Updates in Google and Yandex search for the past year: important innovations

Despite the abundance of search engines presented on the market today to global users, Google and Yandex are still very popular with the public. In order to meet the ever-increasing demands of the audience, as well as the current requirements of our time, search engines are improving and developing. Old, irrelevant options are removed from them, new, more technologically advanced ones are added. This process happens regularly and it is very important for users to follow current trends in order not to miss the opportunities that search engines offer in their updated version. In many ways, they are aimed at increasing the efficiency and convenience of work, improving security indicators and more.

As part of today's review, we will dwell in more detail on the changes that occurred last year with the Google and Yandex search engines. We will consider the key points that will be useful to the majority of the user audience. This will be relevant for both ordinary people and those who are actively involved in professional activities on the Internet. We will also provide a number of recommendations for the current year that are relevant for absolutely all sites, that is, universal ones, as well as those that online stores, SEO specialists, and webmasters should pay special attention to.

Last year's innovations in the Google search engine

Google is the leader among all search engines in the world. Despite the fact that recently many of its services have been partially limited, or even completely unavailable to Russian users, and that Google Play has stopped paying app developers, it ranks 2nd in the local market in popularity, second only to Yandex. We will start our acquaintance with the changes that occurred last year with Google. We will highlight only the main points that may interest the user audience.

Bard Transformation into Gemini

The Bard chatbot appeared in the Google ecosystem relatively recently, but last year it was already undergoing a transformation. In particular, it is now offered to users in the form of a generative neural network called Gemini. The developers took such actions in order to follow current modern trends and ultimately obtain an extremely powerful modern AI model of their own design.

In parallel with the rebranding, the chatbot received a fairly impressive set of new options. Alternatively, users can now create their own personal AI assistants, the so-called Gem bots. With their help, it will be possible to automate the solution of many similar and routine jobs, repetitive tasks. Despite the relatively recent appearance on the market, today you can already find SEO assistants, editors based on artificial intelligence.

The latest version of this neural network Gemini 2.0 appeared on the market in December 2024. It received even more functionality and increased the speed of interaction. This version of the neural network showed excellent results during testing and has already received a full launch on the market. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that this service is still blocked in Russia, but you can easily bypass access restrictions, which we will discuss in more detail later in our review. According to company representatives, Google will continue to develop its neural network, expanding its functionality and implementing it in all internal services, including search. In the foreseeable future, we will be able to see how effectively the specialists managed to implement their idea.

The FID indicator has been removed from the PageSpeed Insights tool

PageSpeed Insights is a solution that Google uses to analyze Core Web Vitals indicators. In turn, they help to find out such parameters as site loading speed, display responsiveness, stability. That is, these are the indicators by which the search engine determines the quality and convenience of pages for the user audience.

Last year, the FID parameter, indicating the responsiveness of the site, was removed from the interface of this tool. Google announced a similar decision quite a long time ago. A new INP indicator has been prepared to replace it. In essence, it is similar, since it will also show the responsiveness of the site. But the accuracy of its work will be higher due to the display of real user experience, and not theoretical data.

Current updates in search algorithms

Over the past year, the Google search engine has updated its search algorithms several times (Core Update). Thus, the consumer market was informed about global changes in March 2024. The main changes here occurred in the area of content quality checks. Resource owners reported that for a certain period of time, while all checks are being performed, the sites may not work very stably. Google took such actions in order to minimize the number of low-quality pages in search results. In particular, according to preliminary calculations, their number should have decreased by at least 40%.

The spam identification system has also undergone significant changes, SpamBrain has been improved. Three new requirements have also come into force:

1. Abusing the site's reputation is prohibited. This rule applies to cases where reputable partner resources hosted advertising materials or other third-party content that did not correspond to the basic theme of the site and, as a result, the requests of the audience that would visit it.
2. Abuse of domain reputation is prohibited. In this case, we mean drop domains that have earned a good reputation in the market, allowing content to be published on their pages that has no value or benefit for the audience.
3. Content scaling is prohibited. Now you cannot create a large number of pages if there is no obvious benefit for the audience. Now the protection system perceives such actions as a way to manipulate search bots. This applies not only to copied material, but also to articles generated using neural networks.

