Search Results

Jamie Indigo isn’t a robot but speaks bot. As a technical SEO, they study how search engines crawl, render, and index. They love to tame wild JavaScript and optimize rendering strategies. When not working, Jamie likes horror movies, graphic novels, and D&D. Jamie Indigo 100% Human Technical SEO Jamie Indigo isn’t a robot but speaks bot. As a technical SEO, they study how search engines crawl, render, and index. They love to tame wild JavaScript and optimize rendering strategies. When not working, Jamie likes horror movies, graphic novels, and D&D. Articles & Resources 20 Jul 2023 Core Web Vitals: Real user metrics vs. Lab data Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Krystal Taing is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall. She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU. She helps brands at managing hybrid customer experiences. Krystal Taing Global Director of Pre-Sales Solutions, Uberall Krystal Taing is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall. She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU. She helps brands at managing hybrid customer experiences. Articles & Resources 24 Feb 2026 How to use Uberall on your Wix & Wix Studio websites 1 May 2025 The Digital Markets Act (DMA): What agencies should know about its impact on search 17 Dec 2024 Tactical local SEO for service area businesses 18 Jun 2024 BOPUS: How local businesses can get started with buy online, pick up in-store 15 Aug 2023 How to get your business on Apple Maps 3 Jan 2023 How to select the perfect GBP category for your business 27 Jul 2022 Local SEO 101: An introduction Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

With over eight years of experience, Tomás Nápoles works with different brands to drive their growth by generating inbound leads via strategic content marketing and optimizing sales and partner processes to enhance engagement and revenue. Tomás Nápoles SaaS Growth and Digital Marketing Consultant With over eight years of experience, Tomás Nápoles works with different brands to drive their growth by generating inbound leads via strategic content marketing and optimizing sales and partner processes to enhance engagement and revenue. Articles & Resources 10 Dec 2024 Seasonal SEO for local business: Leverage search demand for holidays and annual trends Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Itamar Blauer is the senior SEO director at StudioHawk, a specialist SEO agency. He is an SEO trainer, speaker, author, and host of the "SEO Unplugged" podcast, sharing tips and case studies across various SEO topics. Itamar Blauer Senior SEO Director at StudioHawk Itamar Blauer is the senior SEO director at StudioHawk, a specialist SEO agency. He is an SEO trainer, speaker, author, and host of the SEO Unplugged podcast, sharing tips and case studies across various SEO topics. Articles & Resources 11 Jul 2023 Evergreen SEO tactics for SMBs: From setup to maintenance Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Jamar Ramos is a 10-year digital marketing veteran with SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing experience. He enjoys writing, playing volleyball, and fighting back against anyone who claims that Shakespeare isn't the greatest writer to ever put pen to paper. Jamar Ramos Content Marketer Jamar Ramos is a 10-year digital marketing veteran with SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing experience. He enjoys writing, playing volleyball, and fighting back against anyone who claims that Shakespeare isn't the greatest writer to ever put pen to paper. Articles & Resources 20 Apr 2023 How to hire an SEO agency 26 Jan 2023 SEO and digital marketing for small business: A quick start guide Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Akvile DeFazio is the president of AKvertise, an award winning social media advertising agency. With 16 years of experience, she works with eCommerce, lead gen, event, and entertainment clients to reach their goals through future-forward strategies. Akvile DeFazio President at AKvertise Akvile DeFazio is the president of AKvertise , an award winning social media advertising agency. With 16 years of experience, she works with eCommerce, lead gen, event, and entertainment clients to reach their goals through future-forward strategies. Articles & Resources 6 Jun 2024 Meta Ads for eCommerce: Tactics to increase sales Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Where do we stand with AI overviews on the SERP? What does the data show and what doesn't it show?  How are these overviews reshaping the search results by including more sources, introducing subtopics beyond the main SERP content, and why do certain sites consistently appear in these overviews while others don’t? And let’s not forget the all-important question: How stable are those URLs in AI overviews, and what does it mean for your SEO strategy?33 Wix Studio’s dynamic duo, Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, team up with Mark Traphagen from seoClarity to break down the intricacies of Google’s AI Overviews.  Plus, Rich Singer’s eye-opening study on the overlap between organic search results and AI-Overview comes under the microscope, along with juicy details and practical tips for staying ahead.  Plus, learn how to sift the SERP’s most recent feature and track AI Overviews!  So join us as we summarize the AI summaries on the SERP and sum up what it all means for your SEO practices on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back Where are we at with AI Overviews? Where do we stand with AI overviews on the SERP? What does the data show and what doesn't it show? How are these overviews reshaping the search results by including more sources, introducing subtopics beyond the main SERP content, and why do certain sites consistently appear in these overviews while others don’t? And let’s not forget the all-important question: How stable are those URLs in AI overviews, and what does it mean for your SEO strategy?33 Wix Studio’s dynamic duo, Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, team up with Mark Traphagen from seoClarity to break down the intricacies of Google’s AI Overviews. Plus, Rich Singer’s eye-opening study on the overlap between organic search results and AI-Overview comes under the microscope, along with juicy details and practical tips for staying ahead. Plus, learn how to sift the SERP’s most recent feature and track AI Overviews! So join us as we summarize the AI summaries on the SERP and sum up what it all means for your SEO practices on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 106 | October 16, 2024 | 39 MIN 00:00 / 39:54 This week’s guests Mark Traphagen Mark Traphagen is Vice President of Product Marketing and Training for seoClarity. His previous careers as a salesman and then a teacher were excellent preparations for what he does now. Mark's deep dive into online marketing began about 14 years ago when he was tasked with turning around a failing independent bookstore. He took the store online and developed practices of content marketing, influencer relationships, exceptional customer service, and community building that brought the store to profitability in two years. Since that time he has dedicated himself to learning what really works for online business success. He is a sought after speaker at conferences such as PubCon, State of Search, and SMX, and a featured writer for major online publications such as the Moz Blog, Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and a VIP Columnist for Search Engine Journal. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head SEO brand here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredibly uncompromisingly unparalleled head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: That was very kind of you to say, thank you, and yeah, you too. Mordy Oberstein: You're welcome. Crystal Carter: Back at you. Back at you. How about that? Mordy Oberstein: Go for it. Repeat it right back at me. Crystal Carter: I can't say it back. I don't remember. People have different ways of processing things. I find if people talk at me for too long, my brain goes a little fuzzy. I'm not going to lie. So I have to- Mordy Oberstein: I have that with my kids. Sometimes they just go on, I'm like, "I lost you like five minutes ago, dude." Crystal Carter: I need it very, very structured, so I find these are the things. Everybody learns in different ways. It makes the world a many splendorous thing, that's my opinion. Mordy Oberstein: And thus the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also track search performance with our deep integration with Google Search Console. Get immediate insights and dive deep into large quantities of Google Search Console data with our Google Search Console Analytics Report. This as we pick the data on AI Overviews apart to help you make actionable sense of it all. Where do we stand with AI Overviews on the SERP? What does the data show and what doesn't it show? And what do you actually do with all of this data? To help us sift through the data itself, Mark Traphagen of seoClarity will clue us in on where things stand on the SERP as AI Overviews, I'm going to just call them AIOs at this point, AIOs are concerned. We'll also sort through some tools that help you track the AIOs, and of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So generating, generating, generating. If I'm not done generating in five seconds, wait a little longer. And here's our generative sum up on the surmising of the SEO tool providers and what they've done on Google AI SERP Summaries on this the 106th episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. This is a deep pull, by the way, the if I'm not done generating in five seconds, wait a little longer. That's an Ace Ventura, if I'm not back in five minutes- Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: ... wait a little longer. Crystal Carter: There we go. Yes, yes. That's a good one. Mordy Oberstein: Woo, do not go in there. We were just talking about Ace Ventura, weren't we? Crystal Carter: I know, but I can't quote it chapter and verse, I'll be honest. Mordy Oberstein: It's like gospel to me. Crystal Carter: I remember all righty then. That I got. That's there. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, I was just, I don't know, 10 when it came out. When you're a 10-year-old boy, that thing is like gold. Gold. Anywho. You know what's gold? AI Overviews. They're gold for tracking. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Or not, who knows? No one really knows. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: The AI Overviews, which produce a summary of whatever you're searching for with theoretically a bunch of URLs, pulling the data on this stuff is really, really tricky. I know firsthand, I'm not going to get into it, it's super tricky. And it's really hard to get a deep look and there's a whole lot of limitations and it's hard to know. When you're looking at a piece of data or a study about the AI Overviews, it's hard to really know what to do with it, what's accurate, there's so many numbers all over the place, what's what, and whatever. And then of course, what do you do, actionably speaking, with all of this data, which is why we're going to go with a little bit of a different format. Usually, Crystal and I wax poetic on the topic a little while. We talk, we schmooze, we have insights, then we go to a guest. This time though, we are going to get right to our guest, seoClarity's own Mark Traphagen because he's had a deep dive on the data around AI Overviews as he tells us where we stand with AI Overviews and the data itself. Here's Mark. Mark Traphagen: Here at seoClarity, as an enterprise-level SEO platform, we've been keeping a close eye on Google's AI Overviews since their infancy as Search Generative Experience in Google Labs. So we were completely ready in our platform when Google went full public with AIOs in the U.S. in August to track them and report on them in greater detail than any other enterprise platform. That also meant we had access to unprecedented levels of data on AIOs. And our data science team has been hard at work on covering them. Let me cover just a few of the most interesting insights. First and most importantly, in a LinkedIn post a few weeks ago, we were the first to break to the world the news that Google had shifted sometime recently to including more sources in AIOs that matched those on the first page of Google. We saw that almost always now, 99.5% of the time, at least one top 10 organic source appears in an AIO for the same query. Now that alone is a dramatic shift as all agreed prior to this there was almost no correlation between top rankings in traditional Google and appearing in an AIO. But it gets better. Over half of all AIOs contain the number one organic ranked source, and wait for it, over three-fourths of the time, all of the AIO sources are now from the top 10 organic results. And what that means should be obvious: AIO SEO is now just SEO. Improving rankings for your content where an AIO is shown is your best shot at getting mentioned in that AIO. We also recently revealed that 96% of all AI Overviews have informational search intent. That's relevant if you're using top-of-funnel content as part of your marketing strategy but means that e-comm and local business sites can breathe a sigh of relief for now. Now we'll have plenty more insights about AIOs in the weeks ahead. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much, Mark. Check out seoClarity and all the work that Mark's done there around AIO Overviews. We'll link to a bunch of this stuff in the show notes. Okay, so it's really interesting. Okay, so first off, when he put out that data that 99% of AIO Overviews contain at least one result from the organic results, people misunderstood that. I saw around the web people... They were saying, "Oh, the AIO Overviews, the links overlap 99% of the time with the organic results." It's one result is in there in 99% of the AIO Overviews. So that nuance in all of this stuff is so tricky. Just nice piece of data, by the way, and then 96% of all AIOs being informational, yada, yada, yada, yada. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, I think that's really important to think about as well, in my own, and I think that that's really, really useful. And I think that what we see is that sometimes the AI Overviews aren't generating in real-time, that's the other thing. They're pulling from something already, so you go to the page and it's not generating in real-time, it's just has an AI Overview on the thing already. Which tells you that they're pulling from some stored data, and all of these machine learning systems, they have a training set. And the training set for an AIO Overview of the SERP, it would stand to reason that the training set would be the SERP, would be Google's repository of search results. So they have search data for years on content and it makes sense that they would pull at least some of the information from it. And I think that there's a lot of different data around there, and I think it's really fascinating as a topic for search researchers right now because it's rapidly changing. Since they've added AI Overviews into the EMEA space, we're going to see a lot more people chiming in on that data, which is really great to see. My first initial hunch is that it's building on the featured snippet data set. Because what I very often see is that you have an AI Overview for something that has predictive text. Like the predictive search will have an AI Overview because they know that search and they can make an AI Overview for it. And as I said, they're not always generating it. But the way that the featured snippets work, that system is slightly different from the core plain blue links system. That system has always included an AI element and has always included a remixing element. So you'd have places where on the page it would show bullet points, but on the list on the SERP it would show numbers, or it would show numbers on the page and then it would show bullet points on the SERP for instance. So to me, it would make sense, and certainly coming from a SaaS angle, from working with a SaaS team, it would make sense for Google to not completely reinvent the wheel. For Google to use some of their existing frameworks in order to build out their AI Overviews, especially if they're trying to do it at a pace. Mordy Oberstein: Right, and that's what's interesting. So you have so much data on this. You had Rick Sanger who partnered with Authoritas looking at the overlap between the organic results and the AI Overview links, and something around, I think it was 45% of the URLs in the AI Overview are also ranking in the top organic results. I think he looked at the first page, top eight or so. And then when he clicked through to the related search features, people also ask, people also search for, related searches, that number jumps up to 64%. I think that makes a lot of sense because... I can't remember who I was talking to about this. It might've been Garrett Sussman. It doesn't matter, either way. When you're looking at the topic, let's say you're searching for how to build a log cabin... It was Garrett. You're going to get, let's say on that SERP, you're going to get, I don't know, eight or so results on how to build the best log cabin. Let's say just for argument's sake, they're all about how to build a log cabin. There's no other search intent. All of those URLs about how to build a log cabin. When you now have the AI Overview telling you how to build the log cabin, yes, it's going to include some of those URLs, but how to build a log cabin because what that content's talking about, but the AI Overview breaks into a subtopical breakdown. So for example, it might say, "Step one, select the right material, use whatever, maple wood or birch wood," and it might link out to what birch wood is. That URL is not going to be on the main SERP because what birch wood is has nothing to do with that main SERP. So when you go subtopic inside of the AI Overview, it's going to link out naturally to things that should not even be on the actual SERP itself. So when I see numbers like 50 or so percent, that to me makes a heck of a lot of sense because there is alignment. But when you go subtopically, there's not alignment. You're pulling in topics from somewhere else. Crystal Carter: Well, absolutely, and I think that the other thing that the AI Overviews, I think, certainly, in the long run, maybe not in this first iteration, but certainly, in the long run, are hoping to do, is hoping to solve some of the challenges that Google has been trying to address for years. So Google have said themselves that very often if somebody makes a query, they have to make eight questions before they can get to an answer. And the multidimensional search that you're talking about where they would also have some of the subcategories in that question, and whether it's birch or oak or pine or whatever on the log cabin, what kind of log, for instance. When you're thinking about those questions, these are things that Google have been thinking about for ages. So this was something they were trying to address with MUM, for instance. This is something that they've been trying to address with lots of different ways with some of the disambiguation they've added to the knowledge graphs and the featured snippets where you have the drop-down where you'd say somebody would search for blogging and they'd say more about this topic, things you should consider, all of those sorts of things. Google have been trying to address this in a lot of ways, and I think that they're trying to see if they can address it with the AI Overviews. And it stands to reason that yeah, you would have a more rich collection of search results. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to switch topics really quick because I want to talk about why there are so many data discrepancies among the AI Overview data. You have certain tools saying X, certain tools saying Y. So first off, one of the things to look for is consensus. So for example, generally speaking, most of the data studies that have come out, there are obviously outliers, are basically saying as of the time of this recording, by the way, that AI Overviews appear at around or anywhere between 10 and 20% of all SERPs. I think SEO ranking had it at 12%. I could be misremembering, but it's generally around there. So look for a trend. I wouldn't rely on the exact data from the exact study the exact way you normally would with an SEO study because I feel like pulling the data here is very, very difficult and the tools aren't really built for you doing multiple click-throughs. And then Google's also changing formats all the time and getting it right is incredibly difficult. So while the tools may be built to scrape rank, they're not built to scrape AI Overviews the same way. I'll prove it to you. If you look at how when AI Overviews came out, at least in Search Labs, and you look at when the SEO tools started, actually being able to track them we're talking months later, which meant they had to do months of development in order to change how they're tracking things. So I think that one of the reasons why you're seeing a little bit of discrepancies is A, because the AI Overviews are changing all the time, and B, pulling this data is just wonky. It's a little bit tricky, so look for trends. Crystal Carter: It's also tricky too because there are so many different... I think that we're not seeing how consistent it is. So sometimes I think you've been looking at how often the AI Overviews are switching links, and certainly, for some of the- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll get to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll get to that. Crystal Carter: And some of the AI Overviews that I've been tracking, which includes some of my own content, I've been seeing those, and there's not entirely consistent on some of those. So for instance, one of the things that I've seen is that they'll have the core AI Overview and then they'll have a few topical links, a few recommended links on the right. And sometimes what you see is that the recommended links on the right aren't referenced in the AI Overview. So in the AI Overview, they have links within that, then they have links on the side and they're not necessarily the same links. So that's interesting, and I think that also what I'm starting to see is that on some of the search results they'll say, or sorry, on some of the search tools on their cache, they're saying, "Oh, this is an AI Overview." And then you go to the SERP and then it isn't. And so I think that it's still early days in terms of the data, which makes it tricky to track and it's still early days in terms of Google figuring out how they want to roll this out. So it's really a live space at the moment. Mordy Oberstein: That's totally true, and I want to get the URL thing, okay? That's the next thing I want to cover really quickly is that what do you do with all this data? Okay. Oh, AI Overviews are in 10% of all SERPs, I don't know, 15% of all SERPs, or 95% of all information queries, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. But there's two fundamental questions. One, I have absolutely no clue about what I'm trying to get a clue about. One is how often are users engaging with the AI Overview, how often are they not? Or subset of that, how often are they engaging with it, bouncing out of it, and going to the organic results? So even if they are engaging with it, are they still going to the organic results anyway? And if they are engaging with the AI Overviews, what's the stability of URLs? In other words, is it Google swapping out URLs all the time and there's no stability? In other words, what's the real impact of AI Overviews on traffic and then what's the real necessity of trying to optimize, whatever that means, for an AI Overview? Even if they are impacting traffic, but Google's swapping out the URLs on a daily basis, you have no market share. That's a waste of time. Crystal Carter: Right. Because if people aren't clicking on them, which we don't know what the click-through rate is on it, if people aren't clicking on them, should you optimize for them if you are getting straight to the SERP and things? So then it's a question of whether or not Google's taking the share of the click or whether or not there's a click at all, which we don't know if there's a click at all, or whether or not somebody else who's in the AI Overview is taking it. And I think that if we think about the featured snippets element, featured snippets are really, it's very much a similar evolution from when we didn't have featured snippets to when we do have featured snippets. Because in some cases, the featured snippet gives you enough information so that you don't need to make a click. That is true. It is true. Mordy Oberstein: And that's when the format of featured snippet matters most. The paragraph featured snippet you might have the answer right there. List is usually not the full list, so you usually get a higher click-through rate. Crystal Carter: Right. So these things will change, but the visibility is very important. So if people are constantly seeing your content in the featured snippet, then they'll go, "Okay, this is a great source." Mordy Oberstein: Totally, 100%. Crystal Carter: And I can just go straight there and get the information rather than having to go to Google to find the thing, they'll probably have it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I think you always want to be in the AI... If there's one there, you always want to be there, which brings the question: what about that URL stability? For example, I just did a study... I didn't just do a study. I did a study 10 years ago, maybe less, maybe seven or eight. I don't remember what I ate for breakfast, so I don't remember what year it was when I did the study. And it was featured snippet URL market share. If you're in the featured snippet, how long do you tend to last in the featured snippet? And basically, the pattern that I saw years ago, I don't know if this holds true, is that there's generally speaking, two URLs: a dominant URL, and a secondary URL. The dominant URL stands in the featured snippet around 75% of the time, and then the non-dominant URL is in there 25% of the time. So that's pretty good. If you could be one of those two URLs either way, that's at least decent market share, 25%. With the URLs inside of AI Overviews, what's that pattern look like? