were able to find some really good relevancy things to dig into more and try to understand what’s happening,” based on the submissions. And they used some of that feedback with the latest core update “But we also still have more work they’re going to be doing off of it,” he added.
Sullivan equated the experience of going through these submissions like the movie “Miracle on 34th Street.” “There’s an end where they dump all the letters on the court for Santa and, and he’s all excited because he’s like going, oh my God, look at all these letters. That’s exactly how I felt, looking at the submissions because there was a lot of productive stuff.”
So since Google still is going through the feedback on these forms, there is still more for Google to do, Google decided not to open a new form yet. “So there’s no sense in like launching the other form just yet because we still have plenty that we, we’ve got off of this existing one,” Sullivan told me. When Google is done incorporating that feedback, then Google will release a new form.
No Manual Involvement in Ranking Changes
Another note Danny Sullivan wanted to make clear was that filling out the form did not lead to any specific site changes. Google did not reward or punish any specific site because they filled out the form. Google used the form feedback to improve its relevancy algorithms, not to manually adjust any specific site’s ranking. Sullivan said “that’s not how it works.” “There’s no benefit that’s been given to anybody because they use the feedback form. There’s no benefit that’s been given to anybody because they’ve been vocal, just like there’s no disbenefit for using the feedback form or disbenefits for being vocal,” Sullivan explained.
Sullivan said “The ranking systems are not site specific. We’re not going through and boosting a particular site or lowering particular site. The ranking system is designed to work across all sites generally.” This is why some sites that said they are doing better, actually never even used the form, Sullivan explained.
I brought the topic up later on in the interview, in which Sullivan said, “I already said that earlier when I talked about we’re not moving sites around.”
Content Marketing Efforts
As we continued to talk, the topic of content marketing came up. Content marketing is the strategy of creating content for a targeted audience, in the case of Google Search, to write content that ranks well in search to drive visitors to your site.
One example in the feedback form that Danny Sullivan mentioned was a local plumbing site that was not ranking well for local plumbing topics in Google Search. Sullivan said that the site’s content “looked like the content, which is sort of your generic, here’s how to fix your sink type of thing.” He said it was just generic plumber content that probably didn’t drive conversion. Sullivan told me he expected that “a lot of the traffic that the local plumber was getting probably wasn’t even something that was converting to them.” In contrast, if that plumber shared really personal and professional stories about plumbing issues in their local area, that would be more something Google would want to reward.
Page Experience and Ads
Another topic around core updates are ads and poor user experience. And while we covered this topic a lot here, I wanted to revisit it with the Google Search Liaison. In short, nothing changed here, Danny Sullivan said.
The Google page experience guide, “doesn’t say you can’t have ads,” Sullivan added. Many sites that rank well do have ads. Sullivan said, “there are plenty of sites out there that have ads that people don’t like because then they can encounter them in search and then they complain why does this site have so many ads so clearly?”
That being said, Sullivan said there is more Google can do here to make this clearer. “I would love to see us get into a better state where we can point people to more page experience stuff to understand like what’s going on with the site because it is important,” he told me.
Sullivan said “look at your core web vitals” but “It’s not the end all, be all.”
“I would just reiterate to people when you look at a page. If you were coming into it as somebody for the first time, would you feel like you are having a satisfying experience?,” he said. Sullivan again said, “if you’re providing a good satisfying site, that’s one of those things that our ranking systems are trying to reward.”
Reddit and Forum Content Ranking Well in Google Search
Google has this obsession with showing social content, forum content, a lot from Reddit, as we mentioned above. I questioned if showing this content makes sense for health related queries and Sullivan said it does, in many, but not all cases.
Sullivan admitted that social content is more visible in Google Search, “Yes, we have increased the amount of social content that appears in Search,” he told me. Plus he said the content is helpful, “The social content is indeed helpful for many queries.” But he also admitted, “It’s not always perfect.”
And as Google continues to surface the helpful version of that content, he knows it is not perfect. But helpful it is he said, “but it can be very helpful, can be very helpful in some cases for people to hear from other people who are encountering health issues that are looking for support.” “To just dismiss social as not being useful, like I encounter it myself, I find it useful all the time. I find people fix things like I’m trying to fix a thing in my house and I ended up on a forum,” he added. One example Sullivan mentioned he said “wasn’t Reddit, it was like some small forum for people who have the kind of air conditioner I have.” “And it was like, oh, you do this and I’m like, that’s great, exactly what I was looking for. It was wonderful,” he added.
