Google's Summer Updates Shake Up Local Search, and Rich Snippets

As Digital marketers, the Avanti team spends a lot of time in search engine land but more specifically, following and measuring traditional organic search results. Over the past months, there have been shake-ups to search engine results pages - and when we talk about search engines, we’re referring to the powerhouse Google.

In case you haven’t heard, Google has come out with an update called Pigeon, which for the most part has affected how Google uses and determines a searcher's location. 

Since updates and changes are a constant with Google, here are three other things that have also been rolled out over the past summer.

Authorship Tags

Many people were disappointed to see this go, myself included. As an author myself, I worked hard on getting that authorship tag and always thought it added credibility when my picture came up for "The Vizrt Book" in search results. Google disagreed,

The announcement from Google (see below) notes a change, but nowhere does it state a complete loss of authorship credit.

Video Thumbnails

But wait, it gets better. Not long after the authorship drop, there was a shake-up in video results as well with Google dropping non-YouTube video thumbnails. Sure, some still remain in organic search but the drop has been significant. We’ve always noticed a variation in video thumbnails from day to day but the loss of video thumbnails since July has been significant. Still, the research is not yet complete to determine if the change indicates a removal of video thumbnails altogether or just a drop in video results overall. Or could it be Google is questioning the value, and validity of the rich snippets they promoted? Make up your mind Google.

In-Depth Gets More In-Depth

In-depth articles seem to be gaining traction in search results. According to Google, the goal is to show high-quality, detailed content to help searchers learn about a subject. In-Depth articles appear in search results, usually for very broad and generic terms, for example, “physics”. It seems there might be some favoritism towards major brands (NY Times) because of the authority of their online presence and the trustworthiness of their content.

The Takeaway

Even though visibility and lots of traffic are good (at least online) it does not always mean sales conversions for a business. Creating customer-focused, quality call-to-action content that helps guide your prospects on their buyers' journey, will have the the greatest impact on your content marketing efforts.