Which UX Signals Is Google Using in 2025?

Which UX Signals Is Google Using in 2025?

Apr 21, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
Which UX Signals Is Google Using in 2025?

Back in the dark ages of the Internet, when practices like keyword stuffing and spammy backlinks were rewarded with top search rankings, user experience was a secondary concern, mainly because those who focused on it ended up lower down on the SERPs. However, UX is now a core ranking factor, and those who don’t pay attention to it are likely to miss out. Google has always tried to prioritize user experience (thus the numerous core updates), but how its algorithm measures UX has changed over time.

User experience may be one of the most important factors in search rankings, other than keywords. If users aren’t having a good experience on your site, they won’t stay, and your search rankings will suffer because of it.

How Does Google Measure User Experience?

Google is a search engine that uses an algorithm to match users with content based on search terms. How can it tell whether someone is having a good experience on a website or not? And while Google can’t really tell how you’re feeling, there are some signals that it can measure. For example, if a website isn’t loading quickly enough, it’s not what you’re looking for, or it’s got loud autoplaying ads that you can’t pause, you aren’t likely to stay on that website. Google can measure how long users stay on a site before returning to the SERP–the dwell time–and can interpret a very short dwell time as an indicator that it wasn’t the right fit, while a longer dwell time would be a signal of a better user experience.

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The following are some of the UX signals that Google typically considers when adjusting SERP rankings:

  • Dwell time
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Pogo-sticking
  • Load speed
  • Responsive design
  • Clickable elements aren’t too close to each other
  • Readable text and font sizes
  • Accessible color contrast
  • Semantic HTML
  • Screen reader support
  • No intrusive pop-ups
  • No autoplaying videos
  • Logical site hierarchy
  • Breadcrumb navigation
  • Anchor text
  • Scannable content
  • And more

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What’s New in UX Signals?

The above UX signals are all things that Google has been measuring for years. In 2025, these are still important signals because the information they provide has continued to be useful in indicating user experience. However, that doesn’t mean that Google isn’t continually looking at what works and making changes as needed. A new UX signal that Google has begun monitoring is Interaction to Next Paint (INP).

What Is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?

Interaction to Next Paint is a metric that measures web performance. First introduced in a Google core update in early 2024, it replaced First Input Delay (FID) because it was considered to be a more accurate indicator of user experience. INP measures the time in between a user’s interactions with the website (be it clicking, tapping, typing, or something else) and the time the next frame is painted on the screen. What this boils down to is that INP measures how long it takes for a website to respond to a user’s actions.

What Is the Difference Between INP and FID?

FID, or First Input Delay, measured much the same thing, except that it measured only the very first interaction. INP takes that many steps further and continually monitors the website’s response time after a user interaction. It’s more accurate than FID because it paints a bigger picture. FID might miss later delays beyond the first one.

Why Is INP So Important?

INP is an excellent indicator of user experience because, simply put, the longer a website takes to load, the more likely a user is to leave unless they really, really want to be on that site. INP is an indicator of website loading speed and responsiveness (200 milliseconds or less is considered good), and the faster a site can load after a user interaction, the better that user’s experience with the site.

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How SEO Has Changed in 2025

How SEO Has Changed in 2025

Feb 7, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
How SEO Has Changed in 2025

We’ve been hearing a lot of digital marketers say that SEO is dead. However, this is far from true. These reports of SEO being dead or otherwise useless in 2025 may be a reaction to how the SEO landscape has changed with generative AI. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead, though. Far from it, in fact! It’s just different than it used to be, and that’s okay. SEO has been changing for decades in reaction to Google updates and other factors that have impacted the SEO landscape. SEO will evolve again to meet new needs.

Why Are People Saying SEO Is Dead?

Those who say that SEO is “dead” do so for the following reasons:

  1. Google’s Helpful Content updates and AI-driven ranking systems reduce the effectiveness of certain SEO tactics.
  2. AI-generated search results take up a large portion of the top of the SERP, pushing traditional website results further down the page.
  3. Zero-click search results from the Featured Snippet, local pack, knowledge panels, and Google’s Search Generative Experience mean that users don’t have to click away from the SERP to get their questions answered.
  4. Ads and paid promotions also take up much of the SERP, pushing organic results further down the page and making organic SEO more competitive.