After such updates came into force, a fairly large number of resources sank in search results, lowering their once high positions. In most cases, this applied to pages that were filled with generated text. But with all this, Google does not say that neural networks are banned: it only points out the importance of creating high-quality original materials.

Last year, search algorithms were updated three times. In particular, in June, requirements were introduced to prevent violations of the search engine's existing spam rules. In August, developers took into account the requirements of content authors and users, taking a number of measures to improve the visibility of useful pages in the issuance. That is, here the emphasis was on ensuring that the sites focused on improving user characteristics, and not on satisfying the requests of search bots.

The last important update, Core Update, was in November and compared to previous versions, it can hardly be called global, but it is still important to mention it. In particular, the changes concerned the complication of the site ranking system. Such changes in practice happen very often, as Google regularly works to improve search results.

Sites without a mobile version have left search results

Concern for the convenience of the user audience has always been in the first place for Google. Considering the fact that every day more and more people interact with the Internet through mobile devices, having a version of the site adapted for smartphones and tablets has become one of the key requirements for modern sites. Thus, the final stage of the transition to mobile-first indexing is currently being implemented. Now all sites are scanned using a special robot developed exclusively for checking mobile pages, namely Googlebot Smartphone. If it detects content that is not available for viewing on mobile devices, it is immediately removed from the index, that is, it will never appear in the search results again.

Such innovations will negatively affect all sites that are not adapted to work with mobile gadgets. That is, it is worthwhile for absolutely everyone who would like to see their site in Google search results to provide an adaptive version of the resource.

Reminder about the need for HTTP caching

Last year, Google reminded the audience about HTTP caching technology again and introduced its features in detail to the audience, pointing out the need to use it in practice. In particular, it is noted that with its help you can speed up page loading, reduce the load on servers, saving their bandwidth, and also improve the process of scanning the resource by a search bot.

The HTTP protocol was chosen as the data caching standard. It is also recommended to move away from the Last-Modified response header and use ETag instead. It is believed that there will already be higher resistance to errors.

Changes were added to the site optimization guide

Google has had a document for quite a long time, which sets out those points that are very important in SEO optimization of a site. Its first version was created about 17 years ago and it is clear that it needed serious revisions and changes. It is noteworthy that the new requirements and recommendations are now aimed at young professionals and include only key points. This guide got rid of a number of sections that had lost their relevance and, on the contrary, was supplemented with new ones, in particular:

• "what to focus on", which sets out the points that must be implemented at the stage of site optimization;
• "video optimization", which tells about the requirements that must be met when posting a video on a site;
• "how long to wait for results", which explains the approximate time frame for the appearance of the effect of the transformations performed.

The emergence of new generation formats

Last year, Google representatives announced that the search engine was starting to support new generation formats, in particular AVIF. With its help, it will be possible to reduce the size of the image, practically preserving its original quality. This format has proven itself in practice to be much more effective than earlier solutions, in particular JPEG, WebP.

Already today, you can see everywhere how effectively AVIF files are indexed both in Google search and in Google Images. This format is recommended to be actively used during SEO optimization of the site in order to increase its loading speed. But at the same time, it is not recommended to make drastic changes to all the images that are provided on the site. That is, it is important to check their quality and make appropriate adjustments only where there is a real need.

Another new format that Google began to use last year is EPUB. It is relevant for e-books. The fact is that the search engine has also started indexing such files and users can find them in search results using an operator such as filetype:epub.

