Another year in SEO has flown by. While 2023 may have been the wildest year in SEO ever, 2024 was not far behind – with perhaps two of the biggest stories in the history of SEO.
Note: This article doesn’t include any stories related to Google algorithm updates. Barry Schwartz wrote a separate recap on that, which will publish Dec. 26.
15. R.I.P., Google cache link
For years, the cache link in the Google Search results snippets was a de facto tool for many SEOs and searchers. That all changed in February. Google decided to retire it and officially remove the cache link.
14. Reddit-Google
Reddit had a heck of a year, greatly accelerated by an incredible surge of organic visibility in Google search results. And by sheer coincidence (surely), Reddit and Google struck a content licensing deal in February.
13. New insights into how Google ranks content
Mark Williams-Cook uncovered a Google endpoint, revealing over 2,000 properties used to classify queries and websites. We got new insights into scoring, query types, and site quality metrics – and unprecedented clarity into how Google Search works. This discovery is right up there with our Number 1 story and is only Number 13 because it happened so late in the year and hasn’t accumulated as many views as our other stories.
12. ChatGPT tries to change the search paradigm
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was pretty clear that he wanted to figure out search earlier this year. Rumors persisted, until we finally got a new prototype, called SearchGPT. Finally, in October, ChatGPT search launched for paid users. ChatGPT search opened up to all ChatGPT users this month.
11. Google leadership changes
Liz Reid, who was leading up core search experiences, was promoted to the Head of Search at Google in March. Later, Prabhakar Raghavan, who was villainized as being the man who killed Yahoo and Google search, exited his role as leader of search and ads to become chief technologist in October.
10. Organic traffic predicted to drop by 25%
Gartner made headlines with this prediction: “By 2026, traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.”
9. Google’s imaginary market share slip
Google experienced an unbelievable drop in market share in April, according to StatCounter. And when I say “unbelievable,” that’s because I didn’t believe Google took a massive at the expense of Microsoft Bing and Yahoo. In fact, it turned out that the data was wrong. But it was a hot story for a hot minute.