December 2024 Google SERP Updates

Welcome to the first edition of Not Another Update! Let’s kick things off by exploring some key themes and observations in the current SERP landscape. The following data is based on a Google mobile SERP snapshot (US) captured the week of December 9th, 2024.

1. A Crowded SERP

Long gone are the days of only seeing ads and ten traditional blue links. Your SEO strategy will need to evolve along with the rapid changes we are seeing in the search result page. Take ecommerce for example. In the dataset we monitor, organic listings (aka blue links) accounted for 59% of top ten absolute positions in mobile search results.

A significant portion of the remaining SERP real estate is occupied by a mix of refinement and shopping-focused features. Notably, popular products have been gaining prominence as Google continues to enhance its shopping capabilities. Although these product grids account for only 12% of the absolute top ten SERP positions, a closer look reveals that they frequently rank highly, occupying as much as 30% of the number one SERP positions.

2. Challenges for independent creators

Since the launch of the Helpful Content Update (HCU) and the rise of Reddit, there’s been ongoing discussions about Google not delivering on its promises to surface authentic, helpful content. Many independent creators faced significant performance challenges when the HCU went live and haven’t seen meaningful recoveries with subsequent algorithm updates.

We had a look at three specific niches with strong independent creator communities: travel guides, product reviews, and cooking recipes. The outcome wasn’t particularly surprising.

Product review niche

As expected, large media and newspaper sites, along with forums (primarily Reddit), accounted for the majority of organic visibility, with respective shares of voice at 50% and 20%. Large media sites include prominent names such as The New York Times, CNET, and Good Housekeeping. Independent creators accounted for just 13% of the share of voice in the top 10 organic rankings. For clarity, one of the main ways we differentiated media sites from independent creators was by checking if they had a parent company.

Travel guide niche (things to do, places to visit, etc.)

The upper-funnel space within travel presents a similar outlook, with independent creators accounting for just 11% of the top 10 organic share of voice. However, the SERP is more diverse, with similar visibility levels among official tourism organizations, media and newspaper sites, and major travel platforms like Tripadvisor.

Cooking niche

Interestingly, the cooking niche presents an entirely different picture, as it is largely driven by independent creators, who account for 53% of the top 10 organic share of voice. An interesting comparison would be to examine this against the share of voice breakdown in the recipe carousel, which appeared in 19% of the top 10 SERP positions for recipe keywords. We, unfortunately, don’t have this data yet but will aim to capture it in future updates!

3. Importance of branded search

If you haven’t already, be sure to watch this excellent presentation by Mark Williams-Cook. One topic he covers is the site quality score. According to the patent Mark references, site quality score could be interpreted as a brand measurement score, as it incorporates criteria such as the number of times a website is searched for alongside other search terms. We don’t know to what extent, if any, the content in the patent is being used by today’s ranking systems. However, it certainly makes sense and could be scalable, given the vast amount of data Google has access to.

Now let’s go back to a point made earlier regarding the challenges that independent creators face. Generally speaking, independent creators don’t have a strong brand presence, so I was curious to see how certain creators were able to dominate their respective verticals, even when competing against larger media brands. One of the sites I looked into is Love and Lemons, who are absolutely thriving in the non-branded space of cooking recipes.

There are plenty of surface-level evidence that points to Love and Lemons having a strong brand presence, such as its large social media following and highly-rated cookbook. What it doesn’t seem to have, however, is a strong volume of branded searches—at least according to 3rd party tools like SEMrush. Not many users on Google are searching for terms like “Love and Lemons recipes” or “Love and Lemons salads.” 99% of their organic search traffic is estimated to come from non-branded keywords.

What I noticed, though, is another brand in the fashion space with almost the same name, “For Love and Lemons.” While this fashion brand has much smaller organic visibility, it does get a lot of branded searches from keywords like “For Love and Lemons.” When comparing both domains, I found it interesting that the trended view of organic keyword count shows similar directional trends for both.

I admit I’m clutching at straws here and anyone who does a proper deep dive may easily debunk what I’m about to suggest. But is there a remote possibility that the branded search growth of “For Love and Lemons” (the fashion brand) in recent years could be indirectly benefiting the cooking recipes domain? Of course, ranking algorithms are never this one-dimensional so this would only make sense if branded searches did have a significant influence on today’s ranking systems.