Six months ago, I covered the famous (non) "buckle up" comments about the changes coming to Google Search over the next several months. Well, Andy Simpson posted a recording of Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, who said these comments and I thought it would be good to listen to them now - 6 months later.
Here is what Danny said word for word back then:
There are so many things going on with Google in terms of ranking right now. There’s so much coming on and I don’t want to say buckle up because that makes you freak out because if your’d doing good stuff, it’s not going to be an issue to you. But all the things that people keep raising on right now, can’t wait until this all set and that’s coming along. This is going to take care of that sort of thing. I hope, I hope. But it’s not unknown to us and it’s not, we don’t care.
Here is the recording, so you can hear it yourself:
🎙️ The moment Danny Sullivan said "Buckle Up" at @brightonseo in San Diego...I guess he knew it was going to be a big one! #BuckleUp #brightonSEO @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/krNs20hd2r
— Andy Simpson 🇬🇧 (@ndyjsimpson) May 13, 2024
This "buckle up" term has been quoted for the past six months like crazy in our industry.
It is interesting listening to it now, after this March 2024 core update, I believe the update we've been waiting for, and asking if this is the update we've all been waiting for?
I am not sure if most SEOs would think so. But Google did say the last core update resulted in a 45% reduction in low-quality and unhelpful content from showing up in the Google Search results.
Oh, and as I wrote this morning, there is more of this to come.
Forum discussion at X.