GSQi Blog

The Gabeback Machine

Documenting Google’s site-level evaluation and impact on search rankings using the ‘Gabeback Machine’ [Googler Quotes, Videos, Documentation and more]

It’s not like all urls on a site suddenly become low quality overnight… It’s a site-level adjustment that can impact rankings across an entire site. Update: November 19, 2024: Google just updated its “Guide to Search ranking systems” page to include a paragraph right up top about using site-wide signals and classifiers. You can read … Read more

A Nightmare on Affiliate Street

A Nightmare on Affiliate Street – How Google is picking off sites one by one that are violating its ‘Site reputation abuse’ spam policy

Update: I heard from Google’s Danny Sullivan and he confirmed that Google is not testing its ‘Site reputation abuse’ algorithm at this time. So the drops are from other changes that Google is pushing that must be impacting those affiliate directories strongly. Update 2: I just received a response from Google after following up to … Read more

Mobile SEO problems in Google's mobile-first indexing world

PSA: The importance of catching sneaky mobile SEO problems in Google’s mobile-first indexing world [Case Study and Tools]

In 2017 I wrote a post covering the risks of having mobile SEO problems as Google’s move to mobile-first indexing was approaching. That post focused more on sites running m-dots and the various issues that could arise based on Google’s plans to use the mobile version of a page for indexing. Well, we’re now in … Read more

Hijacking the back button and SEO

Hijacking The Back Button and SEO: Gaming Navboost, Exploring Google Spam Policies, And What It Might Signal About Your Aggressive Advertising Situation

In an effort to keep users on their sites, some publishers have hijacked the browser back button by providing a feed of articles that drives users to more publisher content, including sponsored content and ads. That’s versus allowing them to return to the sites they visited from… Disabling, or hijacking the back button, is a … Read more

Google's hidden gems update impacted forums heavily across the web

Beyond Reddit and Quora: How Google’s Hidden Gems Update Yielded Explosive Growth In Search Visibility For Many Forums

In May of 2023 Google wrote a blog post where it explained it was planning to update its systems to surface “hidden gems”, or content written from a “personal or expert point of view”. We eagerly awaited that update when the ‘fall of insane updates’ arrived including three core updates, a massive helpful content update, … Read more

Google's site reputation abuse spam policy

Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy and why an algorithmic approach to enforcing violations is the way forward

Google began enforcing its site reputation abuse spam policy on May 7, 2024 after announcing the policy two months earlier (when the March 2024 core update rolled out). At that time, we didn’t know if enforcement would be handled via manual actions, an algorithm update, or a combination of both. It ended up being just … Read more

How to export Google translated results from Search Console by country

How to bulk export translated results from Google Search Console by country via the GSC API and Analytics Edge

Google recently announced that it expanded translated results in the search results to more languages, which was great to see. Also, it’s important to understand the data is available in Google Search Console’s performance reporting (and available via the API with some added benefit). I’ll explain more about that soon. But while speaking with site … Read more

The Ad Experience Report in Google Search Console and how it fails site owners.

The Ad Experience Report in Google Search Console: Why It Fails Site Owners, How It Provides A False Sense of Security, And How It Could Be Improved

In 2017 Google announced the Ad Experience Report in Search Console. I remember the announcement like it was yesterday. The overarching idea was brilliant. Provide a set of reports that let site owners know when their advertising situation yielded a terrible user experience. And they also announced that if a site was failing a review, … Read more

March 2024 Google Core Update Case Study

Google March 2024 Core Update Case Study: A tale of four tremors, reversals, and a great example of the counterbalancing of systems

This is my second post in a series about the March 2024 broad core update. Again, it was a huge update with many moving parts, so I wanted to cover several interesting things that went on versus writing just one post. For this post, I’m going to cover a very interesting case study that underscores … Read more

How to remove content and links from Google's AI Overviews

How to remove content and links from Google’s AI Overviews by using ‘preview controls’ like nosnippet, data-nosnippet, and max-snippet [Case Study]

Update: May 21, 2024 – My post is BACK in the AI overview, even when using nosnippet. I have provided more information below about that, including a screenshot. Update: May 22, 2024 – Google’s John Mueller replied to me after checking with the team working on AI overviews. The link card should drop out over … Read more