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🔥 ​Most Popular SEOFOMO News Stories & Contributors Of The Week

Check out the top trending stories this week on SEOFOMO News -these are the most upvoted entries, whether SEO news, guides, or resources-, that people upvoted the most:
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​No 1. Is SEO Always Changing? Not Really But Details Do. [5 votes]​
​Barry Schwartz / General SEO / Submitted by Chris Green​
​“I always find it funny how I have so much to write about, day in and day out, on the topic of SEO and search marketing. I mean, fundamentally SEO hasn’t really changed much over the years, but maybe the details have…”

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​No 2. TikTok is about to be banned in the US [4 Votes]​
​Eli Schwartz / Search Trends / Submitted by Eli Schwartz ​
​Barring a Supreme Court surprise or President-Elect Trump offering a lifeline to ByteDance, on Jan 19th, Apple and Google will need to remove TikTok from their app stores.

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​No 3. The Evolution of Brand SERPs: Audit and Monitor your Brand SEO [4 Votes]
​Gerry White / General SEO / Submitted by Gerry White​
​Gerry goes through the critical areas of branded SERPs, including key actions to optimize them with examples in this guide.

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​Top SEOFOMO News Contributors of the week​

Thanks to the SEOFOMOers who have engaged the most this week in the SEOFOMO News, with the highest number of upvotes:

• ​Preeti Gupta (28 Upvotes)
• ​Shaikat Ray (10 Upvotes)
• ​Gianluca Fiorelli (6 Upvotes)

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The most upvoted stories as well as top rated SEOFOMOers can expect 🔥 SEO rewards at the end of this year, start submitting and engaging now!

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🗞️ Search Updates and News from Search Engines

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​Google's Big December 2024 Spam Update Finished Rolling Out​
​Barry Schwartz / Google Search Updates​
​Google has completed the rollout of the December 2024 spam update. This update started on December 19 and was completed on December 26.

• Related: Google’s December 2024 Updates: Final Results​

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​Google Search Rolls Out AI-Organized Restaurant Results​
​Barry Schwartz / Google Product Updates​
​Google has officially rolled out AI-organized results for restaurant-related queries. If you’re looking for something like “restaurants with a view Chicago,” you’ll get a results page organized with AI".

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​Google tightens ad policies to align with Search spam rules​
​Anu Adegbola / Google Product Updates​
​Google will expand its “Abusing the Ad Network” policy to explicitly disapprove ads pointing to destinations penalized for violating Google Search spam policies.

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​Crawling December: CDNs and crawling - A new Doc about CDNs Best Practices​
​Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes / Google Search Guidelines​
​Learn how to use CDNs to improve crawling and users' experience on your site, and get updates on Google's best practices.

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​ChatGPT Search Manipulated With Hidden Instructions​
​Roger Montti / ChatGPT Search Trends​
​Research shows that ChatGPT Search can be manipulated by instructions hidden on web pages.

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​​Monitor the latest SEO News, Updates, and Conversations in Real Time in SEOFOMO News

👌 This week's SEO Awesomeness

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​Google Search Changes Are Killing Websites in an Age of AI Spam​
​Imad Khan / Search Trends​
​Google's major search algorithm updates this past year have left many smaller websites with no other choice than to lay off staff. The internet is worse for it.

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​AI for SEO, Organic Discoverability, & Evolution: An Aggregation of Tips​
​Marty Weintraub / Search Trends​
​As 2025 approaches, the worldwide brain trust is using AI to flip the SEO/organic-discoverability script. Marty aggregates real suggestions that cut through the noise in this guide.

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​SEO depreciation - what would happen if you did nothing?​
​Will Critchlow / General SEO​
​What would you expect if you invested nothing in SEO? Probably a decline, at least relative to your competition. Will goes through it.

• Related: 2024 is about to finish, and once again, SEO hasn't died. This is the evolution of Organic Search as a Marketing Channel by Aleyda Solis​

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​Do You Need to Know Technical SEO to Be an SEO?​
​Daniel Cheung / General SEO ​
​To be an effective, employable search marketer, Daniel says that the answer is yes. He explains why here.

• Related: Learn Technical SEO for Free with Aleyda Solis' Wix Studio SEO Course​

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​How to Use Chrome to View a Website as Googlebot​
​Alex Harford / Technical SEO​
​Alex shows how to set up a Googlebot browser, troubleshoot rendering issues, and improve your SEO audits in this guide.

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​SEO noise vs. SEO signals: Distilling what truly impacts rankings
​Kaspar Szymanski / Search Trends​
​Google updates and industry buzz can cloud SEO strategy. Kaspar explains how to separate the distractions from the essentials.

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​ChatGPT Search vs. Google: A deep dive analysis of 62 queries​
​Eric Enge / Search Trends​
​A detailed analysis of ChatGPT search and Google's performance across 62 queries, with scoring metrics and practical examples. “After a detailed review, I still see Google as the better solution for most searches”.

