Last updated on January 8th, 2025.
Yesterday, Google Search Central in Zürich happened again. It’s a bliss—like a top-notch SEO conference but for free. And in my case: In front of my house (well, a 20 min bike ride 🚲).
We enjoyed three talks from Google folks, two community talks and two Q&As. Find below my personal takeaways from the talks. This is not a full summary of the conference sessions. They reflect what resonated most with me at my current professional stage.
1. Searching with John Muller
The session was a review and outlook of search in the current area.
Intro / Review on Search
- Websites will stay. As long as people want to find something online, we need them.
- In 2021 (yes, 2021), Google worked with ~800,000 search quality testers and ran 4,300 tests. Danny Sullivan later said there were 5,000 tests in 2024 🙂 Some tests were small, others bigger. Some were tested only in specific regions, like AI overview.
- John did not give a timeline for when AI overview will come to Switzerland.
- Don’t over-focus on CWV, but don’t ignore them. Improving them won’t automatically make you rank better.
- A new ’24 hours’ view with hourly data was just launched (on 12th of December) in GSC. (More on Google Search Central Blog)
Outlook
- There will be more core updates (later also echoed by Danny Sullivan) next year.
- Next year, the Google Search Relations team will release content focused on “how to focus quality for your website.”
- Don’t create commodity content. It’s better to avoid programmatic SEO.
- There will be more structured data introduced.
- Project Mariner will be launched. It’s a Chrome extension that will help users navigate search engines. For instance, you can brief it to look for contact addresses across multiple websites.
2. Level Up Your Shopping Structured Data – Irina Tuduce
Next up, Irina Tuduce from the Shopping team at Google spoke about structured data for shopping. I loved Irinas talk because she combined the technical facts about structured data with a personal story form her neighbours 💙.
- Mention all variations of your product (color, size, material, pattern, age, gender) in structured data. This will help match user queries (e.g., “blue polo shirt”) to relevant results.
- Steps to do so: 1. Define variants using schema.org., 2. Validate them in Google Search Console or rich result test
- In 2025, the shopping schema will improve for loyalty programs, return policies and shipping methods.
3. GA & GSC – Daniel Waisberg
Daniels talk focused on difference between GSC and GA4. His aim was to demystify.
- GSC is what happens on SERP: pre click to your website <> GA4 is what happens on your website: post click to your website
- GSC and GA4 sessions and click do not match because it is different metrics and different data model behind. Sometimes sessions are larger than clicks and sometimes clicks are larger than sessions.
Reasons for discrepancy in GA4
- Users do not accept cookie collection.
- GA4 is not implemented correctly.
- Attribution model (e.g., Paid and organic last-click).
Reasons for discrpancy in GSC
- Time zone differences: GSC uses California time (PST). GA4 uses the property’s time zone.
- GSC only shows canonical URLs.
- Bot traffic exclusion: GSC does not effectively exclude bot traffic, which may inflate click counts.
On a different note, I loved Daniel’s quote about the Search Relations team: “It’s great to work with smart people.”
4. Creative Solutions for website migration- Judith Lewis
Judith Lewis walked us through a challenging migration project after an M&A.
- Generally, use more than one tool. And as an SEO, you are the most important tool in the toolbox!
- If all tools give misleading signals, you have to get creative! Judith crawled the old version of the website from archive.org (only the website folder, not everything) to check if redirects were implemented correctly.
- If all tools fail, go back to GSC.
5. Case Study from Giacomo Zecchini
In his talk, Giacomo walked through the concept of automatic detection of similarity to other websites.
- Users spend most of their time on other sites, so it’s better to use common patterns.
- But when is “similar” too similar? It can become a business risk if your website is too similar to your competitor’s.
Thanks, Search Relations Team
Thank you Google, especially Martin Splitt, for organising this. The mix of Google team members and community speakers makes this event insightful.
I have also learned that attention selection is based on a script. So, in case you did not get a ticket. It’s not you, it’s a script. I recommend just showing up next time as I saw the mass of not collected entry tickets when I left.
On a different note, I pitched to speak about stakeholder relations for SEO, I was not selected. If you’re looking for a speaker for your next SEO event, consider reaching out (and here’s my speaking history).
Further reading about Search Central 2024 in Zürich
You will like Mihai’s recap of the event: SEO updates from the 2024 Search Central Live event in Zurich 💡