Adjustments in the Google Search Console service

Webmasters should definitely take such changes into account. In particular:

1. The "users and permissions" section. Here, the improvements affected the tools designed to manage tokens. In particular, you can check whether the site has an ownership token, since it is no longer used in practice.
2. The absence of information from Google Analytics in Search Console Insights. It is no longer taken into account here, and reports on site performance are generated only based on the data that is available to Search Console. The developers claim that such actions are intended to simplify working with data.
3. Improved "Recommendations" function. You can find it in the "Overview" tab. The developer added all the recommendations in one window, but they will be displayed in the most convenient and structured form. Today, this option is not available for all sites, but the situation should change in the foreseeable future.

The "Site Search" option has been removed

Recently, a window was presented directly in the Google search results, with which you could search within a specific resource. Due to the fact that this option was not in stable demand among the audience, they decided to remove it. Thanks to this, it was possible to improve the interface of the search results page. But still, if you need to find specific information on a specific site, you can use the site operator.

A data leak has occurred

Last spring, Google's internal documents were compromised. They were freely available on Github and contained very important information about how the search engine algorithms work. As soon as specialists managed to study them more closely, they saw that a number of statements by company representatives were, let's say, far from reality. As an option, Google previously indicated that young resources would be ranked in the same way as older ones, that is, the age of the domain would not be taken into account. But it turned out that this indicator is still very important.

Another difference between the real and the declared is related to E-E-A-T factors. It was previously said publicly that the expertise of the content author is not important for search engines, but the leaked documents, on the contrary, indicated that Google collects information about authors and checks their authority.

The audience also learned that the search engine, taking into account the popularity of the brand, monitors all mentions and checks the quality of backlinks. The analysis of behavioral factors has a significant impact on the position in the search results, which was not a particularly pleasant surprise for many.

This leak helped many specialists reconsider their approach to website promotion and focus here not on hypothetical, but on the real requirements of the search engine.

These are all the main changes that have occurred in the Google search engine over the past year. Now let's get acquainted with Yandex's innovations.

Last year's innovations in the Yandex search engine

Last year, Yandex continued to occupy a leading position among Russian search engines. Working to satisfy the demands of a huge number of users, adapting its product to current market trends in general, the developers implemented a number of fairly serious changes and added innovations, which we will talk about further.

The emergence of a new service for online stores - Yandex Goods

Yandex Goods is an innovative service designed to provide significant assistance to online stores. In particular, with its help you can present your products directly in the search, thereby increasing sales. Now the search engine interface has a number of tools that allow you to:

• get statistics on traffic quality and volume;
• count on personalized recommendations that will improve the presentation of products in the search;
• download YML feeds with product data, as well as edit them;
• track customers and quickly respond to their reviews, questions, comments.

It is noteworthy that this tool is completely free to use and every owner of an online store can use it without any problems. In order to start working, you will need to automate using Yandex ID, as well as add a link to your site, connect the Yandex Metrica counter.

Changes in product search

Changes last year in the Yandex search engine also occurred directly in the product search. In particular, if you go to the “Prices in stores” block, you will see that it will now be displayed not only in the product card, but also in the regular search. That is, users will be able to compare prices for the products they are interested in directly with the search results and make a choice more quickly. But in order to get into this block, stores will first need to provide a YML feed, indicating current prices and product descriptions in it, adding detailed images.

Also now, the product card has a Neuro-Assistant. With its help, you can quickly get the information you need about a particular model, as well as detailed explanations.

The changes also affected the display of the store name in the search results. Yandex will pull it directly from the “name” tag, located in the feed that you pass to the system. Here it is absolutely important to comply with the official name, and also to avoid adding related words, especially such as "low prices", "best store", etc. In order to make it easier for business representatives to navigate all the innovations and features of compiling a feed, Yandex has additionally prepared a set of training videos dedicated directly to the capabilities of product search. Here you can learn everything that will help you correctly transmit information about delivery, as well as pass the quality check of the system without problems.

