Search Engine Roundtable's 20th Anniversary

Ser Birthday Header

20 years ago tomorrow (December 2, 2003), I started this blog aimed at archiving some of the best discussions within the search marketing community. It has now been 20 years that I’ve been writing on this site, covering what you – the search marketers are talking about from within the search community. Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the Search Engine Roundtable – I would post this tomorrow, but it is Shabbat, and I will be offline most of the day.

I’ve been writing about search for over two decades and almost half of my life. More importantly, I’ve been doing it consistently every workday, several times per day, no matter how I feel, for 20 straight years. As I say every year and think almost every day, it is hard for me to fathom that I still can find several new things to write about every single day on this niche topic of SEO, PPC, and search marketing.

20 Years Of Passion:

20 years ago, I started this site as a way to keep notes on what the search marketing community was talking about. A roundtable of discussions, if you will, between the smartest search marketing minds. Finding new tests and concepts that most have not yet seen yet, to bring those to a larger number of search marketers. That passion and that mission have not changed – I still try to cover what the search marketing community is buzzing about, what the community cares about, and what the community is saying about those changes in our industry.

I still continue to publish several stories here a day and on Search Engine Land. I still produce my weekly video recaps, please subscribe to the YouTube channel. I also continued to do the search vlog where I try to bring more attention to new and maybe old individuals in our community, but I might be pausing this in the coming weeks. I also publish these videos on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. Don’t forget about the fun daily photos and big monthly Google webmaster reports. These are all aimed at saving you time while catching you up on new topics and making you smile at the same time.

If you want, you can read last year’s recap – the 19th year anniversary of the Search Engine Roundtable as well.

Our Growth & Analytics:

Keep in mind, we all switched over to GA4 so the numbers are not really apples to apples exactly. I think we saw a 6.5% increase in traffic this year, while last year, we saw a 6% increase in traffic from the previous year. Search traffic increased by over 12%, with an 11% increase last year. Our direct traffic was also up over 21%; last year, it was up 6%. Social traffic was up 18.5%, last year it was even. Email traffic was up 3.5%, but it was up 22% the year before.

Mobile traffic share is 41.6%, and add 2% more for tablet traffic, it was 43% last year. Chrome browsers still dominate on this site. US is still the most popular source of traffic, followed by India, then UK, then China and then Canada. 62.6% of the readers are male. Again, this is using GA4, not UA3, so the comparisons may be off. Also, this combines app usage and AMP (which we removed this year) usage.

There are now about 36,445 stories on this site, I wrote about 33,545 of them – about 92% of them. I posted about 2,000 stories this year alone! We also had about 19,000 comments posted this year on the published stories, so thank you for all who comment – I do read them all and do my best to deal with spam.

With YouTube, my channel – please subscribe has over 1,800 new subscribers (now at ~16,900 subscribers). There are over 6.7 million views on those videos, with over 68,000 hours of watch time. Oh, and I made just over $1,000 in YouTube ad revenue in the past year, which is $500 less than last year’s revenue. However, if you watch, you will see I have video sponsors now – thank you, sponsors!

Finally, we are slated to launch a new design on January 1, 2024. It has been over a dozen years since I updated this site’s design and platform and this one will be a big update, so stay tuned.

Most Important Stories In Past 12 Months:

Like always, I am hyper-focused on covering both the confirmed Google search ranking algorithm updates and the unconfirmed ones. We had four core updates this year, three reviews update this year, one helpful content update (well, two if you count December 2022) and a spam update (link spam update in December 2022). So 10 confirmed updates in 2023 or 12 confirmed updates since December 2, 2023. Those updates were mostly big and we had a ton of unconfirmed updates. Google even gave us a page to track those updates.

Google changes how its page experience signals work for ranking, dropping a ton of Search Console tools around that. Google released its hidden gems ranking system this year, spoke about topic authority ranking, language matching system, and a lot of site name changes.

If 2023 had any theme – that theme would be about AI and Search. We had OpenAI’s ChatGPT cause huge waves through the search industry. Microsoft partnered with them to make Bing Chat, now Copilot. Then Google answered with Bard and then the Google Search Generative Experience. Of course, ads will be interesting to follow and then how these AI services will send publishers and websites traffic is an important topic to follow.

