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Google recently held an event in which they invited a small group of website owners who had been impacted strongly by the helpful content system. I’ll recap some of the great blog posts and tweet threads written about this. Then, I’d like to think upon what we can learn from what Google representatives said. The […]

Google has updated their documentation on their spam policies. This latest update to the spam guidelines has several changes I thought were interesting enough to write about. 1. Manipulation of search = spam Google added this to the beginning of their document:   It's no surprise that content designed to deceive users is spam, but this […]

Twiddlers are C++ code objects used in Google’s ranking algorithms that help Google re-order search results. They are used in a Google system called Superroot which is Google’s ranking framework. I came across this 2017 Google document on Twiddlers upon reading Mario Fischer’s excellent breakdown of what we can learn about how ranking works based […]

The August core update is here! Google’s documentation on core updates has changed significantly. Let’s take a look at what has changed.  Here’s the archived version of the previous document. The purpose of this update is to show more content that people genuinely find useful Google’s announcement of the core update says that they are […]

I'm thrilled to announce I'm opening up spots for new client consulting. Let me share with you how I have completely reshaped my SEO strategy after spending the last two years learning as much as I can about the AI systems that determine today's search rankings. When the helpful content system launched in 2022, I […]

Why is this page ranking poorly behind one with less helpful / accurate information? We’ve been digging into the treasure trove of information given to us in the DOJ vs Google trial exhibits and testimonies to understand more about how Search works. (The afternoon of day 24 is the Pandu Nayak testimony that I can’t […]

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 […]

Google’s Danny Sullivan and John Mueller both made comments on social media that give me hope that sites impacted by the September Helpful Content update may still have a chance of seeing some form of recovery with Google’s next core update. Travel blogger Katie Caf Travel has been working hard on improving her site, and […]

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 […]