SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π 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. π
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...
8 days agoΒ β’Β 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π€ Google tests AI Mode, an upgraded version of AI Overviews. AI Mode uses Gemini 2.0 to conduct multimodal searches for complex queries. It is currently available if you are a Google One Premium subscriber. β« AI Overviews expand with no sign-in requirements, availability to teenagers and the use of Gemini 2.0. AIOs are used by more than a billion people worldwide and...
15 days agoΒ β’Β 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know βΆοΈ Video engagement, closed captions and channel authority are some of YouTube's key ranking factors. This study also found that 8-9 minutes is the optimal length and cannibalisation is not a factor on YouTube. π§βοΈ Chegg, an online study platform, sues Google for stealing their content in AI Overviews. Chegg reports that organic traffic is key to its business and that...
22 days agoΒ β’Β 7 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π 70% of sites "ranking" in AI Overviews will change over a 2-3 month period. Study confirms that AIOs are far more volatile than other organic results and that changes in AIOs are independent of changes on the SERPs. π§βοΈ Google may face charges for violating the EU's Digital Markets Act. This could mean Google faces similar issues & charges as its US antitrust trial loss...
29 days agoΒ β’Β 7 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π€ AI search engines send ~22% of transactional traffic to homepages, much higher than Google's ~10%. Approximately 80% of this transactional traffic went to ecommerce sites, predominantly big brands and household names. π Perplexity launches Deep Research, a new search feature that creates in-depth answers using dozens of searches and sources. Unlimited use is available...
about 1 month agoΒ β’Β 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π AI Overviews can reduce CTR for organic results by over 70%. When AI Overviews are present organic CTR drops from 2.94% to 0.84%. In contrast, CTR increases from 0.6% to 1.08% when cited in AI Overviews. πΌοΈ Sites using AI-generated images are reportedly losing significant Image traffic. This may be a update to Google's image rankings to reduce the prominence of...
about 1 month agoΒ β’Β 4 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know βοΈ AI Overviews appear to be expanding with more-detailed answers to complex questions. This apparent upgrade can include dozens of citations and layered answers that are similar length to many full articles. π Google tests 'Ask for me' feature that can call businesses for you. 'Ask for me' uses information on Google Business Profile, allowing you to select the service you...
about 2 months agoΒ β’Β 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π οΈ A new free tool trained on Google exploit data can accurately predict which semantic class Google will assign to any search term, allowing for more in-depth query analysis. β Google is introducing AI Overviews to the Circle to Search feature. Google continues to expand its AIO features while Circle to Search appears to be growing in popularity, especially with younger...
about 2 months agoΒ β’Β 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π 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. π Google's global market share drops below 90% for the first time since 2015. This is according to data from Statcounter across all devices...
2 months agoΒ β’Β 7 min read