 

 

 

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Why SEO Is Still Alive in 2025

Despite all of these changes, SEO is still alive and well and as essential as it was before for getting found online. It’s just that it’s different from how it was at the beginning. But that’s a process that has been in progress for a long time, ever since Google’s first major update, the Panda Update. Before that, SEO was kind of a Dark Age of black hat SEO techniques that let people game search engines and spam them with low-quality content, edging out the actual good content that people were looking for.

What Doesn’t Work Anymore in 2025?

A lot of what doesn’t work anymore is SEO techniques that look to game the system, just like the black hat SEO of old. While these techniques aren’t as egregious as they used to be, thanks to Google’s many core updates since then, Google has been gradually pushing for the SEO techniques that are more focused on quality content and user experience than anything else.

What SEO Techniques Should You Use in 2025?

Because of Google’s emphasis on higher quality content and also the increased presence of AI and ads, the best approach to SEO in 2025 is twofold: focus on quality content and focus on what can rank at the top of the SERP.

 

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EEAT

High quality content focuses on experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Aiming for these four qualities will ensure that your content is consistently able to rank well on SERPs. Even though the top spot might be a bit farther down the page than it used to be, it’s still worth trying to rank for because not every SERP has such a big AI section. Even if the SERP does, there are still users who look for actual sites rather than just trusting the AI to be correct.

The main thing, however, is to focus on the type of content that AI can’t provide. That’s where your own lived human experiences come into play.

Featured Snippets and Videos

Another option is ranking at the top of the SERP within the generative AI section. While much of what ends up here is paid ads, there are still featured snippets and videos that are placed right at the top of the page. Creating a YouTube video strategy can help you to rank well on both Google and on YouTube, which is a search engine itself. To try to rank as the featured snippet, you can use long-tail keywords to answer questions directly. This means that sections within a page can rank rather than just a page by itself.

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How the August 2024 Google Core Update Affected SEO

How the August 2024 Google Core Update Affected SEO

Oct 21, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes
How the August 2024 Google Core Update Affected SEO
Google finished its second core update of the year at the beginning of September. This core update, which began to roll out in August of 2024 took 19 total days to complete, which is, while still on the long side, much shorter than the other big update this year. The March 2024 core update took an unprecedented 45 days to fully roll out.

So now that the August update has finished and we’ve had some time to look at how it affected the SEO landscape, is there anything that you should know?

What Did the August 2024 Core Updated Change?

According to Google’s own announcementabout the update, it was designed to improve the algorithm’s ability to match users with the best possible content. The ultimate goal was to show more content that was genuinely interesting and useful to searchers rather than content that was created specifically to rank on the search engine results page (SERP). The update also took into account feedback from smaller creators, who had complained that their quality content wasn’t able to compete as well even though it was relevant.

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White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO

The battle between white-hat SEO and black-hat SEO has been ongoing since the dawn of Google. There have always been creators who create content with the intent of gaming the search engines. These tactics, called black hat SEO, worked back in the dark ages of Google but Google quickly released the Panda Update, which completely overhauled the search algorithm to reward sites that prioritized user experience and punish those that utilized user-unfriendly tactics like keyword stuffing to prioritize the search engine rankings.

While black hat SEO looks very different now than it did back in the early days of Google, it still exists. Any SEO technique that puts the search engine over users can qualify as black hat; it may not look like keyword stuffing anymore because that no longer works but it’s evolved along with Google. Google’s goal is to match users with the best possible results, so prioritizing users and providing them with genuinely useful content can help future-proof your SEO because that’s the kind of content that Google is continually refining its algorithm to prioritize. This latest update is no exception.

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AI Pricing Smaller Creators Out of SEO

Earlier this year, we wondered whether smaller creators who couldn’t afford to pay to play in the Google SERP landscape were getting priced out of SEO. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones concerned that those with smaller budgets weren’t going to be able to compete and Google received feedback from those smaller businesses and individuals who felt that their content wasn’t ranking as well as it ought to, given the quality of the content. This update aims to address that and give smaller creators a chance to rank; before, larger creators would be seen as more authoritative simply because they had the resources and name recognition to garner backlinks that smaller creators wouldn’t.

