On December 12th, I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to Google’s Search Central Conference in Zurich, hosted by Martin Splitt, Googlebot whisperer at the Search Relations team, together with Googlers John Mueller, Daniel Waisberg, Irena Tuduce, plus community talks by Judith Lewis and Giacomo Zecchini. Here’s 4 key takeaways from the half-day event that SEOs should know as we enter 2025.
AI-first content production is not the future
The view from the Google search advocate team is “hopefully not”. While there is no issue with AI assisting with content creation, nothing can replace human to human interaction, which being reliant on AI can remove. Users can easily recognise AI generated content, and so can Google.
Most importantly, publishers need to understand the goals of their audience, which AI without human oversight cannot do. Brands that generate hundreds of thousands of pages without considering what real value these pages bring may be on a slippery slope.
Using generative AI to create code is really cool, using it to just pump out millions of pages, you’re going to run into problems
John Mueller
Expect more core updates, more often
Despite an already highly volatile search paradigm, webmasters should be expecting more core updates, not less, in the coming months and years. Danny Sullivan revealed via video link that the thinking behind this was that Google is always improving it’s systems, so if an update is ready, why wait to release it? In time, Google updates will become routine and continuous. The potential silver lining there for webmasters and marketers is that these Google algorithm updates are no longer seen as major events.
How should marketers respond? Be sure to check Google’s guidelines for creating helpful, reliable and people-first content – this should serve as your guiding principles for creating any content you want to rank in organic search.
Leveraging Product Variants to increase product indexation in Google
Google is always evolving how it presents eCommerce data to users, which was the subject of Irena Tuduce’s talk. She shared how the product variants snippet, launched in February 2024, can help customers find product variations including colour, size, material, pattern, age or gender directly in search results, matching users with more relevant products.
Businesses also benefit from leveraging snippet features, including the case study below showing how eCommerce brands can get more of their products indexed in search by leveraging Product Group Schema.
Irina also shared how structured data types would be expanded further in 2025, for example by surfacing loyalty programmes and special pricing in search, or highlighting special returns policies or shipping methods exclusive to loyalty programme members.
Understanding the difference between Google Analytics and Google Search Console Data
Daniel Waisberg touched on a subject that I often hear from marketing partners, which is why is there a discrepancy between Google Analytics session data and number of clicks reported in Google Search Console. To start, it’s important to know that the two data sets are sourced in completely different ways – Search Console data is recorded on Google’s end, while Google Analytics is tracked on your own site using cookies. Straight away, we can see that these two tools measure different things, and those differences can get extrapolated if your site has implementation issues with it’s Analytics tagging. Next is the fact that your Analytics can be set up with your local time zone whereas Search Console is not, which can lead to discrepancies. And finally, Analytics can be configured with various filters, while Search Console has no filtering options – not even bot-traffic exclusions.
Ultimately, it’s important for marketers to use the two platforms as separate tools that measure different things. Google Analytics is about how people use your site, with key metrics including users, sessions and events. Meanwhile, Search Console is about how users find your site, specifically from Google Search. Key metrics here are impressions, clicks and position.
December 2024 Core Update Launch
Danny also used his session to announce the launch of the December Core Algorithm Update. It looks like Dani jinxed it after all.
Christmas Markets and post-conference drinks
With the talks wrapped up, there was a chance to network with other attendees, meeting old and new friends and colleagues, before a few of us headed over to Sechseläutenplatz for raclette and gluwein at the Christmas markets.
All in all, a great conference to hear directly from Googlers about how they see the future of search, plus a chance to ask questions directly to those in the know.