IndexWatch 2024: Visibility Winners in Google UK Search

From:

Luce Rawlings

Published: 15.01.2025

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Domains analysed in this report:

• savemyexams.com
• senecalearning.com
• vinted.co.uk
• golfclubs4cash.co.uk
• deliaonline.com
• thekitchn.com
• reddit.com

The complete list of winners, 100 absolute gains and 100 percentage gains, is at the end of this document. For more info on the methodology click here.

Where are the losing domains? You can discover the domains which were not so lucky in our dedicated loser analysis which will be linked here when available. Follow us on Bluesky

Education

Save My Exams

Online study platform, savemyexams.com, has seen a 625% visibility increase over the past 12 months.

Save My Exams provides revision materials for a variety of qualifications, including GCSE, AS and A Level subjects, all expertly crafted by teachers and examiners.

Although founded in 2015, savemyexams.com’s SEO journey is still in its infancy, with our Visibility Index showing the domain only began ranking for popular search queries in August 2023. Despite this, its organic performance has already surpassed SERP competitors like Seneca Learning, Study Mind and MME Revise.

Delving deeper into the website’s directories reveals that the primary reason for the domain’s organic ranking success is growth across the “/a-level” and “/gcse” sections. This growth appears to have started around the March core update, with the August and November updates further boosting visibility levels.

Since January 2024, “/a-levels” alone has experienced position increases for 802 existing keywords, and has acquired rankings for 1,444 new terms. The keywords are a mix of subjects and educational terminology, such as “a level physics”, “electromotive force” and “small angle approximation”.

Whilst it is difficult to determine exactly what has changed on-site from 2023 to 2024, it does appear that the user interface has been updated to improve user experience. With this, it also seems that broader topics, like “Cell Structure” in GCSE Biology, have been broken down into subtopics and additional resources created. This has not only enhanced the study experience for students, but it has also improved contextual relevance, enhancing content rankability.

Equally, changes to the homepage over the last 12 months indicate an increased consciousness of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness); with reviews and other elements showcasing brand trust and social proof at the forefront.

August 2023:

December 2024:

It will be interesting to see how Save My Exams performance progresses as we venture into the new year.

Seneca Learning

Whilst they have not quite matched Save My Exam’s success, competitor Seneca Learning has also gained from recent algorithmic activity. Year-on-year, senecalearning.com has seen a 358.48% increase in its VI score.

In early 2024, Seneca Learning’s progress mirrored that of Save My Exams, with a visibility boost after the March core update. However, key differences emerged following the August update where performance briefly dropped before rising again after the November (E) and December updates (E), as well as the December spam update (F).

An inspection of the domain’s directories shows that the website has recently undergone a URL restructure to accommodate internationalisation. Through this process, duplicate subfolders were created for EN-GB (“en-GB” and “en-gb”).

Whilst “en-gb” URLs have now been redirected to “en-GB” versions, it does seem that this redirect rule has been implemented very recently as both subfolders were still featured in Google’s index at the end of 2024.

This technical faux pas may have made their domain less competitive and capped their growth potential during algorithm updates, their overall performance has been positive.

Over the past 12 months, Seneca Learning’s keyword rankings have grown considerably and their position distribution has improved significantly.

8th January 2024:

30th December 2024:

Total keywords: 90,417 (+616.85%)

Page 1 to 3 Rankings:
Page 1: 678 (previously 95)
Page 2: 593 (previously 130)
Page 3: 665 (previously 59)

Now that the Hreflang issue has been resolved, it will be interesting to see how senecalearning.com’s organic visibility progresses over time.

Ecommerce & Marketplaces

Vinted

Buy, sell and swap marketplace, vinted.co.uk, experienced the most significant percentage growth on the Google SERPs (+790.4%).

Over the past 3 years, Vinted’s organic performance has fluctuated a lot; with the domain’s visibility reaching its all-time peak in August 2023 before succumbing to the August core and September helpful content updates.

Although vinted.co.uk’s visibility didn’t drop as low as pre-March 2023, the decline was still notable. However, in January 2024, the site began to see improvement, with a temporary uplift in visibility before seeing consistent growth from mid-June – coinciding with the spam update – through to December 2024.

But what has caused Vinted’s SERP resurgence? 

