By: Sophie Allen Dec 17/2024
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As the year draws to a close and we look back to see which of our predictions for digital marketing in 2024 came true, we thought we’d shake things up a bit. Rather than a typical digital marketing year in review, we’ve instead focused on the many updates Google made in 2024. From Core Updates that caused volatility and rank drops to various AI-related snafus, not all moves from Google this year were a success.
For the sake of keeping this quick and concise (unlike Google’s switch to mobile-first indexing), we’ve narrowed down our list of what Google’s been up to this year to our top six wins, peeves, and somewhere-in-betweens. Keep reading for Snaptech’s list of Google’s hits and misses for 2024.
Hit – Performance Max Updates
Though initially rolled out at the end of 2021, Performance Max (PMax) was significantly improved in 2024 with updates focusing on user control, creative tools, and reporting, including:
- Control Enhancements: Introduced account-level negative keywords, campaign-level brand exclusions, and page feeds for improved targeting and relevance.
- AI-Powered Creativity: Rolled out advanced asset generation and editing tools using the Imagen 2 model, enabling high-quality visuals and streamlined ad creation.
- Enhanced Reporting: Added asset-level conversion tracking and detailed YouTube placement insights, offering advertisers granular data for optimization.
While these features boosted functionality, they also introduced increased complexity, and occasional AI targeting mismatches highlighted areas needing improvement.
Miss – Google 3rd Party Ad Reps
Google outsources many accounts to 3rd party ad representatives that shuffle clients every quarter, creating inconsistency and wasting agency time when getting in touch regarding clients. Agencies feel these reps are simply trying to upsell and complete a checklist, making recommendations that push specific features rather than recommendations that would help the account. They also dip out once initial contact has been made and are hard to get ahold of. If this sounds like your worst nightmare, the savvy Google Ads specialists at Snaptech can help navigate this challenge for you to ensure your ads are performing their best.
Hit & Miss – The Google Leak
The Google leak in June was a hit for SEOs as it revealed crucial insights about Google’s ranking systems, providing us with a clearer understanding of the algorithms and practices. Here are the major takeaways from the leak:
User Engagement Metrics: Metrics like dwell time and bounce rate influence rankings, emphasizing the importance of engaging content.
Homepage Authority: Similar to domain authority, this metric highlights the impact of a strong homepage with quality backlinks and diverse content.
Fresh Content Prioritization: Google’s “Query Deserves Freshness” (QDF) boosts newer content on time-sensitive topics, reminding SEOs to update our material regularly.
Human Raters and E-E-A-T: Google still uses human evaluators and remains focused on expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness to stress high-quality content creation.
Technical SEO Reinforcement: Elements like mobile optimization, site speed, and structured data remain foundational for rankings.
While these insights affirm existing strategies and highlight areas of improvement for SEOs, the miss is with Google, who was essentially caught out with their laundry on display, having previously told SEOs that certain metrics were not ranking factors when the leak proved that they were.
Hit – Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Update
In May, Google rolled out their Site Reputation Abuse update and cracked down on Parasite SEO, starting with manual actions (Google staff reviewing websites and deciding if they should undergo a manual action or be removed from the search index) and following up with algorithmic actions (if a site fails to meet quality signals based on algorithmic rules, it will automatically drop in rankings or lose visibility). Parasite SEO is when low-quality content is mixed in with content on another website to take advantage of the host site’s higher ranking in search engines.
This update was a huge hit for marketers as it reinforced a level playing field in the search engine results. Sites exploiting their established authority to rank low-quality or third-party content were targeted, allowing the update to encourage transparency and quality. Marketers who focused on producing authentic, valuable content were rewarded with better visibility, free from manipulation by competitors relying on exploitative tactics. Google’s measures also improved search relevance and user satisfaction, creating a healthier digital marketing ecosystem for compliant brands and content creators.