Changes to search is coming beyond AI or with AI; with Google getting more personalized, Bing improving its ranking systems with AI and Yahoo promising to make search cool again.

Of course, the Department of Justice is doing its thing with Google, which has been pretty insightful and eye-opening for many of us. As what when the Yandex search code was leaked. It all comes down to SEOs ruining the internet while playing with the alligators at late night parties.

There was a lot that I wrote, like I said above, but here is what I think are the most important stories over the past 12-months or so (if I missed any, let me know in the comments):

Google Core Updates:Google November 2023 Core Update Rolling Out
Google November 2023 Core Update Finished Rolling Out
Google October 2023 Core Update Rolling Out – Only Weeks After Previous Core Update
Google October 2023 Core Update Finished Rolling Out
Google August 2023 Broad Core Update Finished Rolling Out
Google August 2023 Broad Core Update Is Live – What We Are Seeing Now
Google March 2023 Broad Core Update Is Live – What We Are Seeing Now
Google March 2023 Broad Core Update Finished Rolling Out
Google Core Update Bug Resulted In Discover Traffic Issues – Now Fixed

Google Helpful Content Update:
Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update Rolling Out With Improved Classifier
Google September 2023 Helpful Content Completed Rolling Out – Targeting SEO-First Content
December 2022 Google Helpful Content Update Rolling Out With Global Impact
Google’s Helpful Content & Link Spam Updates Done Rolling Out On January 12th
Google Helpful Content System To Find Hidden Gems In Blogs & Forums In Future Update
Google Helpful Content Update Can Demote & Now Promote Content
Google’s Helpful Content Update Doesn’t Target Third-Party Hosted Content Yet
Google Provides Signs That You’re Writing Unhelpful Content
Google To Recipe Bloggers: We’ve Heard Complaints, Ensure Key Parts Of Recipe Have Easy Access

Google Reviews Update:
Google November 2023 Reviews Update Rolls Out
Google April 2023 Reviews Update Rolls Out, Expands To Cover Reviews About Products, Services, and Things
Google April 2023 Reviews Update Done Rolling Out
Google Unwraps February 2023 Product Reviews Update With Language Support
Google February 2023 Product Reviews Update Done Rolling Out

Google Spam Update:
New Google October 2023 Spam Update Targets Spam In More Languages
Google October 2023 Spam Update Finished Rolling Out
Google Unleashes December 2022 Link Spam Update With SpamBrain AI
Google’s Helpful Content & Link Spam Updates Done Rolling Out On January 12th

Google Page Experience:
Google: Page Experience Is A Ranking Signal, Not A Ranking System
Here Is What Changed with the Google Helpful Content Guidance – Page Experience & More
Google Drops Mobile-Friendly, Page Speed, Secure Sites & Page Experience As Retired Ranking Systems

Misc Google Search Algorithm:
Google Ranking Updates Added To Google Search Status Dashboard
Google Hidden Gems Ranking Algorithm Update
Google Search Topic Authority Ranking System (Not New)
Google Search Language Matching Systems Update Released Two Weeks Ago
Google Site Names Now Work In All Languages
Buckle Up: Google To Make Major Search Ranking Changes

Bing Chat / Copilot:
Microsoft Bing’s New AI Features Are Really Impressive & Thought Out
Prometheus: Why Bing AI Chat Is So Fast & Up-To-Date
Microsoft To Release Major Quality Improvement For Bing AI Chat On Thursday
Microsoft Bing Chat May Share Ad Revenue With Publishers
New Bing AI Chat Now On Mobile With Voice Search
Bing AI Chat Now Tests Response Tones: Precise, Balanced & Creative
Bing Chat Adds Images & Videos, Improves Local Results & More Changes
Microsoft Opens Bing Chat To All With New Upgrades
Microsoft Bing AI Codename: Sydney
Report: Microsoft Bing To Add OpenAI’s ChatGPT Feature
Bing Chat Adds Anchor Text Hyperlinks Within Answers
Microsoft Bing’s CEO: Google Bard Is Pretty Far Behind Bing Chat
Bing Chat Personalized Answers – aka Memory
Bing Search Showing Recent Bing Chat Topics
Microsoft: Ads Clicks Within Bing Chat Are 1.8X Higher
Bing Chat / Microsoft Copilot Mode Usage: Balanced 70%, Creative & Precise 15% Each
Bing Chat Now Named Copilot

