Google March Core Update, AI Mode concerns, massive Google growth and AI Search is wrong

Summary

In this video recap from March 14, Barry Schwartz discusses a variety of topics revolving around Google's recent activities. Key highlights include the rollout of Google's March 2025 Core Update aimed at enhancing search content relevance. Additionally, concerns about Google's AI mode affecting web publishers are addressed, with Google's VP of Product promising more UI updates to improve click-through rates. The video also covers Google's significant 22% search growth and findings from the Columbia Journalism Review indicating that AI search engines, including Google's, often produce incorrect results. Lastly, changes in Google Ads and features in development, such as expandable shopping ad carousels and improved Google Tag Manager processes, are mentioned.

Highlights

• Google's March 2025 Core Update started rolling out on March 13, aiming to improve search results 🎉.
• Concerns about AI mode scraping content without clicks have been acknowledged by Google 🤔.
• Google's search traffic surged by nearly 22% compared to the previous year 📈.
• AI search engines received criticism for inaccurate search results, with some performing worse than others 🤖.
• Google Ads is tinkering with new features like expandable shopping carousels 🛒.

Key Takeaways

• The March 2025 Core Update is live, expected to refine relevant content delivery over two weeks 🎯.
• Google's AI Mode is under scrutiny for potentially reducing site click-throughs, but UI improvements are on the way 👀.
• Google's search volume grew by 22% year-over-year, overshadowing AI competitors 🚀.
• Studies show AI search engines, even Google's, often produce incorrect findings 👎.
• New features in Google Ads, including expandable shopping carousels and enhancements in Google Tag Manager, are being tested 🛍️.

Overview

Barry Schwartz begins the video with the exciting news about Google's March 2025 Core Update, which promises to make search results more relevant. This update began its rollout on March 13 and is expected to complete over the next two weeks. The emphasis is on delivering satisfying content for all types of sites, although the full impact on content creators remains uncertain.

The discussion moves to the realm of AI and search engines. Google faces concerns over its AI mode reducing the incentive for users to visit websites by scraping content. Google's VP of Product assures that upcoming UI changes will address these issues. Meanwhile, a report highlights that AI-powered search engines frequently provide incorrect results, raising questions about their reliability.

On the business front, Google has seen remarkable growth, with a 22% year-over-year increase in searches. This growth underscores Google's dominant position despite concerns about AI. Moreover, the video touches on new developments in Google Ads, such as the testing of expandable shopping ad carousels and refinements to the Google Tag Manager, positioning advertisers for better engagement and efficiency.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Purim Greetings In this chapter, Barry Schwarz introduces the video recap by wishing viewers a good morning and happy Purim. He mentions the date as Friday, March 14th, and references the celebratory nature of Purim. The chapter provides a brief overview of the main topics that will be covered in the recap, including the Google March 2025 core update, concerns about Google's AI, a study highlighting the potential inaccuracies of AI search engines, and Google's 22% year-over-year growth.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Sponsor Message and SEO Benchmark Report The chapter titled 'Sponsor Message and SEO Benchmark Report' discusses a sponsorship message from Similar Web. Similar Web has created an SEO Benchmark report that analyzes organic traffic of 10,000 websites across 10 different industries. This report aims to help brands comprehend what successful SEO looks like. The key metrics included in the report are monthly visits, website engagement, SER metrics like AI overview presence, zero-click searches, and organic difficulty. The report was also contributed to by well-known SEO experts such as Adams Ala Soless and Sophie Bannon.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Google March 2025 Core Update Details The Google March 2025 Core Update has been released, which was a much-anticipated event. It went live on March 13th, around 12:30 PM Eastern Time. The roll-out of this update is expected to take place over the course of two weeks. Further details can be accessed in a report linked in the description, which is available for free.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Google's AI Mode Concerns The chapter discusses Google's recent core update, a routine process aimed at improving search result relevance and satisfying content for users. It highlights two main points: firstly, the continued focus on surfacing satisfying and relevant content from various sites; secondly, ongoing efforts to prioritize content from creators through multiple enhancements. The update appears to be part of a series of improvements aimed at rewarding creators, although this particular update may not significantly impact content creators immediately.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Google's Growth and AI Search Issues The chapter discusses Google's announcement regarding their core updates, which was unexpected as they initially planned more frequent updates. The first core update of 2025 occurred in mid-March, and more information about it can be found on the Surge Round Table from February 14th. The chapter also references charts and discussions posted on LinkedIn.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Hotlink Protection and Ads in AI Mode The chapter discusses concerns about hotlink protection and advertisements in AI mode. It mentions a post from March 14th at roundtable.com, highlighting Google's response to concerns about AI mode. The VP of product, Robbie Stein, addressed a question from Mike Fuda regarding worries from web publishers about Google scraping content and reducing user incentives to visit original sites. Robbie Stein assured that the team is focused on addressing these concerns.
• 05:30 - 07:00: Google Shopping Ad Expansions The chapter discusses updates to Google Shopping Ads, focusing on improvements in user interface (UI) to make it easier for users to click through to sites. These changes are influenced by user feedback, emphasizing the integration of AI to enhance click-through rates. The speaker is uncertain about the exact improvements AI might bring, but previous features like AI overviews and featured snippets have shown positive impacts.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Google Ads Review Process Update The chapter discusses a significant year-on-year increase in Google searches, noting a 21.64% growth rate from 2023 to 2024, based on data released by Rand Fishkin. Additionally, the chapter highlights that Google received approximately 373 times more searches than ChatGPT, showcasing its dominant position in the search market.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Google's PMax Negative Keywords Update The chapter discusses the update on Google's PMax regarding negative keywords, highlighting some concerns about the reliability of AI search engines. A recent study by the Columbia Journalism Review shows that AI search engines, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Perplexity, Deep Seek Search, Microsoft's Copilot, and Google's Gemini, often provide incorrect information. Some perform better than others, but on average, they get about 60% of the queries wrong. The findings signal caution in trusting the information from these AI models.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Google Ads Editor and Experiment Suggestions The chapter discusses the performance of different AI models in terms of answering queries correctly. It highlights that 'perplexity' model is the best with only 37% of queries being answered incorrectly. In contrast, 'grok' model has the highest incorrect response rate at 94%. It mentions that many AI models do not adhere to robots exclusion protocols, unlike Google. Google often provides links and citations, but they frequently lead to irrelevant or non-existent pages, which is seen as embarrassing.
• 10:30 - 12:00: Google Tag Manager and Knowledge Panels The chapter discusses various aspects of AI search engines as reported by the Columbia Journalism Review. It mentions a statement by John Mueller highlighting that hotlink protection exemptions for search engines are acceptable and not considered cloaking, although it's uncommon today. Additionally, the chapter touches on Google's exploration into integrating ads into AI models, as reported by Ad Week.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Bing Co-Pilot Interface Testing and Conclusion This chapter delves into the testing of the Bing Co-Pilot interface and presents the conclusions drawn from the process. It begins by comparing the mode of operation to previous AI overview learnings. The chapter highlights Google's initiative to monetize AI, referencing a new expandable shopping ad Carousel. Spotted by rpen benergy, this feature includes video demonstrations of the carousels and their expanding functionality, which is described as interesting and noteworthy. The chapter also touches upon Google's implementation of labels indicating 'price at checkout,' indicative of their ongoing innovations in AI-driven interfaces.

