Archives for August 2023

Analyzing the removal of FAQ and HowTo snippets from the Google search results [Data]

August 23, 2023 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

Update: September 14, 2023
Google just announced that HowTo snippets will now be removed from the desktop results as well. The original announcement explained desktop HowTo snippets would remain, but Google reversed course and has now removed them.

Update: September 13, 2023
Google finally removed FAQ snippets from the desktop results. Learn more about the removal.

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On August 8, 2023 Google announced a big change that would impact both FAQ and HowTo snippets. First, Google explained it was removing FAQ snippets in the SERPs for most sites other than “well-known and authoritative government and health websites”. The change would impact both the desktop and mobile search results, although I have more to share about that in my analysis.

And from a HowTo standpoint, Google announced those incredibly visual snippets that take up precious SERP real estate would be removed on mobile. Google originally said that they would still remain on desktop (usually in a list format), but HowTo snippets have now been removed from both the mobile and desktop search results.

For sites that received FAQ and/or HowTo snippets, the change was not well received by most site owners. Rich snippets can help listings stand out in the SERPs, can help boost click through rate, and can provide more information to entice users to click through. And as someone who spent the time adding HowTo structured data for my SEO tutorials, I loved having HowTo snippets in the SERPs. Seeing them disappear was tough… and had me wondering how CTR would be impacted by their removal. And many other site owners who had FAQ or HowTo snippets also wondered how the removal would impact clicks and CTR. Therefore, I decided to dig in and analyze data across sites to find out.

Tracking The Changes To Clicks and Click Through Rate (CTR):
After quickly scanning GSC’s performance reporting after the changes went live, I was eager to analyze the data across sites, verticals, countries, etc. I have access to a number of sites that were receiving both FAQ snippets and HowTo snippets and I was very interested to see the impact of the removal on clicks and CTR. Below, I’ll quickly cover the methodology I used when analyzing the impact and then I’ll cover each site’s data.

Methodology:

I analyzed six sites in total, three that heavily received FAQ snippets and three that heavily received HowTo snippets.
I analyzed the change in clicks for both mobile and desktop through the removal of FAQ and HowTo snippets starting on August 8, 2023. Note, click through rate is a better indicator since clicks can jump or drop based on demand and impressions. But I included clicks for the six sites below.
I also reviewed the change in click through rate based on filtering pages that received rich snippets prior to the change. i.e. How will the removal of rich snippets impact visibility of those listings, and potentially how many people click through those listings.
And to clarify, I isolated pages receiving FAQ and HowTo snippets in the SERPs and filtered in GSC via regular expressions. This enabled me to gain a closer view of specific sets of pages that received FAQ or HowTo snippets to see the change in clicks and CTR.

First up, I analyzed the impact of FAQ snippets being removed:

Case 1 – Stable.
First, you can see the removal from the mobile search results as expected on August 8, 2023. Clicks drop off a cliff for listings that contained FAQ snippets. Note, this doesn’t mean clicks overall dropped for the site, just that Google stopped providing FAQ snippets in the mobile SERPs.

In the announcement, Google explained that FAQ snippets would also be removed from the desktop search results, but that’s not what I’m seeing across sites. For example, checking desktop, you can see FAQ snippets are alive and well (at least for now). Clicks actually increased after the changes were implemented (but that can be influenced by impressions increasing too). Note, Google finally removed FAQ snippets in the desktop search results on 9/13/23.

When checking the impact to clicks and CTR when filtering by urls via regex that received FAQ snippets on mobile, I didn’t see much impact at all. Clicks are stable and CTR looks normal based on the history of the site. I’ll cover more about why I think this is happening after providing the data for the sites.

Note, you can first see an increase in CTR after the change went live and then a drop back down. But again, there was nothing that stood out based on the historical trending of the set of pages.

Case 2 – Also stable.
When analyzing the data (isolating pages that used to have FAQ snippets via regex), I noticed the same situation. FAQ snippets were removed from mobile, but not from desktop (yet). Again, Google did finally remove FAQ snippets from the desktop results on 9/13/23.

