Since Google's public debut in 1998, hacks have stayed busy trying to trick its search algorithm into gaining higher rankings in its Search Engine Results Pages aka SERP. (Read more about SERP: https://www.semrush.com/blog/serp/).
The first "hacks," were elementary: stuffing keywords and phrases at the bottom of web pages. Then came the overkill with meta tags, fake backlinks, and robot-generated reviews. Google would catch on but it's been a long game of "whack-a-mole."
Enter AI-generated content (artificial intelligence). The WordPress theme I wrote this post with offers AI assistance for writing built into the text module. Yes, I tested it. No, I didn't use it and I never do.
Google Downraking AI Generated Content
On March 5, 2024, Google announced it would begin tackling this latest wave of "spammy" content. They stated that they expect a 40% reduction in poor-quality content in their search results.
This update involves refining some of our core ranking systems to help us better understand if webpages are unhelpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries.
AI is not going away. Companies and organizations are using it to generate scaled content for the sole purpose of "gaming Google's search engine." If Google succeeds, real website content managers who care about content will rejoice.
As always, if you are reading this, and want help with this or any other digital marketing topic that I write about, feel free to contact me: https://sierrablue.biz/#contact
As Google published about this . . .
Today, scaled content creation methods are more sophisticated, and whether content is created purely through automation isn't always as clear. To better address these techniques, we’re strengthening our policy to focus on this abusive behavior — producing content at scale to boost search ranking — whether automation, humans or a combination are involved.
2024 Google Metrics
Google Search processes 5.9 million searches per minute.
That's 8.5 billion per day or more than 3 trillion per year.
Accounts for more than 90% of all online searches on the planet.
Accounts for more than 65% of web traffic referrals.
As a web designer whose primary client base is largely composed of small businesses, I often “throw graphic design” in the mix as a value-added service at no additional fee or a nominal fee to keep them on board. Now with AI making huge inroads into the profession, I felt compelled to find out just how much.
When it comes to website search engine optimization, I've been going by "The book," for many years. Honestly, I've owned and managed websites that ranked #1 on Google for terms such as:
Sacramento Concerts
Sacramento Nightlife
Sacramento Dining
Sacramento Shopping
Sacramento Weddings
See the pattern? It's a lot easier to be real and stay local. My websites had tons of content, photos, and even video. I used H1 tags, meta tags, descriptions and my favorite, the famous, but still underused <img> alt Attribute
Since Google pretty much reinvented online search, the "webmaster's bible," as I call it, is the source you should use if you're a DIY kinda person. This section is the one every serious webmaster should know. When I discuss SEO with clients, I keep the outline and essential details of this "book," front-and-center.
Who is this guide for? If you own, manage, monetize, or promote online content via Google Search, this guide is meant for you. You might be the owner of a growing and thriving business, the webmaster of a dozen sites, the SEO specialist in a Web agency or a DIY SEO ninja passionate about the mechanics of Search : this guide is meant for you. If you're interested in having a complete overview of the basics of SEO according to our best practices, you are indeed in the right place. This guide won't provide any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first in Google (sorry!), but following the best practices outlined below will hopefully make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.
My motivation for writing this post came from a full weekend of working on a fairly sizable website that was super-heavy with images. Local photographer Rudy Meyers has been in the business for more than 25 years and is considered by many, THE photographer if you want to put your best foot forward. He wanted to increase his organic search ranking so when we connected for this project, I was more than happy to get involved and help him achieve his goals.
Key Takeaways from the updated Google Bible
Tell Google which pages shouldn't be crawled
Best Practices
For non-sensitive information, block unwanted crawling by using robots.txt
A "robots.txt" file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site. This file, which must be named "robots.txt", is placed in the root directory of your site. It is possible that pages blocked by robots.txt can still be crawled, so for sensitive pages you should use a more secure method.
Create good titles and snippets in search results
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag may appear in the first line of the results (if you're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video).
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.
Use heading tags to emphasize important text
Since heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page, this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.
Use Google's new Search Console
Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site's Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
_ga
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_ga_
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_gat
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
_gac_
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
__utma
ID used to identify users and sessions
2 years after last activity
__utmt
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
SourceBuster is used by WooCommerce for order attribution based on user source.
Name
Description
Duration
sbjs_udata
Information about the visitor’s user agent, such as IP, the browser, and the device type
session
sbjs_first
Traffic origin information for the visitor’s first visit to your store (only applicable if the visitor returns before the session expires)
session
sbjs_current
Traffic origin information for the visitor’s current visit to your store
session
sbjs_first_add
Timestamp, referring URL, and entry page for your visitor’s first visit to your store (only applicable if the visitor returns before the session expires)
session
sbjs_current_add
Timestamp, referring URL, and entry page for your visitor’s current visit to your store
session
sbjs_migrations
Technical data to help with migrations between different versions of the tracking feature
session
sbjs_session
The number of page views in this session and the current page path
30 minutes
Marketing cookies are used to follow visitors to websites. The intention is to show ads that are relevant and engaging to the individual user.
A video-sharing platform for users to upload, view, and share videos across various genres and topics.
Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location.
1 day
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Tries to estimate the users' bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos. Also used for marketing
179 days
PREF
This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
10 years from set/ update
YSC
Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen.
Session
DEVICE_INFO
Used to detect if the visitor has accepted the marketing category in the cookie banner. This cookie is necessary for GDPR-compliance of the website.
179 days
LOGIN_INFO
This cookie is used to play YouTube videos embedded on the website.
