Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google had yet another Search Console reporting bug, this time with the Discover performance report. Between May 7, 2026 and May 8, 2026, Google confirmed a data logging issue that can result in the report showing fewer clicks and impressions. It is …

A new study from Ahrefs says that adding schema does not and did not boost citations on any of the AI platforms including Google (AI Overviews or AI Mode), ChatGPT and others. “Adding schema produced no major uplift in citations on any platform,” Ahre…

Google announced on Friday that Google Search, as of May 7th, no longer shows FAQ rich results within the Google Search results. Google will also drop reporting on it within Google Search Console and the respective APIs in the future.

Google proposed a number of changes to the EU in order to avoid fines from the European Union. One of those changes is around the site reputation abuse policy, which the EU watchdog said directly impacts a common and legitimate way for publishers to m…

Google posted new developer documentation for how to authenticate requests with Web Bot Auth. This is a “new cryptographic protocol that helps websites to validate that bots are authentic,” Google wrote.

A month ago, Google posted that between the dates of May 13, 2025 through April 27, 2026, just about 50 weeks, there was a “logging error prevented Search Console from accurately reporting impressions.” Google updated the post to now say “This issue h…

A month ago, Google posted that between the dates of May 13, 2025 through April 27, 2026, just about 50 weeks, there was a “logging error prevented Search Console from accurately reporting impressions.” Google updated the post to now say “This issue h…

SEOs and site owners are always complaining about indexing issues with Google Search. Why is this page not indexed, why is that page not indexed. But some seasoned SEOs are asking if Google is more picky about what it indexes in the past month or so, …

I missed last month’s Google Webmaster Report, so I am combining both April and May into one big report. Google completed rolling out the March 2026 spam update in March, and started the March core update, which completed in April. We also had a lot …

As you know, Google announced a new search spam penalty for back button hijacking. Site owners have until June 15, 2026 to remove any such functionality from its site or it will be subject to a manual action and/or automated algorithmic adjustment. Now…

A couple of weeks ago, Google stunned many by saying that they updated their spam report to pass along all information to the site that you enter in the spam report. There was a lot of backlash to that and Google reverted, now saying if there is person…

Danny Sullivan from Google spoke at the Google Search Central event in Toronto a couple of days ago and a few of his slides spoke about it is important to produce “unique, authentic and non-commodity content.” And then Sullivan dug into what commodity…

Google’s John Mueller said the other day that “SEO is not belief-based, nobody knows everything, and it changes over time.” Super true, I’ve been covering SEO changes over the years and I spot this all the time.

Google’s John Mueller said that since SEO is complex, multifaceted, and resilient, you “can do a lot of things that don’t work & still do ok.” Meaning, you can mess up on several SEO things and still do well with search rankings.

Google Search Console seems to have a bug with the performance report, specific to the jobs listing and jobs search appearance filter. The report is showing zero impressions and clicks since the 16th of this month.

A Reddit thread asks if there are any issues with Google Search handling a domain name that has a single letter change in the domain name from another domain name. John Mueller from Google said that usually this is not a problem from Google Search.

Google rolled an important change with how AI Mode works yesterday and it can have a big impact on the experience for desktop users. Now when users click a link in AI Mode…

Google has made a number of updates to its Merchant Center product data specifications. Some changes went into effect on April 14, 2026 and others happen June 30, 2026 and January 31…

Google has posted a clarification that says it now “Google may use spam report submissions to take manual action against violations.” The update was posted here and added to the report spam page.

It’s been a while since Google has come out with a new search spam policy and penalty to accompany it with and now we have a new one, “back button hijacking.” Back button hijacking is something many of us were surprised Google didn’t specifically disal…