Adding Neuro-search and improving YandexGPT

About a year ago, the Yandex search engine released an updated version of its generative neural network YandexGPT 3, and six months later, in November, it finalized it, presenting YandexGPT 4 to the audience. Users have already noticed that in terms of the quality of answers and in terms of solving complex problems, it has received a noticeable change for the better. Moreover, many note that in terms of individual questions, the efficiency of this neural network is not inferior to GPT-4.

Yandex has integrated YandexGPT 4 into many of its products. Moreover, the search engine has launched a new Neuro-search tool on the market, which many consider to be one of the most important innovations of the past year. Now users will be able to get answers to their questions directly in the search results. That is, they do not need to go to the site and study the material completely. Initially, Yandex presented Neuro-search as a separate service, but relatively recently it was integrated into the search. Now the neural network is able to analyze all the information that will come from the network and generate a response to a user request containing links to the 5 most relevant sources. It is also able to recognize images and generate a completely logical conclusion.

Despite the fact that this tool appeared in Yandex relatively recently, many users have already appreciated the benefits of its use. At the same time, resource owners express their dissatisfaction, since traffic to sites has noticeably decreased: visitors are not eager to go to the sites, since they receive the information they are interested in literally from the search results.

There is nothing unexpected here. The fact is that today the search is changing, and quite actively, and all that business representatives and ordinary users in general can do is simply adapt to all these innovations. In order to minimize traffic loss to your site, you should work on improving it and ensure that Neuro-search adds your site to the recommended answers. And in this case, achieving good positions in search results remains relevant. With a high degree of probability, your site will come under the attention of this tool if it is presented in the TOP of the results. It is also recommended to register your business on Yandex. Maps and in any other popular directories. It is on the basis of such sources that the neural network will generate answers to user queries.

Adding geoanalytics

This is a new tool in Yandex that will help you choose places for business. In particular, with its help you will be able to assess the commercial potential of a particular region or city district in order to select the optimal location for launching an offline business, be it opening a cafe, bar, restaurant, hotel, store, workshop, warehouse, etc.

The information will be provided in a fairly clear and easy-to-understand form, namely as a heat map. On it you will be able to see the level of demand for your goods or services, demographic characteristics, level of competition, automobile and pedestrian traffic, as well as a number of other additional information. Today, such a service has been launched for 16 major cities, but the developers claim that geography will gradually expand.

Promo codes, cashback, split added to Yandex Browser

Last year, Yandex's Internet browser received another new option, which the user audience will certainly appreciate. In particular, we are talking about the ability to make purchases through a split system. In this case, we are talking about the ability to pay for goods in parts, select offers that already have promo codes from sellers, cashback. You can see all this information by clicking on the corresponding button located next to the browser's address bar. It will become available to you when you go directly to the online store.

Thanks to this innovation, sellers will be able to demonstrate their loyalty programs directly in the main browser window, thereby attracting the attention of potential buyers with interesting offers. In order to use this option, you will need to send your offers to Yandex. That is, you leave a request, wait for it to be reviewed, and then, if it is approved, follow the steps that will be indicated in the instructions.

Improving the quality of search results for ecom queries

All those user queries that initially have an expressed desire to purchase a particular product or service will now be processed based on updated Yandex algorithms. In particular, all stores presented in the search results will be marked with a special icon in the form of a cart. The algorithms themselves have become more intelligent, which allows them to better determine the desires of users. That is, if a person enters a commercial query directly, then the search results will mainly include stores where he can purchase the corresponding product. Among other things, the search engine will also take into account the availability of the product in the supplier's warehouse, as well as the possibility of its delivery to the buyer's region.

Yandex does not provide precise recommendations and explanations regarding how this algorithm works, but it does give a number of recommendations to online stores, namely:

• information about the assortment on the site must always be up-to-date, as well as all related content;
• all refusals, as well as conversions and related commercial metrics must be analyzed, since this is the easiest way to understand how effectively you interact with customers and meet their needs;
• the usefulness of the content and its uniqueness must always be at a high level: it is optimal to add additional value specific to your site;
• it is important to maintain the user experience at a high level and do everything to ensure that the buyer is satisfied with the cooperation with your store.