And I’m also not seeing a change in mobile clicks or CTR overall for the set of pages when filtering by urls yielding FAQ snippets before the removal (via regex). Clicks are a bit volatile, which is more of a demand situation, but CTR is stable for the set of pages.

Case 3 – Click Through Rate Drops…
Based on what I saw for the first two sites, I was fully expecting to see the others follow (with no change in clicks and CTR). But the third site I dug into was an interesting one. Mobile CTR clearly dropped when FAQ snippets were removed from the mobile search results… For this site, it could be the niche that’s the reason… It’s a YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) category and those FAQ snippets could have helped the listings stand out, provide helpful information to users, and then get more people to click through. It’s hard to say exactly why this site was an outlier, but you can clearly see the drop below.

First, desktop FAQ snippets were not impacted yet (like the others):

But for this site, CTR was impacted when filtering by urls that used to receive FAQ snippets:

Clicks do drop, but not by much. Again, clicks could be impacted by an increase in impressions (which did happen). First, here are clicks:

And here are impressions increasing, which yields more clicks. That’s why CTR is a better indicator of impact based on the removal of FAQ snippets. And CTR did drop.

Next up, HowTo snippets:

Case 1 – Totally stable after removal.
As I mentioned earlier, HowTo snippets provided an amazing SERP treatment (especially on mobile). For example, you would often see a carousel of thumbnails for each step, the snippet would take up a large amount of screen real estate in the viewport, they were extremely visual and engaging, etc. They were hard to overlook, that’s for sure.

So how would the removal of those HowTo snippets impact clicks and CTR? Not much at all from what I’m seeing, which was surprising. As you can see below, clicks and CTR are stable through the removal on mobile.

Case 2 – Also stable.
The next site I checked revealed the same situation. I did not see any changes to clicks or CTR based on HowTo snippets being removed from the mobile SERPs.

Case 3 – Yep, also stable.
And the third site revealed the same result. Clicks and CTR were stable through the removal of HowTo snippets in the mobile SERPs. CTR drops slightly recently, but it’s not too far off based on historical trending for the set of pages.

Key points and insights:

For most sites I’m checking, the removal of FAQ and HowTo snippets are not having a big impact on click through rate and clicks from the search results. That was surprising to me, but that was the case for most sites I’m checking (even beyond the six I covered in this blog post).
That said, there are outliers with some sites seeing a drop in CTR after the snippets were removed. Note, I haven’t seen that for the removal of HowTo snippets, but I provided an example earlier for FAQ. And that change I documented could be based on niche… For example, the case I covered where CTR dropped was a site focused on a YMYL category.
Although FAQ were supposed to be removed on both mobile and desktop, I was only seeing them removed on mobile until recently. Google finally removed FAQ snippets from the desktop search results on 9/13/23. You can read more about that below.
Google also announced on 9/14/23 that HowTo snippets would be removed on desktop as well as mobile. Originally, only the mobile SERPs would be impacted, but Google seems to have reversed course and removed HowTo snippets on desktop too.

Desktop FAQ snippets finally drop out of the SERPs on September 13, 2023:
We knew that FAQ snippets on desktop would eventually be removed, and now the time has come. As of 9/13/23 I am now seeing FAQ snippets removed from the desktop search results. I checked across sites and the snippets are gone. You can see a before and after photo below.

Prior to 9/13/23:

After 9/13/23 when FAQ snippets were removed:

Summary – The removal of FAQ and HowTo Snippets Are Not Having A Big Impact on CTR
For site owners, it’s always tough losing a special SERP treatment like FAQ and HowTo snippets, but there’s not much you can do about it. They are gone and probably not coming back. The good news is that I’m not seeing much impact to clicks and click through rate for sites that lost FAQ and HowTo snippets. I’ll keep tracking this over time and will update this post if anything changes performance-wise.

GG

Why Noindexing Syndicated Content Is The Way – Tracking 3K syndicated news articles to determine the impact on indexing, ranking, and traffic across Google surfaces [Case Study]

August 4, 2023 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

Last month John Shehata from NewzDash published a blog post documenting a study covering the impact of syndication on news publishers. For example, when a publisher syndicates articles to syndication partners, which site ranks and what does that look like across Google surfaces (Search, Google News, etc.)

