Search News You Can Use Podcast: Search Engine Optimization | Search Engine Marketing | Link Building

Google has confirmed that SGE (Search Generative Experience) is not just an experiment, it is the future of search. Google's CEO Sundar Pichai said the SGE is "the next step in the journey" and also, "over time this will just be how search works." Here's what we know so far about the SGE, including screenshots of it in action. This is primarily a video episode, but even just listening, it should be quite helpful. Links mentioned in this episode: Marie's Helpful Content Workbook ($150) - This workbook will guide you through understanding user intent and creating content that meets it. https://www.mariehaynes.com/product/c... Episode 297 of Search News You Can Use https://www.mariehaynes.com/newslette... Google's Earnings Call where they discuss SGE being the future of Search https://www.mariehaynes.com/googles-v... Google's helpful content criteria https://developers.google.com/search/... Work with Marie https://www.mariehaynes.com/work-with...

In this long-awaited return episode of Search News, Dr. Marie Haynes explains how Google's helpful content system has radically changed search rankings. She provides background on her experience studying Google's algorithms for over 16 years, and how the company has shifted to relying more on AI systems like helpful content rather than just links and keywords. Marie walks through the evolution of major algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin, and what they revealed about Google's capabilities and focus on content quality. She explains how machine learning models can now predict helpful content, with training data from quality raters. The episode provides real-world examples of sites that were impacted by recent helpful content updates, and what specific changes Google rewarded. Marie also offers advice for those struggling with helpful content suppression and wanting to better align with Google's criteria. This episode will completely change your understanding of modern search rankings, and what you shou

We've had so many updates lately! It's almost impossible to know why your traffic is down. And for many sites traffic *is* down tremendously. In this episode I've discussed the craziness we've seen this year with Google updates. September Core Update. Helpful Content Update. Two spam updates...there are so many things that have happened! On top of that many sites are losing traffic to Google Explore and because of ChatGPT. We also discuss whether topic filter bubbles in search and continuous scroll on desktop could be impacting you. And um, I just can't talk about E-E-A-T without bursting out laughing. Still, this is very important as Google is now valuing not just Expertise, but also Experience. I hope you enjoy this episode! Links: Buy Marie's book on Google Spam Updates: https://www.mariehaynes.com/product/spam-update-book/ Buy Marie's book on the QRG: https://www.mariehaynes.com/product/quality-raters-guidelines/ Contact Marie: https://www.mariehaynes.com/contact/

I interviewed Charles Floate, an SEO known for ranking websites in ways that go against Google's spam guidelines. We discussed PageRank and the importance of links in Google's algorithms. Charles revealed ways he's been able to manipulate Google's guidelines and succeed, though I don't condone such practices. Our chat helped me reform my thoughts on links and their power to move the needle for rankings. Links are most definitely important in Google's algorithms and will likely remain the core for quite some time. But as Google develops new ways to identify quality content, most of which comes with AI innovations, I believe PageRank is not as important to SEO as it used to be. In this video Charles shows me how he is able to get sites to rank. Some of what he is doing is actually improving E-A-T! I must reiterate that breaking Google's policies can lead to serious consequences While good links can be powerful, building your own links is often either ignored by Google, or can cause manual or algorithmic pen

This week we learned from Google's HJ Kim that E-A-T is used for every single query searched on Google! In this episode Dr. Marie Haynes shares advanced information on how to assess E-A-T. Audience questions answered: Does E-A-T matter for tech blogs? Is being mentioned on a big news site good for E-A-T? Does adding expert reviewers help? How would an ed-tech platform increase E-A-T? How do you measure E-A-T? Should you update old articles that were not written with E-A-T in mind? Common E-A-T mistakes and misconceptions Examples of sites doing well after improving E-A-T How do you do an E-A-T audit? Marie's QRG Book: https://mariehaynes.com/book Links SMX Next: https://marketinglandevents.com/smx/next/agenda/ About the QRG: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/hsw-sqrg.pdf The QRG: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf How search works: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/ Efficient

The October 2022 spam update had a massive impact on many sites. Many of these were "niche sites" - not overtly spammy, but still breaking Google's spam guidelines. With this update, it looks like Google's AI spam fighter - SpamBrain has gotten much better at finding unnatural links - links made for SEO purposes. This is an important listen, even if you were not impacted by this update. Buy Marie's Quality Rater's Guidelines Book/Checklist: https://mariehaynes.com/book Google's Spam Policies (If you were hit, you likely were doing one or more of these things) https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies Google's guidelines on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content What Google has said about guest posting: https://www.mariehaynes.com/google-guest-posting-recommendations/ Gary Illyes talking to Danny Sullivan about links being labeled as "footer", "penguinized" and so on: https://searchenginela