What Results Did Creators See After the Update?

SEMRush reported that a majority of its users saw changes in their rankings, whether good or bad. Most saw some decreases in rankings, although many did see increases as well. Google’s advice for what to do if your rankings drop is to revisit your content strategy to make sure that you’re creating the highest possible quality of content, namely following Google’s EEAT guidelines. We’ve been advising for years to put your users first rather than search engines and we stand by that advice.

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How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

May 20, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes
How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

Google began to roll out a new core update in March of 2024. Usually, it only takes a week or so for a new update to completely roll out. This update, however, was much more complex and took a total of 45 days to complete. What does that mean for the SEO landscape?

What Did the March 2024 Core Update Do?

The March 2024 Core Update was so complex because it addressed multiple core Google systems. However, it had one primary focus: spam reduction. From the onset, Google’s goal has been to provide users with the most useful and high-quality content when they search. Most, if not all of their core updates have been made with this goal in mind.

This latest update is no different. This update’s aim is to reduce or eliminate the amount of spam, or content produced exclusively to attract clicks rather than actually be useful to users, that searchers see. It’s also to reward those who publish high-quality content aimed at users, not search engines, with higher rankings over those who do not.

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What Kinds of Spam Does the Google March 2024 Core Update Address?

According to Google, there are three primary types of spam that this new core update affects:

Expired Domain Abuse

This type of spam involves purchasing an expired domain name and then using it to produce content that has little value to users, thereby attempting to manipulate search rankings.

Scaled Content Abuse

Scaled content abuse involves producing many pages exclusively for the purpose of manipulating the rankings. In many cases, scaled content abuse involves generative AI being used to quickly produce many pages.

Site Reputation Abuse

Site reputation abuse occurs when a site publishes third-party content that doesn’t have close oversight by the site owner and is published with the intention of manipulating search rankings.

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What Changes Should You Make Because of the March 2024 Core Update?

If you’re producing high-quality content with users as your target audience, then no changes are needed. This update targeted content that was aimed at manipulating search engines. If you have experienced a drop in rankings, consider examining your content and making updates where needed to improve its usefulness and quality. Keep in mind the four principles of EEAT:

  • Expertise
  • Experience
  • Authority
  • Trustworthiness

Ensuring that all of your content meets those criteria is the best thing you can do to not only protect yourself from this particular core update but also to future-proof your content from future core updates.

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Can You Still Use AI To Produce Content After the March 2024 Core Update?

The short answer is that it depends on how you were using AI to produce content. If the purpose of using AI was to mass-generate content to manipulate the search engines rather than to produce high-quality content, then that will most likely negatively affect your rankings. If you were instead using AI as a tool to enhance your content, then you might be safe. Our recommendation is to always have a human writer produce your content, whether AI is involved or not, so that there’s expert human oversight over any content that is produced. You don’t necessarily have to avoid using AI altogether, but it should be a helpful writing aid, not the writer.

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In a World With AI, Are Small Businesses Getting Priced Out of SEO?

In a World With AI, Are Small Businesses Getting Priced Out of SEO?

Feb 5, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes
In a World With AI, Are Small Businesses Getting Priced Out of SEO?
Technology changes quickly, and lately it seems like it’s been changing faster than ever before. While artificial intelligence has been a part of that technological landscape for many years in varying forms, it’s been making headlines lately because of the release of ChatGPT and other generative AI programs. Now, it’s begun to change the landscape of SEO.

How Does AI Play a Role in Google’s SERP Rankings?

Google has used AI in its algorithm for a long time. So how is AI only recently changing the SEO landscape? The answer has to do with the newer generative AI like ChatGPT. Google has started to include responses from its own generative AI platform, Bard, at the top of search engine results pages. This takes up a lot of real estate on the SERP. Users have to scroll down to see any search results at all, even the very first result. This means that the value of that top spot isn’t what it used to be. For those ranked lower on the SERP, there’s a chance users may never scroll down that far.

Who Is Google’s Algorithm Ranking the Highest?

