August 2024 core update official blog post

“We launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.

This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content, when relevant to users’ searches. This is an area we’ll continue to address in future updates. This update also aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to show the best of the web.

We’ve also updated our help page about core updates, which includes more in-depth guidance for those who may see changes after an update.”

Posted by John Mueller, Search Advocate, Google Switzerland

Google Positioning

Just one month after Google’s August 2024 update, we’re already seeing positive results from blogs like Hilton-vs-Doubletree on Perplexity.ai, which was published on July 29, 2024 at 6:51 PM EDT.

Data Sourced on 10/15/24

Desktop Stats Overview

Mobile Stats Overview

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Top Keywords Positions on Google

All Positions

Data Sourced on 10/15/24

Organic Positions

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SERP Feature Positions

Data Sourced on 10/15/24

What does this mean for SEO?

Prior to the August 2024 update, Google has continually updated and refined its search core, impacting hundreds of websites. Despite this, investing in a technically sound SEO-optimized website remains more effective than seeking quick fixes. Organic SEO takes time, but one constant principle Google rewards is Performance. We recommend using Google PageSpeed Insights to ensure a technically optimized website.

What does this mean for backlink building?

The long-term effectiveness of using Perplexity.ai Pages for backlink building is uncertain. Currently, they create reputable and quality backlinks, but it’s unclear if Google will adjust its scoring of AI-generated pages. As Perplexity.ai’s market share is small, only time will tell if Google takes action to address this.