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🗞️ Search Updates and News from Search Engines

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​Still No Google Helpful Content Update Recoveries But Yes from Previous Core Update Recoveries
​Barry Schwartz / Google Search Updates
​Barry shares that while we have still not seen any sites recovering from the September 2023 helpful content update, there have been recoveries from previous core updates.

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​Google considers charging for AI-powered search in big change to business model
​Madhumita Murgia, Richard Waters / Google Product Updates
​Google is considering charging for new “premium” features powered by generative artificial intelligence, in what would be the biggest-ever shake-up of its search business. “It is unclear how exactly the company would seek to integrate AI-powered search into these paid-for services”.

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​How Google Search indexes pages [Video]
​Google Search Central / How Search Works
​Gary covers how processing and analyzing a page’s textual content, key content tags, attributes, images, and video allows Google to determine signals that help decide whether or not a page should be indexed.

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​Google’s Crawling Priorities: Insights From Analyst Gary Illyes
​Matt G. Southern / Google Search Guidelines
​Google is working on crawling fewer pages and reducing data consumption. Improving content quality is vital to ensuring efficient crawling and indexing.

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​Microsoft's Fabrice Canel: SEOs Don't Realize Bing Search Usage
​Barry Schwartz / Bing Product Q&As
​Fabrice shares how Bing usage extends beyond what many SEOs may realize, and why we should consider them when investing our search efforts.

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​Google ‘considering Hubspot acquisition’
​Nicola Agius / Google Product Updates
​Google is reportedly in discussions with Morgan Stanley regarding a potential offer, but none has yet been made.

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🙋🏻‍♀️ This week's Aleyda's SEO Take

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Reddit, Quora, and generic, big UGC platforms are not the answer to the accurate first-hand insights that Google needs in SERPs...

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Earlier this week, Barry Schwartz reported how Reddit moderators of the SEO channel kept Removing Google Search Liaison's Responses.

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Ironically, Reddit is the big winner from Google's latest updates looking to reward helpful content, with Google Search Liaison's Danny Sullivan mentioning how "actual searchers seem to like it. They proactively seek it out" and that "It makes sense for us to be showing it to keep the search results relevant and satisfying".

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Coincidentally, Lily Ray also shared a few days ago an insightful article titled "Google Search is Dying" by Dmitri Brereton from a couple of years ago. The TL;DR is:

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Ok, so Google needs to better integrate (by partnering / buying / etc.) with those platforms providing authentic and accurate information. They’re already trying to do this with Reddit showcasing them more in SERPs as well as partnering with them.

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But is this making their results better? No. Reddit is a bad place to refer to for useful information to trust. Because although relatively authentic, those insights can be a hit or miss and can end up being not accurate at all or spammy. I'm not keen to get bronchitis treatment advice from a random “u/whateverfakename” from “r/vagabond”.

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So, sorry, Google but featuring Reddit threads is not helpful at all; even if users proactively seek them out. They likely do it because is the easiest way to access "authentic human advice" (even if it's not accurate for a variety of scenarios).

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Google should look for both authentic and accurate real human insights elsewhere, like in specialized, well-moderated, niche forums/communities. Of course, this is easier said than done, among others, due to internet's dark forests.

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Showcasing Reddit more though, is the lazy answer that doesn’t actually provide the best, reliable experience that users need.

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How did Google end up here though? ​
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If we analyze the situation further, the low-quality UGC showcased in Google SERPs at the moment is -among others- the consequence of Google giving up on their efforts on the social network front (remember Google+ and Orkut before that and how they let them die?) and is boomeranging.

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Owning a strong social network would have allowed Google to:

1. Incorporate social signals
2. Have reliable access to UGC that people are really sharing and looking for at the moment in other platforms (eg. TikTok), while allowing them to filter it better for actual quality results.

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Now they need to rely on third parties, showcasing way too many low-quality Reddit and Quora threads for those types of results to only partially fulfill -and doing it badly across many scenarios- what owning their own social network would have allowed them.

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The lack of vision from a few years back is now sadly backfiring at the worst time (with the AI front also open).

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I really hope Google sees this and reacts accordingly soon.

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👌 This week's SEO Awesomeness

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​How “Deep Content” Will Protect Your SEO in the AI Era
​Joshua Hardwick / Content Optimization
​Joshua shares how AI has changed SEO forever (and will continue to do so), but it’s not going to kill it. He explains we just need to adapt. How? By prioritizing “deep content” about topics that can’t be answered quickly or easily.

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​13 questions to diagnose and resolve declining organic traffic​
​Tory Gray / SEO Monitoring
​Is your site's organic traffic taking a nosedive? Use these questions to investigate and fix the issues impacting your SEO performance.

