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​Google's March 2025 core update has begun rolling out. The rollout started on 13 March 2025 and is the first core update of 2025. As always, Google says it may take up to 2 weeks to complete.

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​LLMs provide "confidently wrong" answers to more than 60% of queries. These inaccuracies range from Perplexity's 37% to Grok 3's staggering 94%. Also, ChatGPT Search was found to cite the wrong article nearly 40% of the time.

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​Google has changed the refresh time of the JSON objects containing the Google crawler and fetcher IP ranges from weekly to daily. This is important if you're authenticating Googlebots to make sure you don't block them.

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​GA4 has added a percentage row to its detailed reports tables. This new row will appear in both the 'Reports' and 'Ads' modules. This will hopefully save us all a lot of time using percentage calculators for our SEO reports!

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​Using both 'Date published' and 'Date updated' can significantly reduce click-through-rate. This study also explains that the on-page date is more impactful than updating the structured data.

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​Google's AI Mode could prove very difficult to track in Google Search Console. Finding existing AI Overview data in GSC is already a convoluted process so AI Mode's depth & complexity may be even harder to track.

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​Content compression ratio is not a good indicator of content quality or rankings. Compression ratio is a measure of how repetitive a page's content is by comparing a page's size before and after removing redundant/repetitive text.

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​Google has updated its structured data documentation about return policies. Merchants should now update their MerchantReturnPolicy schema to include the now-required returnPolicyCountry field.

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​Google has updated its manual actions documentation about site reputation abuse. This update specifies that anyone dealing with site reputation abuse should noindex the affected pages rather than using robots.txt.

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​Google is testing a new accommodations carousel for hotel queries. This change in the local pack could be Google trying to adhere to rules set by The Digital Markets Act to reduce Google prioritising its own services on SERPs.

SEO Keyword Research, Simplified

With the new Keyword Strategy Builder, users can create a keyword strategy in seconds.

Preset filters help them select the best topics and pages with detailed analysis of page intent, search volume, and SERP data, ensuring they follow SEO best practices for better results.

People are still paying for links in 2025

Still in 2025, I see posts like this:

“Buying links is a part of SEO. People that don’t agree / recognise this are just pulling the wool over their own - and others - eyes.”

This is utter rubbish 🚮

Let’s talk about link buying: ⬇

💰 You buy 1 link and get 1 link, whereas actually investing in content worth linking to can attract multiple links for many, many years. For instance, the April Fool’s campaign I worked on for Expedia with Andrew Smith was still getting new links 10 YEARS later 😂

💰 Investing in building something worth linking to means you’re investing in the equity of your own website. This means that even when/if links were no longer used in ranking you are left with something of value for your visitors. This is not true with buying links. Investing in your customers is a smarter long-term play than investing in algorithms that change.

💰 Some people are great at buying links, others not so. For almost all paid links, it’s a matter of when the technology to identify and devalue them comes about, not if. You are sitting on train tracks and at some point, the value of those links will drop to zero.

💰 Honestly, it can be very hard to compete in some sectors without paying for links - a lot of your competitors will be at it. In those highly competitive sectors, you need the money, time, and backing if you want to do it properly in the long term. There’s no way around that.

Yeah, but...is it actually a ranking factor?

Before I even entertain thinking about something as a possible “ranking factor”, I ask myself three questions ⤵️

1️⃣ Does it even make sense? How would this metric be useful? 2️⃣ Does it scale? Can Google find an apply this metric over many websites? 3️⃣ Any evidence? Documentation, Googler statements, patents, tests etc?

These three rules can save you time going on wild goose chases and help you focus your time on things do that do matter. 🪿

You may have seen theories about “text compression ratio” being a ranking factor, which applied to my three rules rated:

1️⃣ “Maybe” 2️⃣ Yes 3️⃣ No

Which meant I didn’t really bother thinking about it too much.

Today, I saw Shai Aharony from Reboot had posted a small study which seems to provide evidence to the contrary.

I think we can put this one to bed.

A system is never without goals and agendas

Google itself is a system with an agenda and goals.

If your SEO strategy is not aligned with Google's goals, it will fail in the long term. 🔥
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This seems obvious when you say it, however in my experience 50% of the 'tactics' I am presented with for SEO contradict this. When you apply this logic at the start, you can quickly reduce the number of options and complexity of planning.
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Otherwise; "it works until it doesn't"

Blog posts ≠ SEO strategy

This was the first tip I posted back in 2019, and it is still as relevant today. It's probably going to sting some people 🫠
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"We'll produce [x] blog posts a week of 500 words". If your SEO strategy sounds similar to that, I can pretty much guarantee you are wasting your money. 🔥 💵 🔥

Get hourly data from Google Search Console

Last 24 hours Google Search Console data? Pfft, for beginners. You can get hourly insights thanks to this Chrome extension by Valentin Pletzer. ⏳

Can be interesting to use during core updates… Like now!

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