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Views: 0Well, well, well. The BBC is very upset that an AI startup might be using its content to train a model. So upset, in fact, that it’s threatening legal action. According to The Guardian, Auntie Beeb sent a formal letter to Perplexity AI for allegedly downloading freely available on-the-web BBC articles. Hmm, it is something that’s been happening on…
Search Engine World
Views: 66Google’s newly introduced AI Mode was another reminder that organic finability is quickly changing. The ability of search engines to generate detailed answers to search queries often results in no clicks because users don’t need to research further, and most brand mentions in those answers are not even linked (prompting users to search brand names in Google before converting).…
Views: 6Bing has updated its logo – again. The “Microsoft” prefix is gone, and it’s back to just “Bing”. This marks a shift from the 2020 rebrand that bundled it as “Microsoft Bing.” Logo tweaks aren’t new for Bing. In 2016, it pivoted to green. Earlier versions played with yellow and blue. But the 2020 change drew criticism, especially from…
Views: 21OpenAI’s June 13 update quietly rolled out one of the most meaningful improvements to ChatGPT’s core functionality to how it handles search. Whether you’re using ChatGPT for research, writing help, or troubleshooting, these changes make the interaction feel faster, smarter, and more useful. What’s New: Smarter, More Context-Aware Search The new release is better at understanding your intent, following…
Views: 19Move over Fox News and Newsmax as Google is quickly becoming the internet’s top source for misinformation. When the company dropped seven figures to help fund Trump’s inaugural, many SEOs saw it as a calculated move tied to its ongoing antitrust troubles. Now, we wonder if this wasn’t part of a broader content, political bias, and editorial shift within…
Views: 762 Google has launched Audio Overviews in Search Labs, allowing users to listen to AI-generated summaries of complex topics instead of reading them. This feature is currently available for English queries in the U.S. through the Google app on Android and iOS. The idea, according to Google, is to help people learn hands-free or on the go. When enabled,…
As we continue this unwelcome journey from Querying search engines to Prompting search engine, we seem to be loosing more and more SEO data. We have to find new ways to track visitors. Googles adoption of text fragments gives us a fresh opportunity to do that. Especially in the 'snippet' AIO era where Google is linking to #textfragments more than they every have.
Views: 17The Linux Foundation has just announced the FAIR Package Manager Project, an initiative that could dramatically improve stability and trust across the open source CMS ecosystem. For those managing sites built on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or any open source platform, plugin chaos and version mismatches are a common headache. Many site owners have dealt with broken themes, outdated modules,…
Google just rolled out public testing for
Search Live, a feature inside its AI Mode that lets users update and personalize answers in real-time. It surfaces live sports, weather, and stock updates. Android users can trigger it with a swipe gesture from inside Gemini...
Views: 44Google images is one of the largest hosts of adult images on the entire internet. We don’t know if there are accurate figures, but it is clear that Google hosts a massive cache of porn. Google just updated its SafeSearch and explicit content documentation. Translation: If your site shows skin, you’re on notice – again. But now, at least,…
Views: 25As referrals fall from search engines, we believe there will be sites that forgo indexing. One thing that the big search engines do is provide webmasters with a means of site search. Often those searches are better served by the engines. Leaving Google’s index is a bitter pill for most sites. Google’s search dominance endures because its ranking formula…
... using ChatGPT for internal linking isn't as simple as dropping in a prompt and watching SEO gold appear. Because internal linking requires learned context and that is something ChatGPT doesn't handle well by default. It needs to see the full page to understand the surrounding content and to avoid boilerplate html like footers and nav menus. That level of awareness isn't built-in unless you prompt it carefully.
...has agreed to invest $500 million over the next decade to overhaul its global compliance systems. This move is part of a proposed settlement in a shareholder-led antitrust lawsuit filed in 2021 by a Michigan pension fund.
Views: 36Google launched AI mode in search this week and with it, we lost some of the ability to turn it off. What still works? AI mode Switch in Labs Open Chrome and ensure you are signed in to your Google Account with Incognito mode turned off. Click on the “Labs” icon at the top of the page and navigate…
Views: 26The U.S. government’s antitrust case against Google is reaching its final phase (Reuters / NPR), and data access is emerging as a key component in addressing a remedy. Federal Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled last August that Google illegally protected its monopoly in search, is now considering how to restore legitimate competition. Closing arguments set for this Friday (30…
Views: 47When I posted in the Pubcon Facebook group asking for recommendations on affordable, reliable social media scheduling tools, the thread quickly turned into a crowdsourced review of what is working for digital marketers today. From the sky-high pricing of legacy tools like Hootsuite and Loomly, to praise for leaner options like Publer, Metricool, and Zoho Social, it was clear…
Views: 12In a very closely watched case involving trademarked keywords in advertising against Google, the supreme court passed on hearing the case. The case had been in the Ninth Circuit where they had held that buying a competitors keywords was not a violation of trademark and that it did not violate the Lanham Act. At the heart of this case…
Views: 9MediaPost reporting that the first of two law suits brought by Rumble has been dismissed on grounds it fell outside the time frame alotted for such suites. Background Rumble sued Google in January 2021, claiming two forms of unfair advantage for YouTube: Rigged search results to boost YouTube rankings over Rumble Android licensing tied to mandatory YouTube installs Timeline…
Google AI thinks it is 2024. The list of Google SGE/AIO/BARD/Gemini/ETAl slop stories continue to grow.
Views: 37Europe’s Open Web Index: What SEOs Need to Know Europe is preparing to test something that could impact the foundation of search: the Open Web Index (OWI). It’s a major step toward digital autonomy – both Euro and US based SEOs should be paying attention. What Is the Open Web Index? The OWI is a public infrastructure project designed…
For SEOs managing multiple Google properties, the daily non-stop friction of jumping between accounts: Search Console, Analytics, Business Profiles, Ads, etc. has been a long-standing annoyance. That friction is finally easing a bit.
Views: 308A growing number of major news organizations are accusing Google of crossing the line with its new AI Mode. What was once a slow drip of concern has erupted into open condemnation, with the News/Media Alliance calling it nothing short of “the definition of theft.” News outlets claim Google’s new AI Mode is ‘theft’ of their content. Indeed, Google’s…
Views: 12 In Dec of 2022, Google CEO Sundar Pichai famously called a “code red” meeting. It moved Google to it’s highest threat level in it’s history. Google shipped so many AI products today, that it really appears as though Google has dialed back the threat level. Clearly Google has leveraged the monopoly power of the search engine to…
..a must read comprehensive study analyzing 55.8m AIOs across 590m searches. The stunning report includes some sobering statistics for SEO’s. Top 50 domains get 30% of all AIO shoutouts...
Views: 174A highly cited report came out earlier this week from BrightEdge. It even had it’s own press release (which should always be a concern for ‘news’ stories). In fact, rather than raw impression counts, SEOs are now looking at qualitative signals like Google’s “snippet” text-fragment appearing in referral URLs – a sign that a real user clicked through from…
Google’s own court-filed slide deck just spilled more tea on Navboost, and the details punch a few holes in years of SEO guesswork. The newly released trove goes further, mapping more than 100 raw signals into a ranking stew that still leans on old-school PageRank while layering in LLM toys like RankEmbed, re-ranking Twiddlers, and the rumored mysterious quality metric called Q*Star.
Views: 130Let’s be honest: SEOs have been doing Google’s dirty work for decades. We clean up the web. We format content so their bots don’t choke. We spoon-feed them useless tags like schema. And we keep playing by their rules, even when they rewrite them mid-game, all the while scraping our content for AI answers. While Google claims to “organically…