Whenever Google announces a new core update, such as the March 2025 core update announced today, I always want to immediately check the rankings of my clients, especially those who have been trying to recover following a previous core update. Yes, I know that rankings will fluctuate and we should not check until the update […] The post Use ChatGPT Operator to check your rankings immediately following a Google Core Update appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

AI Mode is a new experimental feature, currently available in Google Labs. It’s quite possible that AI Mode becomes the regular way that people search.  Let’s have an early look at AI mode, understanding that it is currently an experiment and will change over time. It turns out that the websites shown in AI mode […] The post AI mode ranks sites differently than traditional Search. It uses a “query fan-out” technique. appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

If you're looking to understand how Google ranks content for relevance and helpfulness, especially after recent updates like the March 2024 core update, this article breaks down Google's key signals: meaning, relevance, quality, usability, and context. To improve your SEO, focus on creating original, high-quality content that deeply satisfies user intent, demonstrates expertise and authority […] The post How Google determines relevancy & helpfulness appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

I finally dug into the January 2025 update of the rater guidelines and there are a lot of changes! (Here is the previous version if you want to compare.) Why do we care about the QRG? While the quality raters have no direct effect on your rankings, their ratings help Google determine whether the changes […] The post New in the rater guidelines – filler content, scaled content abuse and guidance around AI use appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

Google’s latest earnings call was all about AI. AI Overviews are popular (well, I mean, unless you are an SEO). We will see them appear for more queries. Project Mariner and Project Astra are going to change how we interact with computers. And Search is going to change significantly over the next year.  AI Overviews […] The post More AI innovations coming to Search – Google’s Q4 2024 earnings call appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

For my monthly clients, I’ve been having regular conversations with ChatGPT and Gemini to see whether the tools recommend them. For one client, ChatGPT referenced competitors, but not them. This was interesting. "The algorithm prioritizes widely recognized sources (sounds like EEAT to me!), recent updates, or content that matches the search phrasing." Naturally, I next asked how they […] The post You can ask ChatGPT why it didn’t recommend you. (Will schema help?) appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

E-E-A-T is Google's way of taking all of the signals they have available to them to determine whether you are known as a go-to source for your topics. In this post we'll explore using LLMs to learn more about your E-E-A-T, and better yet, get inspiration on how to improve upon it. When it comes […] The post Using Gemini to get insight into Your E-E-A-T appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

The December core update was a quick one, running from December 12-18, 2024. Following this,  Google launched a surprise spam update only days after the core update finished. It ran from December 19-26.  There are many comments on Barry Schwartz's article on the spam update with site owners reporting significant declines in traffic. Some are […] The post Understanding the December 2024 Core and Spam updates appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

Google recently held an event in which they invited a small group of website owners who had been impacted strongly by the helpful content system. I’ll recap some of the great blog posts and tweet threads written about this. Then, I’d like to think upon what we can learn from what Google representatives said. The […] The post What we can learn from the Google creators summit for HCU impacted sites appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more

Did Google start to prioritize expertise over authority in September 2024? In this article, we'll look at sections of Forbes and CNN that saw traffic dips. In Glenn Gabe’s most recent article, he wrote about sites that were possible targets for abusing Google’s site reputation abuse policy were seeing declines. Google responded saying that this […] The post Analyzing Sep 2024 traffic drops for Forbes & CNN: Sections of sites unrelated to the brand were affected appeared first on Marie Haynes ..read more