Other AI Search:
Google On AI Content: Think About The Who, How, and Why For Your Content
Google Reiterates Guidelines On AI Written Content After Bankrate AI Content Writer Gains Attention
Big Publishers Concerned With AI Powered Search From Google & Bing
ChatGPT Bot – You Can Block OpenAI Plugins If You Want
Most SEOs Aren’t Concerned About ChatGPT Threatening The SEO Industry
59% Of Searchers Don’t Get The Importance Of AI In Search
New Google Merchant Center Policy Says AI Generated Reviews Are Spam & Disallowed

Bing:
Possible Bing Algorithm Update On Wednesday, January 18th
Now Confimed Bing Algorithm Update On Wednesday, January 18th
Bing May Now Use AI To Write Your Snippets With AI-Generated Captions
Microsoft Bing Updates Webmaster Guidelines: Conversation Mode and Bing Image Creator
Bing Adds Site Name & Favicon To Search Result Snippets
Bing Webmaster Tools Adding Bing Chat & Index Coverage Reporting
Microsoft Working On Content Controls For Bing Search vs Bing Chat
Bing Webmaster Tools Performance Report Update Gets New Data But Bing Chat Data Hidden
Bing Webmaster Tools Sitemap Index Coverage Is Fully Live
Bing Webmaster Tools To Remove Disavow Links Tool

Yahoo:
Yahoo To Make Search Cool Again
Yahoo Working On Yahoo Search
New Yahoo Search Experience May Launch Soon

Crawling & Indexing:
New Google Search Status Dashboard Tells Us When Crawling, Indexing Or Serving Goes Down
Google Mobile First Indexing Now Really Done
Google Bulk Mobile-First Indexing Switch Batch Today (Last Batch Done)
Google: Google Quality Updates Can Impact Crawling & Indexing
Google On Pages Popping In & Out Of The Google Index
Confirmed: Google News Indexing Bug Fixed After 3 Weeks Of Issues
Google Issues With Indexing & Serving New Content
Google Documents Its Three Types Of Web Crawlers
CSV Files Added To List Of File Types Indexable By Google
Google: You Can Use A Single Robots.txt For All Your International Sites
New Googlebot: Google-InspectionTool Added To Crawler User Agents
Google To Work On Complementary Robots.txt Protocols For AI & More
Google-Extended Is The New Google Crawler To Block Bard Or Google AI
Bing Offers Methods To Block Bing Chat From Using Your Content
ChatGPT Relaunches Browse With Bing Respecting Robots.txt Protocols
OpenAI’s ChatGPT New Web Crawler – GPTBot

SEO:
E-E-A-T – “Experience” Added To Revised Search Quality Raters Guidelines
Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines Updated With Fewer Pages
Google: Expect To See Changes In Search Around Third Party Hosted Content
Google: Google Discover Impacted By Many Search Signals, Including Now The Helpful Content Update
Google Now Says Google Discover Impacted By The Helpful Content Update Since October 2022
Google Search Update Fixes Some Problematic Site Names
Google: Site Name Issues Massively Dropped Since Last Algorithm Update
New: Google Search Supports Syntax Graph Merge
Google’s Revised Site Name Questions & Resources Thread
Google Removes Video Thumbnails In Search Results When Video Is Not Main Content
Google: CNET’s Content Pruning Plans Reasonable But SEO Impact Would Be Unnoticeable
Google To Drop Support For Sitemaps Ping Endpoints In 6-Months
New Google SEO Link Best Practices
Google Does Major Refresh Of The Canonicalization Help Documentation
Google Simplifies Policy Circumvention Spam Policy
Google Reorganizes Sitemaps Documentation
Google Search Research Paper Says SEO Practices Tends To Be Very Low Quality
Google: Links No Longer A Top Three Ranking Signal
Google’s Gary Illyes: Authorship, Links & Disavows Less Important Than SEOs Think
Microsoft Bing: lastmod Tag In XML Sitemap File Is Critical
Goodbye FID, Hello INP – Interaction to Next Paint Coming To Google Core Web Vitals
Google Details SEO Guidance For Content Syndication Partners

