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This is part 3 of my series working to understand more about the attributes in the recently discovered Google API files. Part 1: What is this “leaked” Google documentation? Part 2: What are attributes? Navboost is one of Google’s core ranking algorithms. It uses user click data to help refine a bunch of search results […]

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 […]

Google’s latest earnings call gave us a little bit more of a glimpse of where Google is headed. Below I’ve included several quotes from the call. Here is a summary of the most important parts:

The helpful content system produces a signal that is a "negative classification". Sites that have this classification are suppressed from ranking at their full potential. But why do some sites improve during a helpful content system? It may be simply at the expense of those who were suppressed. Or, there is another explanation. Google may […]