Notices by Google Search Liaison (searchliaison@mastodon.social)

Today we announced the March 2024 core update & new spam policies that, in combination, are designed to show less content made to attract clicks and more content that people find useful. Learn more: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies

Today I wanted to share about the belief that there is some type of “perfect page” formula that must be used to rank highly in Google Search. There isn't, and no one should feel they must work to some type of mythical formula. It’s a belief dating back to even before Google was popular, as I wrote about when I was a journalist in 2000, in the article below. As was the case then, so it remains true now. There’s no perfect formula to follow….

Last week, I gave a presentation about Google Search results not being perfect, how we update to improve those results, and how our guidance to creators needs to improve. In this thread, I’ll share my slides and commentary for those who weren’t able to attend my talk…

Google’s results aren’t perfect. We do make mistakes. We don’t always get it right. We’ll never get everything right. But what we can do is keep working to show the most helpful content that we can. More here: https://blog.google/products/search/how-we-update-search-improve-results/

Some people I’ve interacted with over the past few weeks believe our guidance about success with Google Search is new, that they now have to do something different. But for us at Google, that’s confusing, because it’s not new. The guidance is based on years-old and even decades-old guidance…

Our helpful content system is an example of improving Google Search: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/helpful-content-system

It launched last year with the goal to ensure people see more original, helpful content created for people. In September, we improved the system. That sparked some creator questions & concerns…

That’s led me to do a lot of retrospection. If the guidance isn’t new, why do so many feel confused? Quite simply, it seems that our long-standing advice of “Don’t do things for Google” is counter-intuitive to anyone who is trying to be successful with Google.

Our guidance is generally about a broad goal. For example, we advise people to think if they product content in a way that *makes you want to trust it* (not Google, you – or a reader) with examples of what might cause people to trust content, such as background about an author….

Further complicating things, some read our guidance and make definitive recommendations we’re not actually saying, like “If you have an About page, you rank better!” You don’t. It doesn’t work that way. Which leads to some critical thinking to consider when getting advice on ranking well in Google…

What’s heard are specifics. People focus on us talking about an author page as being something that people might expect from people-first content and believe Google itself wants that specific thing, as if we’re going to check for it and rank content better for having it (we don’t).

If “One weird old tricks” don’t work, then beware the “one weird SEO trick.” Nothing with Google ranking – or in life in general – is that simple. If someone is telling you “this is what Google says to do,” are they making clear if it’s what we actually have said or if it’s their interpretation?

There is, of course, excellent third-party advice about ranking in Google. Michael King, Lily Ray, Marie Haynes, AJ Kohn, Casey Markee, Glenn Gabe are some I named in my talk & there are many more and in languages beyond English. The hallmark is they tend to make clear when something is what they believe vs “Google says”

The gap between what Google says to creators and what creators hear about being successful in Google Search needs to get better. That’s largely on us. It’s something we’ll be working on. People-first content remains the path to success, but we hopefully can find better ways to communicate this…

While our communication with creators needs to get better, that doesn’t take away from the fact some well know if they’re creating content that’s not really satisfying. Google Search needs to keep improving because people want a satisfying experience when they search with us…

Perhaps we need to speak more clearly that our systems are chasing what people like, so if you “chase the algorithm,” you’re behind. If you chase what people like, you’re ahead of the algorithm.

For example, instead of saying “Don’t do things for Google” our guidance might say “Yes, do things for Google if they are the things you’d do for people” There’s still much to think though, but the “don’t do” likely needs to change to “do do” to close the gap…

Search and content can move through cycles. You can have a rise in unhelpful content, and search systems evolve to deal with it. We’re in one of those cycles now. We went through one in 2011 (the “Panda” days), and in 2003 (the “Florida” days) and even before. Like 1998…

Google Search needs to keep improving, because we’ve all seen the headlines of dissatisfaction. And here, in my talk, I brought up three slides that were actually from a talk Matt Cutts gave in 2013 when he was at Google, about dissatisfaction and made-for-search content. This leads to cycles…

The search engines back then had never seen this type of content before. The concern then, as it is now, was how it might impact showing great results to users. Not surprisingly, the search engines soon took action against it. (Google also considers it spam: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#cloaking)

In 1998, long before I joined Google or Google existed, I wrote about how the search engines of the day were trying to understand how to deal with content “designed primarily for search engines, not for human beings.” In particular, the rise of what we now call cloaking and doorway pages….