By and large, Yandex also recommends taking these tips into account when working with information portals, but with minor adjustments.

Active fight against slow videos

Both the search engine and the Yandex browser now have a so-called "slow loading detector". This is a tool that will identify videos that will have a low loading speed, and also replace them with faster analogs. These same users will be shown the video content whose loading speed meets the current standards. Accordingly, they will receive the maximum traffic. If desired, users themselves will be able to choose a suitable video source for themselves, using a special filter. In it, you can activate and deactivate certain sites that will be included in the search results.

When determining the rating of stores, reviews from Yandex Maps are now taken into account

In order to build a rating of stores in the search, Yandex actively uses reviews and ratings left by users. They are collected from the information presented in Yandex Browser and Yandex Reviews, and now also on Yandex Map. To study the relevant information, users will simply need to click on the rating of a particular store or any other establishment, and you will be able to see them. Such information can be identified by the mark “From reviews of the organization”.

Updated Yandex Wordstat

Representatives of the search engine reported back in 2023 that they had launched testing of the updated version of Yandex Wordstat, but last year it was already launched into use. Among the new features, it is worth highlighting:

• the ability to track the dynamics of user queries not only by week or month, as it was before, but also by day;
• files in CSV and XLS formats are available for download;
• the presence of a link to the webmaster section “Selection of queries and market analysis”, which provides information on the most popular sites and pages for a specific query, which allows you to analyze their competitiveness, clicks and demand;
• statistical data is collected for the last 6 years.

Changes have also affected the design of the service. Now it looks more presentable, modern and the general style of Yandex is clearly visible in it.

Changes in the algorithms for assessing the quality of content

In this case, we are talking about changes that have occurred in the algorithms that evaluate the quality of content and are part of the Proxima metric. After the latest improvements, more attention has been paid to the expertise of the content and how reliable and correct the information in it is. This is due to the fact that today the amount of content on the network is increasing exponentially and it is important to focus on quality rather than mass.

Among other things, an active fight is also being waged against texts generated by neural networks. It is believed that they may be unreliable, which means that their value for the target audience is significantly reduced. This will be especially relevant for materials devoted to such topics as law, medicine, finance and many others that have a direct or indirect impact on the well-being of users. That is, according to Yandex, such publications should not be created without the participation of an expert.

At the same time, the search engine points out the importance of building trust with the user audience and even provides advice that will help achieve good results, namely:

1. the need for a comprehensive analysis of behavioral factors, which will help understand how valuable your content will be for the audience;
2. the need to emphasize the expertise and experience of the authors of the material and the site as a whole;
3. a ban on the use of clickbait headlines, fact-checking;
4. thoughtful UX design down to the last detail, which will be extremely convenient for users, including adding a quick search option, filter recommendations and other useful elements.

In order to understand what exactly you need to improve to improve the user experience, it is recommended to analyze competitors' sites, run surveys among your regular customers.

Updates in the Yandex Webmaster design and the emergence of new sections

Last year, significant changes occurred in the design of the Yandex Webmaster account. Here, the developers changed the color palette, added a light and dark theme, and adjusted the menu logic. In parallel with this, new options were also added, in particular:

