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🗞️ Search Updates and News from Search Engines

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​Google Launches June 2024 Spam Update​
​Google Search Central / Google Search Updates
​Google began rolling out the June 2024 spam update on June 20, which should take a week to complete.

• Related: Search Liaison: "This update is not related to the algorithmic action on site reputation abuse."​

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​Frequently Asked Questions about AI Overviews
​Google Search Community / Search Trends
​Google has answered the most common questions about AI Overviews to help understand the new feature and how it can enhance search experience.

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​Google Warns On Using JavaScript For Structured Data​
​Barry Schwartz / Google Search Guidelines
​"Google Merchant Center crawlers can and do process structured data when generated with JavaScript but they have seen quality and inconsistency issues with these implementations, so they recommend you do not use it."

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​Google Search Images Go Missing? Might Be A Quality Issue​
​Barry Schwartz / Google Search Q&A
​Google responded to the issue of image thumbnails not appearing in the Google Search result listings, saying it is not a technical thing for most sites but rather a quality issue.

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​Apple Updates Applebot Docs With Applebot-Extended, Reverse DNS & More​
​Barry Schwartz / Apple Product Updates
​Apple has made some big changes to the Applebot documentation by adding more about Applebot, reverse DNS details, Applebot-Extended and more.

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​OpenAI announces the acquisition of Rockset​
​​OpenAI / OpenAI Product Updates
​OpenAI is enhancing its retrieval infrastructure to make AI more helpful: “We will integrate Rockset’s technology to power our retrieval infrastructure across products, and members of Rockset’s world-class team will join OpenAI”.

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​Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas responds to plagiarism and infringement accusations​
​Mark Sullivan / Perplexity Search Updates​
​Recent reports raise questions about how the answer engine works, including its use of third-party content crawlers.

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​​Don't wait until next week to learn about the latest search updates! Subscribe to the SEOFOMO News Whatsapp channel​

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🙋🏻‍♀️ This week's Aleyda's SEO Take

When do you need "advanced" SEO skills?

I was recently asked about “advanced” SEO. There are a few main scenarios that I see requiring more than the “basic” SEO skills due to the challenges or complexities they tend to have, for which I would recommend hiring SEO specialists with comprehensive experience in them:

1. New (or far weaker) brand / site in a very competitive search market, with the main challenge being resource prioritization for cost effective and fast enough impact. A key skill to win here is product / brand USP understanding, alignment and strategic target & prioritization on those feasible queries that actually matter to attract early customers and start growing brand authority/popularity fast.
2. Large bureaucratic or global / distributed organizations with a presence across the world, requiring strong management skills to secure resources (vs other areas) and influence to get execution support from other teams -that can be distributed across the world, with different cultures, communication and management criteria and styles- you don’t directly control fast enough to compete with other well established players. Knowing how to communicate and earn trust and support with non-technical decision makers is fundamental. You’ll need to over-communicate, project management skills, develop forecasts, run tests, pilot projects, etc.
3. Big or technically complex sites to optimize: From sites with very old or blended CMS with high technical debt and restrictions to large dynamic sites with multi millions URLs (think marketplaces, e-commerce) where you need to execute at scale. You'll need to have deep technical SEO understanding and experience dealing with the particular tech stack to effectively communicate, establish workarounds and prioritize with the development and product management teams. In many of these scenarios working with big sites, a programmatic approach becomes a need for cost effectiveness, while keeping the necessary quality and relevance requirements to achieve goals and avoid crawl budget and indexing challenges. From internal linking to indexing rules or description generation, all needs to be dealt with product and development support and at scale.
4. Rebranding of a popular brand, attracting a high share of branded traffic, having to move to a new, non-established domain / brand, for which besides following Web migration SEO best practices to refer the existing traffic by redirecting with effective URL mapping, consolidation and redirect rules towards the new site/design while keeping relevance for non-branded terms, you'll need to work to develop a strategy to enable a presence that can (temporarily) keep the former branded rankings until the new brand is "picked up" by users and Google, as well as to develop brand/entity awareness optimization/promotion as part of the new site SEO process to grow it fast for the new domain.
5. A site with a business model that is not aligned or is directly against organic search findability requirements, having to establish product presence extension, alternatives or workarounds to allow it to be found whenever and however is needed. A deep understanding and influence on the product are critical to establishing and developing the extended web presence required to rank.
6. Dealing with a Web product / site that a Google feature (or need/filter) is commoditizing, giving by default less visibility/traffic. You’ll need to compete directly with them, and identify strategic opportunities / alternatives for areas / topics not yet affected and new areas to grow.

I shared about some of these and asked about what other scenarios you would include in LinkedIn, with a few interesting comments.

The impact of AI Overviews on traffic so far

In last week's SEOFOMO poll, I asked "How have AI Overviews impacted your site's organic search traffic so far?" and aligned with the recent studies and my own tracking data showing an important AIO SERP inclusion decrease, most haven't seen any impact with:

• 42.9% answering "overall no impact",
• 38.9% saying that they're "not monitoring yet"
• 17.5% answered they had seen a negative impact.

Unfortunately, it's currently challenging to track AIO inclusions using Google's Search Console as Brodie Clark showed in his latest experiment. Let's hope Google releases a new filter in the Search Console for them soon.

In the meantime, you can monitor AI Overviews using tools like ZipTie (which I'm using for it), as well as the free Google AI Overview Impact Analysis Chrome extension that allows you to check them in bulk... and then wait until they start to be consistently shown again to assess for traffic impact.

👌 This week's SEO Awesomeness

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​Reddit Traffic Up 39%: Is Google Prioritizing Opinions Over Expertise?​
​Matt G. Southern / Search Trends
​As Reddit ranks higher in Google searches, its traffic has reportedly grown 39% year-over-year.

