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SEO

Nick Fox New Lead Of Google Search; Replaced Prabhakar Raghavan

Barry Schwartz reports big leadership changes at Google Search, with Nick Fox taking over from Prabhakar Raghavan as the new head of the Knowledge & Information team, which includes Search, Ads, Geo, and Commerce products. Raghavan isn't leaving, even though he’s known as the man who killed Google Search - he's moving to a Chief Technologist role focusing on technical direction.

Major Publishers See Sharp Traffic Drops as Google Eyes Affiliate Content

Glenn Gabe covers how major publishers are experiencing significant visibility drops in their affiliate content sections. Despite Google stating they haven't officially launched their 'Site reputation abuse' algorithm, numerous high-profile sites like Forbes Advisor, AP News Buyline, Time Stamped, Fortune Recommends, and others have seen dramatic traffic decreases to their affiliate directories. Google clarified to him that their systems are being improved to better understand when content in subdomains or subfolders differs significantly from a site's main content.

My Take: There' are a couple key things mentioned in his updates right at the top. No algorithmic solution (I still don’t think they’ll have it for quite some time) and analyzing subfolder/subdomain topics from the site’s main content.

Google’s AI Fails At 43% Of Finance Queries, Study Finds

Robert Farrington shares concerning findings about Google's AI-powered search results in the financial sector. Their study of 100 finance-related queries revealed that Google AI Overviews were inaccurate or misleading 43% of the time. While the AI performed well on basic financial concepts, it struggled with nuanced topics like taxes, investing, and student loans.

The investigation found completely incorrect information in 12 instances, with the remaining errors being either misleading or missing crucial details. This high error rate is particularly troubling given that incorrect financial information could lead to costly mistakes for users.

My Take: This isn’t surprising as it’s the general issue with AI currently. The nuances and details are what’s missing. That’s why terms like information gain and gaps will continue to grow in usage.

SEO Ripples

• Vahan Petrosyan breaks down everything you need to know about properly implementing robots.txt files to optimize your site's crawl budget. He explains how it can improve crawling efficiency by telling search engines which pages to crawl and which to skip. The comprehensive guide covers both basic and advanced implementation strategies, from blocking unnecessary URLs to managing AI bot access.

• Matt Southern reports that Google has updated its Search documentation with clearer URL parameter guidelines. Stick to using "=" between key-value pairs and "&" to separate multiple parameters. While using other separators like colons or commas won't directly hurt your rankings, following these standards helps Google crawl your site more efficiently. This is especially important for e-commerce sites and CMSs that rely heavily on URL parameters for functionality.

• Google's John Mueller says Core Web Vitals won’t impact rankings, explaining that while they're a ranking factor, content quality is way more important. His pro tip for small site owners: focus on creating great content and maintaining a smooth user experience rather than obsessing over perfect performance metrics.

• Got a site with legacy AMP URLs still getting crawled? John Mueller says you've got two simple options: either keep your 301 redirects in place or completely remove the subdomain from your DNS. The good news? If you're running a site with around 500k pages, you shouldn't stress too much about crawl budget impact since AMP subdomains have their own separate crawl allocation.

• Google is sunsetting the Sitelinks Search Box feature after a decade of use. Starting November 21, 2024, this search box will be removed from search result snippets due to declining usage rates. Will you miss it?

AI

How to Incorporate Machine Learning in Your SEO Day-to-Day

Lazarina Stoy breaks down practical approaches for marketers to leverage ML without becoming technical experts. She shares examples using tools like Google Sheets templates and APIs to help readers get started quickly without extensive technical knowledge.

Google’s AI DJ Tool Brings Music Creation to the Masses

The GenMedia music team at Google DeepMind announced updates to their AI music creation tools, making music generation more accessible to everyone. The reimagined MusicFX DJ, developed in collaboration with six-time GRAMMY winner Jacob Collier, now offers real-time music generation with improved controls, audio quality, and sharing capabilities. Unlike traditional DJ tools, it generates brand new music by mixing musical concepts through text prompts, allowing users to combine genres, instruments, and vibes.

AI Ripples

• Anthropic just rolled out upgrades to their AI models, including a beefed-up Claude 3.5 Sonnet and a new model, Claude 3.5 Haiku, that matches Claude 3 Opus’s performance. The really cool part: they're introducing "computer use" capabilities in beta, letting Claude interact with computers just like humans do - clicking, typing, and navigating interfaces. While it's still experimental and sometimes clunky, early adopters like Replit and DoorDash are already putting it to work on complex tasks.

• Sam Altman dismissed rumors of a GPT-5 Orion release this year as "fake news" on X two hours after reports of OpenAI releasing it’s next big AI model, codenamed Orion, by December.

• Google DeepMind has outsourced SynthID, a tool that embeds invisible digital watermarks into AI-generated content. Whether it's images, text, audio, or video, SynthID can mark and identify AI-created material. For text specifically, it works by subtly adjusting token probability scores as content is generated. These watermarks stick around even after modifications like cropping images or compressing audio. They've open-sourced the tech through their Responsible Generative AI Toolkit and partnered with Hugging Face to make it widely available to developers.

