The Internet Marketing Driver - Covering the latest in online marketing strategy.

Wirecutter dropped heavily in search visibility over the past four months – Was it a reviews update, Google’s ‘Starkly different’ algorithm, or was vertical expertise rewarded?

September 6, 2025August 18, 2025 Glenn Gabe

Update 3: September 6, 2025The robots.txt change that Wirecutter implemented on thewirecutter.com doesn’t seem to have helped the situation. Wirecutter is still down, and even dropping more based on some of the visibility tools. See the screenshots below in my X share. I’ll keep tracking the situation and will provide updates over time. But for … Read more

AI Search and JavaScript Rendering – How client-side rendering causes visibility and ranking problems in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and others [Case Study]

August 11, 2025 Glenn Gabe

In December of 2024, Vercel published an article explaining how most AI platforms were not rendering JavaScript. Based on their tests, they found that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic, and others were not rendering client-side JavaScript, meaning that content could not be seen by those platforms. And that can obviously cause big problems for sites heavily relying … Read more

The June 2025 Google Core Algorithm Update – Analysis and Findings including HCU(X) surges, AI Overview impact, YMYL volatility, and more

August 1, 2025July 21, 2025 Glenn Gabe

We were due for a broad core update, and a broad core update we received. The June 2025 Google core update was a red-hot update that rolled out on June 30th right before the July 4th holiday weekend. The update took 16 days to fully roll out, which was shorter than Google said it could … Read more

The Case for ASC: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others need to build AI Search Console reporting ASAP to provide site owners much-needed AI Search data

July 9, 2025 Glenn Gabe

Like I said in my previous post about AI Search traffic, AI Search is here, it’s growing, and it’s important to analyze. It’s still a tiny piece of traffic for most sites (less than 1%), but again, it’s growing. Based on that growth, many site owners are extremely interested in understanding their visibility in AI … Read more

AI Search traffic versus organic search traffic.

AI Search Currently Drives Less Than 1% of Traffic To Most Sites, Google Is Still Dominant, and Watch The Long-term Risk of Ignoring Google Search

June 25, 2025June 25, 2025 Glenn Gabe

In this post, I’ll explain how to set up AI Search tracking in Google Analytics 4 to view the difference between AI Search traffic compared to Google Search and organic search overall. I’ll also explain how ignoring Google Search could lead to a drop in quality, which could cause problems with Google’s broad core updates … Read more

The Forgotten Coupling of clicks and impressions.

The Forgotten Coupling – With AI Overviews Surging in Web Search, Don’t Overlook Image Search, Video Mode, and the News Tab in Search

June 16, 2025June 16, 2025 Glenn Gabe

With the rise and surge of AI Overviews, and soon AI Mode, site owners are dealing with an unprecedented situation from a search traffic standpoint. Impressions in search might be stable, or even increasing, yet clicks might be dropping. And that’s often due to AI Overviews ranking in the SERPs for important queries that typically … Read more

How to measure the impact of AIOs on clicks and click-through rate

How to measure the impact of AI Overviews on clicks and click-through rate using third-party AIO data, the Google Search Console API, and Analytics Edge

May 28, 2025 Glenn Gabe

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use AI Overview data from Semrush, ahrefs, and Sistrix and combine that with GSC data exported via the Search Console API. The resulting spreadsheet could uncover the true impact to clicks and click-through rate based on AIOs ranking in the SERPs for your queries. At I/O last … Read more

Is it safe to auto-translate content at scale using AI?

Is it safe? Does Google’s evolving view of auto-translated content, and lack of action with Reddit’s AI translations, open the floodgates for site owners?

June 11, 2025May 5, 2025 Glenn Gabe

Update: June 11, 2025Google finally sent me a statement after I asked if they sanctioned the Reddit AI translation situation. I also asked if it was ok now to use AI translations since Reddit was heavily doing that across countries. They have published tens of millions of urls with AI-translated content. Like I originally covered … Read more

How to compare hourly data from Google Search Console via the GSC API and Analytics Edge

How to compare hourly Google Search Console Data (GSC) to track impact from major algorithm updates using the GSC API and Analytics Edge [Tutorial]

April 16, 2025April 15, 2025 Glenn Gabe

When a major algorithm update rolls out, it’s often helpful to view hourly data in Google Analytics to see the impact in near-real time. If a site is impacted heavily (surging or dropping), you can typically see when the update actually lands and the stark difference in traffic when that happens. One of my most … Read more

Why news and media publishers need to link out.

When Links Go Wrong: Why News And Media Publishers Need To Embrace Earned Links And Ditch Nofollow [Publisher FAQs]

April 9, 2025April 8, 2025 Glenn Gabe

While performing a link authority gap analysis recently for several companies, I noticed a common (and disturbing) theme. The sites had earned powerful links from major news and media publishers, yet the links were nofollowed. Or worse, those sites were mentioned based on their hard work and research, yet they weren’t linked to at all. … Read more

Reddit AI translations have scaled across languages and Google rankings are booming

June 13, 2025March 27, 2025 Glenn Gabe

But should rankings in Google be surging for that AI translated content? In my post I explain the Reddit surge across countries, the translated content that’s ranking well, what Google’s stance has been about machine translating content, and more. Update: June 12, 2025Google finally sent me a statement about Reddit’s AI translation situation after I … Read more