There are many signals that Google’s algorithm pays attention to when it comes to determining search rankings. User interaction is a major one. Google’s search algorithm looks at such signals as clicks, bounce rate, dwell time, and more; websites that not only attract users to click the link but then also remain on the site for longer tend to end up higher in the SERP rankings. In theory, this means that really good content that is the most helpful to users should rank at the top. However, it often ends up being those with the highest ad spend in practice.

How Does Media Spend Impact Google’s SERP Rankings?

Larger companies with bigger budgets for ad and media spend are going to be more visible. Users will therefore recognize these brands more readily, leading them to more frequently click on links belonging to brands they already know and trust. This means that it can be difficult for new or smaller brands to compete; Google shows users what they expect and want to see, which can mean that it shows more popular content and may not leave room for brands that can’t pay to gain that same level of popularity via advertising.

Is Google Favoring Bigger Brands in SEO?

When asked this question, Amanda Shaffer, the founder and CEO of BrainVine, responded:

“The short answer is that it’s complicated, primarily because there’s more than one type of SEO these days. However, within the current landscape and in the more traditional sense of how SEO has functioned during the last decade, the answer is mostly yes.”

 

Amanda Shaffer, Founder & CEO of BrainVine

How Can Smaller Brands Compete in the Modern SEO Landscape?

Even if smaller or newer brands may find themselves priced out of the typical SEO landscape thanks to larger brands and AI taking up the bulk of the SERP real estate, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still options. Local SEO, in which you focus on building a brand within your local area, can be a good option because bigger companies may be focusing on a larger scale. Another option is YouTube; even with generative AI added to SERPs, YouTube videos are often featured prominently at the top. Growing a YouTube channel could be a way to compete for space at the top of a search engine results page.

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How Do Google Core Updates Affect SEO?

How Do Google Core Updates Affect SEO?

Dec 18, 2023

Reading Time: 3 minutes
woman working in front of a computer

Google often releases core updates to its algorithm in order to either address a problem or to improve the relevance and quality of search results for users. With Google changing how its search algorithm works so frequently, there can be some disruptions to SEO. But how, exactly, do core updates affect SEO and what can you do about it?

Do Core Updates Change SERP Rankings?

The short answer is that yes, an update can impact your rankings. It doesn’t always; in many cases, rankings may stay the same if your content still meets Google’s requirements for high quality. However, because the core update may reassess what Google considers to be top quality, rankings may decrease or even increase, depending on how your content matches up with the new qualifications.

What Does It Mean If Your Rankings Decrease After a Core Update?

Each core update just means that Google is adjusting how it ranks content in order to better match users with the best possible search results. In some cases, you may have ranked higher on a keyword that didn’t quite match your content as well and now you rank better for other, more suitable keywords. In other cases, you may need to revisit your content quality and update accordingly to meet Google’s standards.

What Can You Do If Your Rankings Drop After a Core Update?

Whether there’s something you can do or not will depend on the core update. If there’s a specific action you can take to restore your rankings to what they were before the update, Google will let you know. For example, when it switched to mobile-first indexing, optimizing for mobile devices first was something Google announced that you could do to improve your rankings. Sometimes, however, there’s nothing specific and Google will announce that along with the core update.

What Should You Do If There’s Nothing To Fix After a Core Update?

If Google has announced that there’s nothing to fix after a core update, then you should focus on improving the quality of your content and your website. This can mean focusing on EAT principles in your written content as well as improving the technical SEO on your website for things like loading speed.

Do Google Core Updates Cause Ranking Volatility?

It’s possible that a core update could cause volatility in the search rankings as the algorithm adjusts to the new criteria. Rankings may not stay static and may change multiple times during the weeks that the update is being rolled out. If in the immediate aftermath of an update, your rankings aren’t what you’d expect, don’t panic. It may take some time for the rankings to settle after the gradual rollout of the update.

Can You Anticipate a Core Update’s Ranking Changes?

There’s no real way to anticipate the changes that Google will make ahead of time. However, there are things you can do to future-proof your SEO. Focus on producing quality content that will benefit and engage your users. If users find your content genuinely useful and keep coming back to it, then your rankings may more easily recover or may not be affected at all by an update. You should also regularly revisit your technical SEO to make sure that your site is keeping up with current expectations for load speed.

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