Google March Core Update, AI Mode concerns, massive Google growth and AI Search is wrong Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 good morning everybody my name is Barry Schwarz and this is the search buzz video recap today is Friday March 14th perm for all those celebrating hope you guys are having a good time and you're just being safe happy perm everybody so we got a lot of news finally we got a core update from Google we got the Google March 2025 core update that's rolling out some big news on that I'll get to that soon Google's AI mode concerns talk about that as well Google grew 22% year-over-year AI search engines often get it wrong according to a study and a lot more new around search
• 00:30 - 01:00 ads PBC you name it so definitely stay tuned of course I like to thank our sponsor similar web similar web created an SEO Benchmark report analyzing organic traffic of 10,000 websites across 10 different Industries this report helps Brands understand what good really looks like the key metrics include monthly visits website engagement and ser metrics including AI overview presence zero click searches and organic difficulty also some well-known seos helped with this report including Adams ala soless Sophie Bannon
• 01:00 - 01:30 M frabo ballerinas I link to the report in the description below so definitely take a look at it it's completely free and thanks to s for [Music] [Applause] sponsoring so we've all been waiting for this moment the Google March 2025 core update is gone is released doubt it released on March uh 13th uh around 12:30 Eastern in the afternoon um this update is again supposedly supposed to roll out over toward course 2 weeks or
• 01:30 - 02:00 so which Google says for every core update sometimes it takes longer sometimes it takes less and Google said this is a regular core update specifically said this is a regular update designed to better surface relevant satisfying content for Searchers for all types of sites Google added a second Point around content creators saying we also continue our work to surface more content from creators through a series of improvements throughout this year some have already happened Google said additionally additional ones will come later makes me believe that this core update is not going to actually have an impact around content creat
• 02:00 - 02:30 around that Google said before and more in the in later I don't know we'll see we'll see what happens there that was posted on LinkedIn I was expecting more core updates I'm surprised this is the first core update of 2025 Google said there would be more core updates more often but again the first one of 2025 happened in March towards the end of all middle of March um and again I have a lot of information about this core update on the surge Round Table posted on on Friday February 14th um a lot of interesting stuff there um I posted some charts I posted in the chat and so forth
• 02:30 - 03:00 so definitely take a look at that I'm not going to go through it all on this video um but definitely take a look at that post that I posted on March 14th at roundtable.com Google also responded to some concerns around AI mode uh the VP of product Robbie Stein at Google went ahead and answered a question from Mike Fuda who's basically said How do how do you quell legitimate concerns from web Publishers that you are scraping all their content and removing the incentive for users to click over to their site fair question worded very strongly but fair question Robbie Stein from Google gole said the team is really focused on
• 03:00 - 03:30 how we make it easy to click to sites we have a lot of more UI UI updates coming that we showed in our announcement post it's something that we hear from users that they want and core to how we're building AI mode goes on to answer more questions but basically that's their statement I don't know I really don't know how much the click theough rate will improve with AI mode over that we saw that with AI overviews and with features Snippets and so forth It's just just upsetting thing to see and we hope we get it better and
• 03:30 - 04:00 we will see Rand fishkin from sparto released some new data this week saying that saying that 22% actually 21.64% growth in Google searches year-over-year that Google had 20 almost 22% more searches in 20124 than it had in 2023 pretty wild um and one other metric here is that Google received about 3 73 times as many searches as chat chat TPT search got which is pretty wild like so it
• 04:00 - 04:30 makes you think like Google's pretty safe you don't have to worry too much about that um so we'll see what happens with that another survey or study came out this week showing that AI search engines confidently often get it wrong meaning and the reports is from the Columbia journalism review which basically say that Open the Eyes chat GPT search perplexity deep seek search Microsoft co-pilot Gro from from from X and Google's Gemini just get it wrong way too often some do it better than others but about 60 % of the queries
