🤖

​AI search engines send ~22% of transactional traffic to homepages, much higher than Google's ~10%. Approximately 80% of this transactional traffic went to ecommerce sites, predominantly big brands and household names.

📖

​Perplexity launches Deep Research, a new search feature that creates in-depth answers using dozens of searches and sources. Unlimited use is available for Pro users with limited daily use for free users.

🔍

​Google Search explains how it prefetches top results to improve load times. This uses the Speculation Rules API and can also apply to sites that a user hovers on (measured by "eagerness") on SERPs.

⭐

​The issue causing Google Business Profile reviews to disappear appears to be mostly resolved. This error affected many GBP reviews and if you are still missing reviews, you should contact GBP support.

📰

​Google News publication is now fully-automated and no longer requires the manual creation of a source page. This means that any content that meets the requirements for Google News will be automatically eligible for ranking.

▶️

​Search results contribute less than 1% of YouTube views, according to Google's legal team. Most industry datasets significantly contradict this figure, especially with YouTube's continued rise in visibility in organic search.

📈

​YouTube citations in AI Overviews have grown by over 25% since the start of 2025. YouTube links account for over 41% of citations in the healthcare industry while overall 'How to' queries saw a 35.6% increase in 2025.

🛍️

​Google has added new structured data properties for loyalty programs and pricing. priceType allows a strikethrough to show discounts vs original prices and validForMemberTier will show specific prices based on loyalty programs.

Shape the Future of Link Building!

🔗⭐ Take the 2025 State of Link Building Survey:

Share your insights to uncover AI usage trends, impact measurement challenges, and ROI strategies.

💡🧠 Get Smarter:

Refine your campaigns and reporting strategies with benchmarks and actionable data.

🤝 Give Back:

For every completed survey, Citation Labs donates $10 to Norfolk Clubhouse.

⏳ Deadline: 1st March 2025

Google can spot manipulative behaviour

Google has a patent which is specifically designed to catch search engine spammers and it is HILARIOUS 🤣

We covered “Changing a Rank of a Document by Applying a Rank Transition Function” patent on last week’s SEO Patent Podcast, which outlines a system where Google can do things like:

♠️ If they detect a bunch of activity which makes them want to rank the page better, they could do the reverse and bomb the ranking. The bluff is to try and lure search engine manipulators into doing more activity.

🚦 The idea is over time, Google can correlate these sudden shifts to manipulative behaviour to determine is someone is trying to game the system.

​It’s a fantastically fun listen!​

Thanks to Lidia Infante for the tip!

Do NOT trust ChatGPT to do keyword research

From Natalie Slater: ChatGPT cannot do your keyword research for you. Not properly. If you blindly trust its output you are going to encounter problems. ⤵️

This is still true, despite recent advances involving its ability to do real-time search, and the introduction of Deep Research.

Consider intent volume during keyword research

With longtail search terms it is important to think about 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞 not search query volume. ⬇

I regularly get asked on AlsoAsked live chat if there is monthly search volume for the questions - and it ✨pains✨ me!

When a query is 7-8 words long, it naturally means there are many ways to reconstruct that same query intent in another way.

For instance:

❓ Best earplugs for someone with tinnitus

❓ Which earplugs are best for someone with tinnitus

❓ Best earplugs for tinnitus

❓ What are the best earplugs for tinnitus

❓ I have tinnitus what are the best earplugs

❓ Best earplugs for person with tinnitus

❓ Which earplugs are best for people with tinnitus

❓ etc...

7 search terms: 1 search intent 🌟

It would be easy to rewrite this query in 30 different ways, so even if each question only got 10 searches per month (which would report "0"), this one question would have a monthly search volume of 300 searches.

Regex + GSC = 🫶

You can easily filter your GSC query data to uncover a treasure trove of query types your site is ranking for, with the following regex patterns: 🧙‍♂️

​

📃 Informational intent (Guides, tutorials, how-tos)

\b(how to|guide|tutorial|step by step|tips|tricks|ways to|best way to|learn|help|explain|understand|instruction|methods|examples|meaning of|definition)\b

​

⚖️ For comparisons (e.g., "best", "vs", "alternative", "cheaper"):

\b(best|vs|versus|compare|comparison|alternative|alternatives|better|cheaper|worse|cheapest|highest|lowest|top|difference|differences|differences between)\b

​

🛍️ Questions on products/services (e.g., "is X good?", "where to buy X?")

\b(price|cost|buy|purchase|available|best|quality|brand|reviews|ratings|features|specifications|order|discount|warranty|deal|shop|store|version|options|model|type|compare)\b

​

💰 Transactional intent (Buying, pricing, ;ocations)

\b(buy|purchase|price|cost|cheap|discount|deal|coupon|order|shop|store|near me|online|sale|best price|affordable|available|in stock)\b

​

🧭 Navigational intent (Brand-specific, reviews, support)

\b(review|reviews|rating|ratings|customer service|support|warranty|return policy|refund|complaint|feedback|scam|legit|trustworthy|experience|testimonial|problems|issues)\b

​

To get this:

1) Open your Google Search Console

2) Go to "Search results"

3) On the filters at the top click on "+ New"

4) Select "Query"

5) Change the drop down to "Custom (regex)"

Paste in the regex and be amazed ✨

Bonus: You could also use GSC Helper extension by Stephan Czysch for preset filters.

How to correctly use AI to automate redirect mapping

Please don't use LLMs like ChatGPT for 301 redirect mapping 😭

You can absolutely use ✨AI✨ but a spicy predictive text is the wrong tool for the job!

​

Here is an excellent method for automating 301 mapping:

🐸 Use Screaming Frog to crawl your old / new websites

🔢 Vectorise your chosen properties with all-MiniLM-L6-v2

⚖️ Compare vector similarity with Facebook AI Similarity Search (FAISS)

🥘 Eat fine lunch and enjoy high accuracy redirect map

😨 Sound complicated?

​

What if I told you that Daniel Emery made a script that does all of this for you?

​The script is also free.​

What if not only someone else wrote that whole script for you, but I wrote a step-by-step guide of how to do it for as well?

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)