• Related: The real winners from the latest Google Shifts in product / retail related SERPs are Discussions & Forums and Product Carousels​

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​How Recent Google Updates Punish Good SEO: 50-Site Case Study​
​Cyrus Shepard / Search Trends
​Are recent Google updates now targeting SEO practices to demote informational sites that are “too optimized?” Cyrus researched 50 sites that won and lost recent Google updates to find out.

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​260K Search Results Analyzed: Here’s How Google Evaluates Your Content [Data Study]​
​Eric Van Buskirk / Search Trends
​Dive into a SERPs analysis to understand how Google evaluates content with the recent Helpful Content Update.

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​20 SEOs Share Their Key Takeaways From the Google API Leaks
​Chima Mmeje / Search Trends
​Chima invited 20 SEOs to share insights from the recent Google API documentation leak with actionable advice to help you become a better SEO strategist.

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​An E-E-A-T Checklist for Auditing How Your Site Demonstrates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness
​James Brockbank / Content Optimization
​Get this free E-E-A-T checklist to help audit your site's experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

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​This new scam will destroy your local rankings. Here’s what to do about it [Video]
​Darren Shaw / Local SEO
​If someone moves your map pin, you’ll lose all your rankings in your actual location. If you try to move it back, Google may suspend your Google Business Profile. Darren goes through how to solve this problem.

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​The End of the Era of SEO Links. What Lies Ahead​
​Alexandra Tachalova / Link Building
​Explore the future of link building in SEO. Alexandra shares the different perspectives on link building in this guide.
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​AI Overviews Research: Comparing pre and post-rollout results on 100K keywords
​Yevheniia Khromova / Search Trends
​SE Ranking shares its findings in a new study of 100K keywords and compares the results with previous research “84.72% of AIOs link to at least one domain from the top 10 organic search results”.

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​Build a Custom Named Entity Visualizer with Google NLP
​Greg Bernhardt / Technical SEO
​Greg developed a Python script to help you build the starting framework for processing your text content through Google Natural Language API and then transform it into a visual that labels and color codes entity types.

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​MozCon 2023 Video Recordings [Videos]
​Moz / General SEO
​You can now watch the video recording of the presentations from MozCon 2023 for free.

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​​See more SEO Conversations in the SEOFOMO Forum or get the latest SEO news alerts in the SEOFOMO News Whatsapp Channel​

💸 Latest SEO Jobs

• ​Associate Newsroom SEO Editor at The Athletic​
• ​Technical SEO Specialist at Wise​
• ​SEO – Regional Content Manager ( Asia) at Wise​
• ​Senior SEO Analyst at Journey Further​
• ​SEO Specialist at Hillarys​
• ​Senior SEO manager at Brainz Digital​
• ​SEO & Social Media Manager at Brainz Digital​
• ​Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Specialist at ILGM​
• ​SEO & Social Manager at Bloomfield Growth Agency​
• ​Content Marketing Manager at Red Stag Fulfillment​
• ​SEO Account Manager at Clearscope​
• ​Digital PR Manager at On The Map, Inc.​
• ​Head of SEO & Content at Blockovate​

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​See more SEO Jobs in the new SEOFOMO Job board and subscribe to the alerts to be updated about the latest ones​

🛠 Free(mium) SEO Tools

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​SEOFOMO Updates & News Whatsapp Channel
​SEOFOMO
​Don't wait until the next week to receive the latest SEO news! Follow the new SEOFOMO News Whatsapp channel to keep updated about the latest in SEO daily.

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​SEOFOMO Jobs Whatsapp Channel
​SEOFOMO
​Don't miss out and receive the latest SEO and PPC jobs as soon as they're published in the SEOFOMO job board by following the SEOFOMO Jobs Whatsapp channel.

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​Free Domain Ideas
​Hodgetastic
​The simple way to find the perfect .com domain name for your project, starting with just a single word.

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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 Central Live Bangkok 2024
​​Google Search Central / Bangkok, Thailand / August 9, 2024
​Google Search Central Live is going to Bangkok on August 9. Registrations will be open until July 22, and confirmations will be sent on July 29.

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​GA4 for SEO - How data helps businesses grow
​Jeff Sauer / Online / On Demand
​Gain a thorough understanding of what GA4 has to offer so you can deliver better experiences and drive results with this course by Jeff Sauer.

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​The SEOFOMO Meetup - Amsterdam Edition with Digital Olympus
​SEOFOMO, Digital Olympus / Amsterdam, The Netherlands / September 13, 2024
​Join The Free SEOFOMO Meetup - Amsterdam Edition with Digital Olympus, on September 13 at 5:30pm and get to learn & connect with other SEOs.

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​Ahrefs Evolve 2024
​ahrefs / Singapore / October 24-25, 2024
​2 days in sunny Singapore, 500 digital marketing enthusiasts, 18 top speakers from around the world. Join and let the magic happen.

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​See more upcoming SEO events in the new SEOFOMO Events Section​

🙌 SEOs and Digital Marketers to Follow

This week's SEOs and digital marketing specialists to follow are early adopters publishing jobs in the SEOFOMO Job Board:

• Fabrizio Ballarini (X, LinkedIn), Organic Growth at Wise
• Bastian Grimm (X, LinkedIn), CEO at Peak Ace AG
• Liraz Postan (X, LinkedIn), CEO at BrainZ Digital
• Gareth Hoyle (X, LinkedIn), Managing Director at Marketing Signals
• Shelby Blackley (X, LinkedIn), Manager, Newsroom SEO at The Athletic

Expect more awesome SEOs & digital marketers to follow every week. Do you have any suggestions? Just let me know over here!​