The September Core update feels different to me! In this episode I share my thoughts after analyzing many pages that won and lost following this Google core update. The most important thing a site can work on if hit is ensuring that you are the best option to meet the immediate needs of the searcher. If we thoroughly understand the intent of searchers, we can create content that helps them meet that need better than other sites. In this episode I review two pages that did well following the September core update. They may look like they are lacking E-A-T, but I think Google promoted them because they quickly met searcher needs. I also share how the Helpful Content Update may have introduced a way for Google to better determine which pages are meeting the needs of searchers. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/winners-losers-of-the-september-2022-core-update-product-reviews-update/ https://www.semrush.com/blog/september-2022-core-upd

SEO is changing so much! In this episode Marie shares what SEOs can learn from Google’s Search On 2022 event. Is Google going to replace Amazon as the place where people go to buy online? Google announced many changes coming to shopping. Many of the upcoming changes to search are going to make the life of SEOs difficult. If you want to stay on top of these changes, listen to Marie’s thoughts on how search is changing and how we can keep up. Marie’s notes on the Search On event: https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/status/1575195686366085120 Search On Google 2022 https://blog.google/products/search/search-on-2022-announcements/ Newsletter: https://mariehaynes.com/newsletter Marie’s book on using the QRG as a checklist for site quality: https://mariehaynes.com/book Contact Marie: https://mariehaynes.com/contact

The September 2022 Core update is live! The helpful content update has finished rolling out. In this episode we discuss: 1) How the September Core Update and Helpful content updates may be related 2) What to look for in early analytics data to see if you’ve been hit 3) Google has told us specifically how to recover - It’s all about content and E-A-T 4) Why Google’s core update questions are so important - machine learning likely plays a role! 5) A bit on how we analyze competitors’ pages after a core update hit Apologies for the pointer clicking as I was screensharing! I’ll mute that sound the next time I record my screen. Links mentioned: https://developers.google.com/search/updates/ranking https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update Resources on E-A-T: https://www.mariehaynes.com/resources/eat/ https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gccNPlL-a1g Marie’s newsletter: https://

In this special podcast episode Marie welcomes Alan Kent from Google. Alan is a developer advocate who currently works on communicating changes in regards to Google’s product reviews updates. The product reviews updates are discussed in detail. Alan also shares some very interesting thoughts on how machine learning is used by Google in this type of algorithm. Links: Google Search Central videos with Alan Kent All things Google Merchant Center with Alan Kent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EMAqeyKYgk How to improve your ecommerce websites presence in Search results (6 tips) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIUQolZDecM How to SEO optimize your ecommerce website (8 tips) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGyZqUs9XqA&list=PLKoqnv2vTMUPAMjD4uEeBjlMaB-Jj1iSo&index=7 How to make your ecommerce website stand out in Google Search (6 tips) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEpiG_AbaxA&list=PLKoqnv2vTMUPAMjD4uEeBjlMaB-Jj1iSo&index=8 How to optimize images for your ecommerce website (6 tips) https://www.youtube.com/watch

Google added more information to the "About this Result" information in the search results. Their wording on what they've added to this feature is very similar to some that is in the Quality Rater Guidelines. In this episode of Search News You Can Use, Marie discusses how we can possibly use this info to improve E-A-T. Links mentioned in this episode: https://blog.google/products/search/information-literacy/ https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/hsw-sqrg.pdf https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/12003459 Marie’s book https://mariehaynes.com/book Contact Marie https://mariehaynes.com/contact

In this episode Dr. Marie Haynes discusses five interesting changes Google has made to the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, including some information from a new Google document about the raters and the work they do. We’ll learn more about what YMYL is and what Google is looking for in terms of E-A-T for the topics you write on. Links mentioned: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf https://www.blog.google/documents/37/How_Google_Fights_Disinformation.pdf/ https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/hsw-sqrg.pdf https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/ho w-search-works/ranking-results/ Marie's book: https://mariehaynes.com/book

In this episode Marie discusses the new “pros and cons” SERP annotations you may have seen. These are not produced by structured data! A new Google patent explains how n-grams, terms and phrases can be used to discover attributes about a product or entity and then show those right in the search results Links mentioned in this episode: https://www.mariehaynes.com/pros-cons-and-serp-annotations/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/google-proscons-rich-results-annotations-simone-de-palma/ https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-word-n-grams-and-n-gram-probability-in-natural-language-processing-9d9eef0fa058 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210406268A1/en https://cloud.google.com/natural-language https://searchengineland.com/micro-intents-seo-content-journey-mapping-386544 https://www.kopp-online-marketing.com/micro-intents https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/product-reviews-update Hire Marie and the MHC team: https://mariehaynes.com/contact/

