IndexWatch Q3 2024: UK SEO Visibility Winners & Losers

From:

Luce Rawlings

Published: 10.10.2024

SEO Winners Q3 2024

World of Books

Second-hand book retailer World of Books has seen a staggering 999% increase in Google visibility over the past 3 months. There’s a catch though…

At the beginning of 2022, we reviewed the SEO losers for the previous year, including World of Books, who migrated from worldofbooks.com to wob.com in November 2021.

Although wob.com’s organic visibility eventually improved, the company recently decided to revert to the worldofbooks.com domain. All wob.com URLs now redirect to corresponding pages on worldofbooks.com.

Despite shifting the core shopping experience back to worldofbooks.com, the company has chosen to retain the subdomain help.wob.com. As the name suggests, this subdomain houses their customer support resources including articles, FAQs and information on delivery and returns.

Unisa

Unisa-europa.com saw a 753.79% uplift in organic visibility compared to July 2024. Unisa is a fashion brand that specialises in high-quality women’s shoes, handbags and accessories.

Originating from Alicante in Spain, over time, Unisa has established itself as a global entity. This has been reflected in the brand’s approach to international SEO.

Although the “en-gb” version of the website has existed for over a decade, it has only recently gained momentum on the SERPs. A sharp rise in visibility was recorded on 28th August, just two weeks after the August Core Update began rolling out.

In parallel with this visibility uptick, rankings have improved for 692 keywords since 1st July 2024. Additionally, the domain has secured new rankings for 3,417 queries during this period.

This indicates that Unisa has fine-tuned its internationalisation strategy in recent years, likely through optimising or fixing issues with Hreflang implementation. As a result, the website has reached a peak in visibility levels.

Spotify

Popular music and podcast streaming service spotify.com saw a 268.63 improvement in Visibility Index (VI) points between July & September.

The uplift in the domain’s visibility occurred around the time that Google announced the August Core Update, just two weeks prior to Spotify reporting record profitability levels for their platform.

Closely analysing spotify.com’s directory data confirms that, during the period examined, rankings for their key directories, ‘track” and “artist”, saw notable increases, rising from pages 1 and 3 to page 1.

Tracks:

Artist:

A review of the Visibility Index graph for the “artist” directory reveals significant gains across various musician profiles, with Girl Talk, Pixie Lott and Skillet experiencing the most prominent uplift.

Key

• Girl Talk – red line
• Skillet – blue line
• Pixie Lott – green line

Conducting manual searches for these artists confirms that their Spotify artist pages consistently rank within the top 12 results on the SERPs, alongside their official websites, one or two YouTube videos and their most prominent social media profiles.

Ranking data at a domain-level also reveals significant growth, with rankings improving for artists, songs, albums and other key query types across 787,180 keywords. Additionally, new rankings have been secured for a further 798,610 terms.

This suggests that vs other music streaming platforms, Spotify is deemed as the most authoritative, trusted and possibly, the most used too.

All Q3 Winners

Below are the winners by absolute change:

And percent change:

SEO Losers Q3 2024

Cazoo

Used car website Cazoo has experienced an 84.85% decrease in organic visibility since 1st July 2024.

This decline coincides with Cazoo’s acquisition by Motors at the end of June. In the acquisition announcement, it was revealed that Cazoo would transition into a used car marketplace, aggregating listings from dealerships across the UK. Both the marketplace and the new Cazoo app are now powered by Motors.

When reworking the website’s structure, Motors addressed a widespread duplication issue on cazoo.co.uk by redirecting www URLs to their non-www counterparts. They also temporarily reworked the URL structure for a number of directories, including “cars” and “views”. As a result of the redirection work, many of these pages experienced ranking decreases, with page 2 rankings decreasing by 3% and page 3 by 5%.

As the restructuring process continued, the “cars” pages were redirected to the equivalent pages on motors.co.uk. Additionally, the “view” section, which contained article content, has also been redirected to Motors’ dedicated news.motors.co.uk subdomain.

