Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google has updated its guide for optimizing for generative AI search help document to clarify that (1) LLMS.txt files don’t help or hurt with search rankings and (2) AI files, markdown files, etc are not used in Google Search.

Google has finally fixed the link report within Google Search Console. It was broken for the past few weeks and all Google did back then was a temporary “fix” to revert the data to a previous state. But now that report is showing new, normal link data.

Google has a new help document in the Google Search Console tools and reporting section named Platform property tooltips. I don’t see any other information about this document but it does imply that a new report or tool is coming to Search Console.

The folks over at Schema.org have added usage statistics to each schema type. So if you want to see which schema type is used more, you can just check Schema.org. For example, author schema is used on over 10 million domains but event schema is used o…

Google not only updated its advice on hiring an SEO document, but also created a new one named Google Search’s guidance on using third-party SEO tools, services, and advice. This document drills into how to evaluate the advice you get from these source…

Google has updated its help document titled Do you need an SEO? Google said the changes are to help when “evaluating your SEO’s recommendations and tools, along with other minor updates to the page to simplify and modernize the content.” But the docum…

Here is the monthly Google webmaster report – the June 2026 edition – where I cover all the larger SEO and webmaster related Google Search news that you may want to catch up on over the past week. Yes, we had the big Google May 2026 core update, with …

Google has announced the new Search Console Search Generative AI performance reports and a toggle to block your site from showing in AI responses. This is available currently only for a small subset of UK site owners, but it will expand globally at som…

John Mueller from Google said that the Google Search Quality Raters guidelines are not a guide for search rankings. Meaning, the content in those guidelines is not a blueprint on how to rank your website in Google Search.

Google has confirmed another bug with the Search Console Discover performance report on May 21st. Google said there was another data logging issue that may cause a decrease in clicks and impressions for May 21, 2026.

Since Google launched AI Overviews (and AI Mode), there was an apparent lag or delay from when a web page would be removed from the Google Search index, including after getting a manual action penalty, to when it would also be removed from the AI Overv…

For many many years, some SEOs have a strategy of breaking up their XML sitemap files into categories. SEOs do it for various reasons, sometimes it is dependent on the site and site structure.

Are you the type of SEO that digs into all the Google Search Console reporting every single day, to find technical issues or other problematic issues? Or do you sit back and just wait for an email from Search Console warning you about an issue you need…

It looks like the Google Search Console link report has gone haywire and is broken pretty badly. Tons of SEOs are seeing zero links in the report, whereas others are seeing huge drops in the link counts in the report.

Google added the hasAdultConsideration property to the Merchant listing and Product variant documentation, and it is now officially supported and listed as a recommended property for both Merchant listing and Product variant structured data with Google…

Google has added markdown files, .md.txt files, to the Google Search help documents. But John Mueller from Google said that these are not being used for Search or generative AI responses in Search.

On Friday, Google published a new help document named Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search. This document covers much of what Googlers have said over the years, including a myth-busting section that will trigger some in t…

On Friday, Google published a new help document named Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search. This document covers much of what Googlers have said over the years, including a myth-busting section that will trigger some in t…

Google’s John Mueller said, “The indexing API is inundated by bloggers trying to act like legitimate sites.” This means that Google needs to be more careful about who and what they accept through the Google indexing API.

Google updated the leading paragraph in the search spam policies to clarify that the policies apply to the Google Search AI responses, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode (or whatever else is AI-generated). Google said, “the Google Search spam policies al…