There have been no official updates to Google search algorithms since the August Core Update, but we continued to see unexplained fluctuations in search results during the month of September and October. Changes were made to search results, though: new features for the increasingly popular Google Lens and a new standard layout for AI Overviews that features more prominent links to websites. AI Overview was also released to over 100 new countries, but not Europe. The Google Search relations team, meanwhile, has brought us some more resources on Google Trends and 2 new podcasts.
Continued volatility in Google search results (again)
Although no official Google update was announced in October 2024, Barry Schwartz reported on volatility in SERP tracking tools coupled with chatter in SEO forums indicating that there was an algorithm change going on. Writing for Search Engine Roundtable, Barry noted volatility on October 2nd, 10th, 15th, 19th and 20th and for the period 23rd, 24th, 26th and 27th he noted high chatter but not so much change in rank tracking tools.
Note: Barry Schwartz also frequently writes for Search Engine Land which was purchased by Semrush in October. Search Engine Roundtable, however, is independent from Search Engine Land.
It is interesting to note that Similarweb’s SERP Seismometer does not show high volatility after October 4th, but other tools like Cognitive SEO (featured below), Wincher, Accuranker and MozCast shared by Barry do show volatility up until the end of the month.
If you want to make sure that you track your website’s ranking for specific keywords, see our article How to Track Keyword Rankings. It is interesting to know when search results are volatile over a large sample of keywords, but only tools like SEOPress Insights will track ranking for your keywords.
New search features in mobile search
In the Keyword blog post Ask questions in new ways with AI in Search, published on October 3rd, Google unveiled new search features for the Google Search app. The main new features are in Google Lens and the article reveals that this visual search tool is now used for nearly 20 billion visual searches every month. Compared with published estimates that Google processes 8.5 billion searches per day, this means that nearly 10% of Google searches are now through Lens and not text based queries (this seems to be a very significant change in search engine usage so it will be interesting to see this figure confirmed).
New features include search by video, voice questions and improved shopping results pages for queries started with an image of a recognized product.
Google Lens video search demo by Google
AI Overviews released to more countries (but not Europe)
Another Keyword article published on October 28th announced that Google was releasing AI Overviews to more than 100 countries. Launched in May 2024 in the US only, the latest version is available in countries across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. AI Overviews will work in all the supported languages of those countries including English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
It is notable thought that AI Overviews has not been released in any European countries outside the UK (which is no longer a member of the European Union). This may be due to fears that the EU will penalize Google AI for breaking privacy and / or copyright laws.
Google also added that the new design tested since August has been adopted for all countries. In this layout, links to sites are shown directly within the text of an AI Overview. Google says that tests show this new design increased traffic generated to websites. Ads integrated in AI Overviews are also now live in the US on mobile.
Google Search has a new boss after DOJ case
In a note sent to employees on October 17th, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Nick Fox would be the new head of Google Search. He replaces Prabhakar Raghavan who came into the spotlight recently because of internal mail shared during the US Department of Justice trial that Google lost in August 2024. Edward Zitron goes through these mails and accuses Prabhakar as being the Man who killed Google Search, allegedly pushing colleagues to make organic search results worse to improve profits for ads.
There is no suggestion from Google that the change was made because of the trial and Prabhakar remains an employee at Google as Chief Technologist.
The announcement comes off the back of a “proposed remedy” for Google’s anticompetitive conduct published by the DOJ on October 8th. The actual ruling won’t be made until 2025, possibly as late as August 2025, after which Google can appeal. The remedies suggested by this new document include the surprising requirement for Google to share its index through an API as well expected requirements to drop distribution agreements and open advertising in Google Search results to competitors.
Get started with Google Trends
A series of videos tutorials about Google Trends first introduced in August has now become part of the Monitoring and debugging documentation on Google Search Central. The new page, Get started with Google Trends features the first Google Trends Walkthrough video and finished with the Google Trends for SEO video published on YouTube in September.
Presenters Daniel Waisberg and Hadas Jacobi warn us that this is not a video on how to do SEO, but it does show 3 ways that we can use Google Trends for SEO: staying up to date with rising trends, performing keyword research and creating a content calendar. There is also a bonus tip (spoiler: about YouTube search trends).
Search Off the Record podcast
The Google Search Relations team is continued to put a lot of effort into the Search Off the Record podcast in October, with two more episodes released. Neither of these two podcasts gave any actionable insights for SEO, but you may find them an enjoyable listen.
In the Google Search Reliability episode, Gary Illyes invites Ben Walton and David Yule from the SRE (short for Search Reliability) team to talk about their jobs. These engineers are responsible for making sure that search stays online (as much as possible) and can be on call to react whenever Google crashes. All Google search features are not online 100 % of the time, but it is very rare that we notice something wrong before the SRE team fixes it.
The Designing Google Doodles and delightful experiences episode features Jessica Yu who is presented with the wonderful title of Lead for Doodles and Delights. Doodles are the changes made to the Google logo to mark certain events like Halloween. These can just be image changes but can also integrate elaborate features such as games. Other delights built into Google also include “Easter eggs”. One of the examples Jessica talks about in the podcast is the “Drop Bear” Easter egg. After typing this search into Google, you can click a button see this creature drop through the search results onto its favorite prey: foreign tourists in Australia.