Spam:
SpamBrain Flexes In Google’s 2022 Web Spam Report
Obituary Spam On Google Too Fast & Out Of Control
Google: Building Your Site On Bad Links Over Time Will Have A Lasting Effect
Google Spam Policies & Ranking Systems Guide Updated For CSAM Content
The SEO Conch House Story: Scraped Amazon Content That Ranked Incredibly In Google Search

Search Features:
Google To Personalize Search Results To Your Previous Searches
Google Search Adds Follow Feature
Google Search Labs Adds Notes To Search Results
Official: Google Continuous Scroll Now On Desktop Search
Google “Simple Search” – New Search Refinement Option?
Google Search To Show FAQ & HowTo Rich Results Less Often
Google FAQ Rich Results Now Only Displayed For Authoritative Sites
Google Showing More FAQ Rich Results By Tweaking Which Sites Can Show Them?
Google Drops All How-To Rich Results For Desktop (& Mobile) Search
Google Search Stop Showing Event Rich Results – Bug?
Google Search Stops Indenting Results
Google Finally Launches The Perspectives Search Filter
Google Search Perspectives
Google Perspectives, About This Author & More Goes Live
Google About This Image Snippet Feature
Google About This Image Now Live Recency Of Image, AI Details & More
Google Search Perspectives & Opinions
Google Search “Ask A Doctor” PAA
Google Search Shop Deals Shows Commerce-Like Interface With Products By Category
US To Get Google News Showcase & Updated Google News Follow Tab
Google Launches +Topic Search Bar Refinements After Several Months Of Testing
Google Sitename, Favicon & Sponsored Label Live On Desktop (Not Just Mobile)
Google Search Drops Playable Podcast Rich Snippets
Google Confirms Podcast Carousels Going Away In Search On February 13
Google Search Save Your Favorite Brands Feature
Google’s New Search Quality Feedback Form

Search Ads:
Confirmed: Google Tests Ads Mixed Within Free Search Results
Google Ads In Search Generative Experience – What They Look Like
Ads In The New Bing Chat Interface
Google Testing SGE Ads – Sponsored Content – You May Also Like
Google Ads Conversation Experience To Create New Ads & Automatically Created Assets
Google Ads Generative AI Performance Max & New Google Product Studio
Google Expands AI Tools For Search Ads
Google Ads AI Asset Generation For Performance Max Rolling Out
Google Ads New Left Side Bar Design Rolling Out
The Google Ads Sandbox: New Limited Ad Serving Policy
Microsoft Advertising Ads For AI Chat Solutions
Google Ads Removed 53% More Ads This Year – 5.2 Billion Ads Blocked
Google Ads Gains Account-Level Negative Keywords
Google Ads Rolling Out Performance Max Experiments
Google Keyword Planner Organize Keywords Into Ad Groups Officially Live In English
Google Ads Performance Max Adds Brand Exclusions, Page Feeds, Video Creation & More Reporting
Google Ads Adds Automatically Created Assets & Loses Some Location Targeting Settings
Google Ads Performance Max For Travel Goals Available Globally Soon
Microsoft Advertising Gains Flyer Extensions, Retract & Restate Conversions, Ad Schedule Calendar View & More
Google Ads Looking To Surface More Search Term Data
Google Ads To Deprecate Non-Last-Click Rules-Based Attribution Models: First Click, Linear, Time Decay & Position-Based Attribution Models
Microsoft Adverting Bing Doctor And Clinic Ads
Microsoft Advertising Broad Match Modifier Now Use Broad Match Instead Of Phrase Match On Bing
Microsoft Advertising Relaxes Advertiser Identity Verification
Report: Google Pushing Advertisers To Use Agencies & Third Party Resellers
Google Updates AdsBot Mobile Web Android User Agent
Google Updates Shopping Ads, Free Listings Policy Center & How Shopping Works Documents
Google Ads Automatically Created Assets For Performance Max Campaigns
Google Ads New Trademarks Policy Now Requires An Appeal Form
Google Ads Tests Paid Customer Support Options
Google Ads Beta AI Generated Help Guide
Microsoft Officially Relaunches The Old pubCenter As New

