Looking for the premium members version? Log in here or become a member. 

1) New changes in Chrome could radically change how people search

Users will soon be able to track prices in Chrome and get an email if a price drops on any site that tracks that.

2) Google says again that backlinks are less important now

"Backlinks as a signal has a lot less significant impact compared to when G Search first started out many years ago. We have robust ranking signals, 100s of them, to make sure that we are able to rank the most relevant and useful results for all queries." https://t.co/deT5E65bxL

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐼 (@Marie_Haynes) November 30, 2022

3) There was a weird knowledge graph glitch that confused Jim Carrey and Paul Giamatti

This was so bizarre! In this episode we discuss why this happened, but I’m not convinced we know.

All of these are discussed in detail below including, information on improving E-A-T from Olaf Koff that is the best article I’ve seen on E-A-T to date, an excellent recap on the latest algo turbulence by Lily Ray, information on understanding entity SEO as well. I share a bit of a conversation I had with the OpenAI about how Google’s algorithms work.

Become a paid member for $18 per month

Interesting chat with a blackhat SEO

I interviewed Charles Floate, an SEO known for ranking websites in ways that go against Google’s spam guidelines. We discussed PageRank and the importance of links in Google’s algorithms. Charles revealed ways he’s been able to manipulate Google’s guidelines and succeed, though I don’t condone such practices.

Our chat helped me reform my thoughts on links and their power to move the needle for rankings. Links are most definitely important in Google’s algorithms and will likely remain the core for quite some time. But as Google develops new ways to identify quality content, most of which comes with AI innovations, I believe PageRank is not as important to SEO as it used to be. In this video Charles shows me how he is able to get sites to rank. Some of what he is doing is actually improving E-A-T! I must reiterate that breaking Google’s policies can lead to serious consequences While good links can be powerful, building your own links is often either ignored by Google, or can cause manual or algorithmic penalties which can be very difficult to identify and recover from. My hope with this video is not to encourage blackhat SEO tactics, but rather, to talk about the power of GOOD links and how that power is much more than PageRank.

I am live today on the SEO video show!

Guide to understanding the October Spam update

I promised you guys I’d have this for this week and I was so close…it is not done. When it is done I will give it out for free to all of my paid newsletter subscribers. Thank you for your patience!

Working on my book and course

I’m winding up a bunch of client work and calls this week so that for the next few months my only tasks are Newsletter, Podcast and writing. My book is coming along well. I am sharing about how Google quietly evolved from a rules based algorithm to a machine learned one. Yet, so many SEOs are optimizing solely for what they know of the rules based algo. The course is really going to be helpful! There will be a beginners and advanced version as well as an agency version.

You can sign up here and I’ll shoot you an email when it is ready.

New local review bars

Google local reviews with bar to visualize the positive vs unfavorable reviews at that venue https://t.co/WzSNR9BgEJ via @cbrodzky pic.twitter.com/8nJYCArIQM

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) November 28, 2022

New course for Local SEO

🎺TOOT TOOT
🎺 My new course went live today! It's about content for Local SEO, and it's free 🆓 and you should sign up and watch it! (Please and thank you very much) https://t.co/0NpWosBo7U

— Claire Carlile🕊️ 🌊 🥑 🦥 (@clairecarlile) November 29, 2022

Does review recency impact rankings?

Does Review Recency Matter for Google Rankings? https://t.co/0ffTW8jml7

— Sitebulb (@sitebulb) November 26, 2022

This small study looked at 4 sites and concluded that yes, review recency matters.

Google is reinstating listings – but it’s still taking time

Had a listing this week that was reinstated in 7 days. Hope that's a sign of better things on Google's side. 😁 https://t.co/6jLtPlsw7e

— Amy Toman 🍁 AmyToman@seocommunity.social (@BubblesUp) November 25, 2022