the end of seo??
Google's core algorithm updates have been pissing off SEOs for a while, but the August 2024 core update seems to have pushed them to new heights of anti-Google rhetoric. One prominent SEO has taken to calling these "anti-SEO" updates, citing this month's announcement that Google is aiming to show "less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search."
(On some level, I actually think Cyrus is right. Google IS trying to de-incentivize business models based on manufacturing authority to sell software-as-a-service. The difference is that I think it's a good thing.)
But the real point of this is how bothered I am that these prominent, lifelong SEOs seem to think Google has been and should be on their side. Google updates have long targeted SEO tactics that bother searchers. That's like, the story of SEO.
I have been thinking about this since some of The Verge's reporting last year on the state of Google Search, and a few months ago wrote this version of the history of SEO that I think brings us quite nicely to this month's core update:
seophia's history of seo
In the late '90s, Google created a new way to index and surface information on the internet. Entrepreneurial-minded people saw it as a way to sell things, and they paid people to figure out how to turn search results into money. Those people were the first SEOs, and they built hundreds of directory links and keyword-stuffed webpages for every variation of a search term they could think of. They made a lot of money for their businesses, and a lot of money for themselves.
Google noticed that these people were manipulating the search engine results like this, and responded in two ways: they began strengthening the search engine algorithm against known manipulation tactics, and they released their own guidelines for search engine optimization.
And the game began. SEOs began analyzing the new top-ranking websites and mining the Google guidelines for clues to how to be number one again. The strategies that worked became the new standard, until enough sites were using them that Google got wise and modified the algorithm to get ahead. More SEOs figured out a new wave of strategies, Google responded, and so on.
This has been happening for 25 years. The back-and-forth/cat-and-mouse/whack-a-mole dynamic between the search engine and its optimizers has reached a fever pitch, accelerated by the incorporation of AI into more and more corners of the internet. The algorithm is so complex and the internet so vast that any SEO strategy can win for at least a little bit, until Google finally catches up to it. So agencies and consultants and corporations battle Google’s algorithm and each other for search dominance, and the result is a useless, cluttered internet full of ads and spam.
what's changed in 2024
It makes sense to me that so many SEOs would be angry with Google. Despite its algorithm changes often targeting old optimization tactics, Google's PR toward the SEO industry has always been friendly and collaborative. It even went so far as hiring Danny Sullivan, widely considered one of the first SEOs, as their Public Search Liaison, a role dedicated to interfacing between the search engine and its optimizers.
The August 2024 announcement explicitly shifts the tone between SEO and Google from collaborative to confrontational. I think Google is anti-SEO, and needs to be, because the machinations of capitalism have exploited the beauty of the underlying search algorithm into a frustrating digital mess.
Google has also backed itself into an interesting corner of public perception. It's spent so long positioning itself as a free public service that under scrutiny from the DOJ, etc it has to double-down on that, show it's for GOOD and not just another giant evil tech company. Sacrificing the entire SEO industry is actually a brilliant way to do that.
Information access shouldn't be a for-profit business. That's why libraries are still around.