Google's AI systems have changed search

Hi. I’m Marie Haynes.

Read my newsletter, Search News You Can Use.

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My hope is to help you understand how Google Search is changing. AI changes everything.

In 2012 an obsession over understanding Google’s Penguin Algorithm, lead me to pursue SEO as a full time career. Since then I’ve had such a cool career. I’ve travelled around the world to speak at conferences and help site owners improve in ways that Google’s algorithms will reward. I ran a wonderful agency. I’m back to doing solo work now. Through my podcast and newsletter I have been able to help thousands improve their site quality and win more search presence.

I’ll be resuming podcast soon, now that my helpful content guide is finally complete. Stay tuned for info about upcoming talks as I’ll be teaching on AI and how it is changing not only search, but our lives as well!

Work with Marie

New: Creating Helpful Content Workbook

Buy Marie’s Creating Helpful Content Workbook

Learn how to create content Google’s AI systems are likely to consider helpful.

For over a decade, I’ve studied websites with falling traffic, particularly since Google’s 2022 introduction of its helpful content system. Many businesses may have seen unexplained drops in traffic due to this system.

Google’s AI driven helpful content system rewards websites that consistently provide users with a satisfying experience and demote content that is less likely to do so. This site-wide demotion affects not only your low or medium quality content, but also makes it harder for your good content to rank.

If your traffic is dropping, you may have an unhelpful content classification. You can sometimes reverse this by aligning with Google’s criteria for helpfulness, detailed here, and also the Quality Rater Guidelines. Unfortunately, not all sites can bounce back, and those that can may need extensive work. It is possible though as you will see in this guide.

For more on the helpful content system:

Google’s Helpful Content & Other AI Systems May Be Impacting Your Site’s Visibility

Learn more about the helpful content workbook

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Who is Marie Haynes?

Dr. Marie Haynes is recognized as a leader in the SEO industry and has 15 years of experience helping businesses of all sizes improve their site quality. She has helped train many of today’s brightest minds in the SEO industry. Marie is known for understanding Google’s rapidly changing search algorithms. She was among the first to teach on E-A-T (now E-E-A-T), using the Quality Raters’ Guidelines to improve site quality, and understanding AI driven systems like the Helpful Content System and SpamBrain. Marie has been featured on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Round Table and mentioned in many publications including The Atlantic, Forbes, Entrepreneur and Inc.

Today, she spends her time obsessively learning and sharing all she can on how AI is rapidly changing the digital marketing landscape:

How LLMs (Large Language Models) work. Recommended reading: What is ChatGPT doing?
How we can use tools like ChatGPT and Bard.
Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience). Marie is a beta tester alongside many other SEO’s. She shares on Twitter and of course, in newsletter.
ChatGPT and Microsoft Plugins. Businesses are starting to create plugins that connect with all of Microsoft’s Copilot offerings including Windows.
How businesses are using AI to their advantage. AI is changing Google ads dramatically. It sounds like Google will give us the ability to train models on our data and then allow users to interact with it. Exciting things are happening!

Featured Resources

Google Algorithm Changes

My timeline of Google algorithm updates details a complete history of every Google algorithm change that was either confirmed by Google or suspected by those of us who do a lot of work helping sites that have seen traffic drops. I’ve been maintaining this list since the early days of Panda and Penguin updates!

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E-A-T and SEO

Here’s my guide to understanding E-E-A-T, including what E-A-T is, what Google’s Quality Rater’s guidelines say about it, and my webinar series on the three components of E-A-T: Expertise, Authority and Trust.

Learn More

Search News You Can Use Podcast

Podcast is on a break! I know this is a time when we really need to learn about what is happening with search and AI. I desperately want to restart podcast, but need to get a few things in line first. It will be back soon!

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