Authority Hacker Podcast – AI & Automation for Small biz & Marketers #334 - March Core Update Analysis with Lily Ray
21 snips
Apr 8, 2024 
Prominent SEO expert Lily Ray discusses the impact of the recent Google core update. They cover visibility changes, Reddit and Quora in search results, HCU discrepancies, and new Google importance signals. Examples of rule-breaking are also shared, making it an insightful listen.
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Organic Visibility Tools Miss New SERP Features
- Search results now include many non-organic features (SGE, ads, product cards) so organic visibility tools underreport true exposure.
- Lily says you often must scroll past SGE and ads to find organic links, so tools like Ahrefs miss traffic losses caused by SERP layout changes.
Same Content, Different Domains, Different Outcomes
- A site owner with multiple sites in the same vertical saw identical content perform differently across sites after the update.
- The owner moved content between sites and noticed content that failed on one domain ranked fine on another, implying domain-level effects.
HCU Language Shift Creates Ambiguity
- Google changed HCU wording: it now emphasizes page-level evaluation but still admits site-level signals, creating ambiguity.
- Lily notes Google is baking helpfulness into core ranking and dismantled the clear site-wide classifier language.