SEO From The Front Lines

This is Part 3 of "Core Update Notes" for the August broad core update . I cover an update on September Helpful Content Updates sites (HCUX), tremors I'm seeing during the update, sites violating Google's Site Reputation Abuse spam policy, how YMYL sites can surge even with a fraction of the links of competitors, how Google will eventually catch up with sites heavily publishing A...

Part 2 of "Core Update Notes" for the August Google broad core update. I cover the latest with helpful content update sites surging back from the dead, reviews sites also rising from the ashes, Google confirming that AI overview rankings can be impacted by broad core updates, how SERP features could be impacted during core updates, and the connection between the May 3rd and May 10th unco...

Episode 10 of 'SEO From The Front Lines" covers what I'm seeing so far with the August 2024 core update. Includes sites heavily impacted by the September Helpful Content Update surging back, if Google is handling site reputation abuse algorithmically, the ranking bug that happened while the core update started rolling out, impact to YMYL sites, and more. 00:00 August 19th "Core U...

With Google's hidden gems update in the fall of 2023, both Reddit and Quora surged like crazy. Although many are focused on the surge of Reddit, with good reason, it's important to understand that many forums surged in the fall of 2023. I have covered this heavily on X over time. So I just rank the visibility numbers for 97 forums I'm tracking across verticals. The percentage change ye...

While checking Bing Webmaster Tools recently, I noticed a huge change across sites starting on May 29, 2024. The more I dug in, the more volatility I saw. It sure looks like Bing pushed some type of large algorithm change that impacted many sites across the web. The surges and drops I'm seeing are across sites and verticals, so it's not just one niche. I reached out to Bing's Fabrice C...

Learn why an algorithmic approach to enforcing Google's site reputation abuse policy is the way forward. I first cover manual actions Google applied on May 7, 2024 and how sites handled the content violating the site reputation abuse spam policy. Then I explain why blocking via robots.txt isn't a valid approach to blocking that content, as well as how noindexing content can also go haywire...

Google was testing a change to how it provides links in AI Overviews in the search results. I was in the test last week and captured some video of it in action. The new treatment provides an overlay of search results on top of the AI overview. You can tap a group of favicons to see all of the pages where the AI sourced the answer from. In addition, there were small link icons that would trigger a...

With Google recently expanding support for translated results in the search results, I explain how to export those translated results by country from Google Search Console via the GSC API and Analytics Edge. I also cover how translated results work, what they look like in the search results, how to opt-out from having your content translated, and more. View the blog post now .

Confused about aggressive and disruptive ads and how that impacts a site with major algorithm updates? Well, the Ad Experience Report in Google Search Console might add to that confusion. Glenn Gabe of GSQi explains how the Ad Experience Report in Google Search Console fails to provide an accurate view of the advertising situation for site owners, and how that provides a false sense of security. G...

I cover scary and confusing surges and drops in indexing in Google Search Console (GSC) and why that might be totally fine for site owners and SEOs. If the surges are due to urls categorized as "Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt", then that can cause the spike and drop you are seeing. And since Google is on record that it can't impact the site quality-wise, it can be totally fine...

Now that AI overviews rolled out in the United States in Google Search, I dug into Google Search Console (GSC) to track those overviews (the queries and landing pages ranking there). In this episode, I walk you through several examples of sites ranking lower on page one in the 10-blue links, but also ranking in AI overviews at the top of the SERPs. Based on that, I was hoping I would clearly be ab...

Glenn presented at SMX Advanced about the latest Google algorithm updates that rolled out in 2023 and 2024, but due to a tech glitch, he had to cut the presentation short by a few slides (due to time). So, he decided to record the end of the presentation and post it here! Glenn covers an interesting March 2024 core update case study, the counterbalancing of systems, the 'site reputation abuse&...