📉

​GeeksForGeeks, a 70M per month traffic "computer science portal for geeks" website has been deindexed from Google with little surprise from SEOs, although the site is calling it a "temporary issue with Google Search".

🍅

​Danny Sullivan says Google don't measure brand, but lists some things Google do care about, which are for all intents and purposes the definition of brand - helpfully confirming Google pronounces it "tomato", not "tomato".

🔍

​Microsoft launches Copilot Search, making Bing an "AI-powered search and answer engine". Copilot Search appears to be a competitor to ChatGPT Search, where users can ask questions to progress their search journey.

📑

​Google's NotebookLM can now discover its own sources from the web. Rather than manually uploading sources, users can describe their topic and NotebookLM will show up to 10 recommended sources for the topic.

📧

​Google can now use data in your email campaigns to automatically update your Merchant Centre. This automatic opt-in began on 3 April and means Google will collect and display content from your emails in Search & Shopping.

🛍️

​Bing is testing product and shopping results in Copilot Answers. While not fully functional, this could be a step towards answering how how AI search works with transactional searches rather than informational searches.

📊

​Generated Insights will appear in GA4 for 'significant changes'. These insights are an update to the Automated insights and appear at the top of a report. They also include a button to link directly to the highlighted data.

📝

​Leaked documents explain how Apple rates AI-generated responses. These guidelines are used for digital assistants, not web content, and give insights into six rating categories including Truthfulness and Harmfulness.

📍

​AI-generated summaries for Google Business Profiles are now appearing in Knowledge Panel. These summaries are not the same as the review summaries, these are summaries of the business itself.

🖼️

​Images loaded by JavaScript can still be indexed if they appear in the rendered HTML. Martin Splitt answered this question about indexing images loaded by JavaScript on the SEO For Paws live stream.

🎮

​You can catch the first 151 Pokémon in Google Search's latest Easter egg. No, this isn't SEO news but it's hopefully a little bit of fun to cheer you up on a Monday. Lets us know how many you have in your Pokédex!

Join the green web revolution

The web won’t get greener on its own! 🌱

Join us at our next GreenSEO event in Brighton on Wednesday, April 9th and hear from Nat Arney, Chris Green, Fiona MacNeill, and Kathryn Lawrence as they share insights on making the web more green - with sessions on content, rank tracking, and behavioural change.

Be part of the solution and book your free ticket now! 💚

Valuable analysis comes from humans, not LLMs

You can't use an LLM to write an analysis of your SEO report.

If you're ✨ lucky✨ , an LLM will correctly describe what has happened in the data, but this is not an analysis.
​
An analysis will include things such as:
​
🤖 The context of these movements, for instance with recent Google updates you know have happened - or actions that you or competitors have recently taken that you know will impact this.
​
🏃 Is it strategically relevant? Does anything need to change, or does the course need to be adjusted?
​
🔀 Knowing what resources you have (time, people, budget), what are the options from here?
​
Most of the value is outside the scope of what the LLM is doing.

How much does your content contribute to traffic?

Google still uses a modified version of PageRank, and the link graph of the web is still hugely important for ranking documents. 📄
​
🧙‍♂️ PageRank rarely gets talked about now, but it is still fundamental in understanding the underlying concepts of how search engines think about relationships between pages.
​
🎙️ Last week, on the SEO Patent Podcast, we covered "Method For Node Ranking in a Linked Database" AKA PageRank: so you can get an easy to listen overview of how it importance scores to documents based on the quantity and quality of links pointing to them, essentially a recursive system where a link from a highly-ranked page carries more weight.

AI Overviews are changing user behaviour

While not reliable, AIOs will undoubtedly change the expectation of interaction cost for content. With this in mind, I would consider moving gated content to ungated if there is a competing AIO. 🔓
​
Apart from maybe not even being present in the AIO (so missing out on the click entirely), even if you attract a click, I think the amount of people willing to do this is going to drop over time. 📉
​
It's still important to get your potential customer into "your" systems, but I feel acquisition needs to add more value. Would love to hear your thoughts.

How handle discontinued products correctly

Here is a flowchart we devised at Candour that you can use to give general guidance on how to handle discontinued (not temporarily out of stock) product URLs ⤵️
​
🔃 Direct replacements: If a product has a ‘direct replacement’ (for instance, a cooktop that’s just released a new version with some updated electronics, but it functions the same, fits the same, and serves the exact same purpose), then usually a redirect directly to the new product is acceptable.
​
It can be a good idea (especially if there is search volume for the old model) to add a clear notice that this is the new version of the discontinued model to let searchers know they are in the right place. You can even be super smart and only show this if the user has followed the redirect from the old version of the product.
​
🔚 No direct replacements: If a product is discontinued and you only have similar products, it’s usually a good idea to leave the product page up and explain that it was discontinued. If you simply remove the page, a user may then return to search and try and find it somewhere else, perhaps losing you a sale and increasing their frustration.
​
You can use this opportunity to link to similar products, categories, or even a guide to alternatives to catch new search terms as audiences become aware that this product is discontinued.
​
↔️ When to redirect/410: At this point, it is worth reviewing every few months to see how search traffic has evolved. If searches for that product persist, it is worth keeping the page live.
​
In almost all instances, the traffic will gradually die off as demand reduces. At this point, investigate and decide whether the page has any valuable backlinks. If there are no good links, letting the page 4xx (410 Gone) is completely fine, as redirects do add overhead. If there are links you wish to keep, it’s usually best to redirect the page to the most similar asset for the user, whether it is a product, article, or category.
​
🔄 Update your site: Whenever you’re doing redirects, you want to make sure those pages are removed from your sitemap and you have updated all of your internal links as well.

Easily digest SEO patents as a podcast

Being aware of patents involved in SEO is a great way to "ground" your knowledge and theories. While not all patents may be used as-written in search, it gives fascinating insight into how challenges are being solved.
​
🎙️ I run the SEO Patent Podcast, which provides NotebookLM overviews of SEO patents that are easily digestible. This week it's covering the "Using concepts as contexts for query term substitutions" patent which details a system for enhancing search queries by using concepts, which are groups of words with a unified meaning, as contextual clues for suggesting better search terms.

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 / Bluesky)

🥈 Nikki Pilkington (LinkedIn / Bluesky)

🥉 Lidia Infante (LinkedIn / Bluesky)

🏅 Saijo George (LinkedIn / Bluesky)