ZOE

The website for personalised nutrition brand ZOE (zoe.com) has seen a 63.74% drop in UK Google search visibility.

From delving into the domain’s URL data, we can see that during the quarter, zoe.com’s AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages) were removed. Consequently, many of these page’s keyword rankings were assigned to equivalent non-AMP versions or alternate pages discussing topics relevant to the keywords. This resulted in ranking decreases for 1,204 out of 1,333 keywords that were previously associated with AMPs.

This change also unearthed keyword cannibalisation between content in the “learn” section – the home of the ZOE Health Academy (health guides) – and the “post” section – featuring articles on specific health topics. 

Learn:

Post:

Whilst cannibalisation is not unusual on information-rich sites, internal linking can help clarify to search engines which content should rank for specific queries. A review of instances of cannibalisation across these sections suggests a lack of internal links between competing resources, which, if implemented, could improve topical hierarchy and stabilise rankings.

Screwfix

British hardware retailer Screwfix experienced a notable drop in Google SERP visibility, with its website, screwfix.com, suffering a 56.75% decline during Q3.

Historically, screwfix.com has enjoyed robust Google search visibility. However, over the last 3 months, algorithmic changes have exposed weaknesses in the site’s SEO strategy. This has given its close competitor, diy.com (B&Q), a competitive edge on the SERPs, widening what was previously a minimal visibility gap between the 2 domains.

A closer examination of the site’s directories has revealed that “c” (category) pages have seen a notable decline in SERP prominence. The specific categories that have seen the biggest downshift are “tools”, “electrical-lighting” and “heating-plumbing”.

When comparing ranking distribution for the entire “c” directory, page 1 rankings have dropped from approx. 11,500 to 9,250 (almost 20% decline).

1st July

30th September

A review of B&Q’s category pages reveals that they’ve introduced new CTAs to assist users in navigating to subcategories. This enhancement to user experience seems to have gradually boosted rankings over time, enabling their domain, diy.com, to increase their competitive advantage.

Early 2024

October 2024

All Q3 Losers

Below are the losers by absolute change:

And percent change:

Conclusion

We’ve seen some fascinating fluctuations throughout Q3, but what can we learn from the latest visibility winners and losers?

• Domain migrations are complex and should only be undertaken when absolutely necessary. While wob.com achieved organic visibility comparable to worldofbooks.com, the choice to revert back to worldofbooks.com highlights the significant role branding plays in these decisions. Both visibility and potential brand ramifications are crucial factors to consider with a domain change.

• Technical factors, such as Hreflang, can affect a website’s organic rankings across different search engines. In the case of Unisa, this may have led to an unnecessary delay in content discovery and indexation.

• Internal linking can often be helpful to minimise cannibalisation occurrences and to signify to search engines which page is most relevant to rank for each query. In the case of ZOE, this could solidify rankings.

• E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) significantly influences rankings, especially for competitive search queries, such as those targeted within the Spotify domain.

• Acquisition strategies can greatly affect domain performance. Once the Cazoo acquisition was completed, Motors opted to leverage the site’s historical organic authority while encouraging users to utilise the search functionality on the Motors website.

• Removing duplicate content versions, like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs), doesn’t guarantee that the remaining version will automatically rank. While the content might eventually rank for the same keywords, its positions could be higher or lower. You can’t assume you’ll maintain your current rankings.

• Sometimes, simple UX changes can create a competitive edge in ranking positions. B&Q’s recent design updates have highlighted Screwfix’s SEO weaknesses, enabling B&Q to take some of their market share.

Methodology

We’ve used SISTRIX’s Visibility Index to analyse the top 250 winners and losers on Google UK, focusing on domains that experienced the most significant visibility changes between 1st July and 30th September 2024.

Please note: Visibility Index (VI) scores do not account for external factors, such as seasonality.