The results confirmed what many have seen in the SERPs over time while working at, or helping, news publishers. Google can often rank the syndication partner versus the original source, even when the syndicated content on partner sites is correctly canonicalized to the original source.

And as a reminder, Google updated its documentation about canonicalization in May of 2023 and revised its recommendation for syndicated content. Google now fully recommends that syndication partners noindex news publisher content if the publisher doesn’t want to compete with that syndication partner in Search. Google explained that rel canonical isn’t sufficient since the original page and the page located on the syndication partner website can often be different (when you take the entire page into account including the boilerplate, other supplementary content, etc.) Therefore, Google’s systems can presumably have a hard time determining that it’s the same article being syndicated and then rank the wrong version, or even both. More on that situation soon when I cover the case study…

Google canonicalization help document with syndicated content recommendations.

And here is information from Google’s documentation for news publishers about avoiding duplication problems in Google News with syndicated content:

Previously, Google has said you could use rel canonical pointing to the original source, while also providing a link back to the original source, which should have helped their systems determine the canonical url (and original source). And to be fair to Google, they did also explained in the past that you could noindex the content to avoid problems. But as anyone working with news publishers understands, asking for syndication partners to noindex that content is a tough situation to get approved. I won’t bog down this post by covering that topic, but most syndication partners actually want to rank for the content (so they are unlikely to noindex the syndicated content they are consuming.)

Your conversations with them might look like this:

Syndication partners ignoring site owners.

The Case Study: A clear example of news publisher syndication problems.
OK, so we know Google recommends noindexing content on the syndication partner website and to avoid using rel canonical as a solution. But what does all of this actually look like in the SERPs? How bad is the situation when the content isn’t noindexed? And does it impact all Google surfaces like Search, Top Stories, the News tab in Search, Google News, and Discover?

Well, I decided to dig in for a client that heavily syndicates content to partner websites. They have for a long time, but never really understood the true impact. After I sent along the study from NewzDash, we had a call with several people from across the organization. It was clear everyone wanted to know how much visibility they were losing by syndicating content, where they were losing that visibility, if that’s also impacting indexing of content, and more. So as a first step, I decided to craft a system to start capturing data that could help identify potential syndication problems. I’ll cover that next.

The Test: Checking 3K recently published urls that are also being syndicated to partners.
I took a step back and began mapping out a system for tracking the syndication situation the best I could based on Google’s APIs (including the Search Console API and the URL Inspection API). My goal was to understand how Google was handling the latest three thousand urls published from a visibility standpoint, indexing standpoint, and performance standpoint across Google surfaces (Search, Top Stories, the News tab in Search, and Discover).

Here is the system I mapped out:

Export the latest three thousand urls based on the Google News sitemap.
Run the urls through the URL Inspection API to check indexing in bulk (to identify any type of indexing issue, like Google choosing the syndication partner as the canonical versus the original source). If the pages weren’t indexed, then they clearly wouldn’t rank…
Then check performance data for each URL in bulk via the Search Console API. That included data for Search, the News tab in Search, Google News, and Discover.
Based on that data, identify indexed urls with no performance data (or very little) as candidates for syndication problems. If the urls had no impressions or clicks, then maybe a syndication partner was ranking versus my client.
Spot-check the SERPs to see how Google was handling the urls from a ranking perspective across surfaces.

No Rhyme or Reason: What I found disturbed me even more than I thought it would.
First was the indexing check across three thousand urls, which went very well. Almost all of the urls were indexed by Google. And there were no examples of Google incorrectly choosing syndication partners as the canonical. That was great and surprised me a bit. I thought I would see that for at least some of the urls.

Indexing check across recent news articles.

Next, I exported performance data in bulk for the latest three thousand urls. Once exported, I was able to isolate urls with very little, or no, performance data across surfaces. These were great candidates for potential syndication problems. i.e. If the content yielded no impressions or clicks, then maybe a syndication partner was ranking versus my client.

GSC performance data across recent news articles.