1. The algorithm that generates a set of information for the “Links” section began to work more correctly. Thanks to this, external links began to be displayed along with HTTP statuses, namely “working” and “not working”. Users can now track the dynamics of errors and their types via internal links, which will allow them to obtain more detailed information and find the best ways to fix the problem.
2. The "Request Monitoring" report contains information on individual pages and requests, and now they will all be displayed in one window. Thanks to this, you will be able to see which requests bring the audience to a particular page of your site.
3. The "Useful Services" section now contains Yandex Browser links that will help improve sales. They will tell you where you can connect promo codes, splits, and cashbacks. There will also be a link to Yandex Products, where you can organize work with product feeds.
4. New sections "Traffic and Assortment Analytics" and "Request Selection and Market Analysis". The first of them is designed to analyze the popularity of a brand and individual products on the network, and assess their competitiveness. Using the second section, webmasters will be able to work flexibly with the processing and analysis of demand, key phrases.
5. A set of additional options for medical centers, clinics. We are talking about the fact that now information about doctors can be transmitted not only in the form of a familiar YML feed, but also in the form of an Excel table, which will be a more convenient solution for users, as well as institutions where a large number of personnel work. Let us repeat that providing Yandex with such information is your chance to get into the thematic search results block, where information about the doctors of your clinic will be presented. Also in the “Site Quality” section, you can find the “Reviews” tab, and in it another section “On doctors”. It is here that those users who have the appropriate access to the webmaster panel will be able to respond to user reviews about doctors. In most cases, this can be either the doctor himself or an outsourced specialist, or an ORM manager.

This concludes our introduction to the main innovations that were implemented by the Yandex search engine last year. Now we will briefly present the plans of specialists for the current year.

TOP recommendations from specialists for the current year

If we analyze all these innovations and changes that have occurred in the Google and Yandex search engines, we can assume how the situation will develop in the current year. For your convenience, we have divided the recommendations for 2025 into 3 separate groups:

1. For webmasters and SEO specialists.
2. For online stores.
3. Universal recommendations for all sites.

Let's look at them in more detail.

Universal recommendations for all sites.

If you want your site to continue to work effectively in search engines this year, and also bring income to your business, we recommend following these tips:

• focus on quality content and ease of use for the user audience: these are the solutions that will always remain relevant;
• work on increasing trust from potential buyers, increase the expertise of your materials;
• monitor the work of Yandex Neuro Search in your niche and do everything to ensure that your site appears in such recommendations;
• use neural networks only as an assistant: chaotic thoughtless content generation can lead to your site losing its position in search results;
• think about what added value your business has, in particular what is not on other sites: implemented cases, unique analyst advice, expert opinions and add all this to your pages.

These recommendations will be relevant for absolutely any site, regardless of what niche it is presented in.

Recommendations for online stores

In order to attract the attention of buyers to your brand and its products, we recommend using the following recommendations:

• work on improving those products that you add to the search using the Yandex Goods service;
• show potential buyers their benefit, in particular cashbacks and promo codes already in Yandex Browser;
• create a high-quality YML feed, adding current prices, description, pictures, and be sure to write the store name in the tag;
• use the Geoanalytics tool if you plan to open an offline representative office of your business;
• work on improving the reputation of the business, respond to audience feedback, strive to receive positive feedback, increase citation.

A number of recommendations here will be relevant not only for the Yandex search engine, but also for Google.

Recommendations for webmasters and SEO specialists

To ensure that sites show themselves as best as possible in search results, so that your efforts to optimize and promote sites give maximum results in a short time, use the following tips:

• use caching for static content, which will speed up the site and improve the efficiency of its scanning by search bots;
• if you plan to buy an old domain, then be sure to follow its theme, but fill it with unique author's content that contains benefits for the audience;
• work on improving the mobile version of the site, because the relevance of this trend is constantly increasing;
• use all the opportunities that your personal Webmaster account opens up for you, as well as the advanced options of Yandex Wordstat, getting really high-quality statistics for developing future strategies;
• pay attention to the new image format - AVIF, as it allows you to compress images with virtually no loss of quality, and Google is already indexing them.

There are many opportunities, evaluate what solutions your site will need and implement them in practice.

Let's sum it up

We hope that this information, which we presented in today's review, was really useful and informative for you, and you will be able to take it into service, thereby ensuring the stable development of your sites and excellent results in their promotion to the top of search results. And in order for all your work to be as fast, flexible and efficient as possible, we recommend using additional mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service.

You can find more detailed information about what this product is, current tariffs and functional capabilities at the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy. We also suggest that you take a free test for 2 hours to make sure that this product is promising and convenient.

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