20 Oct 2024
Google Discover tests new design and usual Google Search Feature tests page for October is live now.
29 Sep 2024
3 AM I’m bored and can’t go to sleep – even its been a slow day because most of restaurants/clubs in my suburb were full because of Australian Football League (AFL) finals today. So I didn’t go outside either otherwise would done a nice Saturday dinner somewhere. I don’t like/watch AFL but I heard that Brisbane won.
Anyway recently SEO stuff has been a wild ride, things are moving at faster pace than I expected. Of course doing some work with new leads that I got recently (thanks LinkedIn). Also I started posting videos over there as well – three so far. I plan to post more there soon, I guess its a good channel to build some presence and attract better clients from Melbourne/Sydney. So far I have done three videos there – first one talks about SEO Audits & how it may come to a conclusion that SEO is not the right solution for a business. Here is the transcript of that video if you want to read.
In the second one I talked about Google’s friend Reddit and shared some details about why I have to make a difficult call to let a client go because Reddit has taken over all of their targeted keywords recently. Transcript of this here, also I still love Reddit because it sooo real.
And in the third one (I plan to post more over coming weeks) I talked about transparency with clients and how it is important to go back to clients & telling them that we need to make some changes in SEO Strategy that we agreed upon because things have changed. Of course Google has been making a lot of changes in the search recently so strategy need to be changing accordingly. Transcript of this one here.
20 Sep 2024
Google Discover an upcoming feature which is probable as of now will allow the users to filter the feed according to their search history. Similar to this is a Google App test – sending article links as notifications to the users.
I think that this would be good if rolled out fully by Google because this may lead to more traffic for publishers, getting the notification clicking on it then landing on search results & some users might decide to click through to the article.
I think that this is similar to Google Discover – a lot of users see the cards while scrolling through while only few actually go ahead and click through. A lot of people getting the notification while only few actually ending up on the article and reading it.
Also published an article about more social media content in Google’s Search Results.
13 Sep 2024
Added some new search feature tests in September Google Search Feature Tests page – a lot of screenshots showing current vs test so that its easier to get more context about what the exact test is?
And published a new blog post about Google Discover covering why SEOs should be using it on Android devices if they are working with publishers clients or are consulting them to optimise their content for Google Discover & gain more visibilty.
Also I was recently told by my mentor that I should have some way to structure all the useful information that I post on X platform. Following on her advice I have created a useful X posts page for September which covers tweets (X posts) of mine plus I added some more context around content of those posts & links to some useful internal or external pages if I think that it would useful for reader to know more about something specific.
4 Sep 2024
August Core Update roll out is done as of 5:08 AM Melbourne | Australia time.
Created a new page for september Google search feature tests – its empty for now and I will be updating it over the month. Usually I post on X in real time like if I notice some test today I will just post it on X and on weekend or whenever I get some time (its been busy recently!) I update the page. So if you want to know about new search features on the same day I noticed them, I would recommend checking out my X account daily or you can check this internal search page on X which just shows my tweets only about new search features with most recent on the top.
Meanwhile you can check August, June or July search feature tests.
Or just pray for recovery of publishers who lost visibility in Google Discover due to the August Core Update.
Just published an article about Helpful Content – NO ONE knows what Helpful Content Update is & How to recover?
Haven’t updated my AI Overviews Tracker and its been real long – seems like not days but weeks are passing by as if its just a flip of finger. I will soon update the tracker.
29 Aug 2024
Interesting article about SEOntology by Andrea Volpini, CEO of WordLift.
Tweet – Surprising to see that core update is rolling out and crawling is still so frequent – usually with previous core updates I have noticed Google slowing down crawling for sites that I’m managing but with August Core Update it’s normal and for some sites number of daily crawl requests is even 20 to 30 percent higher than compared to same day last month 🤔
Tweet – Have to serve 410 to Googlebot because it was just not stopping to fetch the URLs.
25 Aug 2024
Tweet – User Experience of watching – Search Results > Short Videos carousel > YouTube Short is just better than clicking on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook video from there – loads the app and just not many options to navigate around the video. Probably because these platforms are created to provide better scroll through experience and not just watch a single individual video. But good that YouTube almost giving all controlling options for Shorts as they give for their longer videos & also providing those in Search Results as well.
You can check the screen recording in the tweet.
An interesting tweet 😃
“See also” is being tested in desktop search results and its being shown in Knowledge Panels. I have updated my usual monthly article about feature tests to include this.
Tweet – Google Business Profile (GBP) suspensions are taking longer than usual.
Tweet – While doing analysis SEOs should keep an eye on Images carousel in Search Results because it may impact the real position of ranking URLs and therefore actual position not being what it is which of course impacts the CTR to the URL – decreasing the organic traffic to the page.
Posted this on LinkedIn – Google is testing some default favicons.
Also updated August Search Feature Tests page to include some other default favicons which I noticed. To view all these new favicons, you can just check this image.
24 Aug 2024
Tweets about August Core Update
Many sites are loosing visibility in Google Discover.
You can click on images to expand.
Some sites are recovering but not to the levels at which they were before the Helpful Content Update in September last year.
Google is now testing default fallback favicon in Search Results – you can check some variations of favicons which are being tested in my usual monthly search feature tests blog post.
I’m super duper curios to know what Google did to Helpful Content signal in their ranking systems because with August Core Update rollout. I’m noticing a lot of sites recovering which previously were impacted by Helpful Content Update in September 2023.
But seems like NO ONE has a theory as of now but just need to wait and see!!!
