Google launched AI mode in search this week and with it, we lost some of the ability to turn off…
Month: May 2025
Europe Prepares The Open Web Index
Europe's Open Web Index: What SEOs Need to Know Europe is preparing to test something that could impact the foundation…
US vs Google AntiTrust Trial Closing Arguments Today
The U.S. government's antitrust case against Google is reaching its final phase (Reuters / NPR), and data access is emerging…
A Look at Todays Top Social Posting Tools
When I posted in the Pubcon Facebook group asking for recommendations on affordable, reliable social media scheduling tools, the thread…
Justices Pass on Google Keywords Trademark-Infringement Case
In a very closely watched case involving trademarked keywords in advertising against Google, the supreme court passed on hearing the…
Google Dodges Rumbles First of Two AntiTrust Law Suits
MediaPost reporting that the first of two law suits brought by Rumble has been dismissed on grounds it fell outside…
According to Google AI - No it's Not 2025
Google AI thinks it is 2024. The list of Google SGE/AIO/BARD/Gemini/ETAl slop stories continue to grow.
Karma Search Engine Review
Name: Karma Search URL: https://www.karmasearch.org Index: Brave Search API - Bing Ads Karma Search is a search engine with a…
SEO's Rejoice : Google Streamlines Account Switching Across Apps
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.
Seznam.cz: Search Engine Overview
While Seznam.cz is the leading native search engine in the Czech Republic, it commands around 11–15% of the local search…
Publisher Alliance Says AI Mode Is Theft!
A growing number of major news organizations are accusing Google of crossing the line with its new AI Mode. What…
Google Dials Back to Defcon 4 - Sergey Even Showed Up
In Dec of 2022, Google CEO Sundar Pichai famously called a "code red" meeting. It moved Google to it's…
AHREFS Study - Stunning New Report on AIO and AI Search Engines
..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...
New "Search" Report is Deeply Misleading - Search is NOT Up
A highly cited report came out earlier this week from BrightEdge. It even had it's own press release (which should…
Fresh Doc Dump: PageRank, Navboost, and RankEmbed: DOJ Papers Outline Google’s Stack
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.
Qwant Search Engine Review
Qwant is a French search engine launched in 2013 that positions itself as a privacy-focused alternative. It emphasizes user privacy…
SEOs: The Unsung Heroes Behind Google’s Trillion-Dollar Success
Let's be honest: SEOs have been doing Google's dirty work for decades. We clean up the web. We format content…
Google Updates Logo - Goes Full Gradient Rainbow
In a move that some will surely see as political, Google went a more full rainbow gradient with their logo…
SEO's Again Being Targeted by Google AdWords Phishing Ads
Heads Up! Attackers are at it again - purchasing Google Ads targeting keywords related to SEMrush (they also did this…
Avoiding the AI Tell: Editing Tricks That Make Your Content Shine
Cleaning your AI output. There are a ton of "rewriters" out there right now. Variations on the theme of "casual",…
Googles Navboost - Serp Click Tracking is one of Googles Top Ranking Signals
“Giving traffic to publisher sites is kind of a necessary evil.” That quote from a former Google exec sets the tone. In this three-part series, we unpack NavBoost—Google’s behavior-driven ranking system that might influence more than PageRank ever did. From DOJ trial slides to buried log analyzers, this is the most important ranking revelation since PageRank. If you're still optimizing for keywords and backlinks without thinking about user signals, you're missing the biggest ranking factor no one is talking about.
“Bing Was Better Than I Thought” - What a Study on Search Engine Habits Really Tells Us
A new academic study has stirred up old debates about search engine loyalty and added fresh insight to the lethargic…
Google Held a Brunch for 7 Bloggers - Apparently Called it A "Summit"?
At first glance, Google throwing a summit for seven social media influencers sounds like a bad Onion headline.
Google will pay a $1.375 billion settlement to Texas over privacy
The bad news keeps coming on this Friday for Google. $1.375 Billion Settlement with Google Related to Texans’ Data Privacy…
Googles 5 Options and How it Decided to Force Websites into AI Usage
Before Google trained on half the web anyway, it floated six opt-out tiers that would have let publishers throttle indexing,…
Google Faces Heat on Three Fronts: Discrimination, Diplomacy, and Dangerous Devices
Google is waking up to a trifecta of global headaches today – each one a bit more absurd or than the last. From the courtroom to the classroom the tech giant is at the center of controversy, chaos, and questionable decisions.
AdSense Enters Chatbots: Google’s Quiet Move to Monetize AI Conversations
Google is quietly laying the groundwork to monetize conversational AI, starting with chatbot-based AdSense ads. After testing ad integrations with select AI startups like iAsk and Liner in 2024, Google is now inviting more chatbot developers to embed AdSense-style ads directly into their conversational experiences.
WSJ Article on Search : Even Big Media Gets A Clue - The Massive Change In Search
There was a search related story on WSJ that had some eyebrow raising quotes in it. The Wall Street Journal…
Cloudflare CEO Pulls FIRE Alarm: Google AI Is Breaking the Web's Economy! Search Is Broken!
Ten years ago, for every two pages Google scraped, you got one visitor, today, it’s six pages scraped for one visitor. And with AI? It’s 250 to 1… or 6,000 to 1!
Fun Fact Friday - Did you know?
Did you know? That the original purpose of YouTube was to be a video dating (ugh, hookup) site? That there…