Each month, our in-house technical SEO experts scour the web for the best industry news items website pros need to read this month.

Here’s the latest round-up of SEO news for April 2024:

Google is considering charging users for AI search

In a change from its usual business model, Google is considering a subscription-model structure for its AI-powered search results. 

The costs of running any AI-powered service are extremely high, with most of that expense going towards the technology’s day-to-day running. Analysts have suggested that moving to a subscription-based model would be Google’s only chance of recuperating even some of that cost.

(Source: The Guardian)

Google CEO discusses the evolution of search and SGE

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai recently attended the 2024 Business, Government & Society Forum, where he spoke about the changing landscape of search in a world transformed by AI. Unsurprisingly, Pichai doubled down on his stance that AI has the power to transform search for the better, getting even more valuable results in front of users. 

Pichai also points to the launch of featured snippets in Google Search almost a decade ago, citing that as the first time Google introduced a kind of AI to surface the best results. 

(Source: Search Engine Land)

Brave announces its new AI-powered search engine

Brave is the latest company to throw its hat into the ring when it comes to AI-powered search. Simply known as ‘Answer with AI’, Brave’s offering promises all the benefits of AI search without the noise created by so-called ‘big tech’. AI-generated results will still include links, and any commercial or transactional queries will not be answered by AI. 

The solution is also powered solely by Brave’s own index of crawled and ranked websites, harking back to the company’s continued privacy-first approach. The impact this latest offering has on Brave’s overall market share will be something to monitor with interest.

(Source: Search Engine Journal)

Scrutiny continues over Google’s preference for Reddit in SERPs

Google has come under fire from many in the SEO industry (and beyond) over the last couple of months. The reason? A significant increase in top-ranked search results from the social news forum Reddit. 

Back in February 2024, a deal was reached between Google and Reddit that gave Google access to Reddit’s Data API, essentially making Reddit’s content available for use in training Google’s AI model. In return, Reddit could expect to see increased visibility in Google results.

Since then, many users have reported a shift in results for a wide breadth of searches, many of which now heavily surface Reddit pages above other sites and content creators. Conversations as a result of this change have understandably been heated, with Google defending its decision to surface forum results when users are likely to find them useful. However, SEOs have pointed to an increase in Reddit pages being shown for YMYL queries (such as medical-related searches) as evidence that the switch-up has gone too far.

(Source: Search Engine Journal)

Google confirms that crawl budget is allocated by hostname, not root domain

Google has confirmed that crawl budget is allocated by hostname, not by root domain as many formerly thought. This means that each individual subdomain can have its own crawl-rate limits, independent of any other subdomains on the same site.

(Source: Search Engine Roundtable)

Google ends support for Video Carousel markup

Google is ending its experiment in supporting Video Carousel markup has come to an end, with the company claiming that it ”wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale” following the tests. Any users that have implemented the markup can safely leave it on their site, as structured data continues to have benefits beyond eligibility for Google’s rich result features.

(Source: Search Engine Roundtable)

Video Recap: Google SEO Office Hours, April 2024

The April edition of Google’s “SEO Office Hours” is now available to watch on demand. 

Intermittent 503 errors, host provider migrations and sitemap naming conventions are covered in this month’s SEO Office Hours. John Mueller and Gary Illyes are in the ***-seat this time around, answering real user questions. While many reference specific use-cases, there’s always something to learn from these that can be applied to your own sites. If you don’t fancy watching the whole thing, a full transcript of the hangout is also available here.

(Source: Google Search Central on YouTube)

Google’s latest core algorithm update continues its rollout

The core algorithm update announced by Google on March 5th seems to be ongoing, with no conclusion added to the Search Status Dashboard. Google is usually very prompt with updating the dashboard as soon as rollouts are complete. Insights from SEO consultant Glenn Gabe, posted on X each morning, confirm that volatility is starting to cool off, suggesting that the update might be reaching its closing stages after 48 days of active rollout (so far).
(Source: Glenn Gabe on Twitter/X)