I was told by some site owners from India that after the rollout of August Core Update started on 15th. They are noticing their information content decline in ranking and its being replaced by ecommerce sites like Amazing India, Flipkart and India Mart.
Posted on LinkedIn about August Core Update – mentioning – Its just because Google is controlling the impact of Helpful Content signal in its ranking systems and so far I think that they have down weighted it significantly.
Also here is my article about August Core Update.
Super interesting and cool weekend patent reading – this is really old patent but still interesting to read and know!
Interesting Google Patent from 2011 – Systems and methods for detecting click spam
Some weekend readings related to Search Engine Optimisation (old articles but still are GOLD)
How Google Might Fight Web Spam Based upon Classifications and Click Data via Bill Slawski this was written in 2010.
How Search Engines May Crowd Source Web Spam Identification via Bill Slawski from 2010
How Google might use the context of Links to identify link spam via Bill Slawski from 2013
Do Search Click-Throughs Help Determine Where a Page Ranks? via Bill Slawski from 2015
Google Patent Granted on Web Link Spam via Bill Slawski from 2009
Writing is super hard 😔 I want to write but whenever I sit to write – I don’t feel like writing. But during night I’m able to write more compared to day time – seems like words flowing to me instead of dreams at night.
20 Aug 2024
Updated the article about August Core Update – included more chatter from X and what I’m noticing. Also added recent updates from SEO Professional Glenn Gabe and coverage of this update by SEO Trade Publication – Search Engine Roundtable.
Favicon for Harvard Online Business Online is missing from Google Search 💀
Don’t rely on Google as the only or main source of revenue for your business! via X
19 Aug 2024
Google Discover – now noticing many sites being turned off on 31 July and 4 Aug. Went from really high visibility to zero over night.
Yaay!! A site improving after the rollout of August Core Update started.
Now noticing that many small & independent publishers are being turned from Google Discover and they are no longer showing in the feeds of users – loosing insane amount of traffic.
AI is controlling everyone – remember if your prompting a LLM like ChatGPT then your being controlled by it.
Cooked a dish and recipe was generated using Gemini 1.5 Pro
Google Discover is super cool because publish the content on site and within minutes it start to show up in feeds of people 😸 here and example – article was published 11 minutes ago and it already showed up in my feed. Major benefit of Google Discover over Google Search where usually it takes some time to rank & therefore get traffic.
(Melbourne) Recent clicks taken while being in metro 🚇 as it moves from Flinder Street Station towards Southern Cross Station.
Noticed this tweet from DejanSEO about Gemini 1.5 Pro (Experimental 0801)
I have been using this model for quite sometime for different applications and to make my SEO Workflows faster.
Here are those applications/tips if you want to also try out and improve your workflows 😁
Prompt tip to get better answers
Using it for processing different modalities of information like audio, video and text to extract relevant info or insights. Also it’s almost like picking up some info from audi file then asking it to check if that’s mentioned in video & in what context.
This can unlock a lot of new insights from which information which otherwise are spread across different files 🙂
Noticing empty physical stores in Melbourne while online retail seems to be doing alright.
Google is testing dynamically loading Reddit content below usual URLs.
Noticed that Google is now testing AI Overviews generated descriptions of site in “About the source” which shows up when three dots next to a URL in Google Search results are clicked.
Posted on LinkedIn about recent Google Search issues ……
Bored and waiting for my electric bicycle to be repaired and serviced – it’s been a while since the last service and now both motor & battery having issues turning on.
18 Aug 2024
Updated my article about August Core Update which is rolling out now – added some more screenshots of sites which are recovering & some which not. Also add some screenshots which were shared by other members of SEO Industry and included recent update from Glenn Gabe who on daily basis is reporting on X about core update movements for 380+ sites that he is tracking.
LinkedIn Post about Google testing hover over bluish background for meta info in Search Results and I’ve already covered this in my monthly search features test page for August which shows all the search features testing I notice.
Posted a thread about August Core Update on X – Sharing some screenshots of ranking movements after start of rollout of core update.
Yaay!!! 7 years of shit posting on Twitter (X) 🤣🤣
Evening clicks at Swinburne University of Technology
5 PM coffee with some cookies 🍪 the best thing ever 😊
Discussion about August Core Update on X (Twitter) I was expecting that sites which lost their visibility in Google Discover back in August 2022 to recover and start to show up in Discover again but so far not noticing any recovering 🤷🤷🥴
Some of publishers which get almost 1 to 1.5 million visits to their pages from Google News are not showing up at all in Discover since August 2022. In terms of quality these are top and THE BEST in Australia and Google News visibility speaks for it but still nothing in Discover.
Waiting for August Core Update to rollout and see what will happen 🙂
Midjourney has gotten so good that even simpler prompts nowadays generate really high quality images. Earlier it used to be like write a whole paragraph as prompt then only it was able to generate something looking good but now it’s just a simple prompt. It generate cool image.
I wonder where it will be in a year or two!!
A meme about Paywalled content lol 😂
Some Google discover users on Android are noticing a new way to give feedback, which earlier I noticed for image search I tweeted about this. Here is a tweet you can see the recording of how it looks?
17 Aug 20024
My LinkedIn post about August Core Update
Also I wrote a blog post about August Core Update.
My LinkedIn post about Google testing new UI of Business Profiles
LinkedIn Collaborative articles now show “This summary is powered by AI ….” they are literally using AI to create the content of article then getting people to add comments on sections of those. Then using AI to summarise those comments.
