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Core Updates SEO Newsletter

🍝Core Updates: AI-organised results coming to restaurants and Google revives Tag Assistant [6 Jan]

Published 4 months ago • 3 min read

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-Cook​
Search with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward​

SEO updates you need to know

🍝

​AI-organised search results have expanded to restaurant recommendations. This is the same format Google launched for recipes in October 2024. It includes AI-generated categories based on your specific search.

🏷️

​Google has revived Tag Assistant and merged its two previous versions. Google has reversed its previous decision to remove the Google Tag Manager Chrome extension. The update combines both Legacy and Companion.

✨

​Google warns that AI crawlers don't render JavaScript. In 2024's final episode of Search Off the Record, Martin Splitt explained the growth of the web's reliance on JS and why this could become a problem for AI search engines.

✅

​The December 2024 spam update completed its rollout on 26 Dec 2024. The final gift from Google in 2024 lasted 7 days. This appeared to be a relatively quiet update.

📍

​Google is testing 'Places people are talking about' for local searches. This feature highlights social media videos about nearby restaurants in a carousel. Once again, Google appears to be emphasising UGC for local search.

🔍

​AI Overviews take up more pixel height than ever before. According to BrightEdge's ongoing study, the average AIO size has increased from 600px to 800px. This continues to push the 'ten blue links' further down the SERP.

☁️

​Cloudflare introduces a new feature to allow site owners better control over AI crawlers accessing their site. This AI Audit Dashboard includes requests per bot, which AI services accept robots.txt and filtering of specific crawlers.

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Search with Candour podcast

2025 SEO predictions

Season 3: Episode 52

In this special episode of Search With Candour, hosts Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook sit down with guests ⁠Arnout Hellemans⁠, ⁠Yagmur Simsek⁠, and ⁠Begum Kaya⁠.

Recorded in a brand new studio to celebrate the finale of Season 3, the panel discusses SEO industry highlights from 2024, and makes some SEO predictions for 2025.

Topics include the rise of AI, shifts in search engine market shares, and the ever-evolving landscape of SEO.

The conversation extends to personal branding, the importance of community in SEO, and how the integration of AI could reshape the search experience in the coming years.

The web almanac: SEO chapter with Jamie Indigo

Season 4 Episode 1

In the first episode of 2025, host Jack Chambers Ward is joined by Jamie Indigo, an expert in technical SEO and an overall delightful human being.

Jamie guides Jack through the findings from the 2024 Web Almanac's SEO chapter including technical data changes over recent years, offering insights and predictions for the future.

Jamie also highlights AI's rising influence, the importance of robots.txt, Core Web Vitals updates, and structured data advancements.

🎉 Happy New Year! 🎉

Here is where the SEO tips usually go

Okay, look, I had some rest over the holiday period so there were no unsolicited #SEO tips last week.

Hopefully you can forgive me this transgression and instead accept my heartfelt wish that whether 2024 was good, bad, or somewhere in between for you, that 2025 is even better.

Usual SEO tips service resumes this week for 2025. For me, in terms of SEO, the hype of 'AI' (specifically LLMs) was quite a challenge for me, so in 2025 I will be focusing a lot of tips on understanding AI, LLMs, RAG and in general how it affects and impacts the industry.

Best wishes and lots of love from Mark and Jack 💙

​

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Core Updates SEO Newsletter

Weekly SEO updates from Mark Williams-Cook

The Core Updates newsletter is written by Mark Williams-Cook, a veteran SEO who is Digital Marketing Director at Candour, Founder of AlsoAsked and organiser of SearchNorwich. Over 40,000 SEOs follow Mark's 'Unsolicited #SEO tips' on LinkedIn, which has now been wrapped up into the Core Updates newsletter, along with an overview of weekly news and the current episode of the Search with Candour episode, hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward.

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