Google's new deceptive ad layout not only tricks people into clicking more ads It's costing businesses real money 💸

These Google sitelinks are getting out of hand

AGENCY OWNERS! Help yourself & your fellow agencies out: randfish.typeform.com/to/eFoJ3tXz Paddy Moogan is once again running the Digital Agency Owner Survey for 2025. Last year's results were incredibly compelling; this year's will be, too.

True story

More evidence that Google's August 2025 Spam Update was bigger than most SEOs realize "How to tell if you were impacted by the August 2025 spam update" by @mariehaynes.bsky.social Multiple Googlers have said this Google will reward "originality" this year FWIW www.mariehaynes.com/august-2025-...

And we're off! Exciting time speaking today at Ahrefs Evolve in San Diego "What Google Doesn't Tell You About E-E-A-T" Photo credit @lou-lin.bsky.social

Something tells me Google's August 2025 spam update—which lasted 26 days(!)—was more significant than we realize Seeing many *legitimate* sites with significant movement beginning mid-September, reminiscent of the declining slopes we saw with the Helpful Content updates 📉

While there currently is no evidence that using a CYRUS.txt file can help you rank higher in Google + LLMs, @whitespark.ca is testing it so you don't have to 📈

Open AI / Google: Please release a search console for your LLMs. Let us measure our content performance and search behavior to better serve the audience there without having to only rely on 3rd party data! Thanks, SEOs around the world 🙏 ...

One of the coolest small gigs I ever worked in Hollywood was with the Jimmy Kimmel Show. (I got to help Jimmy rehearse for an on-air bit.) Thank you for your service, sir, and may good things come in your future

This week alone (and it's only Wednesday), I've received *three* different sponsored social requests for newly launched AI companies. I've never said yes to any of these, but be slightly wary when you see an influencer talking about the latest AI tool

RankEmbedBERT is a deep-learning model used by Google to rank web pages, relying on two primary sources of data 1) 70 days of search logs (user data/clicks, etc) 2) Scores generated by Quality Raters Information is power. Do with this knowledge what you will

So sorry to hear this. Alan could be a character, but he was there for a lot of people when it mattered. I'll never forget what he did for Dana during her last days.

We have some (unpublished) data showing a positive correlation between <a>branded anchor text</a> and Google rankings 📈 So we changed the links on Zyppy List from a generic "Contact Company" to include your company's brand name Hopefully, it helps your SEO a little!

Court rules Google must share data with competitors. Looks like they'll be forced to share: 1) Basic Search Index: URLs/first seen/last crawled/spam score/etc. 2) "Glue": uses click data to build SERPs 3) RankEmbed: deep learning to understand semantic meaning www.courtlistener.com/docket/18552...

Terrific post by @wilreynolds.bsky.social on the frustrations + successes of AI Optimization "AI Optimization Test: Footers are back like 2003" www.seerinteractive.com/insights/ai-...

Pro Tip for improving AI Search visibility 📈 YouTube often plays an outsized role across many AI platforms as a cited source, due to models reading *transcripts* So if you've been waiting to upload those videos with positive brand mentions, now might be a good time to put it on your roadmap 🗺️

Easily one of the best articles I've seen on AI search Explains how Structured Data influences AI answers, even if the models never sees it "From Retrieval to Reasoning: The Architectural Evolution of Information Systems for Large Language Models" by Andrea Volpini wordlift.io/blog/en/retr...

Migrated 95% of the pages on this site to shorter URLs +closer to the homepage You'll never guess what happened next

Chart of the Day: ChatGPT vs Google Traffic Across 44,421 sites tracked by Ahrefs, traffic from.. • Google = 41.91% • ChatGPT = 0.19% While ChatGPT traffic is growing at a faster rate, Google still sends 220x more traffic. What are you optimizing for today? chatgpt-vs-google.com

Here's a free llms.txt file you can use that has proven to work with ChatGPT, Google Gemini, etc. Edit to fit your site. Easiest way to higher AI rankings: tinyurl.com/3u33tx8e

Current state of the SEO industry

SEO Tool of the Day: Rendering Difference Engine Need to spot the difference between your HTML and JavaScript rendered content? "Identify SEO signals added, removed, or altered during JavaScript rendering — without digging into the code." Very nice! 👏 thegray.company/resources/js...

