Search news roundup: October 21

What’s been happening in search, content and social media this month?

Welcome back to our monthly recap of the most significant news and events to emerge from the digital marketing space over the last few weeks. This at-a-glance catch up ensures you always have your finger on the pulse of the most topical developments, ready to feed in to your SEO, web design and content marketing projects or assist with client questions. Read on to get caught up…

Google search results more volatile than ever study confirms

If you’ve been working on SEO campaigns for clients and have been frustrated about just how hit and miss the Google search results are when checking out rankings, this could explain the reason why.

According to research carried out by SEMrush, there has been much more rankings volatility across the board in 2021. SEMrush categorises this as a 68% increase in volatility on desktop results since 2020 and an even higher 85% growth for mobile results.

The data shows that the frequency and intensity of ranking ups and downs has also ratcheted up, meaning you might well have found yourself tearing your hair out much more often when checking ranking reports this year!

There’s more on this data here.

Clarification issued on what ‘lowest quality content’ looks like

Low quality content is something no search marketer aspires too but, it’s often hard to know exactly what sends your creations into the scrap heap. This month Google updated its Search Quality Rater guidelines and has expanded on what makes it flag up content as being of poor quality.

It says low quality content will not have expertise or authority and if the content appears to have been created without “adequate time, effort, expertise, or talent/skill.” A page may also be classed as low content if there isn’t enough content on the page or, if there are distractions such as too many pop up ads.

The full 172-page guidelines can be accessed here.



Infinite scroll rolled out on mobile

The vast majority of English language searches carried out on mobile will now be served up with continuous scroll – which means that search users can simply scroll and scroll, without having to click ‘see more’ at the end of each page of search results.

This is something Google first tested as far back as 2011 so it’s an update that has been in the pipeline for an extended period of time. Some experts believe that this might have an impact on click through rates from search, as it makes it easier for users to carry on scrolling. The upside of this is that if you aren’t ranking on page one, you now have a better shot at picking up search traffic as the user will see you listing more easily. The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.