In October 2024, the company closed a secondary share sale to TPG Tech Adjacencies (TTAD) to support its expansion beyond preloved clothing into new categories, such as books, toys, electronics and video games. The sales process began in July, and by the end of 2024, the product expansion was completed, introducing new categories, subcategories and consequently, more organic search opportunities.

In line with the investment, product diversification, and the positive influence of the June spam and August core updates, Vinted’s “items” and “brand” subfolders gained more visibility in Google search results.

Vinted’s keyword rankings for the “items” subfolder increased by 850.37% year on year, while the “brand” subfolder saw a rise of 73.2%.

Golf Clubs 4 Cash

Golfclubs4cash.co.uk saw a 178.75% increase in organic visibility year-on-year. Golf Clubs 4 Cash sells new and used golf equipment and also offers a trade-in service.

Over the course of 2024 (no pun intended), golfclubs4cash.co.uk’s “collections” subfolder saw the most notable increase in search visibility. “Products” also saw some positive movement, but this was less significant.

From reviewing the website’s mega menu, it seems that golfclubs4cash.co.uk has had a very targeted approach to collections for several years, allowing users to browse by product type, brand, dexterity, flex and much more.

However, a deep dive into the individual collection pages highlights that in previous years, they have not been capitalising on the basic optimisations available to maximise their SEO footprint, such as incorporating branded keywords into Title Tags or H1s, or creating product descriptions to target keyword variations.

Here is an example of how the product category (PLP) for Callaway Drivers has evolved over time.

December 2022:

Title Tag: Second Hand Drivers For Sale | Buy Used Golf Drivers Online – Tagged “Callaway”

H1:  Second Hand Drivers

Product Description: N/A

December 2024:

Title Tag: Second Hand Callaway Drivers at Prices That You’ll Love!

H1:  Callaway Drivers

Product Description: If you’re in the market for a used Callaway driver at a fraction of the price of new, look no further. Looking for something else? Check out our full range of second hand drivers from all brands.

This optimisation work in parallel with the expansion of product inventory has led to golfclubs4cash.co.uk’s ranking positions to increase from 6,833 to 9,510 (+39.1%).

Food

Delia Online

Deliaonline.com is the official website of British cook, Delia Smith. The domain is a hub for recipes, cooking tips and other food-oriented content. Delia Online saw a 171.3% uplift in Google visibility.

A closer look at the site’s subfolders highlights significant growth in VI score for the “recipes” section. As the name suggests, this area contains Delia’s recipes for everything from “The Best Ever Apple Crumble” to “Vegetarian Moussaka”.

But what has caused the uplift in SERP prominence?

Exploration of our SERP snippets data confirms that compared to the previous year, Delia Smith’s website has been served for 53% more SERP features (3,970 vs 2,602); primarily within a mix of image boxes, the knowledge graph and featured snippet placements.

Page 1 to 3 rankings have also improved by 8% during this same period, with the majority of deliaonline.com’s content now appearing on Page 2 of the search results.

The appearance of deliaonline.com has not changed over the last year which indicates that the enhanced visibility the website has achieved is through technical optimisations, increased press coverage and/or content improvements.

From reviewing Google News, it is evident that Delia Smith has a finger in many pies (pun intended this time!). Outside of being a TV cook and author of cookbooks and online recipes, Delia Smith is associated with football, having recently left her position as a director of Norwich City Football Club after 25 years. In 2024, her voice was also featured in a local pantomime production of Aladdin. Naturally, her cooking advice has also been regularly quoted or featured in news articles throughout the year as well. This all suggests that Delia Smith’s overall online footprint may have been helpful to her domain’s performance, regardless of industry or topical relevance.

The Kitchn

Thekitchn.com has seen a 200% enhancement to its Google search visibility across the last 12 months. The Kitchn houses 9,000+ trusted recipes from over 26 million home cooks.

Predominantly targeted at a US audience, it seems that Google has deemed this resource to be beneficial for UK users, with the United Kingdom now making up approximately 5% of the brand’s worldwide SERP visibility.

So, where exactly has this growth stemmed from? Browsing the domain’s directory data highlights that a section called “collections” has seen the biggest increase in SERP prominence. These “collections” pages group recipes and other cooking resources by ingredient. 

