GSQi Blog

Wikipedia Reliable Sources List

Is Your Site Reliable? Meet Wikipedia’s Reliable Sources List: Another Proxy For Google’s Quality Raters

From “Generally reliable” to “Blacklisted”, you can find scores and discussions for many sites whose reliability is frequently discussed by Wikipedia editors. And as a bonus, I’ll explain how to find when a site is used as a source across Wikipedia. Based on helping many companies over the years that have been impacted by major … Read more

The evolution of Google's HCU

5 ways that Google’s helpful content system could evolve based on the evolution of previous punitive algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin

I’m going to flip the script for this post, which I rarely do. I’ll start with where I think the helpful content system can go from here and then provide the why after (for those that want to better understand some background about Google’s punitive algorithm updates). Here we go. I think Google’s helpful content … Read more

Google Note experiment

How to find Google Notes for your website and what those Notes could signal about quality, UX, the ad experience, and more

Google released Notes as an experiment on November 15, 2023, which is essentially a global commenting system that can appear in the search results, in Discover, and now while browsing a webpage via “SGE while browsing”. It enables anyone that’s part of the experiment to post a note for a specific url and read Notes … Read more

How to find embedded YouTube videos that have been removed using Screaming Frog

How To Find Embedded YouTube Videos That Are Unavailable or Marked Private Using Screaming Frog

There’s nothing more frustrating than coming across articles containing YouTube videos that have been removed for some reason. It’s extremely frustrating for users and can easily elude site owners (especially on large-scale sites). And from an SEO perspective, addressing unavailable videos can avoid UX barriers and unhappy users. So join me as we go hunting … Read more

How to use data-nosnippet

How to use data-nosnippet to block specific content from being used in a Google search snippet [Experiment]

For whatever reason, I’ve seen an uptick in site owners reaching out to me recently about search snippets appearing that they aren’t happy about. For example, Google is selecting text for a search snippet that they simply don’t want to be displayed in the search results. The site owners reaching out didn’t know if they … Read more

Highly visible and low-quality. A most dangerous SEO combination.

Highly Visible and Low Quality (or Unhelpful) – A Most Dangerous SEO Combination

As I’ve been helping companies that were heavily impacted by the “2023 Fall of Insane Algorithm Updates”, I have once again heard from several site owners that had their highest levels of traffic right before getting hammered. I’ll cover more about that soon, but it’s something I have seen for a long time. And now … Read more

The long-term impact of Google's reviews updates.

Analyzing the long-term impact of Google’s reviews updates and what that could mean for sites impacted by the helpful content update (HCU)

Google rolled out the November 2023 reviews update on November 8, 2023 and announced it is moving to more of a continuous rollout (so the November update will probably be the last reviews update announced). That’s unless significant changes to the system are implemented (like expanding to additional languages or other major changes implemented). As … Read more

Low-quality AI user-generated content and Google's helpful content system

Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU) and the danger of low-quality AI user-generated content

Including tips and recommendations for helping site owners navigate the AI UGC triple (detection, volume, and pace of lower-quality AI user-generated content.) The term “low-quality AI user-generated content” is a mouthful, but it’s an important topic for site owners that allow UGC to be published on their sites. And I have come across several tough … Read more

Google's broad core updates

Google’s Broad Core Algorithm Updates: Important Points And Frequently Answered Questions For Site Owners And SEOs

The past two months in Google Land has been one of the most volatile times I can remember in the search industry. Google released the August broad core update, then a powerful helpful content update in September, then the October broad core update, and also sandwiched in a spam update which overlapped the October core … Read more

September 2023 HCU

The September 2023 Google Helpful Content Update – Did Google’s Announcement in April About Page Experience Foreshadow What We’re Seeing With The Current HCU(X)?

Based on what I’m seeing with sites heavily impacted by the HCU, and what Google explained in its April documentation update, the combination of unhelpful content and poor UX can be an extremely problematic combination for site owners. Update: 10/2/23:Included a section about Google’s latest blog post on web.dev which covers how to effectively run … Read more

Bing's Sitemap Index Coverage Reporting

How To Find Lower-Quality Content Being Excluded From Indexing Using Bing’s XML Sitemap Coverage Report (and Its “Content Quality” Flag)

Bing finally rolled out its XML Sitemap Coverage Report in Bing Webmaster Tools, which is a great addition for site owners. Using the report, you can check indexing levels based on the urls being submitted via XML sitemaps. This is similar to what Google offers in its Coverage reporting, but it’s great to have another … Read more