Local Search & Google Business Profiles:
Google Maps Local Listings Are Now “Photo-First” Results
Google Maps Blocked 20% More Fake Reviews In 2022
Google Sues Business Over Alleged Fake Business Profiles & Reviews
Google Discontinues Google Posts Insights
Google Business Profile Tests Generative AI To Help Owners Write Business Descriptions
Google Updates Reviews Guidelines For Personal Information & Fake Engagement
New Google Business Profiles Reinstatement Process (US)
New Google Business Profile Policies Overview Page
Google Reduces Local Pack Results In Web Search?
Google Local Pack Map Auto Expand Is Now Live
Google Maps iOS App Also Gets Business Tab
Google Business Profile Bulk Data Changes
Apple Business Connect: Manage Your Business On Apple Maps
Apple Business Connect Adds Peer Group Benchmarks

Google Analytics:
Google Analytics To Show UA3 Data For A Year After It Stops Collecting Data On July 1, 2023
Google Analytics UA 3 Still Collecting Data But Google Says Not For Long…
Google To Sunset Google Optimize On September 30, 2023
Google Reiterates: Google Analytics 4 Deadline Is Not Changing
Finally: Google AdSense Integrates With Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 Supports AMP Pages – Days Before GA4 Migration Deadline

Industry:
DOJ Sues Google Again To Break Up Its Ad Business Over Monopolistic Actions
Google’s 3 Pillars Of Search Ranking Via DOJ Documents
Google Raised Ad Prices To Hit Revenue Goals, Google Executive Said
Google Ads VP Emails Chrome & Search Team For Ranking Tweaks & Query Injections From Chrome
Yandex Search Ranking Factors Leaked & Revealed
The Google Layoffs Are Sad For Many But The Fear May Be Worse
Yusuf Mehdi & Mikhail Parakhin New Roles At Microsoft With Panos Panay’s Departure
Head Of Google Ads, Jerry Dischler, Steps Down After 15 Years
No, SEOs & Google Didn’t Ruin The Internet & Nor Is The Internet Ruined

Most Viewed Stories In Past 12 Months:

Here are the most viewed stories in the past 12 months of 2022 based on Google Analytics. The theme – Google Search ranking updates:

Google: Links No Longer A Top Three Ranking Signal
Google March 2023 Broad Core Update Is Live – What We Are Seeing Now
Google Drops Mobile-Friendly, Page Speed, Secure Sites & Page Experience As Retired Ranking Systems
Google Provides Signs That You’re Writing Unhelpful Content
Google Search Volatility Heats Up As Core Update & Spam Update Rollout
Google October Core Update Heated Weekend Volatility
Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update Rolling Out With Improved Classifier
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update – August 3-4 (Unconfirmed)
December 2022 Google Helpful Content Update Rolling Out With Global Impact
Google November 2023 Core Update Is Super Volatile & Super Fast
Google September 2023 Helpful Content Completed Rolling Out – Targeting SEO-First Content
June 14th Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update & Fluctuations
Google Reiterates Guidelines On AI Written Content After Bankrate AI Content Writer Gains Attention
Buckle Up: Google To Make Major Search Ranking Changes
Google October 2023 Core Update Rolling Out
Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update Current Impact & Volatility

Looking Forward To 2024:

Last year, I said we will see a lot more for the helpful content update, in a very big way. The core updates, I think, may be lighter and less impactful. I do think we will see stronger spam updates in 2024 as well. I was wrong on some levels, the core updates were not weaker and we only had one helpful content update in 2023 and only one spam update in 2023. But the updates were very strong and impactful – for the most part.

I wrote that AI will become used more in SEO, for better or worse, which was a no-brainer and I was right. I also said we will see more from Google and others with search interface changes; which we 1000% saw, especially a few weeks ago with the personalization and follow feature and notes.

I also said AI will play a big part of search and search ads – which is an understatement for what was announced in 2023.

Looking forward to 2024 – the easy answer is to say AI in search will continue to be a big deal. Google will launch a more subtle layout for the SGE AI-generated answers. We will see new AI-based ad formats from Google and Bing. I do hope we will see less personalization but I suspect we will see more of it, baked into AI for search and Google Assistant.

More and more tasks will be handled by AI for both technical SEO, content SEO and search ads.

It is just such an exciting time in search with so much changing and I think most of us see the direction things are headed.

Thank you:

As I said last year, I deeply appreciate and thank you all so much for reading every day, commenting (or ignoring the comments) and for sharing the stories here. Keep up the chatter and let’s build an even better search community this coming year. Everyone stay safe and healthy!

Thank you,

Barry Schwartz

UrbanObserver

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