📊

​Google clarifies that AI Overviews count as one position on Google Search Console. John Mueller explains that AIOs are considered "one block" so, no matter where the link is within the AIO, it's considered a single position.

🗃️

​Redacted documents from Google's DOJ trial give details about ranking signals. The details include information about ABC signals, Topicality and how page quality relates to relevance.

📉

​Mail Online reports a 56% decrease in CTR, even in position 1, when AIOs are present. For context, Mail Online is the 8th biggest English language news website in the world so AI Overviews can affect any site, large or small.

🖼️

​Google recommends using consistent URLs for images in updated documentation. Using consistent URLs reduces crawl budget as Google can keep the image cached and doesn't need to recrawl.

📈

​Google keeps users on the SERPs longer than ever before. The 'pages-per-visit' statistic indicates that users are interacting more with SERP features and clicking on fewer links to sites.

📍

​Google launches the 'What's Happening' feature for Google Business Profiles. This feature for restaurants and bars aims to highlight specific, time-sensitive updates such as 'Today's special' and upcoming live music.

🧑‍⚖️

​Google faces a €12 billion lawsuit from price comparison sites. This lawsuit relates to the Digital Markets Act where Google must not favour its own comparison services over external sites.

🗑️

​AI Overviews have a big spam problem, especially with 'best' searches. These results are easily manipulated and are regularly displaying low-quality, AI-generated listicles and posts.

👛

​Google Search Console tests annotations feature in Performance reports. Annotations are long-requested for GSC and this could be a small but important new feature for users tracking changes and updates.

Get ready, London! 🚀 The biggest Search ‘n Stuff Signature London Meetup of the Year is hitting the city this summer, and trust us — this isn’t just another networking event with stale sandwiches and awkward small talk.
Nope. This is the rooftop party you’ll be talking about all year.

📅11 June 2025
​📍Doggett's Coat and Badge, London
🍔 Full BBQ feast – including vegetarian and vegan options (we see you, herbivores)
🍹 4–5 drinks per person – enough to fuel bold conversations and legendary stories (alcoholic & non-alcoholic options available)
🎤 4 Quickfire Talks – topics covering SEO, Strategy, PPC, and Paid Social (Speakers to be revealed VERY soon 👀)
🎥 Professional video and photo coverage – because if you don’t post about it, did it even happen?
🤝 Unbeatable networking – meet a fantastic crowd of 60+ marketers, founders, agencies, freelancers, and in-house pros from all across the industry

Every part of your web address matters

This is the anatomy of a web address. All parts of it can have an impact on ranking.
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🔒 Protocol: Google prefers secure vs non-secure (we're ALL doing that now, right?)
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↕️ Sub-domain: "www" is a subdomain, so putting content "on a subdomain" does not really matter - however - I have seen Google seemingly use the subdomain (assuming with other signals) as a marker for a new "site", meaning other metrics are not shared. There are many case studies showing visibility improvement when moving the same website spread over multiple subdomains into subfolders.
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🚏 Domain name: Exact match domains (EMDs) can trigger Google into thinking a generic search term has navigation intent, so EMDs can punch above their weight sometimes. It certainly makes it harder for Google to judge how popular a particular brand is.
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🌍 Top-level domain: Primarily, you have gTLDs (generic top-level domains) and ccTLDs (country code top-level domains). The latter can make it easier to rank in a specific country. Google specifically treats some ccTLDs as gTLDs, such as .ai and .io (see comments for full list). There are also some TLDs such as .gov that cannot be purchased.

Google uses Chrome data for a popularity signal

This is kinda big 😵

New Google/DOJ documents released, to my knowledge the first time we've had a primary source specifically saying Google uses Chrome data in a popularity signal for ranking. 👀
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That's been speculated for a long time. I remember when Semrush were lambasted in a study where they put "direct traffic" as a #1 ranking factor - although the study was that of correlation, and I don't think it's anywhere near a #1 factor - maybe more consideration should have been given to this at the time. 🤔
​
Lots of other interesting insights in these docs that I will be distilling over the next few days!

Th-th-th-that's Knowledge Graph, folks

contextual_porky_pig answer was a boolean parameter we discovered in the Google exploit we reported last year, but what is it? 🤔
​
With such a silly name, it always baffled me, and I would joke about it on stage - but the new DOJ documents have revealed it is a feature that if someone for instance Google's some facts about the relation of a famous person, the Knowledge Graph will supply traditional search with the name of the person.
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Mystery solved! 🔍

See how Google renders your competitors' pages

If you want to know how Google renders a page that you don't have Search Console access to (such as a competitor), then using the Rich Results Test tool is a viable option. 🔧
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1) Run the URL you wish to look at in the tool
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2) Click on "View Tested Page"
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3) Click on "Screenshot" on the right
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This is yet another way you can avoid mistakes that would otherwise make you look silly, an admirable career goal.

Put it in your tab, but do it properly

It’s changed over the years, but as far as I can see, Google seems to treat content hidden behind things like tabs just fine. 🤝

It can still “see” this content. Logically, I would expect it to treat this content as slightly less important (if it’s so important, why is it hidden on load?), but I’ve encountered few issues with ranking content which are hidden by things like clickable tabs. 👀

This is with the technical caveat that nothing silly is happening and the content is in the DOM and not something like loading it in only on interaction. 😵

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