Practical digital marketing insights, tested in the real world.
AI search has not changed what makes a page worth reading. It has changed what a ranking is worth. The same page that ranked third last year still ranks third; the difference is how many people now get their answer without ever seeing it. That difference has been measured properly. In a randomised field experiment […]
No. Google's stated position is that content is judged on quality regardless of how it was produced. The policy that does apply is scaled content abuse, and the detail people miss is in its own wording: it applies regardless of how the content is created. That phrase is doing deliberate work. A hundred thin generated […]
Google's own position, stated publicly by Gary Illyes at Pubcon in September 2023: "I think they are important, but I think people overestimate the importance of links. I don't agree it's in the top three. It hasn't been for some time." That sentence should have ended a whole industry of tactics, and it did not. […]
Search Console has more reports than anyone needs, and five of them answer almost every question worth asking. One of those five did not exist three months ago. The others are not useless — they are situational, and treating them as a routine checklist is how people spend an hour a week learning nothing. This […]