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​Google Search Console data experienced significant delays that are now resolved. Many users reported no clicks or impressions from 29 June - 3 July with delays of more than 100 hours.

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​Nearly 60% of Google searches end without a click in 2024, according to a study by SparkToro. The study also found the introduction of AI Overviews coincided with a drop in mobile searches.

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​Using prompt injections can lead to Bing removing your website from search results. Prompt injection is when users try to convince LLMs to go outside of their restrictions to perform tasks. Bing's guidelines now strictly prohibit this.

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​Cloudflare launches a new detection system to combat AI bots. This new system aims to reduce bot traffic and AI-powered scrapers.

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​Google has updated its guidelines about structured data for carousels. This includes using different markup such as ItemList for paginated category pages vs infinite scroll.

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​Google has updated its guidelines for embedded images. This small change adds that "Google can find images in src attribute of <img> element (even when it's a child of other elements, such as the picture element)."

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​Google confirms that soft 404s are bad as they waste crawl budget and are filtered out during indexing. Gary Illyes compared a soft 404 to a coffee shop advertising a menu online but not actually providing anything in the shop.

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​Google is testing a longer search bar. Searchers are using more words per search than ever so this change makes sense to accommodate this. This was first discovered by Sachin Patel.

100+ links using Super Bowl digital PR

In this video, we explain exactly how we made our client go mainstream in all news outlets from the US, and even worldwide.

We suggested to our client that they should offer their wedding venue for free, for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, if they got engaged at the Super Bowl.

They also offered the venue to any couple named Travis and Kelce, on Super Bowl Sunday.

Longer content does not necessarily rank better

Some studies may indicate this, but when you look at the source data, it’s just because that content is so much better (and there is a higher probability longer content has had more effort invested). 🤔

The web is not short of quantity of content - it’s short of quality. Answer questions and intent as quickly as possible, then get into the detail if needed.

Of course, a longer piece is more likely to rank for more keywords all other things being equal, but it’s a good idea to focus on the intent around the initial searches you’re targeting. This is what we built AlsoAsked for - to build these maps.

Avoid the Remove URLs tool

If you are moving your site (full or partial), DO NOT use the Remove URLs tool in GSC on the old site.

It won't make the site move 'go any faster'.

It only impacts what's visible in Search so it could end up hurting you in the short-term. 😱

What are the fastest redirects?

A performance consideration when you're doing lots of redirects is where they are handled:

🥉 "In the database" tends to be the easiest to manage, but the slowest way. Commonly through the CMS.

🥈 At the server level, such as a .htaccess is one of the most common ways and quite performant.

🥇 On the Edge (such as Cloudflare) tends to be the most performant way to handle redirect logic.

Faster sites are good for users.

Use canonicals when AB testing

If you're AB testing different page designs on live URLs, make sure you use the canonical tag so you don't confuse search engines with duplicate content while the test is live.

I would recommend this instead of noindexing, as if you do attract links to your variants, the won't count if it's not indexed.

Once the test is finished, make sure you 301 redirect the losing variant to the winning one!

As site size increases, so does technical importance

When you're getting an SEO site audit, generally the larger the site is, the more impact and value technical fixes will hold - and the smaller the site is, content production will usually carry more value. Here is a beautiful graph to demonstrate this.

Top Core Updates referrer leaderboard

A big thank you to our top referrers, who have signed up over 10 people to the Core Updates newsletter, go follow them!

🥇 MJ Cachón Yáñez (LinkedIn / X)

🥈 Nikki Pilkington (LinkedIn / X)

🥉 Lidia Infante (LinkedIn / X)

Got any feedback?

Apparently, some people do read this far, we've had people email us! Thanks for that, we just want to tell you that you're our favourite if you read this far and we hope you have a lovely week.

ICYMI Mark is back from his adventures under the sea so please welcome him back to the SEO world if you haven't already.

As usual, we read all the emails, so any feedback or advertising questions - let us know!

~Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers-Ward