• 04:30 - 05:00 were answered incorrectly across all of them perplexity is the best at only 30% 30 37% queries being answer answered incorrectly um grock had the highest rate of 94% of of queries being incorrect answered incorrectly most of them don't listen to uh robots uh exclusion protocols Google does and often when they actually site um links and citations and so forth they often link to stuff that makes no sense or a 40 for or whatever so it's pretty embarrassing in terms of of um those
• 05:00 - 05:30 types of results there in terms of these AI search engines so again take it for what you want this is a report the Columbia journalism review so it is what it is but it is interesting to see that um John Mueller said that hotlink protection carve out specifically for search engines are okay it's not cloaking it's just perfectly fine although most people don't do that these years um ads will probably be coming to AI mode soon um a statement from ad week from Google said they're exploring Google's exploring bringing ads into AI
• 05:30 - 06:00 mode similar to what they did from the leveraging the learnings from AI overviews so we'll see what happens with that um but it's not a surprise that Google will want to monetize AI mode uh Google's testing this expandable shopping ad Carousel this is spotted by rpen benergy um who basically showed this video of the carousels and expanding and so forth it pretty it's pretty wild um it's pretty interesting so keep an eye for that Google also has these labels that say price at checkout this is
• 06:00 - 06:30 spotted by um rpen as well and also posted on Adrien Decker who basically show this price at checkout in the shopping things basically showing this is the price that you get a checkout as opposed to what the price may be shown on the actual product page which is useful uh to see uh Google updated its add review process help documentation to clarify that it does use both AI methods and human evaluators to go ahead and enforce and detect policy VI violations around removing ads assets Des ations and accounts and other content issues
• 06:30 - 07:00 around Google policies so it does use Ai and human evaluations for that and that's just made clearer there Google has updated its pmax negative keywords uh system to support up to 10,000 uh negative keywords or keywords in that in that space it used to be just 100 negative keywords now it's up to 10,000 that's example of Google listening to advertisers and changing there Google has released Google ads editor version 2.9 it's now out with a bunch of new features there so definitely take a look at that advertisers has spotted again
• 07:00 - 07:30 Google ads search Max search Max in the wild again um this lets you build AI campaigns um keywords headlines and descriptions landing pages and so forth It's a new campaign setting I think um does a bunch of cool things there here's a screenshot of that feature this was spotted by uh Jerome Fleck nice find there Google ads is now suggesting implementing a s an experiment when you dismiss a recommendation so if you go Google gives you a recommendation to Google ads and you say dismiss Google may go ahead and say hey here's an experiment maybe just try it as an experiments and so forth this is spotted
• 07:30 - 08:00 by Goen panir nice find there Google has sent out email about Google tag manager changes specifically saying that Google tag manager will send events before loading the Google tag and Google calls this a small change that will not harm measurement performance um it says currently your Google tag manager container sends events before loading a Google tag starting on April 10th 20125 containers will with Google ads and floodlight tags will automatically load a Google tag before sending the events
• 08:00 - 08:30 some advertisers are skeptical about what this really does but again that's what Google said uh Google is testing knowledge panels with expandable Place Maps here's a screenshot of that this is spotted by kashu um over there and it is interesting because um I think this might be a dma a digital markets act feature but anyway that's that also Google is testing a quiz feature which we saw for a while but now it's is called as get tailored recommendations this is by by Broly Clark who posted on
• 08:30 - 09:00 Ser notes um it has like get Taylor recommendations you go through a quiz process to get more recommendations in Google search which is super weird but it is there and also Bing is testing a new interface for co-pilot answers um this new co-pilot answer interface is more linear more paragraph approach as opposed to boxy uh this is spotted by Sash and Patel any then thanks so much for listening to the search bu video Recaps again similar web check them out and also check out that SEO Benchmark report in the description below everyone have a great safe weekend I hope you guys do well with the March core update and happy perm to those celebrating
• 09:00 - 09:30 bye-bye