seo

Google’s “From Sources Across The Web” Search Feature – A Knowledge Graph and Carousel Frankenstein That’s Hard To Ignore

I was recently performing a SERP analysis for a client and noticed some big differences in performance when comparing mobile to desktop. For example, clicks and click-through rate were much lower on mobile than desktop for certain queries. And when checking the mobile SERPs for those queries, it wasn’t long before I could see the … Read more

Web Stories Powered by AMP – 12 Tips and Recommendations For Creating Your First Story

I’ve been following the progression of Web Stories (formerly called AMP stories) since 2018 when the developer preview launched, and they have been hard to ignore recently. Google has been pushing the Story format pretty hard over the past year and I’ve seen stories show up more and more both in Search and in Discover. … Read more

Visualizing The SEO Engagement Trap – How To Use Behavior Flow In Google Analytics To View User Frustration [Case Study]

When thinking about content quality, it’s incredibly important to meet or exceed user expectations based on query. If your content cannot do that, then users can end up extremely frustrated as they search Google, click through your listing in the search results, scan your page, and not find what they were looking for. And that … Read more

The May 2020 Google Core Update – 4 Case Studies That Emphasize The Complexity Of Broad Core Algorithm Updates

{Update July 2022: I just published my post about the May 2022 broad core update with five micro-case studies covering drops and surges.} On Monday May 4, 2020 Google pushed another broad core update, which are only released three to four times per year. They are huge updates, global, and can have a significant impact … Read more

How To Remove An Image From Google Search Using The Outdated Content Tool (When The Image Was Published On Another Site)

There are times that pesky image search results stick around on Google even when those images have been removed from the web (or at least you think they have been removed from the web). I’ve received many calls over the years about this very situation. And many times, the images that people want to remove … Read more

Chrome’s Timeline For Blocking Mixed Content – Examples of Blocking, How SEOs Can Test Pages, and How To Prepare For Mixed Images in Chrome 81

In October of 2019, Google announced a plan to gradually block mixed content over time. Mixed content is a common issue across sites where secure pages attempt to load insecure content. For example, loading an image file over http from an https page. There are security risks associated with that, so Chrome wants to eliminate … Read more

Revisiting The SEO Importance of Quality Indexation For Large-Scale Sites: Hunting High Indexation and Low Search Value By Directory [Case Study]

A Quick Reintroduction To Quality Indexation:I’ve covered the importance of what I call “quality indexation” many times in my posts about major algorithm updates. It’s an extremely important topic, especially for larger-scale sites. When I refer to quality indexation, I’m referring to the importance of making sure your highest quality content gets indexed, while ensuring … Read more

Google SafeSearch and SEO: How To Test If Your Site Is Being Filtered And How To Predict Future Filtering Using The Vision API

Update: June 5, 2025Google just updated its documentation for SafeSearch and there are some interesting changes and new information there. The new documentation covers allowing Google to fetch your video content, how to handle age gates, changes to how to group explicit content, and more. ————— For many site owners and SEOs, SafeSearch can be … Read more

User Comments And The Difference Between Indexable And Indexed – Are Blog And Article Comments Helping Your Site SEO-wise?

Update: June 23, 2020Disqus Indexing Bug Fixed By Google:Google’s Martin Splitt confirmed there was a glitch that was inhibiting Google from indexing some Disqus comments. That glitch has been fixed and Google is now indexing Disqus comments. You can read more about that below in my post. ———————————– While helping companies that have been impacted … Read more

Fixing A Google Images Indexing Problem Caused By Redirect Chains and Robots.txt Directives – Case Study

Google has done a lot of work over the past two years with Google Images. And all signs point to Google driving forward with even more new features and functionality. Although sometimes an afterthought for many companies when it comes to Search, Google Images can drive meaningful traffic. In addition, having your images properly indexed … Read more

The September 2019 Google Core Update – Case studies, health and medical volatility, Discover impact, “baby algorithms”, and revisiting the “kitchen sink” approach to remediation

Google typically pushes broad core ranking updates only a few times per year, and on September 24, 2019, they pushed yet another. Google’s Danny Sullivan pre-announced the update on Twitter and explained like previous core updates, it would be a global update and could take several days to fully roll out. Although it was quiet … Read more