🛑

​Google requiring JavaScript for Search causes major issues for SEO tools. Many rank tracking tools are experiencing blocks and, in the long-term, this may increase the cost of third-party tools as it increaes their operating cost.

📉

​Google's global market share drops below 90% for the first time since 2015. This is according to data from Statcounter across all devices and has remained below 90% since October 2024.

📈

​Brands are reporting significant growth in traffic from ChatGPT and Gemini. Viv, an eco-focused period care brand, has also attributed an increase in sales to LLMs and provided tips for brands to appear in AI search.

🖱️

​CTR manipulation does work in the short-term but doesn't pay off long-term. From a test by Sterling Sky, CTR manipulation can boost that site temporarily but will often result in Google reducing rankings due to the unusual behaviour.

🔍

​The UK's antitrust regulator, CMA, has begun investigating Google Search. This follows up from the US's DOJ classifying Google as a 'search monopoly' last year and is another potential step towards Google's potential divestment.

🖼️

​A new GBP feature allows you to remove & change the background of product images with AI. This is similar to the feature in Google Merchant Centre and has received mixed feedback from users so far.

🤝

​Google has struck a deal with The Associated Press to provide more up-to-date news to Gemini. This similar to other deals between AI search engines and publishers to provide training data and avoid copyright violations.

✅

​Google has updated its review snippet guidelines to only include ratings with written reviews and the reviewer's name. This update aims to reduce spammy shallow reviews and increase context for ratings featured on SERPs.

Bazoom is your go-to link building platform

Get links from over 80,000 media outlets worldwide

Bazoom is a full-service link building platform, designed to help clients create the perfect SEO strategy.

• Free marketplace access – no subscription or entry fees
• 24/7 support worldwide
• Free strategy builder and recommendations
• Integrated with industry leaders

Take your link building to the next level!

Are you ready to try a unique and intuitive link building platform to increase your organic traffic?

What's the value of technical SEO for your site?

“We have worked on hundreds of websites for small businesses and 95% of them get zero value from technical SEO” - I saw this today and you might be surprised, I agree with it!* 🤔

🛠️ That’s because technical SEO doesn’t create value for the end user, it amplifies value that exists through technical hygiene.

🤷‍♂️ If you have a 6-page website with 52 visitors per month, I’m afraid it doesn’t really matter how good your schema is, or that you got 98 instead of 82 on your Core Web Vitals, technical SEO likely isn’t going to help you.

✏️ At this stage in your website’s life, you’d be much better off creating value for your users, which is usually achieved with some kind of content.

🧙‍♀️ Sure, you can have technical SEO in place ahead of time, just don’t expect it to work miracles at this stage - it’s not magic!

🦾 If you’ve got 50,000 visitors a month over 5,000 pages, you’ve been through 3 websites and especially if you’re doing things like digital PR, then it’s likely you’ll see some quick results from technical SEO!

🕴‍ Future savings are also great - if your technical SEO makes everything else for your SEO just 5% more efficient, you’ve essentially secured a 5% discount on everything else you do for life!

I’ve recreated the “meme” version of the original chart here that shows the directional relationship that is usually true between putting effort into site content or technical SEO. As a rule of thumb, your technical SEO payback grows with site traffic, whereas content decreases with it when compared to % gains.

*Yes, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions, it depends.™

Should you redirect a discontinued product?

If you have an e-commerce site and products are discontinued, just using a 301 is not always the best thing to do and can confuse your potential customers.
​
BUT WAIT!

There is so much more nuance here, so make sure you read the full version in this brilliant 2025 SEO tips Wix round up article which I was very happy to contribute to as I got to work with the fantastic George Nguyen again!
​
I'm very proud to be featured alongside some brilliant SEOs that I admire greatly, including but not limited to:

• ​Ashwin Balakrishnan​
• ​Bengu Sarica Dincer​
• ​Naomi Francis-Parker​
• ​Michael King​
• ​Darren Shaw​

​Here is the full article with 25 SEO tips for 2025​

David can slay SEO Goliath with agility and risk-taking

Are your competitors much bigger than you with x10 the SEO budget? It doesn't mean that you still can't roast them 🔥
​
👨‍💻 Big companies tend to have long dev queues. This means you can beat them to the punch on new features; whether it's web stories or schema, to give you the edge.
​
😱 Big companies tend to be very risk averse. You should be experimenting liberally, the downside of failure is small, and the upside of being able to double-down on success is a huge advantage.
​
🏇 Big companies are normally very slow to make decisions with multiple stakeholders that need to be convinced. This means, you can get a head start, especially when it comes to new innovations such as AI.
​
Don't try and battle them on their terms, pick your battles to focus on areas that are frustrating for them and carve your place there! 👏

Don't neglect your images, especially during migrations

Images are often neglected when it comes to site migrations, but they can be big traffic drivers, especially for e-commerce websites. So what can we do? 🛒
​
I had an e-commerce client getting approximately 80,000 clicks from their product imagery, but they were replacing all of their images (and therefore image names/URLs) during a site rebuild and migration. 😱
​
It became hugely complex trying to map redirects for old product images to new ones, so we ended up doing something else: We simply copied the asset directory with images over to the new site so they were accessible on the same URLs. What was the result of this? ⤵️
​
✅ The images stayed ranking and if a user clicked to visit the source, they followed the normal URL redirect and ended up on the correct page
​
✅ Many of the new images started to rank for similar terms - so in some instances, we had double images leading to even more traffic!
​
The best solution is sometimes the least complex 😊

Use customer AND search data, not just one source

“Don’t do keyword research, just talk to customers” has got to be one of the most short-sighted and asinine takes in 2025 🤦‍♂️

💬 You absolutely should be talking to your customers, and watching how they interact with your site. It’s gold dust if they can tell you their problems, concerns, impressions!

But also consider ⤵️

📊 This is a qualitative measure, while some customers may tell you they are interested in [x], you don’t know how prevelant that want or need is, so it becomes hard to prioritise. Search data will give you this information.

🥸 Customers will lie to you! Would you be comfortable reading out your last month of Google searches to a stranger? People want to be liked, appear smart and have egos. This will affect what they tell you. Search data lays bare what people are actually typing in.

🧠 The majority of searches are longtail, so qualitative research will either miss them completley, or will unearth them at an incredible slowly, missing an opportunity. Search data will give you the full picture.

📅 Search data (like AlsoAsked) can show you trends that are changing within hours of events happened. Unless you’re keeping some customers held in an on-site facility to continue interrogating them, this is more missed opportunity that search data can give you.

👀 You wouldn’t believe the types of search queries that professionals working in SEO and PPC see on a weekly basis!

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)