Miss – AI Overviews
Google’s launch of AI Overviews was a huge miss for marketers and basically anyone looking for accurate answers to their search queries. AI Overviews are the latest search feature in Google, providing users with AI-generated answers to their queries and appearing above all other search results. These answers are generated using information from various web sources to give users quick answers to their queries. While this sounds like a great idea, here’s why it’s a miss:
Cannibalization of Clicks: Having the answer readily available on the SERPs reduces the need for users to visit the original source. This can lead to a decline in organic traffic, negatively affecting ad revenue, lead generation opportunities, and insights from user behaviour analytics.
Loss of Brand Awareness and Trust: While AI Overviews can share links to their sources, they aren’t always clearly displayed, causing businesses to lose the chance to build credibility and brand recognition. This reduces the website’s authority and long-term trust-building efforts.
Risk of Inaccuracies Damaging Credibility: If AI Overviews misrepresent or oversimplify information, it could reflect poorly on the sources cited–even when it’s the AI that is at fault. This can lead to businesses facing reputational damage for mistakes they didn’t make.
Negative Impact on Marketing Analytics: As marketers, we rely on click-through rates, time on site, and other analytics to refine our strategies. Without users visiting the site, this data becomes sparse or skewed and impairs our ability to understand user intent and behaviour as well as optimize for future campaigns.
Conflict with E-A-T Principles: Despite Google emphasizing that Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness are important to the algorithm, AI Overviews undermines this by favouring brevity over depth and context. This paradox creates tension as businesses are encouraged to invest in high-quality content that AI Overviews can bypass entirely.
Loss of Advertising and Affiliate Revenue: For bloggers, niche content creators, and smaller publishers relying on ads or affiliate links embedded within their content, AI Overviews taking away visits from their site can cause a loss in revenue.
Ethical and Legal Implications: AI Overviews may use proprietary content without clear permission, raising questions about copyright infringement or fair use.
Hit & Miss – Google Phasing Out Cookies
Since the initial announcement in 2020 to phase out third-party cookies on Chrome, Google has been continuously pushing back the date when third-party cookies will be gone for good. In July of this year, Google announced it was abandoning the phaseout entirely, instead giving Chrome users new privacy control options. However, as of the end of October, it looks as if Google is simply delaying the phaseout until early 2025. This is allegedly to develop more effective privacy alternatives like the Privacy Sandbox that balances users’ privacy with advertising needs.
We’ve marked this as both a hit and a miss largely because of the will-they-won’t-they of the decision. This flip-flopping impacts both users’ and marketers’ trust in Google, which is largely a miss for Google. For users, these delays suggest Google’s lack of commitment to privacy and an unwillingness to prioritize user interests over its ad business. For marketers, the back-and-forth creates challenges in planning when and how to adapt to new systems. If third-party cookies were phased out, it would be a hit for users and their ability to control their privacy options, and it could result in a hit for marketers as they adapt to new targeting methods and focus more on collecting first-party data.
We at Snaptech mostly feel that phasing out third-party cookies is a miss as we’ve already prepared the eulogy for cookies, and quite frankly, it’s an excellent read.
The Year in Review
Thank you for joining us for another year of appeasing the Google gods. Despite the challenges we as marketers faced with some of these updates, Google remains focused on user experience, user privacy, and providing helpful content in the SERPs. While this may vex us in terms of being able to track user behaviour for our client’s websites, it is helping us to grow and adapt to new strategies and, ultimately, become better marketers.
We predict that in 2025, Google will continue to refine its AI tools while simultaneously providing mixed messages about ranking factors. They may even finally phase out cookies, and when that happens, we’ll be ready with a killer eulogy and Cookie Monster on speed dial to offer our condolences. We’ll also be right here, ready to report on the essential marketing updates you need to know about. For now, the team at Snaptech wishes you a safe and happy holiday season, and we’ll see you in the new year.
If you find Google too confusing and want to hire someone else to handle your marketing for you, give the team with slightly more patience in dealing with them a call!