But what about when Reddit is outranking your own content, like we shared here. Sullivan said “that’s a different issue.” He admitted, in those cases, Google needs to do a better job of surfacing the original content first. But he attributed some of those cases as to how people search, i.e. search for the exact headline of the article, which normal people don’t do. He said, “when you do a headline search, you are doing a search that typically ordinary people don’t do.”
So why does Google show Reddit above the original source? Sullivan explained, “when you do a specific headline search, our systems are gonna go more sensitive towards let’s find something that really seemed to have all these words adjacent and then maybe other things like freshness might kick in and, and maybe that can have a play into it as well.”
Hidden Gems
There has been a lot of confusion around Google’s algorithmic efforts to showcase hidden gems in the search results. Sullivan said, “where we went out with it” it was focused on social content. But he would like to see other forms of hidden gems rewarded by future updates.
“One of the sites I saw on the feedback helps you understand if something was like in a movie or TV, show that you wanna buy like that’s amazing,” he told me. Sullivan added, “I would like to see us do better by them and it’s we’re trying to find a way to do better surface this kind of authentic human voice type of content.”
Site Reputation Abuse Policy
As the interview went on, I decided to follow up on some other Search policies and algorithms. One topic was the site reputation abuse policy, some call “Parasite SEO,” and the status of that.
Earlier this year, Google began enforcing this policy through manual actions. That has not changed, Sullivan said. And it won’t be enforced anytime soon using algorithms, or in an automated way.
“There’s no algorithmic action, I don’t expect there to be any algorithmic action anytime in the near future,” Sullivan told me. He said if and when it becomes algorithmic, Google will announce it. Until then, it is not.
Why is it not algorithmic? “The reason we probably won’t have it any time in the near future is because we wouldn’t be exceedingly careful and, and thoughtful in how we do it. So that’s just taking time and for the moment, the manual actions are the way for us to go,” Sullivan explained.
AI Content and Scaled Content Policy
I then moved on to the topic of AI Content, and asked if the same advice is there. In short, Sullivan said the same thing, it is not about if it was written by AI or not, but rather it is about the scaled content policy.
He said people focused on the wrong message, they focused on that AI written content is okay in some cases. But he said the focus should have been more on if the content is being produced at scale (AI or human generated) with the intent to be written for search and not users. “I would look very closely what we said about scale content abuse,” Sullivan warned.
Sullivan said that the community “seemed to take the first half of our statement and ignore the second half. The first half of our statement was we’re not really focused on how the content is created, whether or not the content is helpful. And that got turned into a bunch of people as Google doesn’t care if content is AI. That was the wrong message,” he said.
“The message that you should have taken away from that is, is it helpful,” Sullivan said.
It is less about if it is AI generated or not, “It’s just the question of, are you producing a lot of content at scale to rank well in search,” he said. “Oftentimes people will do that using automation, oftentimes people may do that now using AI, people have certainly done that using human beings as well. None of it matters in terms of if you’re doing it at scale period. That is your issue if you’re doing it primarily for ranking purposes,” he said.
Navboost and Core Updates
I then ventured into the touchy subject of Navboost, this was uncovered during the DOJ trials. From our coverage, Navboost “is one of the important signals” that Google has, Nayak said. This “core system” is focused on web results and is one you won’t find on Google’s guide to ranking systems. It is also referred to as a memorization system.
So I asked if Navboost is part of the core systems. Sullivan didn’t really say, he just said, “Core updates, use a variety of ranking signals and we’re not gonna really kind of get into the specific of those ranking signals. Core updates can involve all kinds of different systems too if there’s still just core to our ranking system.”
He did say that Google did say they look at anonymized click data since 2009, that is not new. “But in the end, we understand a variety of signals, we use a whole mixture of things and anonymized user interactions will be one of them,” he added.
Review System Update
Finally, I asked if the Reviews system was also now baked into the core updates. Sullivan said he doesn’t believe anything changed since what Google announced back with the November 2023 reviews update. This update is now run regularly and was not part of the core system back then.
“My understanding is it’s still running as a separate system, but it’s running on a regular, frequent basis, like really regular frequent,” Sullivan told me.
If you want a summary of this interview, Danny Goodwin wrote it up a bit later on Search Engine Land.
That is all folks… Please be nice in the comments – got problems with Google, take them out on Google and not any specific individual…
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