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​Why Ranch-Style SEO Is Your Future-Proof Content Strategy
​Bernard Huang / Content Optimization
​Learn what ranch-style SEO is, why it works, and how to use this perspective-driven content strategy to your advantage with this guide by Bernard.

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​Google's SGE Snapshots Replicate Ecommerce Product Pages [Thread]
​Aleyda Solis / Ecommerce SEO
​Google SGE AI Overviews for specific product queries generate PDP like snapshots with a description, pro's and con's, price ranges and reviews, linking directly to PDPs of top retailers. Another reason to prioritize your PDP optimization.

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​How Often Should I Update My Website's Content?
​Ryan Jones / Content Optimization
​Discover how to keep your website's content fresh and engaging. Learn the importance of a three-month audit cycle, find tools for identifying pages needing updates, and boost your site's SEO success.

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​10 SEO A/B tests that delivered over 10% more traffic + a bonus 50% winner
​Craig Bradford / SEO Testing
​Learn about 10 SEO A/B tests that increased traffic by at least 10% and a bonus example with a 50% lift.

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​The Importance of Localization for International SEO [Presentation]
​Sara Fernández Carmona / International SEO
​Sara shares insights on creating a robust SEO localization plan and explores strategies for adapting to local markets.

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​6 reasons why SEO audits seem like a waste and how to fix them
​Philipp Götza / General SEO
​SEO audits are only a waste of time if you do them the wrong way. Get more SEO recommendations implemented by solving these six problems.

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​Get your business name displayed in different languages on Google Maps
​Darren Shaw / Local SEO
​Darren shares an improved 5-step process to get your business name displayed in different languages on Google Maps.

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​A Web Migration Gone Wrong: Woo.com migrating back to WooCommerce.com
​Woo / General SEO
​"Moving to Woo.com created challenges for our users to find WooCommerce in Google searches, which were made worse following Google’s March update... We collectively believe that reverting back to WooCommerce.com will deliver the best outcomes for WooCommerce and the wider Woo community."

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​Sitebulb's JavaScript SEO Survey
​Sitebulb / Technical SEO
​Sitebulb is putting together the State of JavaScript SEO Report, which will be shared throughout the community. Answer their survey now.

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​​See more SEO Conversations in the SEOFOMO Forum​

💸 Latest SEO Jobs

• ​Technical SEO (Remote) at Weedmaps​
• ​SEO specialist job vacancy at Candour ​
• ​Blog Content Manager, Acquisition Marketing at Grammarly​
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Do you want your SEO job to be featured here for free? Just send it over here!​

🛠 Free(mium) SEO Tools

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​Sparktoro: New Audience Research Tool
​Sparktoro
​A new version of Sparktoro is here, making it easier to discover the websites, blogs, podcasts, social accounts, and publications that reach your audience. Test it for free!

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​AI Content Analysis with the Anthropic API in Google Sheets
​Richard Baxter
​Use this free Google Apps Script to analyze your Website content in Google Sheets.

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Looking for more SEO Tools? Take a look at the recently launched SEOFOMO SEO Toolbox​

🎙️ Upcoming SEO Events

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​Webinar: March 2024 Google Core and Spam Updates - What They Mean for the Future of SEO
​Clearscope / Online / April 11, 2024
​Learn about the recent developments in SEO, including the March 2024 Google Spam and Core Updates with Barry Schwartz, Ethan Smith, and Aleyda Solis in this webinar. Register now for free.

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​Navigating Chrome's 2024 Cookie Policy Changes webinar
​Duda / Online / April 18, 2024
​Join Andrey Lipattsev from Google, Debbie Reynolds, Helen Rhys and Olesia Korobka for a webinar on Chrome's upcoming changes in cross-site cookie handling.
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​See more upcoming SEO events in the new SEOFOMO Hub Events Section!​

🙌 SEOs and Digital Marketers to Follow

Let's follow these amazing SEOs and Paid search specialists sharing awesomeness:

• Darren Shaw (Twitter/X, LinkedIn), Founder at Whitespark
• Navah Hopkins (Twitter/X, LinkedIn), PPC Specialist and Evangelist at Optmyzr
• Erin Sparks (Twitter/X, LinkedIn), President at Site Strategics and Host of EDGE of the Web podcast
• Lisa Raehsler (Twitter/X, LinkedIn), Founder & SEM / PPC Strategy Consultant at Big Click Co
• Ashley Segura (Twitter/X, LinkedIn), VP of Marketing & Content Strategy at ContentYum

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