Reddit Flooded Google with AI Translations. It Worked.

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SEO

Google March 2025 Core Update Rollout Completed

It’s over!

Reddit AI Translations Have Scaled Across Languages and Google Rankings Are Booming

Glenn Gabe dives into how Reddit's machine-translated content is booming in Google rankings across Europe and Asia, despite Google’s explicit stance against auto-translated content for SEO. Reddit is leveraging AI translations at massive scale to flood international search results, surfacing millions of new URLs with “tl=” language parameters (?tl=fr, ?tl=hi, and ?tl=es-es). While most sites risk penalties for similar tactics, Reddit’s content appears to be getting a free pass from the algorithm gods… for now.

Top SEO Shares How To Win In The Era Of Google AI

Jono Alderson doesn’t mince words: if your SEO strategy still relies on cookie-cutter content and last-click attribution, you’re already losing. In this interview, Jono says to ditch mass-produced keyword blogs and start publishing original research, expert insights, and brand-driven narratives. He urges SEOs to get upstream in the buyer journey, influence early, and think like marketers, not just rank-chasers. Use AI as a muse, not a content mill.

A Guide to Semantics or How to Be Visible Both in Search and LLMs

Gianluca Fiorelli makes it clear that in the age of AI-powered search, visibility isn't about keywords anymore - it’s about meaning. He lays out how semantic SEO, entity search, and embeddings are the secret sauce behind ranking in both Google and LLM-generated answers like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Build a content structure so clear, so relevant, that machines can’t ignore it.

My Take: It’s a good read and overview of semantics, entities, and everything I talk about in Topical Maps Unlocked. This is more of a technical article, but if you’ve read about semantic SEO / topical authority before, it’s not a difficult read.

How Retrieval-Augmented Generation Is Redefining SEO

Francine Monahan breaks down how retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is pushing Google to deliver contextual, conversational, zero-click answers. AI Overviews and AI Mode are no longer pulling from static datasets; they’re retrieving real-time info, leveraging knowledge graphs, and highlighting “fraggles” (passage-level snippets) instead of entire pages. SEO success now hinges on crafting entity-based, structured content in short, semantically rich chunks - optimized not just to rank, but to be retrieved, cited, and surfaced by AI.

I’ve Had It! We Need to Stop the Fearmongering and ‘SEO Is Dead’ Narrative

Chima Mmeje brings the fire in this takedown of the tired “SEO is dead” trope. In reality, Google’s search volume and ad revenue are thriving, and most websites still get the bulk of their traffic from search. Chima makes the case for blending SEO with brand-first strategies like digital PR, influencer marketing, and omnichannel content. She outlines five clear plays: own your topics, earn mentions on authority sites, partner with affiliates, diversify channels, and build a brand people talk about.

SEO Ripples

• Google AI Overviews are now live in 9 new countries and 4 additional languages. Launch includes Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and more. Languages include English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Polish. This rollout is a signal: optimizing for AI Overviews isn’t optional—it’s the new front page. Think entity clarity, content freshness, and answer-first formats.

• At Search Central Live NYC, Google’s John Mueller reassured SEOs search isn’t going anywhere. Core elements like crawling, indexing, and ranking still matter, even as AI changes the way users interact with results. He emphasized that SEO fundamentals remain vital and evolving with AI is simply part of the job.

• In a case of “launch, then glitch,” Google rolled out AI Mode invites to a second batch of users, only to hit them with a waitlist wall. Barry Schwartz details the bumpy rollout, where even confirmed invitees (himself included) were blocked from access due to a misfiring “Try Now” button. Frustrations flared across forums and social media until, 15 minutes post-publish, the bug was quietly fixed.

• Google says it values the open web, but behind closed doors, not everyone agrees. Roger Montti reports that while execs like Sundar Pichai and Liz Reid emphasize supporting publishers, a former Googler claims the company sees driving traffic to websites as a “necessary evil.” With AI Overviews rising and voice and visual search set to eclipse the traditional search bar, Google’s real ambition is to become an ever-present assistant—not a traffic referrer.

AI

Introducing 4o Image Generation

If you haven’t heard or seen any of the Ghibli-style images the world is sharing, OpenAI released an updated GPT-4o with its native image generation. GPT-4o now renders photorealistic, text-accurate, context-aware images on demand. Lots of great potential for personal and business use-cases.

My Take: This is the first time where the initial image generations are usable from ChatGPT for me. A few examples in this email, including this one below.

I made a comic book page with ChatGPT 4o. I started out by asking “What’s the Digital Surfer newsletter?” to make sure they know about us. They did! 💯 So then I gave it this prompt to create a page and it gave me the below on the first try:

Create a comic book page of surfers sitting on the beach watching the big waves in Hawaii. They're in the middle of an engaging conversation about the Digital Surfer newsletter. Make it a Marvel comic. 

More New AI Models Released

Gemini 2.5 Pro - Google just dropped its best AI thinking model yet - Gemini 2.5 Pro. Gemini 2.5 stands out by outperforming rivals on reasoning, math, science, and code tasks.

Ideogram 3.0 - This model gets even better at photorealism, precise text rendering, and style consistency like no other. With Style References, you can guide your visuals using up to three images.

Artificial Analysis Arena - Confused what the best models? Here’s a handy site that compares different models for different tasks. They do a blind arena test where two images are shown and the user picks which image is better for a prompt. Then there’s a leaderboard based on user picks.

Chatbot Arena - This is one I’ve shared before for chats, but they also do images now too.

Tracing the Thoughts of a Large Language Model

Anthropic just gave us a microscope into the mind of Claude and they trace how Claude "thinks," revealing that it doesn’t just predict the next word. It plans ahead, strategizes, and even fibs when coaxed. Using neuroscience-inspired methods, the team uncovered conceptual circuits powering Claude’s multilingual fluency, rhyme planning, mental math, and even how it gets tripped up by jailbreaks.

My Take: Want to learn more about LLMs? This is a good read, especially if you’re into semantics, entities, and showing up in search engines, AI or not.

Meet LLMs.txt, a Proposed Standard for AI Website Content Crawling

Rob Garner discusses llms.txt - a new proposed standard designed to help large language models crawl and understand websites more efficiently. Think of it as a smarter sibling to robots.txt, but tailored for AI. Instead of blocking bots, it guides them by providing flattened, markdown-friendly versions of your content, making it easier for LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude to parse your site. Rob lays out clear benefits: stronger AI visibility, better content control, improved brand accuracy in responses, and new SEO/GEO opportunities.

AI Ripples

• Google is asking the U.S. government to loosen the reins on copyright and export controls to supercharge AI development. As Kyle Wiggers reports, Google argues that fair use and text-and-data mining are essential for innovation—and that strict export rules could hobble U.S. competitiveness. Their proposal doubles down on the right to train models on public, copyrighted data and opposes transparency laws that risk exposing proprietary methods.

MARKETING

How I Grew SEOFOMO Into an Email Marketing Empire

Aleyda Solis shares the exact playbook behind SEOFOMO’s meteoric rise to 36.6K subscribers in five years. From clever giveaways to referral hacks and niche audience mastery, Aleyda shows how thoughtful systems (not scale-for-scale’s-sake) can turn a newsletter into an empire.

LINK BUILDING

We Tested Email Lookup Tools — They Don’t Work for PR

Vince Nero just blew up the myth that email lookup tools are a PR pro’s best friend. After testing 553 journalist emails through popular tools, he found that most of them flopped—big time. While these tools promise speed and scale, they’re built for sales, not media outreach. Some of the key insights from the study:

• 62% were wrong or not found. Only 38% of emails were correct.

• 59% of wrong emails won’t bounce—so you’ll never know.

• Tools gave an average confidence score of 87.5 - but still wrong 1 in 3 times.

• Catch-all domains fool verification tools.

• 34% of journalists are freelancers with no corporate emails.

• Large publishers use multiple inconsistent email formats.

• Best fix: manual search + tools like LinkedIn, Wiza, and advanced Google operators.

SOCIAL MEDIA

• Starting March 31, a “view” on YouTube Shorts will be counted the moment a Short begins to play - no more waiting for a few seconds of watch time. Geoff Desreumaux breaks it down: this brings YouTube in line with TikTok and Reels, making cross-platform comparisons easier for creators and brands. But YouTube isn’t tossing engagement out the window. They’re adding a new “engaged views” metric in Analytics to track more meaningful interactions.

ChatGPT 4o IMAGES

Couple more images that were the first shot for each prompt. Impressed at the first shot of each one:

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