For a long time, we thought that Google did not release updates over the summer (in the northern hemisphere), wanting to make sure that engineers were not on vacation if those updates needed tweaking. Over the past few years, this seemed to have changed. In 2021, Google released two updates in July; In 2022 they released the Product Reviews update; In 2023 there was massive volatility in search results that made us believe that major changes were being made to ranking algorithms even though no official announcement was made.
In July 2024 it looks like we are back to “normal”. There were no official updates and the various rank-tracking software have been relatively quiet. But engineers may not be on vacation just yet. A message from Google Search Liaison makes us think that a Core Update is due to be released in early August.
Google says Core Update is imminent
Contributing to the comments on The SEO Roundtable article Google To Host More Creator Meetings, Google’s Danny Sullivan said that he expected a Core Update to be released “in the coming weeks, because that fits in with our general cycle. But precisely when, that’s just not known yet”. He wrote this on July 15th so the Core Update must be imminent now (although it is a brave person who will ask him if it is ready yet). The Core Update may even already be released by the time you read this. Check the Google Search Status Dashboard to see if any new Ranking updates are mentioned.
Core Updates are changes to the core systems of Google’s ranking algorithm. This now contains previously separate systems such as Helpful Content that uses AI to evaluate the quality of content. Many site owners that were hit by previous versions of the Helpful Content update (by “hit” we mean that they lost ranking and traffic) and are hoping that the next Core Update will see their sites improve ranking and recover lost traffic.
We are also expecting a new Spam Update linked to site reputation abuse since May. See news from last month about this and why it is not a good idea to ask Danny if we are there yet.
Reddit blocking search engines
Reports that Reddit had blocked Google from indexing all its pages forced search chronicler Barry Schwartz back to his desk during the July 4th public holiday in the US. The request from Reddit is clearly visible in their robots.txt file. The two-line command (User-agent: * and Disallow: /) means that all robots (including Googlebot) are not allowed to access pages on their site. In the comments section of the file, Reddit declares that it “believes in an open internet, but not the misuse of public content”.
Google’s normal response to seeing these directives in a robots.txt file would be to remove the content of the site from its index and search results. Links to pages already indexed may continue to appear in Google, but it would stop crawling and indexing new pages.
Learn more about robots.txt and how you can use SEOPress PRO to edit it, see our guide : Edit your robots.txt file.
Reddit blocking Google would be a major shock because Google announced an extended partnership with Reddit in February and are reportedly paying $60 million annually to access and index content from the site. The announcement of the deal by Google contained the quote, “Over the years, we’ve seen that people increasingly use Google to search for helpful content on Reddit to find product recommendations, travel advice and much more. We know people find this information useful, so we’re developing ways to make it even easier to access across Google products”. It has certainly been the case that Reddit has been showing up more prominently in search results in 2024.
Barry debunked the claim in the article Reddit is not blocking Google Search by using the Google Rich Snippet testing tool to show what Google is really seeing when it accesses the robot.txt file. However, this does seem to confirm that Reddit is blocking other search engines and AI bots. Microsoft later confirmed that Bing had stopped crawling and indexing Reddit (but 1.86 million pages are still indexed).
On July 24th, Tim Rathschmidt from Reddit was quoted in The Verge’s article Reddit is now blocking major search engines and AI bots — except the ones that pay, as saying “We have been in discussions with multiple search engines. We have been unable to reach agreements with all of them, since some are unable or unwilling to make enforceable promises regarding their use of Reddit content, including their use for AI.”
Search Off The Record and international SEO
Google released a new Search Off The Record podcast episode in July, this time about international SEO. If you run a site offering content in multiple languages, you may find it an interesting listen. This new episode is hosted by Martin Splitt from the Search Relation Team and features his colleagues Lizzi Sassman and Gary Illyes (who worked on HREFLANG implementation in Google). Martin asks the question why does everyone say that HREFLANG is so complex?
They shared resources from Google Search Console documentation and the blog post How x-default can help you, but they underlined the fact that Google no longer has a tool for checking HREFLANG. They did mention third-party tools such as Aleyda Solis’ HREFLANG tag generator, Merkle’s HREFLANG testing tool and Hreflang Builders’ site map generator.
WordPress users will be more interested in our guide to implement HREFLANG in WordPress that reviews how you can use multilingual plugins like Weglot, WPML or Polylang with SEOPress to manage HREFLANG.
We offer an eBook about International SEO with WordPress
During the Off The Record podcast Gary confirms that country-specific top-level domains like .de can be better for ranking on Google the related country (Germany). He also repeated this answer the live English Google SEO office-hours from July 2024, this time answering a question about .kr domains related to ranking in Korea.
Google Search News July
Google also surprised us in July with a Google News video featuring our favorite anchorman, John Mueller. We thought that this series finished in 2023 (the last episode was in December) but John is back.
The news is not really related to July but goes through some of the things that have happened this year:
- AI Overviews,
- changes to Search Console and Structured Data,
- Documentation Updates and
- updates to the algorithm in March and June.
He says that Google finds feedback on new features like AI Overviews and updates. He invited site owners to send comments through the feedback links in search results or the Google Search Central Help Community.
Watch the video below.