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​Google’s Crawling December Series Summarized with NotebookLM​
​Preeti Gupta / Technical SEO​
​Preeti shares a podcast summary of Google's series called Crawling December generated using NotebookLM along with the key takeaways.

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​“Steal 21+ Of Our Best SEO & Content Marketing Templates”​
​Louise Linehan / Content Optimization​
​Louise shares her useful content marketing templates—from blog post creation to SEO reporting, and everything in between.

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​Advanced Xpath Functions for the Screaming Frog SEO Spider​
​David Gossage / Technical SEO​
​One of the most powerful features of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the ability to scrape whatever information you want from a website in bulk using custom extractions. David explains how to use advanced Xpath functions.

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​​Monitor the latest SEO News, Updates, and Conversations in Real Time in SEOFOMO News

💸 Latest SEO Jobs

• ​SEO Content Executive at Save My Exams​
• ​Jr. On-Page SEO Specialist at Noah Kain Consulting​
• ​Director of SEO at iPullRank​
• ​SEO Content Writer (Contractor) at OnrampLab​
• ​Strategist, SEO at GR0​
• ​Technical SEO Lead at Terakeet​
• ​Global SEO Lead, SMB Growth - New York at TikTok​
• ​Head of SEO at Publicis​
• ​Deputy Head of SEO at Metro​

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​See more SEO Jobs in the SEOFOMO Job board and subscribe to the email alerts​

🛠 Free SEO Tool: Branded vs Non-Branded Search Performance Dashboard

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Get SEOFOMO's free Looker Studio dashboard to help you monitor your branded vs non-branded organic search performance evolution (via Google Search Console), including Branded vs non-branded clicks evolution and split per device, Top Branded Queries & Pages and their performance metrics, Top Non-Branded Queries & Pages and their performance metrics and more.

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Are you looking for more SEO Tools? Take a look at the SEOFOMO SEO Toolbox​

🎙️ Upcoming SEO Events

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​​Search 'n Stuff x Podcast Growth: Insights, Strategies, and Real Stories​
​​Search 'n Stuff / London, UK / £25 / January 15, 2025​
​​​Join Search 'n Stuff x Podcast Growth Edition, learn from podcast professionals, Emina Demiri-Watson, Jo Cameron, and more for insights, strategies, and real-life success stories about podcasting.

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​Webinar: How Performance Marketing + Brand Fuels Traffic Growth and Conversions
​Search Engine Journal / Online / Free / January 16, 2025​
​Join Mordy Oberstein and Katie Morton to learn how branding is the great equalizer and ways to make it your most effective click driver in this webinar.

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​​The SEOFOMO Meetup - London Edition with Wix Studio​​
​​SEOFOMO, Wix Studio / London, UK / Free / January 23, 2025​
​​Join Aleyda Solis, Gary Illyes, Judith Lewis, and more for SEO roundtables, quizzes, giveaways, free drinks, snacks, and networking for free in London in January.
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​WTSFest London 2025
​Women in Tech SEO / London, UK / £299 / February 19 - 20, 2025​
​Join 10 brilliant speakers, 4 interactive workshops, and a 2-day experience to learn all about website migration, faceted navigation, AI, and more.

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​See All SEO Events from January to May 2025 in the SEOFOMO Events Section​

🏆 SEOFOMOer Of The Week: Clara Soteras

This week's SEOFOMOer to follow is Clara Soteras, Freelance SEO Consultant for News Publishers, in English, Spanish and Catalan, offering both consulting and training. Clara has in-depth experience as an SEO specialist for publishers, as a former SEO and Product Director at ElNacional.cat, and current teacher at the communications faculty of the UAB.

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Clara is also an experienced speaker in SEO and News events, having spoken at the Newsroom Summit, LaikaParty and the SEOFOMO Meetup in Barcelona. She usually contributes through Webinars and articles, and wrote one of the top Moz articles in 2024: What Is Google Discover, and How Can You Boost Your Traffic?​

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Learn more about Clara via her website and LinkedIn.

🥁 Other Digital Marketing News

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​Bluesky is testing a trending topics feature​
Ivan Mehta​
​Bluesky said on Christmas that it is testing a trending topics view. The trending topics are visible both on the desktop and mobile apps of the social network for users across the world.

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​Instagram teases AI editing tools that will completely reimagine your videos​
​Jess Weatherbed​
​Instagram is planning to introduce a generative AI editing feature next year that will allow users to “change nearly any aspect of your videos”.

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​Google Merchant Center relaxes language policy for product feeds and websites​
​Swipe Insight​
​Google has updated its language policy in the Google Merchant Center, permitting some inconsistencies between the product feed language and the website language.

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​New Google Ads Brand Report​
​Barry Schwartz​
​Google Ads has launched a new brand report. The brand report "is a dedicated brand advertiser experience that provides you with deduplicated reach and frequency metrics across your campaigns," Google wrote.

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​See More PPC, Social, Influencer & Content Marketing News in MarketingFOMO​