Search Engine Recap - Week 49 (2024)

This week brought plenty of advice from Google on indexing and Core Web Vitals, along with a glimpse into what’s ahead for search in the coming year. Here is an overview.

Google Recommends Best Practices for Hosting

Google advises hosting assets like images and scripts on separate hostnames or CDNs to preserve the main site’s crawl budget.

By offloading these resources, Googlebot can focus on crawling primary content, improving indexing efficiency.

Additionally, Googlebot caches resources for up to 30 days, regardless of HTTP cache settings, reducing unnecessary crawling.

Website owners are cautioned against blocking resources in robots.txt, as this can hinder Google’s ability to render and rank pages effectively.

These practices are designed to optimize crawl budget usage and enhance a domain’s performance in search results.

Google Warns Against Indexing Black Holes

Google also warns that error pages can create “black holes” in indexing, where regular pages are mistakenly grouped with error pages and permanently removed from search results.

Once a page falls into this “black hole,” it rarely recovers, even after issues are resolved.

To avoid this, Google advises businesses to use proper HTTP status codes for error pages and ensure their content is unique and identifiable.

This helps Google distinguish legitimate pages from errors, reducing the risk of unintended de-indexing.

Field Data Is Best for Evaluating Core Web Vitals

Google encourages website owners to prioritize field data over lab data when evaluating Core Web Vitals.

Field data, derived from real user experiences, provides a more accurate picture of site performance compared to lab data from tools like PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse, which simulate environments.

In line with this, Google is adjusting PageSpeed Insights to produce more realistic Lighthouse scores.

Businesses are encouraged to focus on improving real-world site performance rather than solely optimizing for lab metrics, as field data better reflects user experiences and influences rankings.

Google’s CEO Looks to the Future of Search

Finally, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Google Search will undergo significant transformations in 2025, primarily driven by advancements in AI.

These changes aim to enhance the search engine’s ability to handle increasingly complex queries and deliver more accurate, context-aware results.

Pichai emphasized that AI will play a pivotal role in these developments, enabling Google to better understand user intent and provide more personalized information.

Takeaways and Recommendations

Week 49 was packed with valuable advice from Google, especially regarding technical optimization.

By optimizing hosting and ensuring content is unique and identifiable, businesses can position themselves for higher rankings.

Additionally, Google made it clear that field data is the best metric for evaluating Core Web Vitals, as real user experiences ultimately trump lab simulations.

Finally, Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave us insight into the future of search, with 2025 shaping up to be a year dominated by AI advancements.

Need help understanding these recommendations or figuring out how AI developments will impact your business on Google? Reach out to Bonzer. As a specialized SEO agency, we help businesses achieve top rankings in search engines every day.