For example: https://www.thekitchn.com/collection/beef = Beef Recipes & Ideas

Essentially, these pages are content hubs for core ingredients that users would search for to find recipe inspiration, food preparation guidance or cooking advice. The 75% improvement in keyword rankings indicates that The Kitchn is organised in a way that is helpful for users and the recipes vetting and rating systems are highly trusted – important from an E-E-A-T perspective.

Moving into 2025, thekitchn.com will certainly be a domain to watch!

UGC: The rise of Reddit

In our 2023 winners analysis, we highlighted Reddit’s notable rise in search prominence, building our initial observations following the announcement of the Google/Reddit partnership in February 2024. In our Q1 2024 edition, we explored the early impact of this collaboration. So, what has unfolded since?

Reddit has continued to climb and has made it into the top 25 winning domains, seeing a 785.99 increase in VI score year-on-year. By the start of Q2, reddit.com hit its highest visibility on Google UK. 

Throughout the year, the domain reaped the reward of every major algorithm update, including the March, August and November core updates. However, following the December core and spam updates, there do seem to be early signs that the domain’s visibility may be due to stabilise or potentially decrease in the coming months.

Throughout 2024, subreddits (/r) continued to be the main drivers of the domain’s overall growth. However, since Q1, the top-performing subreddits have shifted slightly. While r/Music and r/EnglishLearning continue to reign supreme, r/Movies has overtaken r/AskReddit.

Over the last 12 months, reddit.com has acquired notable rankings for brand terms (e.g. “Facebook”, “YouTube”, “Wordle Today”, “AirBnB”) that have corresponding subreddits, in addition to generic, non-brand queries with high search volumes (e.g. “best coffee”, “halal”, “minced lamb recipes”). All in all, compared to the beginning of 2024, Reddit has obtained 145,979 additional keyword rankings and seen position improvements for a further 272,389.

You can discover more specific details about the domain’s growth in this comprehensive analysis of Reddit.

2024 IndexWatch domain winners

Here is the full list of winning domains. We have included two tables containing the top domains (absolute and percent). These have been filtered to remove adult content.

Percentage increases:

Absolute increases:

Conclusion

So there we have it, our 2024 winners. But what interesting insights can we extract from the domains that have reaped algorithmic rewards this year?

• User experience matters. From design aesthetic through to internal linking, it is crucial that users are able to easily find what they are looking for and when they find it, can engage with it without jumping through hoops. In the case of Save The Exams, user interface and content diversification have helped them to achieve organic prominence in a very short period of time.
  
• Technical SEO isn’t the be-all and end-all, however, technical issues can hold your website back from achieving its full ranking potential. For Seneca Learning, the existence of the Hreflang issues could’ve been the difference between outperforming one of the biggest organic search rivals, Save The Exams.
  
• Product expansion alone can be the reason for a visibility increase, rather than reoptimising existing products. Naturally, diversifying product ranges opens up scope for Vinted and users alike to incorporate new short and long-tail product keywords into categories, subcategories and of course, listings. This is a similar story with Golf Clubs 4 Cash, but without the user-generated (UGC) content element.
  
• The power of digital PR should not be underestimated. Whilst backlinks have also been important, brand citations are equally important and valuable to build brand awareness and have a knock-on impact on brand awareness and organic authority. Deliaonline.com is a great example of where a brand’s ambassador – regardless of topical relevance – can be influential on domain performance.

• The evolution of Google’s search experience (SGE) is lending itself to having less focus on keywords, with topical relevance coming into play more strongly. The Kitchn has demonstrated a solid strategy that is topic-led in the way forward, as well as doing everything possible to deliver and showcase information in a way that emphasises trust and credibility, with horizontal and vertical linking also playing a crucial role.

• Reddit is still dominating the SERPs, but what comes up inevitably comes down at some point.

Methodology

The top-performing domains have been identified using SISTRIX’s Visibility Index (VI), which assigns scores to each domain appearing in UK search results. These scores evaluate organic ranking performance across approximately 100 million keywords spanning a variety of websites on both mobile and desktop devices.

Important Note: The Visibility Index reflects algorithmic shifts only; it does not account for external influences such as seasonality, events, national holidays or weather. Learn more about how the Visibility Index Score is calculated.

IndexWatch for other countries

• 🇪🇸 Spain (by Arturo Marimón)
• 🇫🇷 France (by Nicolas Audemar)
• 🇮🇹 Italy (by Elisa Paesante)
• 🇩🇪 Germany (Jolle Lahr-Eigen)

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