Agent mode is a wild paradigm shift in online marketing happening now Users never visit your site Your traffic becomes bot traffic *yet it still converts*

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One mile in 8 minutes, 11 seconds Not terrible for a guy my age. Will train and measure again in a few months

"Based on current trends, ChatGPT referral traffic could overtake organic search in 31 months." This study was based on a couple hundred websites, but if the growth curves are directionally accurate, the premise is NOT implausible www.siegemedia.com/strategy/cha...

Spent the weekend merging Zyppy List and Zyppy into one unified website. Why? • Better user experience • Consolidate link equity • Consistent brand signals Strangely, toughest migration I've ever tackled! :) zyppy.com

Very few clients reaching out to gain better visibility in AI answers Lots of clients reaching out looking to recover declining Google traffic

What if the universe gave you everything you wanted… …so perfectly you never had to go anywhere again? The Hollow Universe is a story about convenience, control, and the slow death of discovery. www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-hol...

Very excellent experiments —from a former Googler—show how ChatGPT web search uses Google Search > Bing Search Google can't be happy about this 🤨 acme.bot/blog/chatgpt...

Slow clap to the marketer who submitted this for the required "Real Human Photo" with their Zyppy List application 🫡

Working hard to show up in AI Overviews so we can get zero clicks in more places 💪

#1 SEO Client Question is the state of AI-content: 1) A mix of AI/human content ranks everywhere on Google 2) Yet Google demotes low-effort "scaled" AI content 3) Quality Raters are now instructed to identify AI/auto-generated content, so further changes may be coming

Installed a new doorbell camera, turned it on, and first thing I see is a strange old man on our porch

SEO Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Changing New podcast just dropped with BuzzStream SEO is WAY different than it was 2-3 years ago. We discuss all the changes... Full episode: www.buzzstream.com/blog/seo-isn...

Freaking out because I committed to speak at 3 upcoming conferences and things are changing so fast with AI/SEO, I'm not sure what to confidently talk about + the usual dose of imposter syndrome 🫣 Any suggestions?

Had a lovely conversation with Katherine Blunt from The Wall Street Journal on optimizing for AI Search Note: I did not advocate calling it "GEO" (but I may have thought about it :)

I don't recommend clients write meta descriptions anymore. This seems to lower the threshold for Google generating query-dependent meta descriptions. Over many tests vs controls of groups of pages with/without MDs, on different client sites, the no MD pages saw on average ~3% uplift. Sorry.

Working with a highly reputable law firm seeing a double-whammy from AI answers reducing clicks + folks using AI instead of hiring a lawyer Having conversations like these almost daily now across different service/software/informational verticals and folks, it ain't fun

My secret weapon Graphic Designer shows how she creates an explainer image for content shared far and wide Nice work @dawnshepard.bsky.social! 👏👏👏

What social media platform is the best for SEO and why is it Bluesky?

Welp, looks like we're back to 10 blue links folks

Made a sandwich that will do your SEO Haters will say it's fake

Thought it was mostly SEOs/publishers who like to complain about Google, but surprisingly good comics are going viral on the front page of Reddit, of all places www.reddit.com/r/comics/com...

What Has Changed in SEO? | sat down with Jo Cameron and revised a popular Whiteboard Friday filmed in 2021 to see what's changed since then. Good times! moz.com/blog/what-ha...

Dear [JACQUELINE WATSON], Yes, I would love to buy PR services from you, [BLOG DRIVER]! Please call at your earliest convenience. Sincerely, [Client Name]

For AI search, let's simply call it SAIOGEOAEOAIO and be done with it

Do visits from AI search show higher intent when they click to your website? But what does the data say? @taylordanrw.bsky.social studied 188M sessions w/ 671K from AI search "Users arriving through *organic search* generally have a higher likelihood of engaging (converting) on the website"

Programming note: And that ends one of the most stressful weeks of my adult life If you ask me what it was about, I'll likey reply "No comment"