Google Recap: November 2024

Google has announced the November 2024 Core Update

In mid-November, Google announced that it was releasing the new November 2024 Core Update. The aim is to continue the team’s work to improve the quality of search results to show more content that users find helpful.

Google with new best practices in crawl budget documentation

Google has updated its crawl budget documentation. The team clarifies some key points about the links in a site’s mobile and desktop versions.

Google strongly recommends to ensure the same set of links on both desktop and mobile versions, especially if you use separate HTML for each of those versions. In case this is not possible, make sure that all important URLs are included in the sitemap file.

The company added that Googlebot indexes primarily the mobile version of the page. If some of the URLs on the desktop version are missing on the mobile version, it can slow down and make it harder to discover new pages.

When to create separate domains and subdomains?

SEO experts often wonder when it is really necessary and makes sense to host images and other types of content on separate domains or subdomains.

Google’s John Mueller answered this question. He wrote that if Google’s bots can’t crawl as much as they want for technical reasons, this type of load splitting would make sense. This is appropriate for any type of static content.

He added that most sites don’t need to split their content across multiple domains or subdomains. This does not mean that the site will be crawled more often or that more frequent crawling will result in improved SERP rankings.

The Google team shares helpful tips for Version history pages

Version history pages contain historical data about the page, such as product releases, specifications, APIs, and other version history.

John Mueller shared some best practices to follow. In short, if your site has versions such as APIs, specifications, or annual releases, it is highly recommended that you use the same URL for the current version and then archive the older version history details to a URL that acts as an archive page.

As an example, he used the Google Ads API “Release notes” page, which shows everything up-to-date in the current version, with older versions archived at different URLs.

Google Search supports C2PA metadata

The Google team shared that Google Search now supports C2PA metadata for the About this image feature.

The company has updated its Image metadata in Google Images documentation and added a new section on how this kind of metadata can appear in Google search results.

The team describes that if an image contains C2PA metadata, Google will be able to extract details such as how the image was created, whether artificial intelligence was used for editing and other information.

C2PA stands for the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. It addresses the spread of misleading information online by developing technical standards to authenticate the source and history of media content.

Is it worth to focus too much on URL structure?

Another hot topic for many businesses and experts in the SEO niche is whether URL structure is that important for SEO?

John Mueller shared his observations about how too many experts focus on URL structure. He emphatically stated that if the context of a page is not clear, whatever changes you make to the URL structure will not improve the performance of that page.

In short, he advises the following few things:

• Avoid making unnecessary changes to the URL structure: from an SEO point of view, this will affect for a certain period, as the bots will need time to recrawl again and reprocess all the affected pages;
• Think primarily about users: what do they want to see, does this page provide value, and is it clear what its purpose is. Nowadays, a huge percentage of users do not look at the URL structure.

Of course, a well-constructed URL structure is helpful for grouping, analysis, and the overall site, but it’s not the most important thing to focus on.

Google Trends: what does the company advise?

The process of planning topics for your blog and creating content requires creativity and detailed research. The content should answer users’ important questions, be attractive, provide additional value, and provide comprehensive information on a certain subject.

Tools like Google Trends show what users are searching for in real-time. It allows you to explore how much interest there is in a certain topic, in a certain place and at a certain time.

Regarding this tool, John Mueller shared some tips on how to use it. He said that it should not be completely relied on and it is not necessary to create new posts that cover all the possible phrases that users are searching for. He reminded us that the goal is to add value, not repeat what others have said already.

To this statement, Glenn Gabe added that one should also be careful with People Also Asked, which John Mueller also confirmed in a comment below the post. Glenn Gabe said he thinks this data is great for reference, research and analysis, but not every single one should be acted upon.

Google has dropped the Page Experience report in the Google Search Console

In November, the Google team announced that it was removing the Page Experience report in the Google Search Console. Its purpose was to summarize data from two other reports, Core Web Vitals and HTTPS. Those are both still available.

The company is dropping this report to reduce clutter in the Search Console and make it easier and cleaner to navigate and access the information you need.

Does Google use separate ranking signals on a site and page level?

The Google team has updated the Google Search ranking systems documentation to clarify something very important.

The company says its ranking systems are designed to work on a page level. For this purpose, they use different systems and signals to understand how to rank individual pages. However, the search engine also uses site-wide signals, which in turn help to better understand the pages.

The Google team specifies that having good site-wide signals does not mean that all content will improve in rankings, nor that a few weak signals will adversely affect the entire site.

Google supports Product variant structured data

Mark Williams-Cook, an SEO expert, shared a tip on LinkedIn for indexing and ranking product variations. He said it’s good to use product variant structured data when product variations exist. He noticed a new feature that shows how product variations can be visualized as rich results.