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, this is it. So it'd be interesting to see how that develops and it's so fresh, it's so new, particularly in different markets as well that we'll have to carry out the data and I think it's going to have to be a little bit manual for a while. Mordy Oberstein: It's a little wonky because a little peek behind the curtains, I've been working with Semrush to try to do something like this. And we did one version, had to redo it because Google changed the format of the URLs inside the AI Overviews, they don't want that data. And even then, it's still a little bit tricky. When I'm telling you it's tricky, I'm not telling you because I think it's tricky. I'm working with companies and I'm telling you it's tricky. I don't know if I could spill the tea or not. I don't know when this episode is coming out. I don't know when the study's going to come out. I will tell you- Crystal Carter: Spill the tea, Mordy. It's your podcast, it's your study. Me too. You do what you want. Mordy Oberstein: I already drank all the tea. I'm literally holding my tea mug upside down. Oh, I just actually... There was one drop left and I just dropped it on my keyboard. Crystal Carter: You can't tell us about all this juicy stuff and then hold back. That's just- Mordy Oberstein: I'll say it's less stable than you think it is. And I'll throw one stat at you. If you're out of there over a 31-day period, and this is only for AI Overviews where the AI Overview showed for at least 20 out of 30, 31 days. So you're talking about AI Overviews that are already consistent. If they're not consistent, then what's the point of URL consistency? The whole thing's not consistent, right? So I guess I'm saying all this data is so layered, so let's now only look at AI Overviews that are consistent. They show up 20 out of 30, 31 days, whatever we looked at. If you're out, you're out. Only 45% or so of the URLs that got kicked out ever came back in over that data period. Crystal Carter: Over the course of how long? Mordy Oberstein: 31 days, Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, maybe they come back after 60 days. I don't know. Secondary data point, I don't remember this exactly off the top of my head, but it's not like Google... Because maybe you'll say, "Okay." When Google's swapping the URL out... That's how my brain works. It's why I'm good at data studies. Maybe it's... And it takes out the Wix SEO Hub and it puts in another URL from the Wix SEO. All right, that's fine, right? I still have the market share. I think 100% of these AI Overviews that were in this category saw domain changes, meaning Google's not just saying, "Oh, one URL for one website." It's swapping, I don't know to the extent, but significantly so, swapping out domains. And when you add it all together that very few AI Overviews have the level of consistency that you're looking for. Very few URLs are returning, and a lot of domains are switching. It doesn't paint a very stable picture as of right now, as of the time of this recording. It could all change tomorrow. Who knows? Crystal Carter: See, this is interesting because I think this plays back into what Mark's talking about is that the SERP right now is a little bit unstable. We do a weekly or a daily news thing with Barry, and he's constantly like SERP volatility, SERP volatility, SERP volatility. If it is the case that the AI Overview optimization is essentially SEO, then it would stand to reason that the URLs would switch around in a volatile SERP. That would make sense. I think that this also points to, if you're thinking about AI Overviews, thinking about some of the information around... Or some of the fact that there are still some big, big players in terms of the AI Overviews of who has the most visibility. So Kevin Indig shared who's got the biggest share of AI Overviews, and he was saying that the biggest one is YouTube. Again, that's really similar to featured snippets. Then followed by Wikipedia, followed by YouTube mobile, followed by LinkedIn, and then followed by a few others, including usual suspects like Healthline, and WebMD, and Mayo Clinic, and things like that. We also see that those same folks see a big share on the SERP, and those same folks will have a fairly stable level of visibility on the SERP. They have fairly stable rankings in terms of where Google shows their domain and how often that Google shows their domain. But yeah, I think it's a really fascinating time in research and looking at this particular part of the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, exactly. But you were saying what Mark is saying, "Do good SEO." Crystal Carter: Yo. Mordy Oberstein: Just do good SEO. That will get you there. Crystal Carter: Right? Everybody wants some fancy thing, but it's like people are like, "How do I lose weight?" It's like, "Eat better and do some exercise." It's nothing complicated. Mordy Oberstein: Just the execution part, that's the hard part. Crystal Carter: That's true. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Some of it gets a little tricky. Crystal Carter: Because I love donuts, so if I could just have a delete donut. Have donut, delete donut, if I could just have that, that would be great. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I love donuts so much. Krispy Kreme or Dunkin' Donuts. Crystal Carter: Oh, I love Dunkin'. Mordy Oberstein: I love Dunkin' flavors. They have better flavors, but the donut itself, I think Krispy. Crystal Carter: Krispy Kreme is great, but I find Krispy Kreme to be very expensive, and also, they don't oblige my dietary requirements, whereas Dunkin' Donuts comes in better for me. So it's not a flavor thing. It's not explicitly flavor, it's for other considerations. Mordy Oberstein: Either way, donuts for the win. You know what else for the win? Tracking your AI Overviews. Global AI Overview data is great, super interesting, super informative, super everything, but how do you track your own AI Overviews? Well, find out as we look at the data providers as we go tool time on the SERP's Up Podcast. All right, so there's a whole heap of tools that do different things. I don't know, like Semrush and SE Ranking. Let's start with them maybe. I found them. They both have it in position tracking and then they were like organic research so you can see how stable your AI Overviews are and what keywords you have. And you can also analyze the competitor and see how many overviews they have, which I think is cool for looking at brand power for example. If I look at, I don't know, Nike versus New Balance, which brand is more powerful? Or the one that has a ton of AI Overviews kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. I think it's interesting to see that and I think that it's great to see some of these different tools showing this because people need to know. So I think that what is their general summary for the overall visibility on AI Overviews? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, if you run it through the organic research tool and then you can filter out by SERP feature, you can see all of the AI Overviews that that website or that domain is grabbing. Crystal Carter: And on their Semrush sensor, they also have included it under their SERP feature there so you can get an idea of the general trend. So according to- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but that data set is super normalized. I think that data set is... Because you're looking... I think now they're showing 2 or 3%, something like that. I know that data set because I work with it when I'm doing their algorithm update stuff. It's not reflective of what you do every day. The Moz data set would be. The MozCast is very much high search volume keywords, assuming that they're informational kind of thing. That would align with AI Overviews. I think that the Semrush data is just more normalized across the board, which is what I mean. This data, looking at the numbers, it's so hard. So hard. Crystal Carter: So then help me understand this. So according to their Semrush sensor, they're currently saying that for the US, on desktop, it's showing at 1.23% of search results and on 1.63% of search results. So what are you saying when you're giving that information? Mordy Oberstein: So what I'm saying is, okay, that's interesting because you compare this to say, I don't know like what Mark was talking about, or SE Ranking, and BrightEdge, and their data. The Semrush data set is lower, but I think it's because they're using their volatility data set to track it. When they track the volatility of SERP features, they have your featured snippets, and local packs, and images, they're not creating a separate data set that targets that feature or aligns with that feature. It's a universal data set to track all volatility. So it's not built... The way I search, I search mostly for informational keywords. That data set is not built to function the way I or most people search. It's meant to try to track the web. But AI Overview, so you're trying to track those. If you wanted to really see that you would have to include more things like how people actually search, in which case you would probably see a higher number. So I would look at the trend, not at the actual number in that one, and the trend's up. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and the other thing I think is interesting on the trend is that the Semrush sensor, for instance, filters by categories. And if you look at arts and entertainment, for instance, it's showing AI Overviews for 0.14%. But if you look at health, and this goes, again, back to some of the data that Kevin was showing, that some of the top AI Overviews include Healthline, WebMD, Mayo Clinic. That's three out of 10 for the top 10. And this is saying that health is showing 3.63% of the time. So again, maybe the numbers, maybe the number percentage might not be hard fast- Mordy Oberstein: But the trends, yeah. Crystal Carter: Exactly, but the trend that, on average, it's showing 1.63%. On average, it's showing a certain amount, but it's showing three times as much in the health sectors is interesting. And that also follows with some of the data that Lily's been sharing around that particular sector. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's so many tools like the seoClarity tool, for example. They show you the actual AI Overview content itself so you can actually see the snapshot of the AI Overview and what's actually in there. So you can see, obviously, where you're being impacted or where your competitors are being impacted, but you can get an actual sense what does that actually mean by looking at the actual content and the snapshot of the AI Overview. Which is great if you are, for example... If you're not in the U.S. and your clients are in the U.S. and you want to see what that actually looks like without using a VPN. You can use a VPN also, but you can use seoClarity and it's right there. Crystal Carter: Right. And another one that's got some is ZipTie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, ZipTie is interesting. I checked them out. Crystal Carter: So ZipTie.dev is detecting AI Overviews. They are claiming that they're detecting 17 times more AI Overviews than certain other tools. So they were checking us. According to ziptie.com, wix.com is showing a 27% of AI Overviews, which is interesting. Yeah, so they've got various different tools. I think they've got a freemium setup as well and they've been putting out some reports around that. So shout out to Tomasz Rudzki for some of his data there because that's really interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's cool because they'll tell you with AI Overview, remember there was one where there was automatically triggered, and then one format where it wasn't automatically triggered. They'll tell you which one it was, or they'll tell you if you have the AI Overview and the featured snippet, or just the AI Overview, or just the featured snippet. They'll tell you what AI Overview features are inside of it. Is there a topic breakdown? Are there pros and cons lists? Are there bullet points? Is there a shopping list? They'll actually break it down for you. So it's a really interesting tool. It seems like a really powerful tool for tracking AI Overviews for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely, and they've got their... On their blog, they're sharing a lot of data. So for instance, they were saying that, in June, it rose from 8% in June to 11% in August, which is interesting over things. And again, this goes back to your trend point, so just like it's on the up. How much? It's difficult to quantify exactly, but yeah, they are also breaking it down on their blog as to how many... What types of terms people are seeing it on and things like that, so yeah, interesting times in SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. We'll link to all those tools in the show notes. Check them all out, see which one is best for you. We are agnostic here on the SERP's Up Podcast, so pick what is best for you. You know what is a great place to learn about AI Overviews and the latest news happening around AI Overviews? I find that to be such a tongue twister, by the way, AI Overviews. Crystal Carter: It just makes me think of Old McDonald. I'm not going to lie. Mordy Oberstein: The what? Crystal Carter: Old McDonald, like A-I-A-I-O, like E-I-E-I-O, come on. Mordy Oberstein: That’s a great connection. That's great. Crystal Carter: Yeah, like << On the SERP there was a... And Google had a SERP, A-I-A-I-O. And you get a link, and a link over here, everyone link, link, link, link, link >> Mordy Oberstein: By the way, no one actually... We should have a separate conversation about the actual impact CTR-wise. Side note, I see a bunch of cases where a lot of rankings in AI Overviews and not real traffic change. Crystal Carter: As a user, I very often skip over it. As a user, I very often skip over it. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if they check it out and come back, maybe then I click... I'm interested if they click on it and just don't even see the links and just go back and click on the links in the SERP, that would be interesting. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that's interesting. But also, I find that sometimes the AI Overview doesn't make any sense for what I'm searching. I'll search for one thing and then it's- Mordy Oberstein: Eat glue! Crystal Carter: Well, yeah, I'm searching for one thing and then it shows up with something else, and I'm like, it's not what I'm talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's very broad. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think the other thing with the AI Overviews, they're trying to make a cohesive statement in the AI Overview, and they're trying to make a cohesive statement about whatever it is you're looking at. And sometimes if you were to look up Bluetooth speaker connectivity, right? Now, I might be looking for how I can connect all of the Bluetooth speakers in my house, so I don't have to find each individual one. I can just play Shakira on all of them. I might be thinking about how would I do that, but I've only typed in Bluetooth connectivity. And they might be like, "Oh, Bluetooth works like this, and this, and this, and this, and that, and that, and that." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Not what you wanted. Crystal Carter: And I'm like, "Y'all, that's not what I'm interested in." And so sometimes what's on the SERP is more aligned with what I'm interested in. And sometimes it's not, but I think that the nature of the beast means that sometimes it doesn't align, and it'll be interesting to see how they get better. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we digressed, by the way. I was trying to get into the Snappy News by saying, "You should try..." No, that's my bad. I did that. If you're trying to keep up on the news on AIOs, you always want to check out what Barry Schwartz is doing over at SE Roundtable, but until then, check out this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Two from Barry Schwartz, both from seroundtable.com. First Google AI Overviews not linking to sites hit by helpful content update. This is from, per report, this got started by Lily Ray who reported on X, "Hey, when you type, who is XYZ's site?" And insert site affected by the HCU, the Google AI Overview result seems to not include links to that site, yada, yada, yada, yada. Glenn Gabe tested the same thing, and he says, "Yeah, it looks that way." He said even for the sites that, quote, "bounce back a bit with the August core update, and they don't show up in the AI Overviews for their own brand site." It's fascinating. It feels to me like that's like a glitch in the matrix, especially if it's a website that yes, got hit by one of the previous core updates, or the initial... Not the initial, but the last of the HCU. That should be the name of a movie, the Last of the HCUs, back in September 2023. If it's your own website, if people are particularly specifically Googling, "What is name of website.com?" I feel like you should show up there regardless of what Google thinks of you algorithmically in terms of ranking for informational navigation... I mean informational, commercial transactional searches related to your queries. It's a navigational search. Would you not rank navigationally? If someone typed in, "What is blah, blah blah website.com," you would show up number one regardless of any algorithm. I mean, unless you're like manual action kind of stuff, but so why not in the AI Overview? Then there's a little bit of speculation on X about Barry's own website, seroundtable.com, which I check out each and every day, and which you should too. And if you want, you can also get a dose of seroundtable.com on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub where we have It's New, our daily dose of SEO News with Barry Schwartz and Greg Finn. Plugging is over. Barry's site didn't seem to show up in the AI Overviews, which is just weird. I did a few of these searches related to seroundtable.com myself. Sometimes Barry does show up there, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes it's just his X handle. Sometimes it is the actual website. I found one where you search for what is seroundtable.com. So then Barry does get the link in the AIO overview, but Apple gets the featured snippet for some kind of search engine round table thing that they have in the app store that who the heck knows. That's not this. That's not the real Search Engine Roundtable. Barry is. But for example, if you search for what is search engine around table website, seroundtable.com does not show up in there as of the recording of this recording. The recording of this recording, that's not redundant. Only Barry's X profile shows up, so that's interesting. So again, it just seems wonky, for lack of a better word, or glitch in the matricky, for lack of a better word. Anyway, on to the second article. Also, again, reminding you from Barry Schwartz on seroundtable.com, which you may or may not find in an AIO overview near you. DOJ may break up Google as remedy to monopoly ruling. I see this on It's New. First, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez break up, and now Google. How many breakups can I handle? I can't. I just can't. This is reporting... A lot of it was reported on CNBC, which Barry links to in the article. I don't want to get into the whole 32-page document issued by the DOJ. You could read that on your own time because that's not snappy. Anything 32 pages is not snappy. But Barry did pull out some highlights and Barry writes, what is proposed is not just a break-up, which could split off Chrome, Android, and many other things. "But also," says Barry, "Google will make available its competitors' data within its search index and models. Google will make available its AI-assisted search features." Again, whoa. "Google to make available its ad ranking data, policy regulations about retaining its data, limitations on its partnership with Apple and others," that does make sense, "and more." So some of that is just like, "Wow, just take everything." It's a full-on garage sale. We're taking everything. So that's really interesting. I'll link to Barry's article in the show notes, which links to all the other links that you need. If you want to deep dive into 32 pages of this stuff. I do not. The minute I hear law and legal, I'm out. So I'm out. That's this week's Snappy News. I'd like to see AI Overview Barry. You ask Barry and it just spits out a summary, but the summary is two words. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? Mordy Oberstein: Reads. Crystal Carter: Not new. Mordy Oberstein: How do I connect my Bluetooth speaker, AI Overview Barry? With a plug. Crystal Carter: Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. With electricity. Complete brevity. Brevity AI Overviews by Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: And efficiency. Mordy Oberstein: Efficiency. I had a pocket in my shirt. I put my phone in it. For reference, go look at an old episode of It's New for that. Which brings us to our follow of the week, and our follow of the week is someone we already mentioned this week, so you should be following him anyway by this point. You should have listened to the episode and clicked follow on this person's profile because we mentioned their name. That's a little much. It's Rich Sanger. Rich was one of the folks who, first off, we met him a few times at our New York City digital marketing meetup at the SEOFOMO meetup we did in New York City at the Wix Playground. So Rich is a great guy. I think he's a Red Sox fan, so I won't hold that against him, but that's fine too. But he did the study with Authoritas on how often the overlap is between the organic results and the AI Overviews. Again, we'll link to that study in the show notes, but he puts out a lot of really thought-provoking blog posts that he writes. So it was a great follow out there on X and on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's worth checking out folks who are doing good content like that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and they're just good people even if they're Red Sox fans. Crystal Carter: It's not all about baseball. Mordy Oberstein: Is it? Is it not all about baseball? I'm literally wearing a baseball jersey. I feel like it is. Crystal Carter: If you build it, they will come. Mordy Oberstein: Ease my pain. That's what I tell my kids when they're making me crazy, "Ease his pain." When I say his, I mean mine. Crystal Carter: I try to think of... But literally, if they build it, they will come. I think that's the only baseball quote I got. No, no, no. There's that, what is it? Yeah, I don't know. To be fair, I think of the Sandlot when I'm putting together a content strategy because in the Sandlot, he points at where he is going to hit it, and I feel like that's what you're doing when you're doing a content strategy, or a campaign strategy, or any kind of marketing thing. Because you don't know what's going to happen, but you're like, "I'm going to put it right there, and it's going to do the thing." And I think of the Sandlot when I'm doing that. Mordy Oberstein: Also, a great movie. A lot of great baseball movies, but the first movie, in case you not a baseball nut or a movie nut, is Field of Dreams, which is one of the best movies, I think, ever made. Crystal Carter: It's a good movie. It's a good movie. Mordy Oberstein: That last thing, the last line, "Hey Dad, do you want to have a catch?" Bawling every time. Every time. Every time. You go on YouTube, by the way, I've actually done this. You watch reaction videos of people who... And you just see them bawling, it's crazy. Check that out. Anyway, that was off-topic and off the rails. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to do SEO for a sub-brand. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, and webinars, and SEO courses on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Mark Traphagen Rich Sanger Kevin Indig Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Wix Studio SEO Course seoClarity AI Overview Data Study Google AI Overview Study: Link Selection Based on Related Queries SE Ranking AI Overview Data Study AI on Innovation SE Ranking AI Overview Tracking Semrush AI Overview Tracking seoClarity AI Overview Tracking ZipTie AI Overview Tracking News: DOJ May Breakup Google As Remedy To Monopoly Ruling Google AI Overviews Not Linking To Sites Hit By Helpful Content Update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Mark Traphagen Rich Sanger Kevin Indig Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Wix Studio SEO Course seoClarity AI Overview Data Study Google AI Overview Study: Link Selection Based on Related Queries SE Ranking AI Overview Data Study AI on Innovation SE Ranking AI Overview Tracking Semrush AI Overview Tracking seoClarity AI Overview Tracking ZipTie AI Overview Tracking News: DOJ May Breakup Google As Remedy To Monopoly Ruling Google AI Overviews Not Linking To Sites Hit By Helpful Content Update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head SEO brand here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredibly uncompromisingly unparalleled head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: That was very kind of you to say, thank you, and yeah, you too. Mordy Oberstein: You're welcome. Crystal Carter: Back at you. Back at you. How about that? Mordy Oberstein: Go for it. Repeat it right back at me. Crystal Carter: I can't say it back. I don't remember. People have different ways of processing things. I find if people talk at me for too long, my brain goes a little fuzzy. I'm not going to lie. So I have to- Mordy Oberstein: I have that with my kids. Sometimes they just go on, I'm like, "I lost you like five minutes ago, dude." Crystal Carter: I need it very, very structured, so I find these are the things. Everybody learns in different ways. It makes the world a many splendorous thing, that's my opinion. Mordy Oberstein: And thus the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also track search performance with our deep integration with Google Search Console. Get immediate insights and dive deep into large quantities of Google Search Console data with our Google Search Console Analytics Report. This as we pick the data on AI Overviews apart to help you make actionable sense of it all. Where do we stand with AI Overviews on the SERP? What does the data show and what doesn't it show? And what do you actually do with all of this data? To help us sift through the data itself, Mark Traphagen of seoClarity will clue us in on where things stand on the SERP as AI Overviews, I'm going to just call them AIOs at this point, AIOs are concerned. We'll also sort through some tools that help you track the AIOs, and of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So generating, generating, generating. If I'm not done generating in five seconds, wait a little longer. And here's our generative sum up on the surmising of the SEO tool providers and what they've done on Google AI SERP Summaries on this the 106th episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. This is a deep pull, by the way, the if I'm not done generating in five seconds, wait a little longer. That's an Ace Ventura, if I'm not back in five minutes- Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: ... wait a little longer. Crystal Carter: There we go. Yes, yes. That's a good one. Mordy Oberstein: Woo, do not go in there. We were just talking about Ace Ventura, weren't we? Crystal Carter: I know, but I can't quote it chapter and verse, I'll be honest. Mordy Oberstein: It's like gospel to me. Crystal Carter: I remember all righty then. That I got. That's there. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, I was just, I don't know, 10 when it came out. When you're a 10-year-old boy, that thing is like gold. Gold. Anywho. You know what's gold? AI Overviews. They're gold for tracking. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Or not, who knows? No one really knows. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: The AI Overviews, which produce a summary of whatever you're searching for with theoretically a bunch of URLs, pulling the data on this stuff is really, really tricky. I know firsthand, I'm not going to get into it, it's super tricky. And it's really hard to get a deep look and there's a whole lot of limitations and it's hard to know. When you're looking at a piece of data or a study about the AI Overviews, it's hard to really know what to do with it, what's accurate, there's so many numbers all over the place, what's what, and whatever. And then of course, what do you do, actionably speaking, with all of this data, which is why we're going to go with a little bit of a different format. Usually, Crystal and I wax poetic on the topic a little while. We talk, we schmooze, we have insights, then we go to a guest. This time though, we are going to get right to our guest, seoClarity's own Mark Traphagen because he's had a deep dive on the data around AI Overviews as he tells us where we stand with AI Overviews and the data itself. Here's Mark. Mark Traphagen: Here at seoClarity, as an enterprise-level SEO platform, we've been keeping a close eye on Google's AI Overviews since their infancy as Search Generative Experience in Google Labs. So we were completely ready in our platform when Google went full public with AIOs in the U.S. in August to track them and report on them in greater detail than any other enterprise platform. That also meant we had access to unprecedented levels of data on AIOs. And our data science team has been hard at work on covering them. Let me cover just a few of the most interesting insights. First and most importantly, in a LinkedIn post a few weeks ago, we were the first to break to the world the news that Google had shifted sometime recently to including more sources in AIOs that matched those on the first page of Google. We saw that almost always now, 99.5% of the time, at least one top 10 organic source appears in an AIO for the same query. Now that alone is a dramatic shift as all agreed prior to this there was almost no correlation between top rankings in traditional Google and appearing in an AIO. But it gets better. Over half of all AIOs contain the number one organic ranked source, and wait for it, over three-fourths of the time, all of the AIO sources are now from the top 10 organic results. And what that means should be obvious: AIO SEO is now just SEO. Improving rankings for your content where an AIO is shown is your best shot at getting mentioned in that AIO. We also recently revealed that 96% of all AI Overviews have informational search intent. That's relevant if you're using top-of-funnel content as part of your marketing strategy but means that e-comm and local business sites can breathe a sigh of relief for now. Now we'll have plenty more insights about AIOs in the weeks ahead. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much, Mark. Check out seoClarity and all the work that Mark's done there around AIO Overviews. We'll link to a bunch of this stuff in the show notes. Okay, so it's really interesting. Okay, so first off, when he put out that data that 99% of AIO Overviews contain at least one result from the organic results, people misunderstood that. I saw around the web people... They were saying, "Oh, the AIO Overviews, the links overlap 99% of the time with the organic results." It's one result is in there in 99% of the AIO Overviews. So that nuance in all of this stuff is so tricky. Just nice piece of data, by the way, and then 96% of all AIOs being informational, yada, yada, yada, yada. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, I think that's really important to think about as well, in my own, and I think that that's really, really useful. And I think that what we see is that sometimes the AI Overviews aren't generating in real-time, that's the other thing. They're pulling from something already, so you go to the page and it's not generating in real-time, it's just has an AI Overview on the thing already. Which tells you that they're pulling from some stored data, and all of these machine learning systems, they have a training set. And the training set for an AIO Overview of the SERP, it would stand to reason that the training set would be the SERP, would be Google's repository of search results. So they have search data for years on content and it makes sense that they would pull at least some of the information from it. And I think that there's a lot of different data around there, and I think it's really fascinating as a topic for search researchers right now because it's rapidly changing. Since they've added AI Overviews into the EMEA space, we're going to see a lot more people chiming in on that data, which is really great to see. My first initial hunch is that it's building on the featured snippet data set. Because what I very often see is that you have an AI Overview for something that has predictive text. Like the predictive search will have an AI Overview because they know that search and they can make an AI Overview for it. And as I said, they're not always generating it. But the way that the featured snippets work, that system is slightly different from the core plain blue links system. That system has always included an AI element and has always included a remixing element. So you'd have places where on the page it would show bullet points, but on the list on the SERP it would show numbers, or it would show numbers on the page and then it would show bullet points on the SERP for instance. So to me, it would make sense, and certainly coming from a SaaS angle, from working with a SaaS team, it would make sense for Google to not completely reinvent the wheel. For Google to use some of their existing frameworks in order to build out their AI Overviews, especially if they're trying to do it at a pace. Mordy Oberstein: Right, and that's what's interesting. So you have so much data on this. You had Rick Sanger who partnered with Authoritas looking at the overlap between the organic results and the AI Overview links, and something around, I think it was 45% of the URLs in the AI Overview are also ranking in the top organic results. I think he looked at the first page, top eight or so. And then when he clicked through to the related search features, people also ask, people also search for, related searches, that number jumps up to 64%. I think that makes a lot of sense because... I can't remember who I was talking to about this. It might've been Garrett Sussman. It doesn't matter, either way. When you're looking at the topic, let's say you're searching for how to build a log cabin... It was Garrett. You're going to get, let's say on that SERP, you're going to get, I don't know, eight or so results on how to build the best log cabin. Let's say just for argument's sake, they're all about how to build a log cabin. There's no other search intent. All of those URLs about how to build a log cabin. When you now have the AI Overview telling you how to build the log cabin, yes, it's going to include some of those URLs, but how to build a log cabin because what that content's talking about, but the AI Overview breaks into a subtopical breakdown. So for example, it might say, "Step one, select the right material, use whatever, maple wood or birch wood," and it might link out to what birch wood is. That URL is not going to be on the main SERP because what birch wood is has nothing to do with that main SERP. So when you go subtopic inside of the AI Overview, it's going to link out naturally to things that should not even be on the actual SERP itself. So when I see numbers like 50 or so percent, that to me makes a heck of a lot of sense because there is alignment. But when you go subtopically, there's not alignment. You're pulling in topics from somewhere else. Crystal Carter: Well, absolutely, and I think that the other thing that the AI Overviews, I think, certainly, in the long run, maybe not in this first iteration, but certainly, in the long run, are hoping to do, is hoping to solve some of the challenges that Google has been trying to address for years. So Google have said themselves that very often if somebody makes a query, they have to make eight questions before they can get to an answer. And the multidimensional search that you're talking about where they would also have some of the subcategories in that question, and whether it's birch or oak or pine or whatever on the log cabin, what kind of log, for instance. When you're thinking about those questions, these are things that Google have been thinking about for ages. So this was something they were trying to address with MUM, for instance. This is something that they've been trying to address with lots of different ways with some of the disambiguation they've added to the knowledge graphs and the featured snippets where you have the drop-down where you'd say somebody would search for blogging and they'd say more about this topic, things you should consider, all of those sorts of things. Google have been trying to address this in a lot of ways, and I think that they're trying to see if they can address it with the AI Overviews. And it stands to reason that yeah, you would have a more rich collection of search results. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to switch topics really quick because I want to talk about why there are so many data discrepancies among the AI Overview data. You have certain tools saying X, certain tools saying Y. So first off, one of the things to look for is consensus. So for example, generally speaking, most of the data studies that have come out, there are obviously outliers, are basically saying as of the time of this recording, by the way, that AI Overviews appear at around or anywhere between 10 and 20% of all SERPs. I think SEO ranking had it at 12%. I could be misremembering, but it's generally around there. So look for a trend. I wouldn't rely on the exact data from the exact study the exact way you normally would with an SEO study because I feel like pulling the data here is very, very difficult and the tools aren't really built for you doing multiple click-throughs. And then Google's also changing formats all the time and getting it right is incredibly difficult. So while the tools may be built to scrape rank, they're not built to scrape AI Overviews the same way. I'll prove it to you. If you look at how when AI Overviews came out, at least in Search Labs, and you look at when the SEO tools started, actually being able to track them we're talking months later, which meant they had to do months of development in order to change how they're tracking things. So I think that one of the reasons why you're seeing a little bit of discrepancies is A, because the AI Overviews are changing all the time, and B, pulling this data is just wonky. It's a little bit tricky, so look for trends. Crystal Carter: It's also tricky too because there are so many different... I think that we're not seeing how consistent it is. So sometimes I think you've been looking at how often the AI Overviews are switching links, and certainly, for some of the- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll get to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll get to that. Crystal Carter: And some of the AI Overviews that I've been tracking, which includes some of my own content, I've been seeing those, and there's not entirely consistent on some of those. So for instance, one of the things that I've seen is that they'll have the core AI Overview and then they'll have a few topical links, a few recommended links on the right. And sometimes what you see is that the recommended links on the right aren't referenced in the AI Overview. So in the AI Overview, they have links within that, then they have links on the side and they're not necessarily the same links. So that's interesting, and I think that also what I'm starting to see is that on some of the search results they'll say, or sorry, on some of the search tools on their cache, they're saying, "Oh, this is an AI Overview." And then you go to the SERP and then it isn't. And so I think that it's still early days in terms of the data, which makes it tricky to track and it's still early days in terms of Google figuring out how they want to roll this out. So it's really a live space at the moment. Mordy Oberstein: That's totally true, and I want to get the URL thing, okay? That's the next thing I want to cover really quickly is that what do you do with all this data? Okay. Oh, AI Overviews are in 10% of all SERPs, I don't know, 15% of all SERPs, or 95% of all information queries, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. But there's two fundamental questions. One, I have absolutely no clue about what I'm trying to get a clue about. One is how often are users engaging with the AI Overview, how often are they not? Or subset of that, how often are they engaging with it, bouncing out of it, and going to the organic results? So even if they are engaging with it, are they still going to the organic results anyway? And if they are engaging with the AI Overviews, what's the stability of URLs? In other words, is it Google swapping out URLs all the time and there's no stability? In other words, what's the real impact of AI Overviews on traffic and then what's the real necessity of trying to optimize, whatever that means, for an AI Overview? Even if they are impacting traffic, but Google's swapping out the URLs on a daily basis, you have no market share. That's a waste of time. Crystal Carter: Right. Because if people aren't clicking on them, which we don't know what the click-through rate is on it, if people aren't clicking on them, should you optimize for them if you are getting straight to the SERP and things? So then it's a question of whether or not Google's taking the share of the click or whether or not there's a click at all, which we don't know if there's a click at all, or whether or not somebody else who's in the AI Overview is taking it. And I think that if we think about the featured snippets element, featured snippets are really, it's very much a similar evolution from when we didn't have featured snippets to when we do have featured snippets. Because in some cases, the featured snippet gives you enough information so that you don't need to make a click. That is true. It is true. Mordy Oberstein: And that's when the format of featured snippet matters most. The paragraph featured snippet you might have the answer right there. List is usually not the full list, so you usually get a higher click-through rate. Crystal Carter: Right. So these things will change, but the visibility is very important. So if people are constantly seeing your content in the featured snippet, then they'll go, "Okay, this is a great source." Mordy Oberstein: Totally, 100%. Crystal Carter: And I can just go straight there and get the information rather than having to go to Google to find the thing, they'll probably have it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I think you always want to be in the AI... If there's one there, you always want to be there, which brings the question: what about that URL stability? For example, I just did a study... I didn't just do a study. I did a study 10 years ago, maybe less, maybe seven or eight. I don't remember what I ate for breakfast, so I don't remember what year it was when I did the study. And it was featured snippet URL market share. If you're in the featured snippet, how long do you tend to last in the featured snippet? And basically, the pattern that I saw years ago, I don't know if this holds true, is that there's generally speaking, two URLs: a dominant URL, and a secondary URL. The dominant URL stands in the featured snippet around 75% of the time, and then the non-dominant URL is in there 25% of the time. So that's pretty good. If you could be one of those two URLs either way, that's at least decent market share, 25%. With the URLs inside of AI Overviews, what's that pattern look like? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, this is it. So it'd be interesting to see how that develops and it's so fresh, it's so new, particularly in different markets as well that we'll have to carry out the data and I think it's going to have to be a little bit manual for a while. Mordy Oberstein: It's a little wonky because a little peek behind the curtains, I've been working with Semrush to try to do something like this. And we did one version, had to redo it because Google changed the format of the URLs inside the AI Overviews, they don't want that data. And even then, it's still a little bit tricky. When I'm telling you it's tricky, I'm not telling you because I think it's tricky. I'm working with companies and I'm telling you it's tricky. I don't know if I could spill the tea or not. I don't know when this episode is coming out. I don't know when the study's going to come out. I will tell you- Crystal Carter: Spill the tea, Mordy. It's your podcast, it's your study. Me too. You do what you want. Mordy Oberstein: I already drank all the tea. I'm literally holding my tea mug upside down. Oh, I just actually... There was one drop left and I just dropped it on my keyboard. Crystal Carter: You can't tell us about all this juicy stuff and then hold back. That's just- Mordy Oberstein: I'll say it's less stable than you think it is. And I'll throw one stat at you. If you're out of there over a 31-day period, and this is only for AI Overviews where the AI Overview showed for at least 20 out of 30, 31 days. So you're talking about AI Overviews that are already consistent. If they're not consistent, then what's the point of URL consistency? The whole thing's not consistent, right? So I guess I'm saying all this data is so layered, so let's now only look at AI Overviews that are consistent. They show up 20 out of 30, 31 days, whatever we looked at. If you're out, you're out. Only 45% or so of the URLs that got kicked out ever came back in over that data period. Crystal Carter: Over the course of how long? Mordy Oberstein: 31 days, Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, maybe they come back after 60 days. I don't know. Secondary data point, I don't remember this exactly off the top of my head, but it's not like Google... Because maybe you'll say, "Okay." When Google's swapping the URL out... That's how my brain works. It's why I'm good at data studies. Maybe it's... And it takes out the Wix SEO Hub and it puts in another URL from the Wix SEO. All right, that's fine, right? I still have the market share. I think 100% of these AI Overviews that were in this category saw domain changes, meaning Google's not just saying, "Oh, one URL for one website." It's swapping, I don't know to the extent, but significantly so, swapping out domains. And when you add it all together that very few AI Overviews have the level of consistency that you're looking for. Very few URLs are returning, and a lot of domains are switching. It doesn't paint a very stable picture as of right now, as of the time of this recording. It could all change tomorrow. Who knows? Crystal Carter: See, this is interesting because I think this plays back into what Mark's talking about is that the SERP right now is a little bit unstable. We do a weekly or a daily news thing with Barry, and he's constantly like SERP volatility, SERP volatility, SERP volatility. If it is the case that the AI Overview optimization is essentially SEO, then it would stand to reason that the URLs would switch around in a volatile SERP. That would make sense. I think that this also points to, if you're thinking about AI Overviews, thinking about some of the information around... Or some of the fact that there are still some big, big players in terms of the AI Overviews of who has the most visibility. So Kevin Indig shared who's got the biggest share of AI Overviews, and he was saying that the biggest one is YouTube. Again, that's really similar to featured snippets. Then followed by Wikipedia, followed by YouTube mobile, followed by LinkedIn, and then followed by a few others, including usual suspects like Healthline, and WebMD, and Mayo Clinic, and things like that. We also see that those same folks see a big share on the SERP, and those same folks will have a fairly stable level of visibility on the SERP. They have fairly stable rankings in terms of where Google shows their domain and how often that Google shows their domain. But yeah, I think it's a really fascinating time in research and looking at this particular part of the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, exactly. But you were saying what Mark is saying, "Do good SEO." Crystal Carter: Yo. Mordy Oberstein: Just do good SEO. That will get you there. Crystal Carter: Right? Everybody wants some fancy thing, but it's like people are like, "How do I lose weight?" It's like, "Eat better and do some exercise." It's nothing complicated. Mordy Oberstein: Just the execution part, that's the hard part. Crystal Carter: That's true. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Some of it gets a little tricky. Crystal Carter: Because I love donuts, so if I could just have a delete donut. Have donut, delete donut, if I could just have that, that would be great. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I love donuts so much. Krispy Kreme or Dunkin' Donuts. Crystal Carter: Oh, I love Dunkin'. Mordy Oberstein: I love Dunkin' flavors. They have better flavors, but the donut itself, I think Krispy. Crystal Carter: Krispy Kreme is great, but I find Krispy Kreme to be very expensive, and also, they don't oblige my dietary requirements, whereas Dunkin' Donuts comes in better for me. So it's not a flavor thing. It's not explicitly flavor, it's for other considerations. Mordy Oberstein: Either way, donuts for the win. You know what else for the win? Tracking your AI Overviews. Global AI Overview data is great, super interesting, super informative, super everything, but how do you track your own AI Overviews? Well, find out as we look at the data providers as we go tool time on the SERP's Up Podcast. All right, so there's a whole heap of tools that do different things. I don't know, like Semrush and SE Ranking. Let's start with them maybe. I found them. They both have it in position tracking and then they were like organic research so you can see how stable your AI Overviews are and what keywords you have. And you can also analyze the competitor and see how many overviews they have, which I think is cool for looking at brand power for example. If I look at, I don't know, Nike versus New Balance, which brand is more powerful? Or the one that has a ton of AI Overviews kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. I think it's interesting to see that and I think that it's great to see some of these different tools showing this because people need to know. So I think that what is their general summary for the overall visibility on AI Overviews? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, if you run it through the organic research tool and then you can filter out by SERP feature, you can see all of the AI Overviews that that website or that domain is grabbing. Crystal Carter: And on their Semrush sensor, they also have included it under their SERP feature there so you can get an idea of the general trend. So according to- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but that data set is super normalized. I think that data set is... Because you're looking... I think now they're showing 2 or 3%, something like that. I know that data set because I work with it when I'm doing their algorithm update stuff. It's not reflective of what you do every day. The Moz data set would be. The MozCast is very much high search volume keywords, assuming that they're informational kind of thing. That would align with AI Overviews. I think that the Semrush data is just more normalized across the board, which is what I mean. This data, looking at the numbers, it's so hard. So hard. Crystal Carter: So then help me understand this. So according to their Semrush sensor, they're currently saying that for the US, on desktop, it's showing at 1.23% of search results and on 1.63% of search results. So what are you saying when you're giving that information? Mordy Oberstein: So what I'm saying is, okay, that's interesting because you compare this to say, I don't know like what Mark was talking about, or SE Ranking, and BrightEdge, and their data. The Semrush data set is lower, but I think it's because they're using their volatility data set to track it. When they track the volatility of SERP features, they have your featured snippets, and local packs, and images, they're not creating a separate data set that targets that feature or aligns with that feature. It's a universal data set to track all volatility. So it's not built... The way I search, I search mostly for informational keywords. That data set is not built to function the way I or most people search. It's meant to try to track the web. But AI Overview, so you're trying to track those. If you wanted to really see that you would have to include more things like how people actually search, in which case you would probably see a higher number. So I would look at the trend, not at the actual number in that one, and the trend's up. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and the other thing I think is interesting on the trend is that the Semrush sensor, for instance, filters by categories. And if you look at arts and entertainment, for instance, it's showing AI Overviews for 0.14%. But if you look at health, and this goes, again, back to some of the data that Kevin was showing, that some of the top AI Overviews include Healthline, WebMD, Mayo Clinic. That's three out of 10 for the top 10. And this is saying that health is showing 3.63% of the time. So again, maybe the numbers, maybe the number percentage might not be hard fast- Mordy Oberstein: But the trends, yeah. Crystal Carter: Exactly, but the trend that, on average, it's showing 1.63%. On average, it's showing a certain amount, but it's showing three times as much in the health sectors is interesting. And that also follows with some of the data that Lily's been sharing around that particular sector. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's so many tools like the seoClarity tool, for example. They show you the actual AI Overview content itself so you can actually see the snapshot of the AI Overview and what's actually in there. So you can see, obviously, where you're being impacted or where your competitors are being impacted, but you can get an actual sense what does that actually mean by looking at the actual content and the snapshot of the AI Overview. Which is great if you are, for example... If you're not in the U.S. and your clients are in the U.S. and you want to see what that actually looks like without using a VPN. You can use a VPN also, but you can use seoClarity and it's right there. Crystal Carter: Right. And another one that's got some is ZipTie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, ZipTie is interesting. I checked them out. Crystal Carter: So ZipTie.dev is detecting AI Overviews. They are claiming that they're detecting 17 times more AI Overviews than certain other tools. So they were checking us. According to ziptie.com, wix.com is showing a 27% of AI Overviews, which is interesting. Yeah, so they've got various different tools. I think they've got a freemium setup as well and they've been putting out some reports around that. So shout out to Tomasz Rudzki for some of his data there because that's really interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's cool because they'll tell you with AI Overview, remember there was one where there was automatically triggered, and then one format where it wasn't automatically triggered. They'll tell you which one it was, or they'll tell you if you have the AI Overview and the featured snippet, or just the AI Overview, or just the featured snippet. They'll tell you what AI Overview features are inside of it. Is there a topic breakdown? Are there pros and cons lists? Are there bullet points? Is there a shopping list? They'll actually break it down for you. So it's a really interesting tool. It seems like a really powerful tool for tracking AI Overviews for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely, and they've got their... On their blog, they're sharing a lot of data. So for instance, they were saying that, in June, it rose from 8% in June to 11% in August, which is interesting over things. And again, this goes back to your trend point, so just like it's on the up. How much? It's difficult to quantify exactly, but yeah, they are also breaking it down on their blog as to how many... What types of terms people are seeing it on and things like that, so yeah, interesting times in SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. We'll link to all those tools in the show notes. Check them all out, see which one is best for you. We are agnostic here on the SERP's Up Podcast, so pick what is best for you. You know what is a great place to learn about AI Overviews and the latest news happening around AI Overviews? I find that to be such a tongue twister, by the way, AI Overviews. Crystal Carter: It just makes me think of Old McDonald. I'm not going to lie. Mordy Oberstein: The what? Crystal Carter: Old McDonald, like A-I-A-I-O, like E-I-E-I-O, come on. Mordy Oberstein: That’s a great connection. That's great. Crystal Carter: Yeah, like << On the SERP there was a... And Google had a SERP, A-I-A-I-O. And you get a link, and a link over here, everyone link, link, link, link, link >> Mordy Oberstein: By the way, no one actually... We should have a separate conversation about the actual impact CTR-wise. Side note, I see a bunch of cases where a lot of rankings in AI Overviews and not real traffic change. Crystal Carter: As a user, I very often skip over it. As a user, I very often skip over it. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if they check it out and come back, maybe then I click... I'm interested if they click on it and just don't even see the links and just go back and click on the links in the SERP, that would be interesting. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that's interesting. But also, I find that sometimes the AI Overview doesn't make any sense for what I'm searching. I'll search for one thing and then it's- Mordy Oberstein: Eat glue! Crystal Carter: Well, yeah, I'm searching for one thing and then it shows up with something else, and I'm like, it's not what I'm talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's very broad. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think the other thing with the AI Overviews, they're trying to make a cohesive statement in the AI Overview, and they're trying to make a cohesive statement about whatever it is you're looking at. And sometimes if you were to look up Bluetooth speaker connectivity, right? Now, I might be looking for how I can connect all of the Bluetooth speakers in my house, so I don't have to find each individual one. I can just play Shakira on all of them. I might be thinking about how would I do that, but I've only typed in Bluetooth connectivity. And they might be like, "Oh, Bluetooth works like this, and this, and this, and this, and that, and that, and that." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Not what you wanted. Crystal Carter: And I'm like, "Y'all, that's not what I'm interested in." And so sometimes what's on the SERP is more aligned with what I'm interested in. And sometimes it's not, but I think that the nature of the beast means that sometimes it doesn't align, and it'll be interesting to see how they get better. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we digressed, by the way. I was trying to get into the Snappy News by saying, "You should try..." No, that's my bad. I did that. If you're trying to keep up on the news on AIOs, you always want to check out what Barry Schwartz is doing over at SE Roundtable, but until then, check out this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Two from Barry Schwartz, both from seroundtable.com. First Google AI Overviews not linking to sites hit by helpful content update. This is from, per report, this got started by Lily Ray who reported on X, "Hey, when you type, who is XYZ's site?" And insert site affected by the HCU, the Google AI Overview result seems to not include links to that site, yada, yada, yada, yada. Glenn Gabe tested the same thing, and he says, "Yeah, it looks that way." He said even for the sites that, quote, "bounce back a bit with the August core update, and they don't show up in the AI Overviews for their own brand site." It's fascinating. It feels to me like that's like a glitch in the matrix, especially if it's a website that yes, got hit by one of the previous core updates, or the initial... Not the initial, but the last of the HCU. That should be the name of a movie, the Last of the HCUs, back in September 2023. If it's your own website, if people are particularly specifically Googling, "What is name of website.com?" I feel like you should show up there regardless of what Google thinks of you algorithmically in terms of ranking for informational navigation... I mean informational, commercial transactional searches related to your queries. It's a navigational search. Would you not rank navigationally? If someone typed in, "What is blah, blah blah website.com," you would show up number one regardless of any algorithm. I mean, unless you're like manual action kind of stuff, but so why not in the AI Overview? Then there's a little bit of speculation on X about Barry's own website, seroundtable.com, which I check out each and every day, and which you should too. And if you want, you can also get a dose of seroundtable.com on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub where we have It's New, our daily dose of SEO News with Barry Schwartz and Greg Finn. Plugging is over. Barry's site didn't seem to show up in the AI Overviews, which is just weird. I did a few of these searches related to seroundtable.com myself. Sometimes Barry does show up there, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes it's just his X handle. Sometimes it is the actual website. I found one where you search for what is seroundtable.com. So then Barry does get the link in the AIO overview, but Apple gets the featured snippet for some kind of search engine round table thing that they have in the app store that who the heck knows. That's not this. That's not the real Search Engine Roundtable. Barry is. But for example, if you search for what is search engine around table website, seroundtable.com does not show up in there as of the recording of this recording. The recording of this recording, that's not redundant. Only Barry's X profile shows up, so that's interesting. So again, it just seems wonky, for lack of a better word, or glitch in the matricky, for lack of a better word. Anyway, on to the second article. Also, again, reminding you from Barry Schwartz on seroundtable.com, which you may or may not find in an AIO overview near you. DOJ may break up Google as remedy to monopoly ruling. I see this on It's New. First, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez break up, and now Google. How many breakups can I handle? I can't. I just can't. This is reporting... A lot of it was reported on CNBC, which Barry links to in the article. I don't want to get into the whole 32-page document issued by the DOJ. You could read that on your own time because that's not snappy. Anything 32 pages is not snappy. But Barry did pull out some highlights and Barry writes, what is proposed is not just a break-up, which could split off Chrome, Android, and many other things. "But also," says Barry, "Google will make available its competitors' data within its search index and models. Google will make available its AI-assisted search features." Again, whoa. "Google to make available its ad ranking data, policy regulations about retaining its data, limitations on its partnership with Apple and others," that does make sense, "and more." So some of that is just like, "Wow, just take everything." It's a full-on garage sale. We're taking everything. So that's really interesting. I'll link to Barry's article in the show notes, which links to all the other links that you need. If you want to deep dive into 32 pages of this stuff. I do not. The minute I hear law and legal, I'm out. So I'm out. That's this week's Snappy News. I'd like to see AI Overview Barry. You ask Barry and it just spits out a summary, but the summary is two words. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? Mordy Oberstein: Reads. Crystal Carter: Not new. Mordy Oberstein: How do I connect my Bluetooth speaker, AI Overview Barry? With a plug. Crystal Carter: Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. With electricity. Complete brevity. Brevity AI Overviews by Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: And efficiency. Mordy Oberstein: Efficiency. I had a pocket in my shirt. I put my phone in it. For reference, go look at an old episode of It's New for that. Which brings us to our follow of the week, and our follow of the week is someone we already mentioned this week, so you should be following him anyway by this point. You should have listened to the episode and clicked follow on this person's profile because we mentioned their name. That's a little much. It's Rich Sanger. Rich was one of the folks who, first off, we met him a few times at our New York City digital marketing meetup at the SEOFOMO meetup we did in New York City at the Wix Playground. So Rich is a great guy. I think he's a Red Sox fan, so I won't hold that against him, but that's fine too. But he did the study with Authoritas on how often the overlap is between the organic results and the AI Overviews. Again, we'll link to that study in the show notes, but he puts out a lot of really thought-provoking blog posts that he writes. So it was a great follow out there on X and on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's worth checking out folks who are doing good content like that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and they're just good people even if they're Red Sox fans. Crystal Carter: It's not all about baseball. Mordy Oberstein: Is it? Is it not all about baseball? I'm literally wearing a baseball jersey. I feel like it is. Crystal Carter: If you build it, they will come. Mordy Oberstein: Ease my pain. That's what I tell my kids when they're making me crazy, "Ease his pain." When I say his, I mean mine. Crystal Carter: I try to think of... But literally, if they build it, they will come. I think that's the only baseball quote I got. No, no, no. There's that, what is it? Yeah, I don't know. To be fair, I think of the Sandlot when I'm putting together a content strategy because in the Sandlot, he points at where he is going to hit it, and I feel like that's what you're doing when you're doing a content strategy, or a campaign strategy, or any kind of marketing thing. Because you don't know what's going to happen, but you're like, "I'm going to put it right there, and it's going to do the thing." And I think of the Sandlot when I'm doing that. Mordy Oberstein: Also, a great movie. A lot of great baseball movies, but the first movie, in case you not a baseball nut or a movie nut, is Field of Dreams, which is one of the best movies, I think, ever made. Crystal Carter: It's a good movie. It's a good movie. Mordy Oberstein: That last thing, the last line, "Hey Dad, do you want to have a catch?" Bawling every time. Every time. Every time. You go on YouTube, by the way, I've actually done this. You watch reaction videos of people who... And you just see them bawling, it's crazy. Check that out. Anyway, that was off-topic and off the rails. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to do SEO for a sub-brand. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, and webinars, and SEO courses on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Erika Varangouli is responsible for growing Riverside.fm’s organic visibility. Before Riverside, she led organic and brand teams at Semrush. She has worked with companies like Capterra, Symantec, Travelex, Asics, HSBC etc. She is a guest speaker, webinar host, and awards judge. Erika Varangouli Head of Search, Riverside.fm Erika Varangouli is responsible for growing Riverside.fm’s organic visibility. Before Riverside, she led organic and brand teams at Semrush. She has worked with companies like Capterra, Symantec, Travelex, Asics, HSBC etc. She is a guest speaker, webinar host, and awards judge. Articles & Resources 14 May 2024 The Content MVP Framework: Create and iterate to rank on any budget Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Petra is an SEO consultant with a background of working in-house for B2C & B2B brands, TUI, Jack Wills, as well as enterprise software brands, Yext, and Botify. She is also an international conference speaker. Petra Kis-Herczegh SEO Consultant Petra is an SEO consultant with a background of working in-house for B2C & B2B brands, TUI, Jack Wills, as well as enterprise software brands, Yext, and Botify. She is also an international conference speaker. Articles & Resources 15 Aug 2024 SEO career development: How to prioritize your growth when skills change every year 16 May 2023 Beyond the basics: Conversations for developing customized SEO strategies Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Mark Williams-Cook has over 20 years of SEO experience and is co-owner of search agency Candour, the founder of AlsoAsked, and runs a pet category eCommerce business. Outside of speaking at conferences, Mark has trained over 3,000 SEOs with his Udemy course. Mark Williams-Cook Digital Marketing Director, Candour Mark Williams-Cook has over 20 years of SEO experience and is co-owner of search agency Candour , the founder of AlsoAsked, and runs a pet category eCommerce business. Outside of speaking at conferences, Mark has trained over 3,000 SEOs with his Udemy course. Articles & Resources 19 Sept 2024 Google’s People Also Ask: Understand customers and improve SEO with intent data 13 Dec 2022 Understanding the nofollow link attribute Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Einat Hoobian-Seybold is the Head of Product SEO and Accessibility at Wix. She began her career in SEO, developing organic growth strategies for leading global brands, before discovering her passion for product development. Einat Hoobian-Seybold Head of Product SEO & Accessibility at Wix Einat Hoobian-Seybold is the Head of Product SEO and Accessibility at Wix. She began her career in SEO, developing organic growth strategies for leading global brands, before discovering her passion for product development. Today, Einat leads Wix’s SEO and accessibility product vision, creating impactful tools that make SEO and accessibility approachable and effective for more than 200 million users worldwide. Articles & Resources 26 Jan 2026 How to connect your Wix & Wix Studio websites to Bing Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Do you have the need, the need for speed?! Today we're talking about performance (also known as How Fast is this Website?) and what it means for your rankings on Google. So, how big of a deal is performance for SEO, anyway? Mordy and Crystal do a deep dive discussing the importance of Core Web Vitals and site performance metrics in SEO today. There’s a lot of conflicting information about the role of performance in SEO. How do you reconcile Google’s own statements about “site speed” along with data from the industry’s tool providers on the impact of Core Web Vitals? Listen in as we parse it all for you so that you have a truer understanding of the role of Core Web Vitals in rankings and beyond. Annie Sullivan, Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google, shares the main steps towards improving Core Web Vitals: measure, analyze, optimize and repeat. Hear Annie’s take on identifying bottlenecks that could be impacting the website's performance. Catch up with Alon Kochba, Head of Web Performance at Wix, who discusses how the team helped improve performance across the entire Wix platform. Back Just how big of a deal is performance for SEO? Do you have the need, the need for speed?! Today we're talking about performance (also known as How Fast is this Website?) and what it means for your rankings on Google. So, how big of a deal is performance for SEO, anyway? Mordy and Crystal do a deep dive discussing the importance of Core Web Vitals and site performance metrics in SEO today. There’s a lot of conflicting information about the role of performance in SEO. How do you reconcile Google’s own statements about “site speed” along with data from the industry’s tool providers on the impact of Core Web Vitals? Listen in as we parse it all for you so that you have a truer understanding of the role of Core Web Vitals in rankings and beyond. Annie Sullivan, Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google, shares the main steps towards improving Core Web Vitals: measure, analyze, optimize and repeat. Hear Annie’s take on identifying bottlenecks that could be impacting the website's performance. Catch up with Alon Kochba, Head of Web Performance at Wix, who discusses how the team helped improve performance across the entire Wix platform. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 13 | November 16, 2022 | 41 MIN 00:00 / 40:39 This week’s guests Annie Sullivan Annie is a software engineer on Chrome's Web Platform team. She is passionate about building a better performing web for users across the globe. Her tenure as a Googler spans 17 years, with experience on the toolbar, docs, web search, and chrome teams. Annie currently leads performance metric development on Chrome. She lives in Michigan with her husband Doug and two sons, and enjoys tinkering with laser cutters, metal etching, and new cooking techniques. Alon Kochba Alon is the Head of Web Performance at Wix, leading all performance efforts across the company, making the web faster at scale. He also manages a back-end group which builds and maintains several critical core services. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by our Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, fun internet people. Welcome to our internet podcast show. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you for joining us today. Crystal Carter: Thank you. It's a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: We've really switched up that vibe on a dime. Wow. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you were like, "Yeah!" You didn't, it's like, " Hello." Mordy Oberstein: Hello, world. Crystal Carter: Hi. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We're here to talk about... Hi. We're here to talk about SEO. Send in your questions to 1-800... Crystal Carter: SEO. 1-800. Mordy Oberstein: 1-800-SEO, right. That's not a real phone number, if you're- Crystal Carter: It's not. Please don't call 1-800 SEO. I don't know whose number that is, but if you get lots of phone calls. Mordy Oberstein: Can you imagine that person? "Hello?" "Yes, I'm calling in..." Crystal Carter: Dear sir, I would like to talk to you about this …. Mordy Oberstein: I would like to sell you links. Crystal Carter: Press one for hi daily. Press two. Mordy Oberstein: That's a good time to remind you that the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where traffic thresholds for Core Web Vitals are a thing of the past. Wait, didn't we do this last week? We did, but it's super relevant for this week, because we're talking about web performance. So Google's Search Console not giving you the field data you so desire, use Wix's Speed Dashboard. Get field data built off user sessions from multiple browsers. No more guessing what your actual Core Web Vitals are with Wix's Site Speed Dashboard. If I was a better planner, I would've used that this week and just this week and a different one last week, because this week we're talking about performance. And last time I talked about Search Console and I should have plugged something about Wix and Search Console instead... Yeah, I'm a poor planner, it turns out, even though I think I'm a really good... I'm a good planner. I promise. Crystal Carter: You're great at planning. Mordy Oberstein: I know, I know. But this is the second time today. The audience does not know the first time that I have not planned well today. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Sometimes it's just like that. Sometimes Mercury's in retrograde, or it's a full moon, or you just skip breakfast, or whatever it is and sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: Or it's Tuesday. Crystal Carter: And you just got to try again the next day. And sometimes it's just like that. That's okay. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: I will try. I will do better tomorrow. Crystal Carter: Hey, hey, we believe in you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Crystal Carter: Your SEO affirmations, there's actually an SEO affirmations Twitter account that I found today. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's like, "Hey, keep up the good work." I was like, "Oh, that's nice." Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I need that. Send it over right away. Crystal Carter: That's good. Mordy Oberstein: So great show today. This week we're talking about, well, we're performers talking about performance. Crystal Carter: We are talking about performance. And I'm so glad that you brought up that site Speed Dashboard, because I absolutely love it. And anybody who has a Wix account should absolutely check it out because- Mordy Oberstein: It is the only place in the world you're going to get that kind of data. Literally. I'm not making that up. Crystal Carter: Literally, literally. So there's field data, there's lab data. Lab data is when you run it through Lighthouse and it says what they can tell from their tools. Field data is information from actual users. And if you have a certain number of traffic, then if you go into Google Search Console, you can't see your field data. You can't see that information. But if you are a Wix user, then you can get your field data, whatever number of traffic you have. Mordy Oberstein: No traffic thresholds. Crystal Carter: No traffic thresholds. And it's not a third-party tool. It comes from the information that Wix is getting from people- Mordy Oberstein: Right from the browser. Crystal Carter: Right from the browser, from multiple browsers, not just Google. Mordy Oberstein: Multiple browsers, not just Chrome. Interesting. Fascinating. Oh, boy. Anyway, okay, so today's show, we're talking about performance, also known as, how fast is this website? Crystal Carter: And how does it all work with its network? And how's it all moving and shaken and not shaking? Not shaking at all? Mordy Oberstein: Well, hopefully it's not shaking. That'd be bad for performance. But we're going to finally settle, maybe hopefully, how big of a deal is performance for SEO, which TLDR? It's an enormous debate among SEOs filled with so much information and not a lot of nuance. So we're going to try to offer a more nuanced look at the impact of performance on SEO. We'll dive into things like Core Web Vitals. Are they as big of a deal as you think? Or maybe they're a bigger deal than you might think? How would that work? Anyway, Annie Sullivan, Senior Staff Software Engineer over at Google's going to stop by and talk about some common mistakes folks make. They make their sites slow down a bit. And we talk to Wix's own Head of Web Performance, the one the only Alon Kochba, the fellow who improved Wix's Core Web Vitals tenfold. And he's going to talk to us about how he approaches performance and where he thinks Google is headed when it comes to assessing faster loading for websites. And he's someone who talks to Google, so he's in the know. Hopefully, we'll get some secrets out of him, yeah? Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited about this episode, because we've got so many great folks joining us today and because- Mordy Oberstein: It's stacked. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we're pretty stacked. Annie is fantastic. I was on a Twitter space with her and she's super incredible and super, super knowledgeable. And I've had lots of conversations with Alon and how he thinks about the whole network of over 200 million websites that he's trying to make sure that are performing as best they can. And it's something that Wix is very enthusiastic about and rightfully so. And I'm excited to talk about this topic. Mordy Oberstein: Alon's super awesome. And, of course, by the way, we have your Snappy News and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Episode number 13 of SERP's Up is here. So performance, performance is super important. It's important for multiple reasons. But it's one of these areas, if you're listening to this podcast and you're trying to, if you are very familiar with the SEO space, you'll probably nod right along. If you're newer into the SEO space, it's something that you need to be careful of. There's a lot of conflicting information about the role of performance or speed and whatnot on SEO. And there's conflicting information coming out of Google itself at some times over the years, that they're doing it on purpose. It's different statements and different people over the years, right hand not talking to the left hand, I don't know, whatever it is. Or SEOs have different takes on it. And it's a really important issue that goes beyond just SEO. But it is also really important for SEO. But it does, I think, require a little bit more of a nuanced understanding of where performance fits into the larger SEO scheme. So I don't know, Crystal, to you, how important, let's throw it out there, how important is performance to SEO? Crystal Carter: Okay, so just for anybody who's not in this all the time, when we say performance, there's lots of things you could talk about for SEO performance. E-ranking could be considered performance. Or traffic could be considered performance. But when we talk about web performance, we're pretty much talking about web connectivity and how people connect to your website. So we're talking about how fast your website loads, how fast different parts of your website load, how your network connections are functioning so that your website performs well, when technically, people are visiting your website. Now, I think, and in my experience, this performance is really valuable for SEO in lots of ways. It can sometimes be a litmus test for other issues that you have across your website. Speed is a ranking factor. They've said that Core Web Vitals is a ranking factor. Security is a ranking factor. These things often overlap when you're making updates. So for instance, if you improve your security settings, it will often have an impact on your speed. It will often have an impact on your Core Web Vitals performance. So these are things that you should be thinking about. And generally speaking, when I've made Core Web Vitals updates, particularly for clients who, or websites where there is a significant amount of traffic, it has had some benefit to the overall SEO outcomes for that site. And because there's so many overlapping things, it can sometimes be difficult to understand whether it's because we improved the security, which also improved the Core Web Vitals metrics or whether it's because we improved the speed, which also improved the Core Web Vitals, or because the page is more interactive, because we didn't have third-party scripts on the page, that sort of thing. But generally speaking, the process of improving your Core Web Vitals will often improve the value of your website, overall. Mordy Oberstein: And if you look at the data some of the different tool providers have put out around the impact of Core Web Vitals on ranking, the data from across the board from multiple providers has been, "Nah, not too much," which is what a lot of SEOs may have expected. Some SEOs not. Somebody says, "Oh no, it's going to be massive and huge." But I think you're right. The way I look like it, that's not the question. The question is not, oh, how much is this particular metric that Google is measuring, your Core Web Vitals, how much are they going to meet in terms of ranking directly? To me, they're more representative of, like you said, of the site overall and not just from the search engine point of view, but from the user's point of view. So when you go to a webpage, to me performance is very much first and foremost is a conversion issue. If the website doesn't function right, if it's too slow to load, or buttons are moving around and you can't click anything, and nothing is working, people are not going to be able to add things to the cart. And they're not going to be able to enter their credit card, and not be able to give you their money, which is what you're trying to do with the website. And the health and performance of a website speaks to just how good of a website it is overall. So when you're asking, they go, "How important is it for SEO?" Super important, because it represents the technical health and it represents a conversion health of the website. You're asking about ranking for a particular keyword or a particular scenario? That's like a drop in the bucket, like a raindrop in the ocean of a kind of a question to me. Crystal Carter: Right. One of things that was great about Core Web Vitals metrics, and if you go to, Google has lots and lots of tools for Core Web Vitals and for understanding them. And I think it's web.dev is their page that has lots of... Web.dev has lots of information about Core Web Vitals and about understanding different things. If you're using Chrome, you can also right click and you can get a Lighthouse report and see different things about your website there. And there's lots of links within that. But the Core Web Vitals metrics are giving you a number for things that have always irritated everyone about websites. So cumulatively, I should just have just said classic one. Mordy Oberstein: The classic, it's so bad, too. Crystal Carter: And we all hate it when you go onto a website and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to click on this thing," and then it moves, because something else is loading. Nobody likes that. Mordy Oberstein: So cumulatively layout shift, there's CLS, if you're not aware. You know where you go to a website and the buttons are moving around, and you click on the wrong thing, and you add the wrong thing to the cart, and then you ended up paying for it? You're like, "Oh, my god, I hate this website." CLS measures that. And a CLS score of zero means that that's not happening at all, which is what you want. Crystal Carter: Right. And so what the Core Web Vitals metrics do and one of the reasons why it's so great to have that as a reporting thing is that you can say, "We have 17 pages on our website that have this issue." And if you're showing for that issue, then that means it's 17 pages that you can fix. And you can see that lots of users are having this issue, or not that many users are having that issue. And you can see how you can do it and you can show progress. So there's something called the CrUX report, which is a free thing that you can download. You can connect your website to it. And you can track your progress over time. And that will help you get better outcome for users, will help you to increase the conversion opportunities that you're talking about there. And I think that that is valuable for lots of parts of SEO. And also for instance though, one of the things that you get with Core Web Vitals metrics is they'll tell you about loading times. So for instance, they'll give you a metric that says that, "There are parts of your page that aren't loading properly. They're loading really slowly. They're taking a really long time to load." So most people, when they come to your website, are not seeing that giant picture that you have on your homepage. Or they're not seeing that video that you have on your homepage. So if you are having a discussion as an SEO, and I'm an SEO who's less aesthetically-minded than some other people, I'm like, "Tell me how beautiful Amazon is, because they rank fantastically." So if you're somebody who's having a discussion about, "Oh, should we have that beautiful video or should we have this SEO optimized copy," or whichever, you can use your Core Web Vitals information, you can use your page experience information to make those decisions more accurately. If most users aren't seeing that video, then you probably shouldn't have that video on there. It's not helping you. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Also, and again, it goes back to the earlier point about conversion, but there's also a branding side of it. If you're going to a page and things start loading... Remember, though, back in the day when we had dial-up internet? And five minutes after you loaded the page, and then something else loaded like, "Oh, oh, wait a second"? But the equivalent of that today is you go to a webpage and there's a video there and you're on the page one or two seconds, all of a sudden the video pops up. That doesn't make you look good. And that goes back to what we were saying before that Core Web Vitals or web performance, whether it's a ranking factor or... Well, I'm sorry. Let me rephrase that. It is definitely a ranking factor. But how big of a ranking factor is it? Is is a tiebreaker scenario? Many of the instances where Google has talked about it is like, "You have two pages. Relatively same content. Every SPO is all optimized the same way, but which one's faster?" "Well, it's a tiebreaker. We'll go with one's, a better performance." Leaving that aside for a minute, when you look at how a page performs, physically performs, and it's doing something like loading the video a minute later, like it's 1995, it's not what you want. Crystal Carter: It's not what you want. Mordy Oberstein: And Core Web Vitals therefore speaks to the overall health and experience of the website as a whole. So when you have Google back in the day saying, like Gary Illyish, Illyes Illyish, ish, ish? Crystal Carter: Gary. Mordy Oberstein: Gary, Gary from Google at one point said, "You could find it in an seoroundtable.com." I'm trying to find the link for you and put it in the show notes. Oh, speed is before Core Web Vitals. It was speed is a teeny, tiny ranking factor. And SEOs are debating this forever. No, no, it's a really big ranking factor. No, it's a teeny... Does it matter? Because it's so far reaching and so far speaking to what your website is that I don't think... Okay. Crystal Carter: And also, it's a question of users are using your website. So if I have a decision between sitting there waiting for a page to load for that long or doing literally- Mordy Oberstein: I see what you did there. I see it. It went right over my head for a second. And then it didn't. Crystal Carter: Right. Or literally doing anything else, I would rather do literally anything else. And so I will go back to the page that I know will load quickly. And I will not go back to the page that I didn't even see, because I left, because I wanted to do literally anything else. So these are the things that are important to think about. And I think that Core Web Vitals gives you incredible metrics to see that at scale, and to see that over time, and to see how you're performing there. So I think it's really valuable. In terms of speed, I've worked on projects where we've made speed optimizations and it's had incredible impact on conversions and on customer value, which therefore, has an impact on rankings, because you're more valuable to users and Google can see that. Mordy Oberstein: I will say on that last point, you've seen many SEOs debate this fact like, "Oh, I made a big speed improval." "Oh, that's not going to make a big impact. I've never seen a speed improve." There's more than one way to skin the cat in SEO. And you never know what's going to move the needle. And multiple things might move the needle. So I don't think it's the zero sum game that SEOs sometimes play. Crystal Carter: One point I did want to also bring up, so Core Web Vitals can be a little bit relative. So sometimes you see that there's not that much change, particularly in sectors around e-commerce, because they're really heavily tracked. But another good thing that Core Web Vitals does is it teaches you best practice. One of the things I see really, really frequently is that lots of people have tons of third-party scripts hanging around on their website that they're not using anymore. They used to use Hotjar and now nobody has access to Hotjar anymore. And they don't even remember when they had the account or something like that. You don't need those on there. You don't need those on there. That's potentially a data risk. And cleaning those out is good practice, and it's good for your Core Web Vitals, and it's good for your users, and it's good for your site, and all of those sorts of things. These are good habits to have. And I think the Core Web Vitals is a great element in an SEO atmosphere, because of things like that. Mordy Oberstein: And speaking of things you can do to improve your Core Web Vitals and the performance of your website overall, here's Annie Sullivan, Senior Staff Software Engineer over at Google, as we ask her, what are some common mistakes you see people making with their sites that negatively impact performance? Annie Sullivan: To me, the biggest mistake people make that negatively affects performance is not taking the right approach to understanding performance. Last week, Dan Shapir tweeted out, "Measure, analyze, optimize, repeat." And I couldn't agree more. Those four words sum up performance work so well. But I see a lot of people skipping over the measure and analyze steps and just going straight to optimize. When you do that, you're not going to make much progress. You need to start by measuring to get a baseline. You should have an idea of how fast your site is for real users and how fast you'd like it to be. We have recommended thresholds for all the Core Web Vitals metrics, if you're not sure. Once you've got an idea where you're at, the next step is analyzing to understand where the biggest bottlenecks are. If you're not sure how to identify bottlenecks, you'll want to read up on the critical rendering path in browsers. Your goal is to make the critical rendering path shorter. So you want to find the biggest things you can cut out of its way. Once you've analyzed a critical path for your own application and found where the biggest bottlenecks are, then it's time to optimize. The repeat part is important, too. Often, your optimization won't have the impact you expect. You'll need to measure to be sure. If it doesn't, then you'll need to do another round of analysis to figure out why. Then optimize again. Another aspect of repeating is finding ways to prevent yourself from reintroducing the bottlenecks you just removed. A lot of bottlenecks, like render-blocking resources are cleanly written out as Lighthouse audits. If you found a big improvement from a Lighthouse audit, you'd consider writing a test on your continuous build to ensure that audit doesn't start regressing in the future. It's so much fun to dig into performance bottlenecks and learn about what makes things slow. I can't wait to hear what you find. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Annie. And I just want to say, if you're looking to make improvements to your performance of your website, it can seem overwhelming. There's plenty of materials out there and a lot of the steps are not as complicated as it might seem. And yes, at a certain point you might reach your limits and it's okay to ask for help. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think Annie works with Google. Google's really been leading the charge with this. And one of the things that was great about when the Core Web Vitals information started coming through was that Google provided us with lots of information. There's lots of information about different methodologies. There's lots of tools you can use, both within Chrome, within Google Search Console, within tools like Lighthouse, tools like PageFeed Insights, things like that. So there's lots of great tools there. And what Annie was saying about analyzing your information is really, really valuable. And I think that it's really important to look not just at the metrics, but actually at the pages. For instance, I've had it before where I was working on a site and the person said, "Oh, I've been trying to fix the cumulative layout shift for ages and we've been having all this trouble." And I went into Google Search Console. I know I had a look at the trends, which pages were pulling up the same error. And I went to the page and I saw that the cumulative layout shift, it was very clear. They had their products in folders. And you would go to the page and all of the folders would show up where you could see all of them. And then they would all scrunch up into a burger menu straight afterwards. And I was like, "We need to pick one. We either need to put all of these at the bottom or we need to just go at the burger menu. But it can't be open and close, and open and close. That's ridiculous." And we did that and it fixed it. And we saw better results for users as well, because if you're a user and all you're getting is… Mordy Oberstein: Here's the content. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: No, it's not. Crystal Carter: So every page would just show that list on mobile, would just show the list of all of the categories rather than showing the actual products on the page. So it's better for users, because you've made that analysis. And also, she talked about testing afterwards. So that's really important, as well. So you make that change and then you monitor the results to see how users are actually engaging with that, if it's actually moving the needle, if it's actually making an impact. And then you refine and do it again. So she also mentioned Dan Shapir, who's a fantastic person to follow on the web performance space. There's some great people who are doing some great things in web performance. He's a great one, as well. So yes, I wholeheartedly agree with what Annie's saying about the test it again. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to tell you an amazing story. Okay. It's a story of millions of websites suddenly got hit by a bolt of lightning and became supercharged beasters. Okay, it's a little bit hyperbolic. And it's not really my story to tell. But it's a fascinating story. Crystal Carter: Wasn't that Thunderbolt? Mordy Oberstein: Inside joke. It wasn't Thunderbolt. Well, partially. But really, it's a fascinating story and the amount of work, dedication, ingenuity that went into improving Wix's Core Web Vital scores to make it at the point where it's a market leader, like 60% of our mobile sites in the US past Core Web Vitals it's incredible. And it was an incredible effort, honest, and personally, I just want to say I feel privileged to have been a small part of it back in the day to help advocate for driving these efforts and pushing these efforts in. But if anyone deserves the credit, it's people like Dan Shapir, who you just mentioned, who at the time was working at Wix and this man, Alon Kochba, Head of Web Performance at Wix. So join me and join Crystal as we go across the Wixverse to discuss with Alon how he and the team improve performance on many websites and where he thinks the future of web performance is headed. Audio: 3... 2... 1... We have ignition. Liftoff. Mordy Oberstein: How are you? Alon Kochba: Everything is great. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: Ah, we're good. Hanging out here. It's raining. It's a dreary day out here today. Crystal Carter: Somebody told me it was raining. I was very surprised that it was raining. I've never heard anyone talk about rain. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I'm officially an old person now. I talk about the weather. Crystal Carter: Oh, I live in England. That's all they talk about. Mordy Oberstein: So today, we're not talking about the weather. We're talking about performance. We've been talking about performance, all of us. And Alon, I mean, I know you're going to brush this off. And you're going to dismiss what I'm about to say, but if you take a look at Wix's CrUX data, and the Core Web Vitals, and what we've done there, it's amazing. Our numbers have improved tenfold. And I'm going to credit you with doing it. Alon Kochba: It's me and a lot of other great people at Wix. And that's really been focusing on performance for a long time now. Mordy Oberstein: It's true. And again, not taking away from you, it's been an enormous team effort across the entire company. I would say we're a performance first company across the board. But I'm curious, now that we have you here and we're talking to you about this, and you've been such a backbone behind the efforts, just what has it been like to try to improve performance for millions of websites? What have you done, obviously, without going too much into the technical nitty gritty of that, but it's more like how have you approached it? Alon Kochba: So I think as the platform, we have an amazing opportunity where we're hosting millions of sites, like you said, and we're trying to solve a lot of technical challenges that a lot of site builders have, a lot of people have on their own sites, but do it at a massive scale. And it all starts with hosting and serving all your files from CDNs, and caching, and bringing everything close to the user. But it also has a lot of development teams building a lot of amazing products across of Wix that all need to tend with it. So basically, it's finding your opportunities and seeing how to go from there. Crystal Carter: And I think there's lots of different layers to it. So you talked about different security performance and things like that. So do you work just with teams within Wix to achieve some of that change? Or are you working with teams who are external as well to see some of that progress? Alon Kochba: So basically, I think a lot of things in Wix and a lot of those platforms, a lot of the things are up to us as a platform. And that means talking with a lot of development teams across Wix and pushing best standards internally. On the other hand, you have these things that are up to the user, because he can design his site however he wants. And at the end of the day, there are best practices and what kind of third parties you put on your site that can cause issues and how you design your pages. So it's basically split between both sides. Mordy Oberstein: Which is what makes it a little bit interesting when you're trying to approach improving a website. It's not just, okay, it's on the development side of it, but also whoever, the designer of the SEO, whoever's creating the website, it's sort of a partnership between the two. And it's a partnership, as you mentioned before, with multiple teams here at Wix. And if you're not Wix, if you're, I don't know, you're working in an agency, you're working with designers, you're working with the content teams, you're working with developers. It's sort of just like one giant effort, because everything impacts performance. How do you manage that? Particularly here at Wix, we have so many parts of the product. And all of it, theoretically, can impact performance. How do you manage all that? How do you set expectations? How did you go about setting the bar so that the teams, when they're developing whatever they're developing or developing with performance first? Alon Kochba: So I think at the end of the day, it's a numbers game. You can't fix everything. And they're always new performance opportunities. And you need to choose your battles. But we've been trying to first install all these guidelines and best practices across teams so it's in everyone's minds. And we've been trying to focus on the largest cases that handle the most sites and the most common use cases and working our way from there. Mordy Oberstein: Out of curiosity, if you can pick one thing, I don't know, what's one thing that you've done at Wix that you've seen that you can share, maybe that people can take away as a lesson for their own sites, that we've done that's really moved the needle in terms of performance? Alon Kochba: So I think at the end of the day, you really, first off, you want to serve your HTML as fast as possible. If the HTML is not fast, if it's not served from a server that's near your users, or in our case, everywhere, because we have users from a lot of distinct fundraise, you can't really succeed to performance if you don't have a fast TFB and fast FCPO, you'll have a very hard time passing Core Web Vitals. But then on the other hand, after the HTML arrives, you basically have your resources that are the LCP. And this has to do with how you build your site and what framework you're using. But go HTML. This is really the way to go today. Browsers are up to speed on a lot of standards and a lot of things can be built straight on the HTML. That's what we've been trying to do. Crystal Carter: And so I think that comes a little bit to how Wix is structured. So you were talking about HTML, but a lot of people think of Wix and they think of JavaScript. How do you manage the JavaScript from a performance point of view? Alon Kochba: So basically, all Wix sites are built on top of React. And we have a very extensive framework wrapping React internally. But React brings with it a lot of JavaScript dependencies. And that's something that we, like a lot of other companies, have been trying to avoid with a lot of best practices of preshaking, and lazy loading, and reducing bundle sizes. But we are looking forward at a lot of talk out there about little to no JavaScript solutions and alternative frameworks. In the past Wix was FLASH sites all over. And then we used the Angular. And these days we use React. And I think we do a great job of even exceeding the average React site. So yes, JavaScript arrives, but ideally JavaScript is there at least only for interactivity currently and not- Crystal Carter: Sure. And it's my understanding that the HTML is server side rendered. Is that correct? Alon Kochba: Yeah, so we use a server side rendering, but we also have extensive automatic caching for all our sites and CDNs. And we invalidate whenever something changes. For example, you buy your last product and the product needs to become out of stock, so something takes care of that for you. Crystal Carter: And that's super simple to set up right? All of those things. And making sure that all of those things work seamlessly so that every time somebody comes to my little blog, they can see exactly what they need to see, and that it loads properly, and loads correctly. That's super easy, right? Alon, you make it look super easy. Alon Kochba: Definitely. You don't even need to think about it. You built your site. You bought your domain. And you just get everything automatic. If you are using Velo, then there are cases where you need to turn it on manually, but. Mordy Oberstein: Right, which is smart, by the way, because if you have a custom code there maybe doesn't make any sense to have it cached that way, because who knows what you have on the website? Alon Kochba: Exactly. And we're a bit careful around custom code and caching. Crystal Carter: I think you talked about some of the things that are built in. And there's some fantastic things within Wix for performance that I absolutely love, that we have. WebP is one of the sort of defaults for images. I think you shared an image on Twitter recently that was talking about how many WebP images we have proportionally, which I think is amazing. Is there a reason why you chose that particular one as being the main image format for Wix? Alon Kochba: Yeah. So I think image formats are a very interesting area where a lot of people... JPEG and PNG have been around for tens of years and are not really as optimized as they should be. And WebP is really the alternative that currently is supported across all browsers. And you can see that a lot of companies and site builders are trying to move everything over to WebP. And we do that automatically. For order of our files are currently served as WebP, we automatically detect that the browser supports it or not. So that's great for users. I think with the LCP being three out of four times an image, you really need your images to be as small as possible and advanced modern image formats give you that. Crystal Carter: Right. And that reminds me of another thing that's built in that I think is awesome, is that you have an automatic image compressor built into the CMS, which I think is awesome as well. I know that on some of those CMSs you have to download an extra plugin to have something that does that. But we have that built in, which I think is really cool. Mordy Oberstein: It helps. Crystal Carter: It helps. It does help. I just wondered if you could also share with our team, I know that this is a bug bear for SEOs who log into Google Search Console and want to know what's going on with their Core Web Vitals. And there's a little sailing ship and you can't see. And it just says, "No." And there's a little sail ship that says, "You don't have enough traffic. Try again." Mordy Oberstein: It says, "You're not good enough. Get more traffic." Crystal Carter: "You're not good enough. Nobody comes to your website anyway." And you're like, "People come." And they're like, "No." So you get that little sailing ship and you get no data. And I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about the awesome solution that your team builds to help people to find some solutions for addressing Core Web Vitals that's in the WIX CMM. Alon Kochba: Definitely. So this is a product I love that we have, the Site Speed Dashboard that really... Well, I'll start from top. We collect real user measurements. That's just like Chrome does for their users, we do for all our users. That's what we use internally to find opportunities and improve. But this allows us to measure your Core Web Vitals in all browsers and show it directly to each user. So in your Site Speed Dashboard, you can easily see the LCP, the CLS, the FID for each day. So if you do a change, you can see it instantly. And you can do it with a minimal amount of traffic. Crystal Carter: Which is amazing! Mordy Oberstein: And it's why we plugged it in the beginning of the show. Alon Kochba: Sometimes you have more traffic and performance improves. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. Increase your traffic and it will increase your performance. Mordy Oberstein: So before we have to let you go, because I know your time is super sensitive, where do you think Google is heading with performance going forward? Because I don't think Google's already talked about IMP, responsiveness. The Core Web Vitals that we have now are not going to be the same. I don't think that was ever the intention for that to be a static thing. So I know you're in touch with Google. I know you work with them back and forth. Maybe you can share something that you're allowed to share that wouldn't get you in trouble. Crystal Carter: Exclusive! Mordy Oberstein: But would be juicy for the audience? Crystal Carter: You heard it here first. Alon Kochba: Unfortunately, I don't have anything that juicy. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But directionally speaking, where do you see Google going forward in the future? Crystal Carter: Hypothetically? Alon Kochba: I think beyond hypothetically, I think Google are working hard to try to measure interactions better, which you talked about quite a bit with responsiveness and interaction to expand, which is something that we're heavily focused on. And you know what? I do have one juicy thing. Single-page navigations, so basically, Google has problems today measuring single-page apps. Basically, single page apps, like React, means you load one page and then you move to another page. You don't download the new HTML. You just redraw the things you need for the next page. And Google doesn't measure those today. So basically, Wix has a React app that uses single-page navigations. We have even faster navigations because of this, but no one measures them. And Google is trying to now measure single-page apps. And ideally, they will be pushing this into CrUX if this works well. And that will even the playing field a bit between single-page apps and multi-page apps. Crystal Carter: You heard it here first, people. Alon Kochba: But you heard it from ….. already and it's just initial work. Crystal Carter: You heard it here second, people. Mordy Oberstein: But it's still juicy. Crystal Carter: Still juicy. Amazing. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, Alon. We really appreciate all that you're doing. I don't know what you're doing half the time. You're a mystery to me still. But we do really appreciate everything that you and the entire performance team does. Alon Kochba: Thank you very much and thank you for having me. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much, Alon. Alon Kochba: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Again, thank you, Alon, for coming in. And definitely check out Alon on Twitter at A-L-O-N K-O-C-H-B-A. That's Alon Kochba on Twitter. Crystal Carter: He shares some great insights. Mordy Oberstein: He does. He's brilliant. I mean, he's smarter than I am, which, I guess, is not saying much, but hey, check it out. He shares a lot of great information on Twitter, really important, great data. So check it out, for sure, which brings us to our next little segment. As this episode slowly ebbs away, let's get snappily to it with this Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, let's jump right into this with something that was getting a bit of buzz in the SEO community from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, more from Google and AI content. It's about if the content is helpful. So there was a whole Twitter conversation going on about AI written content and Google's helpful content update within which Google's Danny Sullivan, their official Search Liaison, chimed in saying, "We haven't said AI content is bad. We've said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue. That's what we're focused on. If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank or fires up a spinner or AI, same issue." He then went on to say, "So if you are an SEO trying to figure out how AI fits into being successful or not on Google, you're too focused on the tool, not the content. Is the content you're producing helpful, reliable, and people-first in nature?" So two things here. One, Danny Sullivan is absolutely right. Don't get lost. Is it AI written content? Is it human written content for yourself? Focus on is the content on your site high quality content or is it just bad? Two, and I want to take the liberty of reading in between the lines a little bit, if you'll indulge me. So the question that spurred this whole conversation on Twitter was, "Is the helpful content update specifically targeting AI content?" And what I think Danny's trying to tell us is they're targeting, they, meaning Google, targeting low-quality content? And included in that, is AI-written content, as a rule? I mean, sometimes it could be good in theory, but as a rule, AI-written content is low-quality content, particularly when it's long form. Maybe a product description will be different, whatever. I'm not getting into that right here and now. In other words, let's go back a step. Google has a problem. AI writers are prevalent. And they do create not the best content. So what do you think when Google launches a new algorithm that they're considering AI-written content? What do you think that Google's thinking? We have this big problem in AI-written content. We're developing new technology, new algorithms, new whatever. They're not considering AI content? They're not thinking about it or "targeting" it? That seems kind of ludicrous to me at best and negligent on Google's part at worse. Of course, which by the way, they're not doing. Obviously, they're not being negligent. Of course, AI-written content is part of the equation. It's part of the Google mindset, part of the Google intent, part of what they're doing. But is what they're doing, let's say in the helpful content update, specifically targeting AI content? Dennis Sullivan says, "No, it's targeting all bad content." But again, subsumed under all bad content, is as a rule, AI-written content. So we're just kind of splitting hairs here, aren't we? And that is my lesson for you today. Outside of, write good content for your website that is high quality and not written by AI. Sometimes the conversation around SEO within the SEO world are a little bit of a wormholes of hair splitting. Don't lose sight of the larger picture. Keep your eye on the prize. There are a whole bunch of other cliches about zooming out and keeping things in perspective. And with that piece of advice, that is this week's Snappy News. Before we duly depart, as is the custom on the SERP's Up Podcast and as very appropriate for this particular episode, we have somebody who you should be following on social media, who should be following this week, none other, formally known as Deepcrawl Lu Mar's own, Jamie Indigo. Crystal Carter: Jamie Indigo, she's a fantastic follow on social media. She has a big heart and a very, very big brain. And she knows lots and lots of things about technical SEO. And she's fantastic. So there's lots of stuff. She shares lots of things about JavaScript and about lots of other parts of SEO that are really worth digging into. And she's also very generous with her knowledge. So she's happy to share insights and answer questions, as well. So she's a great person to follow. Mordy Oberstein: And she actually wrote a lot about Core Web Vitals. I think there's a great article she wrote, if I remember correctly, back on Search Engine Journal, back in the early days of Core Web Vitals. So definitely have a look at that. I'll try to link to it in the show notes. She's written some amazing content about Core Web Vitals. She writes The Rich Snippets newsletter for Traffic Think Tank, so subscribe to that as well, which is not only just a conglomerate information from across the SEO world, but she has her own thoughts and insights in there. Definitely follow Jamie. She's also a master Dungeon & Dragons, from what I see on Twitter. I do not know Dungeon & Dragons, so I could be completely inaccurate here. But if that's your thing, then Jamie's your person, I think. Over at Twitter, it's at Jammer_Volts, so it's J-A-M-M-E-R_V-O-L-T-S. Link to it in the show notes. So check it out and give her a follow, which means thank you for joining us on this SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into SEO reporting. Look for it wherever you consume podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Annie Sullivan Alon Kochba Dan Shappir Jamie Indigo Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Advanced Core Web Vitals: A Technical SEO Guide Wix Performance News: More From Google On AI Content - It's About If The Content Is Helpful Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Annie Sullivan Alon Kochba Dan Shappir Jamie Indigo Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Advanced Core Web Vitals: A Technical SEO Guide Wix Performance News: More From Google On AI Content - It's About If The Content Is Helpful Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by our Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, fun internet people. Welcome to our internet podcast show. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you for joining us today. Crystal Carter: Thank you. It's a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: We've really switched up that vibe on a dime. Wow. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you were like, "Yeah!" You didn't, it's like, " Hello." Mordy Oberstein: Hello, world. Crystal Carter: Hi. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We're here to talk about... Hi. We're here to talk about SEO. Send in your questions to 1-800... Crystal Carter: SEO. 1-800. Mordy Oberstein: 1-800-SEO, right. That's not a real phone number, if you're- Crystal Carter: It's not. Please don't call 1-800 SEO. I don't know whose number that is, but if you get lots of phone calls. Mordy Oberstein: Can you imagine that person? "Hello?" "Yes, I'm calling in..." Crystal Carter: Dear sir, I would like to talk to you about this …. Mordy Oberstein: I would like to sell you links. Crystal Carter: Press one for hi daily. Press two. Mordy Oberstein: That's a good time to remind you that the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where traffic thresholds for Core Web Vitals are a thing of the past. Wait, didn't we do this last week? We did, but it's super relevant for this week, because we're talking about web performance. So Google's Search Console not giving you the field data you so desire, use Wix's Speed Dashboard. Get field data built off user sessions from multiple browsers. No more guessing what your actual Core Web Vitals are with Wix's Site Speed Dashboard. If I was a better planner, I would've used that this week and just this week and a different one last week, because this week we're talking about performance. And last time I talked about Search Console and I should have plugged something about Wix and Search Console instead... Yeah, I'm a poor planner, it turns out, even though I think I'm a really good... I'm a good planner. I promise. Crystal Carter: You're great at planning. Mordy Oberstein: I know, I know. But this is the second time today. The audience does not know the first time that I have not planned well today. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Sometimes it's just like that. Sometimes Mercury's in retrograde, or it's a full moon, or you just skip breakfast, or whatever it is and sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: Or it's Tuesday. Crystal Carter: And you just got to try again the next day. And sometimes it's just like that. That's okay. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: I will try. I will do better tomorrow. Crystal Carter: Hey, hey, we believe in you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Crystal Carter: Your SEO affirmations, there's actually an SEO affirmations Twitter account that I found today. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's like, "Hey, keep up the good work." I was like, "Oh, that's nice." Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I need that. Send it over right away. Crystal Carter: That's good. Mordy Oberstein: So great show today. This week we're talking about, well, we're performers talking about performance. Crystal Carter: We are talking about performance. And I'm so glad that you brought up that site Speed Dashboard, because I absolutely love it. And anybody who has a Wix account should absolutely check it out because- Mordy Oberstein: It is the only place in the world you're going to get that kind of data. Literally. I'm not making that up. Crystal Carter: Literally, literally. So there's field data, there's lab data. Lab data is when you run it through Lighthouse and it says what they can tell from their tools. Field data is information from actual users. And if you have a certain number of traffic, then if you go into Google Search Console, you can't see your field data. You can't see that information. But if you are a Wix user, then you can get your field data, whatever number of traffic you have. Mordy Oberstein: No traffic thresholds. Crystal Carter: No traffic thresholds. And it's not a third-party tool. It comes from the information that Wix is getting from people- Mordy Oberstein: Right from the browser. Crystal Carter: Right from the browser, from multiple browsers, not just Google. Mordy Oberstein: Multiple browsers, not just Chrome. Interesting. Fascinating. Oh, boy. Anyway, okay, so today's show, we're talking about performance, also known as, how fast is this website? Crystal Carter: And how does it all work with its network? And how's it all moving and shaken and not shaking? Not shaking at all? Mordy Oberstein: Well, hopefully it's not shaking. That'd be bad for performance. But we're going to finally settle, maybe hopefully, how big of a deal is performance for SEO, which TLDR? It's an enormous debate among SEOs filled with so much information and not a lot of nuance. So we're going to try to offer a more nuanced look at the impact of performance on SEO. We'll dive into things like Core Web Vitals. Are they as big of a deal as you think? Or maybe they're a bigger deal than you might think? How would that work? Anyway, Annie Sullivan, Senior Staff Software Engineer over at Google's going to stop by and talk about some common mistakes folks make. They make their sites slow down a bit. And we talk to Wix's own Head of Web Performance, the one the only Alon Kochba, the fellow who improved Wix's Core Web Vitals tenfold. And he's going to talk to us about how he approaches performance and where he thinks Google is headed when it comes to assessing faster loading for websites. And he's someone who talks to Google, so he's in the know. Hopefully, we'll get some secrets out of him, yeah? Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited about this episode, because we've got so many great folks joining us today and because- Mordy Oberstein: It's stacked. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we're pretty stacked. Annie is fantastic. I was on a Twitter space with her and she's super incredible and super, super knowledgeable. And I've had lots of conversations with Alon and how he thinks about the whole network of over 200 million websites that he's trying to make sure that are performing as best they can. And it's something that Wix is very enthusiastic about and rightfully so. And I'm excited to talk about this topic. Mordy Oberstein: Alon's super awesome. And, of course, by the way, we have your Snappy News and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Episode number 13 of SERP's Up is here. So performance, performance is super important. It's important for multiple reasons. But it's one of these areas, if you're listening to this podcast and you're trying to, if you are very familiar with the SEO space, you'll probably nod right along. If you're newer into the SEO space, it's something that you need to be careful of. There's a lot of conflicting information about the role of performance or speed and whatnot on SEO. And there's conflicting information coming out of Google itself at some times over the years, that they're doing it on purpose. It's different statements and different people over the years, right hand not talking to the left hand, I don't know, whatever it is. Or SEOs have different takes on it. And it's a really important issue that goes beyond just SEO. But it is also really important for SEO. But it does, I think, require a little bit more of a nuanced understanding of where performance fits into the larger SEO scheme. So I don't know, Crystal, to you, how important, let's throw it out there, how important is performance to SEO? Crystal Carter: Okay, so just for anybody who's not in this all the time, when we say performance, there's lots of things you could talk about for SEO performance. E-ranking could be considered performance. Or traffic could be considered performance. But when we talk about web performance, we're pretty much talking about web connectivity and how people connect to your website. So we're talking about how fast your website loads, how fast different parts of your website load, how your network connections are functioning so that your website performs well, when technically, people are visiting your website. Now, I think, and in my experience, this performance is really valuable for SEO in lots of ways. It can sometimes be a litmus test for other issues that you have across your website. Speed is a ranking factor. They've said that Core Web Vitals is a ranking factor. Security is a ranking factor. These things often overlap when you're making updates. So for instance, if you improve your security settings, it will often have an impact on your speed. It will often have an impact on your Core Web Vitals performance. So these are things that you should be thinking about. And generally speaking, when I've made Core Web Vitals updates, particularly for clients who, or websites where there is a significant amount of traffic, it has had some benefit to the overall SEO outcomes for that site. And because there's so many overlapping things, it can sometimes be difficult to understand whether it's because we improved the security, which also improved the Core Web Vitals metrics or whether it's because we improved the speed, which also improved the Core Web Vitals, or because the page is more interactive, because we didn't have third-party scripts on the page, that sort of thing. But generally speaking, the process of improving your Core Web Vitals will often improve the value of your website, overall. Mordy Oberstein: And if you look at the data some of the different tool providers have put out around the impact of Core Web Vitals on ranking, the data from across the board from multiple providers has been, "Nah, not too much," which is what a lot of SEOs may have expected. Some SEOs not. Somebody says, "Oh no, it's going to be massive and huge." But I think you're right. The way I look like it, that's not the question. The question is not, oh, how much is this particular metric that Google is measuring, your Core Web Vitals, how much are they going to meet in terms of ranking directly? To me, they're more representative of, like you said, of the site overall and not just from the search engine point of view, but from the user's point of view. So when you go to a webpage, to me performance is very much first and foremost is a conversion issue. If the website doesn't function right, if it's too slow to load, or buttons are moving around and you can't click anything, and nothing is working, people are not going to be able to add things to the cart. And they're not going to be able to enter their credit card, and not be able to give you their money, which is what you're trying to do with the website. And the health and performance of a website speaks to just how good of a website it is overall. So when you're asking, they go, "How important is it for SEO?" Super important, because it represents the technical health and it represents a conversion health of the website. You're asking about ranking for a particular keyword or a particular scenario? That's like a drop in the bucket, like a raindrop in the ocean of a kind of a question to me. Crystal Carter: Right. One of things that was great about Core Web Vitals metrics, and if you go to, Google has lots and lots of tools for Core Web Vitals and for understanding them. And I think it's web.dev is their page that has lots of... Web.dev has lots of information about Core Web Vitals and about understanding different things. If you're using Chrome, you can also right click and you can get a Lighthouse report and see different things about your website there. And there's lots of links within that. But the Core Web Vitals metrics are giving you a number for things that have always irritated everyone about websites. So cumulatively, I should just have just said classic one. Mordy Oberstein: The classic, it's so bad, too. Crystal Carter: And we all hate it when you go onto a website and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to click on this thing," and then it moves, because something else is loading. Nobody likes that. Mordy Oberstein: So cumulatively layout shift, there's CLS, if you're not aware. You know where you go to a website and the buttons are moving around, and you click on the wrong thing, and you add the wrong thing to the cart, and then you ended up paying for it? You're like, "Oh, my god, I hate this website." CLS measures that. And a CLS score of zero means that that's not happening at all, which is what you want. Crystal Carter: Right. And so what the Core Web Vitals metrics do and one of the reasons why it's so great to have that as a reporting thing is that you can say, "We have 17 pages on our website that have this issue." And if you're showing for that issue, then that means it's 17 pages that you can fix. And you can see that lots of users are having this issue, or not that many users are having that issue. And you can see how you can do it and you can show progress. So there's something called the CrUX report, which is a free thing that you can download. You can connect your website to it. And you can track your progress over time. And that will help you get better outcome for users, will help you to increase the conversion opportunities that you're talking about there. And I think that that is valuable for lots of parts of SEO. And also for instance though, one of the things that you get with Core Web Vitals metrics is they'll tell you about loading times. So for instance, they'll give you a metric that says that, "There are parts of your page that aren't loading properly. They're loading really slowly. They're taking a really long time to load." So most people, when they come to your website, are not seeing that giant picture that you have on your homepage. Or they're not seeing that video that you have on your homepage. So if you are having a discussion as an SEO, and I'm an SEO who's less aesthetically-minded than some other people, I'm like, "Tell me how beautiful Amazon is, because they rank fantastically." So if you're somebody who's having a discussion about, "Oh, should we have that beautiful video or should we have this SEO optimized copy," or whichever, you can use your Core Web Vitals information, you can use your page experience information to make those decisions more accurately. If most users aren't seeing that video, then you probably shouldn't have that video on there. It's not helping you. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Also, and again, it goes back to the earlier point about conversion, but there's also a branding side of it. If you're going to a page and things start loading... Remember, though, back in the day when we had dial-up internet? And five minutes after you loaded the page, and then something else loaded like, "Oh, oh, wait a second"? But the equivalent of that today is you go to a webpage and there's a video there and you're on the page one or two seconds, all of a sudden the video pops up. That doesn't make you look good. And that goes back to what we were saying before that Core Web Vitals or web performance, whether it's a ranking factor or... Well, I'm sorry. Let me rephrase that. It is definitely a ranking factor. But how big of a ranking factor is it? Is is a tiebreaker scenario? Many of the instances where Google has talked about it is like, "You have two pages. Relatively same content. Every SPO is all optimized the same way, but which one's faster?" "Well, it's a tiebreaker. We'll go with one's, a better performance." Leaving that aside for a minute, when you look at how a page performs, physically performs, and it's doing something like loading the video a minute later, like it's 1995, it's not what you want. Crystal Carter: It's not what you want. Mordy Oberstein: And Core Web Vitals therefore speaks to the overall health and experience of the website as a whole. So when you have Google back in the day saying, like Gary Illyish, Illyes Illyish, ish, ish? Crystal Carter: Gary. Mordy Oberstein: Gary, Gary from Google at one point said, "You could find it in an seoroundtable.com." I'm trying to find the link for you and put it in the show notes. Oh, speed is before Core Web Vitals. It was speed is a teeny, tiny ranking factor. And SEOs are debating this forever. No, no, it's a really big ranking factor. No, it's a teeny... Does it matter? Because it's so far reaching and so far speaking to what your website is that I don't think... Okay. Crystal Carter: And also, it's a question of users are using your website. So if I have a decision between sitting there waiting for a page to load for that long or doing literally- Mordy Oberstein: I see what you did there. I see it. It went right over my head for a second. And then it didn't. Crystal Carter: Right. Or literally doing anything else, I would rather do literally anything else. And so I will go back to the page that I know will load quickly. And I will not go back to the page that I didn't even see, because I left, because I wanted to do literally anything else. So these are the things that are important to think about. And I think that Core Web Vitals gives you incredible metrics to see that at scale, and to see that over time, and to see how you're performing there. So I think it's really valuable. In terms of speed, I've worked on projects where we've made speed optimizations and it's had incredible impact on conversions and on customer value, which therefore, has an impact on rankings, because you're more valuable to users and Google can see that. Mordy Oberstein: I will say on that last point, you've seen many SEOs debate this fact like, "Oh, I made a big speed improval." "Oh, that's not going to make a big impact. I've never seen a speed improve." There's more than one way to skin the cat in SEO. And you never know what's going to move the needle. And multiple things might move the needle. So I don't think it's the zero sum game that SEOs sometimes play. Crystal Carter: One point I did want to also bring up, so Core Web Vitals can be a little bit relative. So sometimes you see that there's not that much change, particularly in sectors around e-commerce, because they're really heavily tracked. But another good thing that Core Web Vitals does is it teaches you best practice. One of the things I see really, really frequently is that lots of people have tons of third-party scripts hanging around on their website that they're not using anymore. They used to use Hotjar and now nobody has access to Hotjar anymore. And they don't even remember when they had the account or something like that. You don't need those on there. You don't need those on there. That's potentially a data risk. And cleaning those out is good practice, and it's good for your Core Web Vitals, and it's good for your users, and it's good for your site, and all of those sorts of things. These are good habits to have. And I think the Core Web Vitals is a great element in an SEO atmosphere, because of things like that. Mordy Oberstein: And speaking of things you can do to improve your Core Web Vitals and the performance of your website overall, here's Annie Sullivan, Senior Staff Software Engineer over at Google, as we ask her, what are some common mistakes you see people making with their sites that negatively impact performance? Annie Sullivan: To me, the biggest mistake people make that negatively affects performance is not taking the right approach to understanding performance. Last week, Dan Shapir tweeted out, "Measure, analyze, optimize, repeat." And I couldn't agree more. Those four words sum up performance work so well. But I see a lot of people skipping over the measure and analyze steps and just going straight to optimize. When you do that, you're not going to make much progress. You need to start by measuring to get a baseline. You should have an idea of how fast your site is for real users and how fast you'd like it to be. We have recommended thresholds for all the Core Web Vitals metrics, if you're not sure. Once you've got an idea where you're at, the next step is analyzing to understand where the biggest bottlenecks are. If you're not sure how to identify bottlenecks, you'll want to read up on the critical rendering path in browsers. Your goal is to make the critical rendering path shorter. So you want to find the biggest things you can cut out of its way. Once you've analyzed a critical path for your own application and found where the biggest bottlenecks are, then it's time to optimize. The repeat part is important, too. Often, your optimization won't have the impact you expect. You'll need to measure to be sure. If it doesn't, then you'll need to do another round of analysis to figure out why. Then optimize again. Another aspect of repeating is finding ways to prevent yourself from reintroducing the bottlenecks you just removed. A lot of bottlenecks, like render-blocking resources are cleanly written out as Lighthouse audits. If you found a big improvement from a Lighthouse audit, you'd consider writing a test on your continuous build to ensure that audit doesn't start regressing in the future. It's so much fun to dig into performance bottlenecks and learn about what makes things slow. I can't wait to hear what you find. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Annie. And I just want to say, if you're looking to make improvements to your performance of your website, it can seem overwhelming. There's plenty of materials out there and a lot of the steps are not as complicated as it might seem. And yes, at a certain point you might reach your limits and it's okay to ask for help. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think Annie works with Google. Google's really been leading the charge with this. And one of the things that was great about when the Core Web Vitals information started coming through was that Google provided us with lots of information. There's lots of information about different methodologies. There's lots of tools you can use, both within Chrome, within Google Search Console, within tools like Lighthouse, tools like PageFeed Insights, things like that. So there's lots of great tools there. And what Annie was saying about analyzing your information is really, really valuable. And I think that it's really important to look not just at the metrics, but actually at the pages. For instance, I've had it before where I was working on a site and the person said, "Oh, I've been trying to fix the cumulative layout shift for ages and we've been having all this trouble." And I went into Google Search Console. I know I had a look at the trends, which pages were pulling up the same error. And I went to the page and I saw that the cumulative layout shift, it was very clear. They had their products in folders. And you would go to the page and all of the folders would show up where you could see all of them. And then they would all scrunch up into a burger menu straight afterwards. And I was like, "We need to pick one. We either need to put all of these at the bottom or we need to just go at the burger menu. But it can't be open and close, and open and close. That's ridiculous." And we did that and it fixed it. And we saw better results for users as well, because if you're a user and all you're getting is… Mordy Oberstein: Here's the content. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: No, it's not. Crystal Carter: So every page would just show that list on mobile, would just show the list of all of the categories rather than showing the actual products on the page. So it's better for users, because you've made that analysis. And also, she talked about testing afterwards. So that's really important, as well. So you make that change and then you monitor the results to see how users are actually engaging with that, if it's actually moving the needle, if it's actually making an impact. And then you refine and do it again. So she also mentioned Dan Shapir, who's a fantastic person to follow on the web performance space. There's some great people who are doing some great things in web performance. He's a great one, as well. So yes, I wholeheartedly agree with what Annie's saying about the test it again. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to tell you an amazing story. Okay. It's a story of millions of websites suddenly got hit by a bolt of lightning and became supercharged beasters. Okay, it's a little bit hyperbolic. And it's not really my story to tell. But it's a fascinating story. Crystal Carter: Wasn't that Thunderbolt? Mordy Oberstein: Inside joke. It wasn't Thunderbolt. Well, partially. But really, it's a fascinating story and the amount of work, dedication, ingenuity that went into improving Wix's Core Web Vital scores to make it at the point where it's a market leader, like 60% of our mobile sites in the US past Core Web Vitals it's incredible. And it was an incredible effort, honest, and personally, I just want to say I feel privileged to have been a small part of it back in the day to help advocate for driving these efforts and pushing these efforts in. But if anyone deserves the credit, it's people like Dan Shapir, who you just mentioned, who at the time was working at Wix and this man, Alon Kochba, Head of Web Performance at Wix. So join me and join Crystal as we go across the Wixverse to discuss with Alon how he and the team improve performance on many websites and where he thinks the future of web performance is headed. Audio: 3... 2... 1... We have ignition. Liftoff. Mordy Oberstein: How are you? Alon Kochba: Everything is great. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: Ah, we're good. Hanging out here. It's raining. It's a dreary day out here today. Crystal Carter: Somebody told me it was raining. I was very surprised that it was raining. I've never heard anyone talk about rain. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I'm officially an old person now. I talk about the weather. Crystal Carter: Oh, I live in England. That's all they talk about. Mordy Oberstein: So today, we're not talking about the weather. We're talking about performance. We've been talking about performance, all of us. And Alon, I mean, I know you're going to brush this off. And you're going to dismiss what I'm about to say, but if you take a look at Wix's CrUX data, and the Core Web Vitals, and what we've done there, it's amazing. Our numbers have improved tenfold. And I'm going to credit you with doing it. Alon Kochba: It's me and a lot of other great people at Wix. And that's really been focusing on performance for a long time now. Mordy Oberstein: It's true. And again, not taking away from you, it's been an enormous team effort across the entire company. I would say we're a performance first company across the board. But I'm curious, now that we have you here and we're talking to you about this, and you've been such a backbone behind the efforts, just what has it been like to try to improve performance for millions of websites? What have you done, obviously, without going too much into the technical nitty gritty of that, but it's more like how have you approached it? Alon Kochba: So I think as the platform, we have an amazing opportunity where we're hosting millions of sites, like you said, and we're trying to solve a lot of technical challenges that a lot of site builders have, a lot of people have on their own sites, but do it at a massive scale. And it all starts with hosting and serving all your files from CDNs, and caching, and bringing everything close to the user. But it also has a lot of development teams building a lot of amazing products across of Wix that all need to tend with it. So basically, it's finding your opportunities and seeing how to go from there. Crystal Carter: And I think there's lots of different layers to it. So you talked about different security performance and things like that. So do you work just with teams within Wix to achieve some of that change? Or are you working with teams who are external as well to see some of that progress? Alon Kochba: So basically, I think a lot of things in Wix and a lot of those platforms, a lot of the things are up to us as a platform. And that means talking with a lot of development teams across Wix and pushing best standards internally. On the other hand, you have these things that are up to the user, because he can design his site however he wants. And at the end of the day, there are best practices and what kind of third parties you put on your site that can cause issues and how you design your pages. So it's basically split between both sides. Mordy Oberstein: Which is what makes it a little bit interesting when you're trying to approach improving a website. It's not just, okay, it's on the development side of it, but also whoever, the designer of the SEO, whoever's creating the website, it's sort of a partnership between the two. And it's a partnership, as you mentioned before, with multiple teams here at Wix. And if you're not Wix, if you're, I don't know, you're working in an agency, you're working with designers, you're working with the content teams, you're working with developers. It's sort of just like one giant effort, because everything impacts performance. How do you manage that? Particularly here at Wix, we have so many parts of the product. And all of it, theoretically, can impact performance. How do you manage all that? How do you set expectations? How did you go about setting the bar so that the teams, when they're developing whatever they're developing or developing with performance first? Alon Kochba: So I think at the end of the day, it's a numbers game. You can't fix everything. And they're always new performance opportunities. And you need to choose your battles. But we've been trying to first install all these guidelines and best practices across teams so it's in everyone's minds. And we've been trying to focus on the largest cases that handle the most sites and the most common use cases and working our way from there. Mordy Oberstein: Out of curiosity, if you can pick one thing, I don't know, what's one thing that you've done at Wix that you've seen that you can share, maybe that people can take away as a lesson for their own sites, that we've done that's really moved the needle in terms of performance? Alon Kochba: So I think at the end of the day, you really, first off, you want to serve your HTML as fast as possible. If the HTML is not fast, if it's not served from a server that's near your users, or in our case, everywhere, because we have users from a lot of distinct fundraise, you can't really succeed to performance if you don't have a fast TFB and fast FCPO, you'll have a very hard time passing Core Web Vitals. But then on the other hand, after the HTML arrives, you basically have your resources that are the LCP. And this has to do with how you build your site and what framework you're using. But go HTML. This is really the way to go today. Browsers are up to speed on a lot of standards and a lot of things can be built straight on the HTML. That's what we've been trying to do. Crystal Carter: And so I think that comes a little bit to how Wix is structured. So you were talking about HTML, but a lot of people think of Wix and they think of JavaScript. How do you manage the JavaScript from a performance point of view? Alon Kochba: So basically, all Wix sites are built on top of React. And we have a very extensive framework wrapping React internally. But React brings with it a lot of JavaScript dependencies. And that's something that we, like a lot of other companies, have been trying to avoid with a lot of best practices of preshaking, and lazy loading, and reducing bundle sizes. But we are looking forward at a lot of talk out there about little to no JavaScript solutions and alternative frameworks. In the past Wix was FLASH sites all over. And then we used the Angular. And these days we use React. And I think we do a great job of even exceeding the average React site. So yes, JavaScript arrives, but ideally JavaScript is there at least only for interactivity currently and not- Crystal Carter: Sure. And it's my understanding that the HTML is server side rendered. Is that correct? Alon Kochba: Yeah, so we use a server side rendering, but we also have extensive automatic caching for all our sites and CDNs. And we invalidate whenever something changes. For example, you buy your last product and the product needs to become out of stock, so something takes care of that for you. Crystal Carter: And that's super simple to set up right? All of those things. And making sure that all of those things work seamlessly so that every time somebody comes to my little blog, they can see exactly what they need to see, and that it loads properly, and loads correctly. That's super easy, right? Alon, you make it look super easy. Alon Kochba: Definitely. You don't even need to think about it. You built your site. You bought your domain. And you just get everything automatic. If you are using Velo, then there are cases where you need to turn it on manually, but. Mordy Oberstein: Right, which is smart, by the way, because if you have a custom code there maybe doesn't make any sense to have it cached that way, because who knows what you have on the website? Alon Kochba: Exactly. And we're a bit careful around custom code and caching. Crystal Carter: I think you talked about some of the things that are built in. And there's some fantastic things within Wix for performance that I absolutely love, that we have. WebP is one of the sort of defaults for images. I think you shared an image on Twitter recently that was talking about how many WebP images we have proportionally, which I think is amazing. Is there a reason why you chose that particular one as being the main image format for Wix? Alon Kochba: Yeah. So I think image formats are a very interesting area where a lot of people... JPEG and PNG have been around for tens of years and are not really as optimized as they should be. And WebP is really the alternative that currently is supported across all browsers. And you can see that a lot of companies and site builders are trying to move everything over to WebP. And we do that automatically. For order of our files are currently served as WebP, we automatically detect that the browser supports it or not. So that's great for users. I think with the LCP being three out of four times an image, you really need your images to be as small as possible and advanced modern image formats give you that. Crystal Carter: Right. And that reminds me of another thing that's built in that I think is awesome, is that you have an automatic image compressor built into the CMS, which I think is awesome as well. I know that on some of those CMSs you have to download an extra plugin to have something that does that. But we have that built in, which I think is really cool. Mordy Oberstein: It helps. Crystal Carter: It helps. It does help. I just wondered if you could also share with our team, I know that this is a bug bear for SEOs who log into Google Search Console and want to know what's going on with their Core Web Vitals. And there's a little sailing ship and you can't see. And it just says, "No." And there's a little sail ship that says, "You don't have enough traffic. Try again." Mordy Oberstein: It says, "You're not good enough. Get more traffic." Crystal Carter: "You're not good enough. Nobody comes to your website anyway." And you're like, "People come." And they're like, "No." So you get that little sailing ship and you get no data. And I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about the awesome solution that your team builds to help people to find some solutions for addressing Core Web Vitals that's in the WIX CMM. Alon Kochba: Definitely. So this is a product I love that we have, the Site Speed Dashboard that really... Well, I'll start from top. We collect real user measurements. That's just like Chrome does for their users, we do for all our users. That's what we use internally to find opportunities and improve. But this allows us to measure your Core Web Vitals in all browsers and show it directly to each user. So in your Site Speed Dashboard, you can easily see the LCP, the CLS, the FID for each day. So if you do a change, you can see it instantly. And you can do it with a minimal amount of traffic. Crystal Carter: Which is amazing! Mordy Oberstein: And it's why we plugged it in the beginning of the show. Alon Kochba: Sometimes you have more traffic and performance improves. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. Increase your traffic and it will increase your performance. Mordy Oberstein: So before we have to let you go, because I know your time is super sensitive, where do you think Google is heading with performance going forward? Because I don't think Google's already talked about IMP, responsiveness. The Core Web Vitals that we have now are not going to be the same. I don't think that was ever the intention for that to be a static thing. So I know you're in touch with Google. I know you work with them back and forth. Maybe you can share something that you're allowed to share that wouldn't get you in trouble. Crystal Carter: Exclusive! Mordy Oberstein: But would be juicy for the audience? Crystal Carter: You heard it here first. Alon Kochba: Unfortunately, I don't have anything that juicy. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But directionally speaking, where do you see Google going forward in the future? Crystal Carter: Hypothetically? Alon Kochba: I think beyond hypothetically, I think Google are working hard to try to measure interactions better, which you talked about quite a bit with responsiveness and interaction to expand, which is something that we're heavily focused on. And you know what? I do have one juicy thing. Single-page navigations, so basically, Google has problems today measuring single-page apps. Basically, single page apps, like React, means you load one page and then you move to another page. You don't download the new HTML. You just redraw the things you need for the next page. And Google doesn't measure those today. So basically, Wix has a React app that uses single-page navigations. We have even faster navigations because of this, but no one measures them. And Google is trying to now measure single-page apps. And ideally, they will be pushing this into CrUX if this works well. And that will even the playing field a bit between single-page apps and multi-page apps. Crystal Carter: You heard it here first, people. Alon Kochba: But you heard it from ….. already and it's just initial work. Crystal Carter: You heard it here second, people. Mordy Oberstein: But it's still juicy. Crystal Carter: Still juicy. Amazing. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, Alon. We really appreciate all that you're doing. I don't know what you're doing half the time. You're a mystery to me still. But we do really appreciate everything that you and the entire performance team does. Alon Kochba: Thank you very much and thank you for having me. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much, Alon. Alon Kochba: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Again, thank you, Alon, for coming in. And definitely check out Alon on Twitter at A-L-O-N K-O-C-H-B-A. That's Alon Kochba on Twitter. Crystal Carter: He shares some great insights. Mordy Oberstein: He does. He's brilliant. I mean, he's smarter than I am, which, I guess, is not saying much, but hey, check it out. He shares a lot of great information on Twitter, really important, great data. So check it out, for sure, which brings us to our next little segment. As this episode slowly ebbs away, let's get snappily to it with this Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, let's jump right into this with something that was getting a bit of buzz in the SEO community from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, more from Google and AI content. It's about if the content is helpful. So there was a whole Twitter conversation going on about AI written content and Google's helpful content update within which Google's Danny Sullivan, their official Search Liaison, chimed in saying, "We haven't said AI content is bad. We've said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue. That's what we're focused on. If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank or fires up a spinner or AI, same issue." He then went on to say, "So if you are an SEO trying to figure out how AI fits into being successful or not on Google, you're too focused on the tool, not the content. Is the content you're producing helpful, reliable, and people-first in nature?" So two things here. One, Danny Sullivan is absolutely right. Don't get lost. Is it AI written content? Is it human written content for yourself? Focus on is the content on your site high quality content or is it just bad? Two, and I want to take the liberty of reading in between the lines a little bit, if you'll indulge me. So the question that spurred this whole conversation on Twitter was, "Is the helpful content update specifically targeting AI content?" And what I think Danny's trying to tell us is they're targeting, they, meaning Google, targeting low-quality content? And included in that, is AI-written content, as a rule? I mean, sometimes it could be good in theory, but as a rule, AI-written content is low-quality content, particularly when it's long form. Maybe a product description will be different, whatever. I'm not getting into that right here and now. In other words, let's go back a step. Google has a problem. AI writers are prevalent. And they do create not the best content. So what do you think when Google launches a new algorithm that they're considering AI-written content? What do you think that Google's thinking? We have this big problem in AI-written content. We're developing new technology, new algorithms, new whatever. They're not considering AI content? They're not thinking about it or "targeting" it? That seems kind of ludicrous to me at best and negligent on Google's part at worse. Of course, which by the way, they're not doing. Obviously, they're not being negligent. Of course, AI-written content is part of the equation. It's part of the Google mindset, part of the Google intent, part of what they're doing. But is what they're doing, let's say in the helpful content update, specifically targeting AI content? Dennis Sullivan says, "No, it's targeting all bad content." But again, subsumed under all bad content, is as a rule, AI-written content. So we're just kind of splitting hairs here, aren't we? And that is my lesson for you today. Outside of, write good content for your website that is high quality and not written by AI. Sometimes the conversation around SEO within the SEO world are a little bit of a wormholes of hair splitting. Don't lose sight of the larger picture. Keep your eye on the prize. There are a whole bunch of other cliches about zooming out and keeping things in perspective. And with that piece of advice, that is this week's Snappy News. Before we duly depart, as is the custom on the SERP's Up Podcast and as very appropriate for this particular episode, we have somebody who you should be following on social media, who should be following this week, none other, formally known as Deepcrawl Lu Mar's own, Jamie Indigo. Crystal Carter: Jamie Indigo, she's a fantastic follow on social media. She has a big heart and a very, very big brain. And she knows lots and lots of things about technical SEO. And she's fantastic. So there's lots of stuff. She shares lots of things about JavaScript and about lots of other parts of SEO that are really worth digging into. And she's also very generous with her knowledge. So she's happy to share insights and answer questions, as well. So she's a great person to follow. Mordy Oberstein: And she actually wrote a lot about Core Web Vitals. I think there's a great article she wrote, if I remember correctly, back on Search Engine Journal, back in the early days of Core Web Vitals. So definitely have a look at that. I'll try to link to it in the show notes. She's written some amazing content about Core Web Vitals. She writes The Rich Snippets newsletter for Traffic Think Tank, so subscribe to that as well, which is not only just a conglomerate information from across the SEO world, but she has her own thoughts and insights in there. Definitely follow Jamie. She's also a master Dungeon & Dragons, from what I see on Twitter. I do not know Dungeon & Dragons, so I could be completely inaccurate here. But if that's your thing, then Jamie's your person, I think. Over at Twitter, it's at Jammer_Volts, so it's J-A-M-M-E-R_V-O-L-T-S. Link to it in the show notes. So check it out and give her a follow, which means thank you for joining us on this SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into SEO reporting. Look for it wherever you consume podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO