Google started deindexing PDFs at scale recently, which was initially spotted by Savanna Gray on LinkedIn. And for many sites, those PDFs moved to “Crawled, not indexed” in GSC’s indexing reporting. Based on the widespread impact to sites, it seems like a bigger change to Google’s systems and not specific to those sites. And to … Read more
Google rolled out yet another spam update on August 18, 2026 after rolling one out in late June. As a reminder, Google can roll out specific spam updates when it determines sites using spammy tactics are ranking well via its core ranking system. You can think of spam updates as “patches” to handle spam that’s … Read more
Last week Barry published an article about AI Mode data being surfaced in Google Search Console in the performance reporting. It’s super interesting to see that data and there are some fun things you can do to try and decipher the information. I’ll cover more about that soon. Anastasia Kourou posted on LinkedIn about seeing … Read more
Reddit’s recent post about fighting spam was a bit suspect to me timing-wise, so I dug into the search visibility of its AI translations again. And yep, they finally starting dropping in Google and downstream in AI Search platforms like ChatGPT following the Google May 2026 core update and the June 2026 spam update. This … Read more
Does this case prove you can perform well in ChatGPT without strong Google rankings or does it prove you still need strong organic search performance? Follow me down the rabbit hole to learn how a YMYL site is being cited heavily in ChatGPT without any visibility in Google. Update: August 3, 2026Bing deindexed the site, … Read more
Not long after the March 2026 broad core update completed, we had another core update to deal with. And this one was much more powerful than the March update… The May 2026 broad core update started rolling out on May 21, 2026 and it caused a ton of volatility across verticals and countries. It took … Read more
On April 13, 2026 Google announced a new spam policy for “back button hijacking”. That’s when a site owner inhibits users from returning to the last page they visited from in an attempt to trick them into remaining on their site. Those sites typically show a page with even more content and ads, and it … Read more
After writing a two-part series last year about Reddit heavily scaling AI-translated content, I wanted to check in to see how things were going now. Below, I’ll cover how Reddit’s AI translation project is firing on all cylinders and how that content is being heavily rewarded by Google in the search results. In March of … Read more
A recent manual action provides a great view of how scaling via AI-generated content can yield a huge drop in Google’s 10-blue links, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. But as you’ll see below, ChatGPT citations can drop heavily as well. Well, it seems another example of “Mt. AI” came crashing down recently. I actually noticed … Read more
Wednesday was a relatively normal day for me in Google Land. I was auditing client sites, still digging into the March 2026 core update movement, and posting the latest SEO and AI Search news across social media. But then an interesting email arrived. It was from a company I helped last year and the subject … Read more
I’ve been using Twitter since April 2008, so I’ve been a long-time user of the social network. And to organize the chaos of keeping track of my favorite accounts, keeping an eye on notifications, direct messages, etc., I’ve been using Tweetdeck since ~2011. Note, Tweetdeck changed to “X Pro” after Elon Musk acquired Twitter in … Read more
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