• Adobe is taking a firm stance on AI adoption, with executives declaring that artists who don't embrace the technology will struggle to succeed in the evolving creative landscape. Despite potential backlash from artists concerned about their livelihoods, Adobe's data shows their Firefly AI features are their most-adopted products ever.

• Meta has inked its first major AI news deal with Reuters, allowing Meta's AI chatbot to cite and link to Reuters content when answering news-related queries across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. US users will start seeing Reuters citations and links beginning Friday, marking Meta's entry into the growing trend of AI companies partnering with news organizations.

CONTENT

Information Gain: How Top Content Leaders Win at SEO

Michael Ofei dives deep into the concept of "information gain" in SEO, explaining how unique and valuable content can lead to better rankings. Through interviews with content leaders from Angi, Rainbow Plant Life, and Wistia, he reveals how top websites consistently create content that stands out. He explores how Google evaluates new information through its knowledge graph and provides practical insights for implementing information gain in your content strategy. For example, he recommends aiming for 10-40% new information in SEO-driven content to balance search intent with adding value.

Google Trends for Journalists

Daniel Waisberg and Hadas Jacobi from Google's team share insights on leveraging Google Trends for data-driven journalism. They demonstrate how journalists can tap into billions of daily Google and YouTube searches to uncover meaningful stories and trends. Using natural disasters as an example, they walk through comparing search interests across different countries, analyzing regional variations, and interpreting spikes in search data.

In addition to the recent Google Trends videos, Goole has a new guide on leveraging Google Trends for search marketing.

LINK BUILDING

📝 Survey - State of Digital PR 2024 - BuzzStream

Help add your experiences to BuzzStream’s survey to get a gauge on the digital PR industry this year! Takes only 5-10 minutes.

Why SEOs are Hurting Digital PR

Andrew Holland challenges the current approach to digital PR in the SEO industry. He argues that the obsession with cost-per-link metrics is damaging the effectiveness of digital PR campaigns and stifling creativity. Instead of focusing solely on link acquisition costs, he advocates for evaluating digital PR based on its overall effectiveness in building brand authority and generating both quality backlinks and valuable brand mentions. He says that treating digital PR as a commodity leads to a race to the bottom, where agencies are forced to minimize risk and creativity to meet predetermined link quotas.

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

Digital Surfer Special Discount for Link Whisper! 🌊 🔗 

Link Whisper is a software tool developed by Spencer Haws (Niche Pursuits) that has one primary goal - help you rank better in Google with better managed and optimized internal links.

He’s offering Digital Surfers a special discount of $25 off for 72 hours only. This ends on Monday!

Spencer continues to release new features or updates every single month. Here’s a few of the top features:

• Get relevant link suggestions as you write content

• Quickly add new links to old posts

• Automatically add links based on keywords.

• Integrate with Google Search Console to make link suggestions even better.

• Full internal link reporting - my main use case

• Full dashboard for reporting on internal, external, and broken links

This $25 off discount doesn’t last long - Monday - so don’t wait:

1. Head over to LinkWhisper

2. Enter $25 discount code: DSURFER

Mozbar Chrome Extension Update

Moz updated their Chrome extension, but it’s not people don’t seem to like it. 1 star reviews are all over their web store listing since they released a few days ago. People are disliking it with a passion.

My Take: I used it as I browse the web to easily see the DA of sites since the icon has a badge number. Super easy and out of the way, not forcing me to click anything or forcing a dock bar that eats up window space. I’ll give it a little more time because I think they might bring that back after the reviews they’re getting.

CASE STUDY

How We Did It: Mastering Multi-Site SEO Case Study

Johnny Hughes shares a detailed case study on implementing multi-site SEO for the Orlando Economic Partnership (OEP). The organization faced challenges managing four disconnected web properties targeting different audiences - businesses, talent, investors, and media. Through strategic subdomain structuring and content organization, they transformed these separate sites into a cohesive digital presence under Orlando.org. The results: organic traffic increased by 287%, they ranked for 10,600 organic keywords, and saw a 1,105% boost in lead conversions while reducing cost per acquisition by 73.6%.

My Take: This is a great look into how important planning and organization are. There’s also the research that goes into what’s going to work for your audiences, which many people neglect to do.

NEWS

SEO The Board Game

Kyle Roof and IMG has created something unique - a physical board game that brings SEO concepts to life. This strategic 2-4 player game lets you compete as an SEO expert, buying and optimizing websites on your path to becoming the SEO kingpin. Players use white hat and black hat strategies, manage algorithm updates, and race to acquire five sites. It’s atvailable for pre-order at $79 with worldwide shipping for December 2024 delivery, but limited to only 500 copies. Take a look at the promo video on their site and see what you think.

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