What REALLY Gets Indexed and Ranked in Google

SEO

Google Sued by Chegg Over AI Overviews Hurting Traffic and Revenue

Chegg has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing its AI Overviews of siphoning traffic and damaging its revenue. The edtech company claims Google’s AI-generated answers keep users on Google instead of directing them to third-party sites. With Chegg's stock plunging and revenue down 24% YoY, the lawsuit raises a critical question: Will more companies challenge Google’s AI-driven search experience? Some of the key points:

• AI Overviews keep users on Google, reducing traffic to third-party sites.

• Chegg’s non-subscriber traffic dropped 49% in January 2025.

• Chegg accuses Google of monopoly maintenance and unjust enrichment.

• Google allegedly uses Chegg’s content without fair compensation.

• Google defends AI Overviews, claiming they increase content discovery.

• Case could set a precedent for AI-generated search results disputes.

Google Indexing Study: Insights From 16 Million Pages

Google’s indexing is more unpredictable than ever, and most content never even makes it into search results. Joel Cariño’s deep dive into 16 million pages uncovers what actually gets indexed, what disappears, and why Google is stricter than ever. Some of the key takeaways:

• 61.94% of pages never get indexed.

• Domain-wide indexing failures affect 0.98% of sites.

• 64.86% of pages are indexed within a month.

• 21.29% of indexed pages are later removed.

• Google’s 2024 updates wiped out 45% of search content.

• Indexing submission tools work only 29.37% of the time.

• High-authority sites get indexed faster.

What Is Index Bloat? | Whiteboard Friday

Tom Capper breaks down index bloat, a hidden SEO problem that can drain your site’s potential. If Google is indexing thousands of pages that never get traffic, you’re wasting your index quota—and possibly harming your rankings. This Whiteboard Friday dives into how to spot index bloat, distinguish it from crawl budget issues, and fix it. The key? Identify low-value pages, consolidate similar ones, and cut the dead weight with 301s, canonicals, or noindex tags. If you run a medium-to-large site, cleaning up index bloat could unlock major SEO gains.

How Google Determines Relevancy & Helpfulness

Marie Haynes uses Deep Research from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok to understand how Google ranks content for relevance and helpfulness, with the signals that influence search results. Google’s systems evaluate meaning, relevance, quality, usability, and context, using advanced AI techniques like neural embeddings and vector search. SEO isn’t just about keywords anymore—it’s about matching user intent, demonstrating expertise, and delivering truly helpful content.

People Also Ask SERP Feature: SEO Impact & How to Rank

Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) feature is dominating search results, growing 34.7% in the U.S. and 112% in the U.K. over the past year—a big opportunity for SEOs. Rebecca Brosnan breaks down how ranking in these expandable Q&A boxes boosts visibility, traffic, and brand authority. She discusses how to identify PAA opportunities, optimize answers, and scale the process for maximum impact.

Embeddings in SEO: How They Work and Why They Matter | Chris Green

Embeddings are used more and more in SEO, but they aren’t a magic bullet. Chris Green explores how they help with keyword matching, redirect mapping, and internal linking—while exposing their pitfalls. Success depends on training data quality, nuance detection, and similarity thresholds. He shares a few examples on keywords in travel, cosmetics, and food content where context is key (e.g., Pig vs Bacon).

My Take: Embedding accuracy is something I’m telling people all the time about when using them for keyword clustering. Just be careful if you’re using embedding-driven clustering to drive content creation because they don’t always capture the intent and context. That’s a big reason why I push and use SERP clustering. Google and search engine algorithms are driven to match the intent of user queries, and with their billions of dollars, they’re going to have more sophisticated systems to understand context.

Customer-Centric SEO: How To Enhance Customer Experiences

Jason Hennessey breaks down how customer-centric SEO blends UX, content strategy, and search optimization to boost conversions and build brand trust. SEO isn’t just about rankings—it’s about delivering the best possible experience for your audience. If your SEO strategy stops at traffic, you’re leaving money on the table. Some of the key things to focus on:

• Prioritize user-friendly site navigation

• 70% of shoppers say slow sites affect their buying decisions.

• Outdated stats and broken links erode trust.

• 64.5% of global web traffic comes from mobile.

• Weak calls to action reduce engagement; action-driven language works best.

SEO Ripples

• Google is making it easier than ever to take control of your personal information in search results. The redesigned Results about You tool now proactively scans for your private details—like your phone number or address—and lets you request removals with just a few clicks. Google also introduced a refresh option for outdated content. If a webpage has been updated but Search still shows old information, you can now request a recrawl directly from the results page.

• James Allen dives into identifying, managing, and optimizing web crawlers so they work in your favor. Your website is being crawled right now—by Google, by scrapers, and by bots you may not even recognize. Some help your SEO, others siphon data, and a few might be outright harmful.

