Another year in SEO has flown by. While 2023 may have been the wildest year in SEO ever, 2024 was not far behind – with perhaps two of the biggest stories in the history of SEO.
Note: This article doesn’t include any stories related to Google algorithm updates. Barry Schwartz wrote a separate recap on that, which will publish Dec. 26.
15. R.I.P., Google cache link
For years, the cache link in the Google Search results snippets was a de facto tool for many SEOs and searchers. That all changed in February. Google decided to retire it and officially remove the cache link.
14. Reddit-Google
Reddit had a heck of a year, greatly accelerated by an incredible surge of organic visibility in Google search results. And by sheer coincidence (surely), Reddit and Google struck a content licensing deal in February.
13. New insights into how Google ranks content
Mark Williams-Cook uncovered a Google endpoint, revealing over 2,000 properties used to classify queries and websites. We got new insights into scoring, query types, and site quality metrics – and unprecedented clarity into how Google Search works. This discovery is right up there with our Number 1 story and is only Number 13 because it happened so late in the year and hasn’t accumulated as many views as our other stories.
12. ChatGPT tries to change the search paradigm
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was pretty clear that he wanted to figure out search earlier this year. Rumors persisted, until we finally got a new prototype, called SearchGPT. Finally, in October, ChatGPT search launched for paid users. ChatGPT search opened up to all ChatGPT users this month.
11. Google leadership changes
Liz Reid, who was leading up core search experiences, was promoted to the Head of Search at Google in March. Later, Prabhakar Raghavan, who was villainized as being the man who killed Yahoo and Google search, exited his role as leader of search and ads to become chief technologist in October.
10. Organic traffic predicted to drop by 25%
Gartner made headlines with this prediction: “By 2026, traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.”
9. Google’s imaginary market share slip
Google experienced an unbelievable drop in market share in April, according to StatCounter. And when I say “unbelievable,” that’s because I didn’t believe Google took a massive at the expense of Microsoft Bing and Yahoo. In fact, it turned out that the data was wrong. But it was a hot story for a hot minute.
8. Links still matter
We’ve heard a lot from Google about how links matter less and aren’t a top ranking signal. Well, it turns out that 96% of websites ranking in the top 10 of Google had more than 1,000 backlinks from unique domains – at least according to a study by Internet Marketing Ninjas.
7. Mobile-first indexing (the end?)
Google told us in June that, starting after July 5, Google would crawl and index sites with only Googlebot Smartphone. That meant Google would no longer index or rank any sites that were not accessible using a mobile device.
6. New zero-click search data
Zero-click search results are not new. But we got some new data from the latest Rand Fishkin zero-click search study. Of note: Google searches end without a click 60% of the time; almost 30% of clicks go to Google’s properties; and about 36% of clicks go to the open web.
5. Semrush acquires Search Engine Land
Semrush, the leading online visibility management and content marketing SaaS platform, acquired Third Door Media, our parent company, on Oct. 16. In addition to Search Engine Land, Semrush acquired all of Third Door Media’s brands (SMX, MarTech, and Digital Marketing Depot).
4. Google Search penalties
One day after releasing its new search spam policies, including the March 2024 spam and core updates, Google began penalizing websites. Some sites were completely or partially de-listed from Google’s search results.
3. Google AI Overviews: Rise, fall, and rise again
Google started testing AI Overviews (formerly known as Search Generative Experience) in March. AI Overviews officially launched in May. What followed was a bit of a PR scandal, as Google’s AI-generated answers told searchers to eat rocks and drink urine, among other things. That led to a massive but temporary pullback in the presence of AI Overviews in search results. Google has since expanded the presence of AI Overviews in many sectors.
In June, Google announced it would bring back paginated results. The continuous scroll user experience, where Google loaded more results as you scroll past the first page of the search results, would become a thing of the past. Continuous scroll launched in Google mobile search in October 2021 and on desktop in December 2022.
1. Google’s Content API Warehouse leak
The biggest story of the year – and perhaps the biggest SEO story of all time. Michael King and Fishkin broke the news of a huge leak that gave us a glimpse into how Google’s ranking algorithm may work. Of note, the documents revealed how Google Search is using, or has used, clicks, links, content, entities, Chrome data and more for ranking.