And then I started spot-checking the SERPs. After checking a number of queries based on the list of urls that were flagged, there was no rhyme or reason why Google was surfacing my client’s urls versus the syndication partners (or vice versa). And to complicate things even more, sometimes both urls ranked in Top Stories, Search, etc. And then there were times one ranked in Top Stories while the other ranked in Search. And the same went for the News tab in Search and Google News. It was a mess…

I’ll provide a quick example below so you can see the syndication mess. Note, I had to blur the SERPs heavily in the following screenshots, but I wanted to provide an example of what I found. Again, there was no rhyme or reason why this was happening. Based on this example, and what I saw across other examples I checked, I can understand why Google is saying to noindex the urls downstream on syndication partners. If not, any of this could happen.

First, here is an example of Yahoo Finance ranking in Top Stories while the original ranks in Search right below it:

Syndication partner ranking in Top Stories while the original source ranks in Search.

Next, Yahoo News ranks twice in the News tab in Search (which is an important surface for my client), while the original source is nowhere to be found. And my client’s logo is shown for the syndicated content. How nice…

Syndication partner ranking twice in the News tab of Search over the original source.

And then in Google News, the original source ranks and syndication partners are nowhere to be found:

The original source ranking in Google News over syndication partners.

As you can see, the situation is a mess… and good luck trying to track this on a regular basis. And the lost visibility across thousands of pages per month could really add up… It’s hard to determine the exact number of lost impressions and clicks, but it can be huge for large news publishers.

Discover: The Personalized Black Hole
And regarding Discover, it’s tough to track lost visibility there since the feed is personalized and you can’t possibly see what every other person is seeing in their own feed. But you might find examples in the wild of syndication partners ranking there versus your own content. Below is an example I found recently of Yahoo Finance ranking in Discover for an Insider Monkey article. Note, Insider Monkey is not a client and not the site I’m covering in the case study, but it’s a good example of what can happen in Discover. And if this is happening a lot, the site could be losing a ton of traffic…

Here is Yahoo Finance ranking in Discover:

Syndicated content ranking over the original source in Google Discover.

And here is the original article on Insider Monkey (but it’s in a slideshow format). This example shows how Google can see the pages are different, which can cause problems understanding that they are the same article:

Original article that is being syndicated to Yahoo Finance.

And here is Yahoo Finance ranking #2 for the target keyword in the core SERPs. So the syndication partner is ranking above the original in the search results:

Syndication partner outranking the original source in Search.

Key points and recommendations for news publishers dealing with syndication problems:

First, try to understand indexing and visibility problems the best you can. Use an approach like I mapped out to at least get a feel for how bad the problem is. Google’s APIs are your friends here and you can bulk process many urls in a short period of time.
Weigh the risks and benefits of syndicating content to partners. Is the additional visibility across partners worth losing visibility in Search, Top Stories, the News tab in Search, Google News and Discover? Remember, this could also mean a loss of powerful links as well… For example, if the syndication partner ranks, and other sites link to those articles, you are losing those links.
If needed, talk with syndication partners about potentially noindexing the syndicated content. This will probably NOT go well… Again, they often want to rank to get that traffic. But you never know… some might be ok with noindexing the urls.
Understand Discover is tough to track, so you might be losing more traffic there than you think (and maybe a lot). You might catch some syndication problems there in the wild, but you cannot simply go there and find syndication issues easily (like you can with Search, Top Stories, the News tab, and Google News).
Tools like Semrush and NewzDash can help fill the gaps from a rank tracking perspective. And NewzDash focuses on news publishers, so that could be a valuable tool in your tracking arsenal. Semrush could help with Search and Top Stories. Again, try to get a solid feel for visibility problems due to syndicating content.

Summary – Syndication problems for news publishers might be worse than you think.
If you are syndicating content, then I recommend trying to get an understanding of what’s going on in the SERPs (and across Google surfaces). And then form a plan of attack for dealing with the situation. That might include keeping things as-is, or it might drive changes to your syndication strategy. But the first step is gaining some visibility of the situation (pun intended). Good luck.

GG