• At the same time—Something strange is happening with Google’s crawlers. Some websites—especially those on certain CDNs—are seeing fewer crawl requests but dramatically higher server response times. Essentially, Google is crawling less but taking much longer to do it. Barry Schwartz breaks down the issue, its root cause (Google’s updated IP list), and what site owners can do to fix it.

• Microsoft Bing is doubling down on keeping users within its ecosystem. If you search for Google Chrome, Gemini, Grok, or even Perplexity, you’ll now see banners nudging you toward Microsoft’s own products instead (e.g. Edge and Copilot). This follows Bing’s previous tactics of making Google nearly invisible in search results.

AI

Introducing Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code

Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet featuring hybrid reasoning—a first in the market. This model seamlessly shifts between instant responses and extended, step-by-step thinking, improving problem-solving in coding, front-end development, and instruction-following tasks. API users also have more control over how long the model can think for. Alongside it, Claude Code, a command-line tool for AI-assisted programming, enters a limited research preview, enabling developers to automate substantial coding tasks.

Introducing OpenAI GPT-4.5

OpenAI released their latest model, GPT-4.5, which improves on previous versions with better reasoning, a broader knowledge base, and fewer hallucinations. The model improves its ability to follow user intent more naturally, making interactions feel smoother and more intuitive. It also offers stronger problem-solving capabilities, improved steerability for developers, and more reliable outputs across various tasks. GPT-4.5 is available for Pro users ($200 version) in ChatGPT, with wider access rolling out soon. API prices are high (really high) at $75 / 1M input tokens and $150 / 1M output tokens (even o1 is $15 input and $60 output).

If you’re on Plus, check if you have Deep Research! It rolled out to Plus, Team, Edu, and Enterprise a few days ago, so you might want to check if you have it yet. It’s really good, but responses do take some time. Still much faster than you doing it yourself.

Will Searchers Click On Links Within Google AI Overviews With Dozens Of Links?

Google’s AI Overviews are evolving, but are they actually driving traffic? Barry Schwartz explores Google’s latest test—overviews packed with 40, 50, or even 60+ citations—and questions whether users will click on any of them. With Google already providing direct answers, and an overwhelming number of links displayed, publishers are wondering: is this just another way to keep users on Google?

My Take: Of course, it’s about keeping users on Google. Flood them with links, create decision paralysis, and make them assume the AI-generated answer is a perfectly synthesized blend of all the sources—so they never need to click at all.

AI Ripples

• Google Workspace just rolled out four new tools to make research and analysis easier. AI-powered insights in Google Sheets can now generate advanced charts and surface trends instantly. NotebookLM is now integrated with Workspace, helping teams centralize knowledge and speed up learning. Gemini Deep Research delivers in-depth reports on complex topics in minutes. And Google Drive’s new searchable video transcripts make finding key moments easy.

CONTENT

A Guide to Customer Archetypes

Holly Mosley breaks down how to create archetypes based on real data, from Google Analytics to social media interactions, surveys, and direct customer feedback. Forget broad demographics—customer archetypes dig deeper, helping brands understand the motivations, struggles, and decision-making habits of their ideal audience. She also explains how businesses can use these insights to fine-tune marketing campaigns, refine messaging, and build stronger connections with their audience.

The 7 Principles of Conversion-Centered Landing Page Design

Oli Gardner covers the psychology-backed design principles that transform visitors into conversions on landing pages. From visual contrast to the urgency of scarcity, every element must work in harmony to guide the user to a single action. Some of the key tips:

• Encapsulation: Use design elements like borders and contrast to direct focus to your CTA.

• Color & Contrast: Make your CTA stand out—an orange button on a neutral background can increase conversions.

• Directional Cues: Use arrows, gaze direction, and pathways to subconsciously guide users.

• White Space: Less clutter = more conversions. Let your CTA breathe.

• Urgency & Scarcity: Phrases like “Only 3 left!” trigger immediate action.

• "Try Before You Buy": Free trials, previews, and sample content build trust and lower friction.

SOCIAL MEDIA

YouTube SEO Study: Data-Backed Techniques for Top Video Ranking in 2025

Want to rank at the top of YouTube in 2025? Chinasa Ferderick and Felix Johnson analyzed 1.6 million videos to uncover the 19 YouTube SEO techniques that move the needle. Here are some of the top things you need to focus on:

• Multiple videos can rank for the same keyword – 19% of top channels have multiple top-ranking videos.

• Engagement is the #1 factor – top-ranking videos have a 2.65% engagement rate, compared to the platform average of 0.09%.

• Video sweet spot: 8-9 minutes – longer isn't always better.

• 94% of top videos use transcripts & closed captions – keywords in transcripts help rankings.

• Custom thumbnails matter – 89% of top videos don’t use auto-generated thumbnails.

• HD & 4K win – 90% of top videos are high resolution.

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