SEO

Sorry kids, but SEO isn’t what it used to be. It’s time to bury the old idea of “optimization” and start thinking about what we really do: train search engines. In this brave new world of generative AI, the way we approach search has fundamentally changed and clinging to outdated concepts won’t get us far….

Google has greatly expanded and clarified its documentation around how Search Appearances work within the Google Search Console reports. Google wrote on X, “We improved our documentation on Search Appearances supported in Search Console.” Daniel Waisberg from Google said, “I’ve been asked about this 1000 times, hope you’re all happy now.” The documentation now shows…

Microsoft now has these refinement cards or boxes directly in the Bing Image Search results interface. In these cards, Bing will show you a refinement option for your query with example photos you might find for that refined search query. I spotted this via Frank Sandtmann on Mastodon who wrote, “I don’t think I have…

Martin Splitt from Google said on the latest SEO office hours that having lots of nofollow or noindex tags or attributes on your site does not signal to Google that you have quality issues with your site or many low quality pages. The question was, “Can using a lot of nofollow or noindex tags signal…

Google has updated the local pack, the local results box, in the Google Search results. Now when you click on the results in the local pack, the map slides to the left, behind the local pack listings. Then the detail local listing slides to the right. There is a lot of movement here, so here…

There are many sad stories around sites getting hit by Google algorithm updates, such as core updates and of course the September 2023 helpful content update. But Hardbacon, a financial and budgeting company, was hit hard by those Google updates, then announced the company would file for bankruptcy the day before the August 2024 core…

Google announced that all merchants will be migrated (or as Google put it “upgrading”) from the old Google Merchant Center to Google Merchant Center Next by September (next month). We knew this was coming, we covered the upgrade emails back in July but here is the official announcement. Google wrote last night, “Merchant Center Next:…

Google’s larger search ranking bug was fixed four days after the issue was confirmed. Google’s August core update continues to roll out, some hit by the helpful content update are seeing some surges, but Google says wait until the update is complete. Meanwhile, we saw some potential reversals of some of those surges a day…

The advent of large language models (LLMs) marks the most significant shift in the search experience since the rise of mobile technology. Google’s SERPs are evolving beyond the traditional 10 blue links, introducing AI Overviews and other enhanced features. The full impact on brands and consumers is still unfolding This article explores the hypothesis that…