📊

​Google confirms their system has favoured larger sites and they didn’t intend this but that’s how the algorithm has evolved. Google also stated that they're actively trying to correct this but fixes can take months to implement.

🖥️

​AI Overviews appear for over 13% of all queries. Unsurprisingly, over 88% of the queries that trigger AIOs are informational. There has also been significant increases in AIOs for science, health and legal queries.

👛

​Nerdwallet CEO Tim Chen confirms that AI Overviews have negatively impacted their site's traffic. Chen reported a 29% YoY decrease in unique users but also cites referral traffic from AI as a growing source.

📈

​ChatGPT now accounts for over 80% of all generative AI traffic. DeepSeek is second with just 6.5% with Google's Gemini third with 5.6%. This looks eerily similar to Google's search market share, doesn't it?

❌

​Google updates the Search Quality Raters' Guidelines to target fake EEAT content. This update clarifies guidance for fake celebrity endorsement or fake author pages. i.e. Be authentic, use real people.

📉

​Apple claims that search traffic is dropping on Safari, causing Google's stock to drop by 7.51%. Apple's Eddy Cue emphasised how much new AI technologies are affecting search. Of course, Google has since disputed this claim.

🕷️

​Unlike other AI chatbots, Gemini renders JavaScript and it uses the same service as Googlebot. This, in theory, gives Google an advantage over many of its competitors who are not able to render JavaScript.

🛡️

​Google explains how AI allows them to block 20x more scam search results. This security expansion also adds multilingual protection and more security features for Android users.

💥

​A WooCommerce bug is causing sites to crash. Users began reporting this error on 6 May 2025 and some quick fixes have already been provided. At time of writing, WooCommerce are working on a permanent fix.

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

Do good things for your business, not just your SEO

10+ years ago I bought lots of links and it worked well. Nowadays, I think link buying is pretty much a waste of time if you're an actual business ⤵️
​
My interpretation of what I've seen over the last few years is that Google seems to be putting more and more weight on "site wide" metrics, many of them I believe coming from ML and user interaction data. That means looking at what they are searching for, what results they are clicking on, or working out if that search was successful.
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It's quite obvious really: If nobody is searching for you, how does the story that everyone is talking about you and linking to you make sense? These user signals are what give credibility to your links, and they are easy to spot.
​
​Tom Capper's post-HCU analysis of link metrics vs brand highlighted this well: The sites most impacted by the HCU were sites with the largest ratio between link metrics and brand metrics.
​
It means there are fewer levers you can directly impact as an SEO; but I think it's good for the industry, as it pushes SEO even further into the wider marketing mix.
​
Do fewer things "for SEO" and more things that are good for your business, in the best SEO possible.

Be careful when removing code, your users may need it!

I'm a big fan of Sitebulb's code coverage analysis, which tells you about used code on a page, but you need to be careful not to make this mistake and embarrass yourself! ⚠️ 😳⚠️
​
The analysis is giving you a report of unused code on page load, before any user interaction.
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This means that reported 'unused code' may suddenly become used when a user interacts with the page, for example.
​
Therefore, it is very important you deliver this report to developers with the accurate context of what it is providing.
​
Don't swagger into a room of devs to say "I can't believe you have all this wasted code!" as you'll end up looking silly and lose all your hard-earned dev cred 🤓

Don't be fooled by snake oil salesmen (running on GPT)

“Built a content writer, editor, and SEO nerd all rolled into one. Runs on GPT, not coffee. Here’s how it works. And yes, it’s fully automated inside n8n.” 🫠

I saw this posted today (won’t name author) with 2,000+ Likes, which is disappointing because let me be clear:

⚠️ THIS IS SPAM - this is exactly the kind of thing that will get your business sunk by Google.

These things get so many likes because:

😍 Solutions like this sound great and people WANT to believe they are true. Wouldn’t it be amazing? All that productivity with ZERO effort? Sounds too good to be true…..

🤠 It is in the interest of people selling these solutions to massively overstate their value and gloss over the huge problems with them.

A couple of common arguments:

“Google doesn’t care if content is AI or not” 😏 True! On the basis that the content is also quality and adding value. If you’re “fully automating” content production you are essentially getting rehashed information, with the only “new” part being hallucinations, which are likely to be incorrect. This is not helpful.

“But it works!” 🤡 Until it doesn’t. There have been hundreds of examples of sites pumping out AI content with 45 degree traffic inclines for several months until they get torpedoed back to zero. You’re then likely stuck with a site-wide classifier that’s going to make it difficult for you to rank in the future.

It doesn’t make any sense either from a strategic business point of view: If there was a technique that was so easy and effective, then everyone would just do it - so you have absolutely zero competitive differentiator and you’re competing in a bottomless sea of sameness.

AI is a tool, an assistant, there are lots of really helpful things you can do with LLMs. Pumping out spam content on the web with your “Humanize Text Agent” is not one of them. 👎

Anyway, look forward to seeing some of you next year to help with penalty recoveries.

Shouts to Daniel Foley Carter and Lily Ray for continuing to call these things out.

Sometimes, you really don't need the search volume

PLEASE! 🥺

If you are doing page-level intent research, do yourself a favour and forget about search volume!

It's still one of the most popular questions on AlsoAsked live chat years on ("how do I see the search volume?").
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​▶️I made a whole video on this one concept, please watch and spread the word! ​

Don't always rely on noindex via robots

It is possible to noindex pages by inserting the <​meta name="robots" content="noindex"> via Javascript. This means you could add it to a page you don't have direct control over, via something like Google Tag Manager.
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🎲 I see this question come up a lot - it does work, but you need to know there is a chance the page will initially be indexed when the URL is first discovered before the JS is rendered and everything has gone done all the pipes they need to go down for that magic to happen!
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⚠️ If it's critical, put your noindex in the raw HTML response or HTTP header.

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