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Google's most recent earnings call was quite optimistic. Here are the bits I found most interesting. AI Overviews In 18 months they have reduced the costs for AIO's by 90%. Google is seeing strong engagement with AIO's. They are increasing overall search usage and satisfaction. People who use them come back to search more often. […]

Who is @iruletheworldmo? This mysterious account on X has been all I can think about for days now. I was duped. He used me to push his agenda.  And I am thankful for this. It was all for good reason. Very good reason. We truly are not prepared for what is coming. (Added Aug 17. […]

Navboost, an essential part of Google’s ranking algorithm, analyzes user interactions—such as clicks, hovers, scrolls, and swipes—to refine and prioritize search results. SEOs must understand how Navboost affects ranking, as it tracks critical user signals to decide which pages are most relevant and helpful. Whether users linger on a page, return to search, or quickly […]

Well this has been an interesting week. Rand Fishkin published a fascinating article about a set of documents that was shared with him. These documents contain the documentation for making API calls to Google’s Cloud Content Warehouse. There is speculation, for good reason, that this documentation can help us learn a significant amount about Google's […]

Although Google told us the site reputation abuse policy would go into effect on Sunday, May 5, Danny Sullivan tweeted on Monday evening that the manual actions were currently being handed out and that the algorithmic component was not yet live. At the time I write this, we have seen the first manual actions. I […]

The March 2024 Update has finally finished rolling out. We have a lot to study and learn about before we can understand what happened with this update.   What’s most important to know: Google called the March Core and spam updates “an evolution in how [they] identify the helpfulness of content.” (See below for my […]

I thought I’d share some thoughts on why we may be seeing Reddit ranking for so many search queries. I think it's mostly related to the value that Reddit gives in training Gemini on how people talk. This tweet by Mordy Oberstein got me thinking. He searched for “What Reddit on the SERP means for […]

Marie Haynes. March 27, 2024. The helpful content system has changed. As of March 2024, it is no longer its own separate system, but now, helpfulness is determined primarily on the page level by Google's core systems. I spent some time reviewing Google's previous wording to help us understand this significance of what has changed. […]

Two articles were published this week that spoke of the frustration most of us who have worked in SEO have felt over the dominance of large brands for many search results. I’d like to share why I think Google has this problem, and why I think we will soon be seeing a change where more […]

Google announced a number of significant changes to Assistant. The majority of coverage so far has been surrounding the many things that will be discontinued like sending an email with your voice for example. With no fanfare, the blog post quietly stated that “the microphone icon will now trigger Search Results” from within the Google […]