AI Overviews were released in the US a couple of weeks ago, and after an initial backlash due to suboptimal results, they have been already updated with better detection mechanisms and filters, for higher quality answers. However, even if Google mentioned how they had found that “with AI Overviews, people use Search more, and are more satisfied with their results”, they haven’t yet provided us with a way to track them. Here are two ways to start doing it, to assess their impact on your Websites traffic, with a caveat to take into account: there’s a very high fluctuation of queries triggering t ..read more

Gary Illyes asked for alternatives to make hreflang simpler. But why? To summarize, this is what is wrong with hreflang at the moment: People think hreflang is a definitive signal for language/geolocation, when is not (it needs to align with others) so when Google doesn’t take it into account, site owners get frustrated. ⁠People also think they need to implement hreflang in every single URL of the site all the time, or end up doing it so due to tech constraints of their platforms, since most CMS still don’t give direct or flexible features for it and you need to rely on plugins/add-on’s that ..read more

Accelerate your ecommerce product pages SEO analysis with the “The Ecommerce Product Page SEO Validator” GPT that will help you identify the SEO issues and opportunities of your product page vs the ones of your top competitors. Start using it now. The Ecommerce Product Page SEO Validator assessment is based on the Ecommerce Product Page Optimization Checklist sheet you can also access here and use instead for your online stores product optimization process if you prefer. I hope this helps to improve your ecommerce product optimization status. La entrada The Ecommerce Product Page SEO GPT Val ..read more

I’ve created an SGE traffic risk assessment checklist to help you identify the potential risk for your own top customer journey queries: Verify the SGE inclusion for major traffic and conversion driver terms you target, representative of different intents Identify the traffic erosion risk to prioritize action depending on SGE type, inclusion and query fulfillment Take a look at the already SGE featured pages and analyze their characteristics vs yours to identify opportunities Access the sheet and copy it here. I’ll be sharing a video in Crawling Mondays soon showing how to use the sheet too ..read more

I’ve been continuously playing and monitoring Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) still in test results for my SEO clients and my own sites’ key queries through the customer journey since the test release a few months back. As a result, I have posted in the past about my initial SGE thoughts, as well as the potential SGE impact on popular Black Friday and Cybermonday queries traffic -if it was released as it is now-. Even if Sundar Pichai from Google has said that they “will get it right” before it’s officially launched, the uncertainty of generative search has been listed as one of th ..read more

What scares SEOs the most in 2023? What are the new SEO nightmares that worry us and the persisting ones? I had the great opportunity to present about it a few days ago at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich, and would like to go through some of the top outcomes here too. I asked around on social media and got responses that can be categorized into 4 main areas, that have different levels of control as well as potential (negative) effect: The uncertainty of Google generative search  The unpredictability of Google core updates Overlooking configurations affecting crawlability a ..read more

After a few months, Google is still testing its new SGE experience, which has gone through a few updates and refinements, including adding links directly in snapshots and decreasing initial visibility, among others. Even if Sundar Pichai has mentioned how they want to “get it right“, it’s understandable to be nervous about its potential impact on the most valuable scenarios, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday top queries. Let’s go through them to assess it. Black Friday Deals and Black Friday Deals 2023: An informational snapshot complementing blended organic search results What’s the exper ..read more

I just got access to Google’s Search Lab, and after testing Google’s SGE for a couple of hours, here are my initial thoughts: 1. For broader informational queries like “Shoulder Workout”, “email marketing software” or “how to teach a dog to roll over” This query is ranked by how-to’s guides, videos carousels, and image packs. The SGE result shows directly a list of exercises, my initial reaction is to click *on them* to see more about each but they’re not clickable. There’s a carousel with a mix of rather repetitive guides and videos listed at the right, since many of which are in the ranked ..read more

Digital marketing campaigns, content marketing, and SEO processes that don’t leverage the opportunities given by the latest AI functionalities and tools; to improve the speed while improving -or at the very least, keeping- the quality of the outcome, will eventually struggle to be competitive in a not-so-far future. This is why it’s critical for digital marketers, content marketers and SEOs to: Start integrating AI functionalities within their workflows while ensuring that the relevant output validation is in place -and avoid any tasks on autopilot-. To effectively specify AI prompts -which a ..read more

The release of ChatGPT by OpenAI (chatbot built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 that interacts in a conversational way) at the end of last month became a tipping point for AI that took the world, including the SEO industry, by storm due to the comprehensiveness and quality of answers, even making Google’s management to issue a ‘code red’ due to its rising popularity to look for information. However, it’s important to be aware of its limitations, many of which were explained at the time of its release, and in this and this comprehensive guides covering ChatGPT by Roger Montti, like not being aware o ..read more