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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I’ll be spending the next few weeks looking at content that has been impacted by the March 2024 core update to try and understand more about this change in Google’s ranking systems that they call an evolution in how they assess the helpfulness of content. As part of my course and workbooks I am filming […]

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 […]

Dear Google. If you are reading this, I’d ask that you do more to help the business owners who have been impacted by the March Core Update and September helpful content updates to understand what is happening or what direction to take. I know so many good, hardworking people who are struggling immensely right now […]

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 […]