Hey friend!

If you don’t have time to read everything here, let the biggest takeaway be that Google’s rolled out a new core update in the last week. 

It’s expected to take up to two weeks to complete—which brings us to right before Black Friday. Not great for e-commerce SEOs, so fingers crossed this shake-up won’t be as drastic as previous updates. 

Have you seen any big changes in your site or a client’s over the last week? Let us know with a reply.

–Thenuka

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What’s new in AI and content?

🔍 Google’s November 2024 core update is underway

Last Monday, Google began rolling out its November 2024 core update, which is expected to complete within two weeks. As with previous core updates, it aims to “improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.” All that to say that Google hasn’t announced any specific changes about what elements are being prioritized or adjusted in the algorithm—it’s the same kind of language used for other updates. Google’s advice to content creators then? Focus on producing people-first, reliable content, and don’t expect major recovery if your site was affected by the September 2023 helpful content update.

• What this means for SEO: Expect fluctuations in your rankings over the next week or so—volatility is par for the course with any core update. However, according to one early report, movement has been quite slow so far, with a relatively small number of sites being affected compared to previous updates.

🌐 SEO advice from John Mueller on URL structure and Google Trends for content ideas

Two pieces of SEO advice from Google’s John Mueller: First, no need to obsess over URL structure. While a clear URL structure can help with tracking and user experience, it won’t improve content clarity or ranking if the content itself lacks context. This came up on LinkedIn after someone asked about restructuring a site. John advises simply, “Make a useful structure. Make it easy for you to monitor. Make it helpful for users, if you want.”

Second, in a new video from Google, Mueller cautioned against over-relying on Google Trends for content ideas. “You don't have to create pages to cover every possible related search term,” he says. “Be selective, focus on your own expertise, focus on your users.” Overall, his advice centers on meaningful content creation over technical optimization or excessive keyword targeting. Create content that adds unique value rather than repeating what’s already available online.

• What this means for SEO: All in all, Mueller’s guidance highlights a shift in SEO toward prioritizing content value over technical tweaks, such as URL structure, and overly aggressive trend-based strategies. Don’t create content just to have content. Think about what your target audience is actually looking for and what unique insight or opinion you can contribute about it.

🛒 Perplexity introduces ads to its platform

Perplexity, another big player in the AI and content space, has begun testing ads on its U.S. search results. It’s starting with “sponsored follow-up questions” displayed alongside answers, which are clearly marked as “sponsored.” Sponsored answers are AI-generated rather than brand-scripted, though Perplexity’s announcement emphasizes that this ads rollout is an experiment—meaning this format could very well change. Early ad partners include companies like Indeed, Whole Foods, and Universal McCann, with Perplexity positioning its ad product as a premium alternative to Google’s.

• What this means for SEO: This is an interesting development given that many of Perplexity’s ad-averse users switched from Google partly to avoid ads. Maybe as a way to avoid drawing comparisons, Perplexity notes, “While brands are keen on understanding how their companies appear in AI answer engines like ours, we will avoid duplicating the SEO industry where people are implementing arbitrary tactics to improve their rankings at the expense of user utility.” This is reflected in the fact that Perplexity’s “sponsored follow-up” format offers a more targeted and engaging ad experience that complements user intent. Could be worth exploring down the line from both an organic and paid standpoint, especially if more users shift to Perplexity over Google.

Expert Insights

📄 Ann Smarty: “These days, we’re all losing traffic, regardless of how big of a brand we are.”

SEO expert Ann Smarty recently joined Clearscope founder Bernard Huang for a live content teardown looking at audience-submitted sites. As she reviews the sites, Ann’s candid feedback offers sharp insight on the state of SEO today. For instance, she shares that Google’s helpful content update remains a black box: “There are no tactical solutions to the helpful content update. … It’s probably AI-driven—that’s why Googlers do not have those answers [on how to recover from it].” This doesn’t mean SEO is obsolete, though. As Bernard points out, though traffic is declining, leads and conversions are increasing. Rather than aiming for traffic, he suggests focusing on “content that targets buyer personas in the right places in their search journeys.”

>> Watch the teardown

Playbooks & Guides

🧠 Why E-A-T became E-E-A-T—and why it matters for programmatic SEO

Google’s famous E-A-T acronym, a key framework for creating SEO content that ranks well, became E-E-A-T at the end of 2022. Representing Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, Google uses E-E-A-T to evaluate content quality, placing high value on creators with real-world experience and credentials. We explain the reasoning behind the newly added E and how it relates to content creation for sensitive "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) topics like health and finance in our latest guide.

>> Find out more