Marie welcomes MHC’s Technical Director, Alec Brownscombe, who also owns and operates the website Mapleleafshotstove.com. In this episode, Marie and Alec both discuss how MHC’s traffic drop assessments have evolved, reasons behind traffic drops, relevance, intent, machine learning, and more! This is an episode you don't want to miss. Newsletter episode 242 www.mariehaynes.com/newsletter/episode-242/ Subscribe to the newsletter: www.mariehaynes.com/seo-newsletter/ Links: Mordy Oberstein discussing sites affected by the May Core update https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/content-lessons-google-may-2022-update Cyrus Shepard - 3 Vital Click-Based Signals for SEO: First, Long, & Last https://moz.com/blog/click-based-seo-engagement-signals Tyler Hermanson - Why keywords are still so very important for SEO https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide/why-keywords-important-seo/ Neeva discussing using quality raters and machine learning https://www.surgehq.ai/blog/beyond-clicks-how-neeva-uses-human-eval

Has your Google traffic dropped? In this episode Marie goes into great detail describing how you can assess a decline in organic traffic. Your losses may be because of a Google update but there are many other reasons. Marie covers technical issues, core web vitals, competitor research and much more. In the next episode, two weeks from now we will go into even further detail on how you can determine if your drops are due to a change in intent, relevancy or because of quality issues. Newsletter episode 240 https://www.mariehaynes.com/newsletter/episode-240/ Links mentioned in this episode: Using a knowledge of semantic search to improve E-A-T https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/status/1537087939968221188?s=20&t=KOEJWeSmtERtphpydbriWw SMX Advanced Talk/Agenda https://marketinglandevents.com/smx/advanced/ Is Google Search Dying? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/google-search-algorithm-internet/661325/ MHC clients that did well with May core: https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/status/1536722779

In this episode, Marie Haynes and Lily Ray both discuss the early impact of the May 2022 core update, advice for recovery, a little about how Google handles title tags, and more! Newsletter episode 238 https://www.mariehaynes.com/newsletter/episode-238/ Subscribe to the newsletter: https://www.mariehaynes.com/seo-newsletter/ Links mentioned in this episode: How Google generates titles for documents with language or script misalignment https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/06/title-script-misalignment Lily’s recent article on E-A-T https://friendsofsearch.com/nl/blog/interview/lily-ray-amsive-digital-any-seo-who-hasnt-jumped-onto-the-e-a-t-wave-is-not-playing-close-enough-attention/ Youtube’s use of knowledge graphs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-bTGefJj0A Google’s announcement on the core update https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/05/may-2022-core-update How people read on the web https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-people-read-online/ Barry Schwartz and John Mueller on whet

In this episode, Marie welcomes MHC’s director of products and services, Callum Scott. Callum has incredible knowledge of how Google’s algorithms work. In this episode, he and Marie discuss the following: - May 16-18 - unnamed Google update affecting a large number of affiliate sites. - How MHC’s site reviews developed over the years - How we help sites improve their E-A-T - Why knowing semantic search gets SEOs ahead of the game - Google is likely a lexical search engine and a semantic search engine. - Semantic search and E-A-T - Register for SMX Advanced to hear Marie speak on using a knowledge of semantic search to improve E-A-T. It’s free this year! https://attend.marketinglandevents.com/smx-advanced-2022?i=ttmi2mIwsKjtm9Yb56yxhjMCxG2PCGqx - Marie speaking with John Mueller and Barry Schwartz on Duda’s webinar about Google updates: https://webinars.duda.co/google-updates - Microsoft Azure article on semantic search: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/semantic-ranking https://docs.microsoft

In this episode, search professionals Olaf Kopp and Marie Haynes discuss the concept of Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness in Google’s algorithms in great detail. You’ll learn what E-A-T is and how Google likely uses E-A-T in their algorithms including information on entities, the knowledge graph, the knowledge vault, and more. At the end of the episode, Olaf gives very specific tips on how to improve E-A-T in ways that Google’s algorithms should reward. Newsletter episode 234 https://www.mariehaynes.com/newsletter/episode-234-light-version/ Subscribe to the newsletter: Mariehaynes.com/newsletter Links mentioned in this talk: Search quality rater guidelines: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf Glenn Gabe on Phantom updates: https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/penguin-2-google-phantom-update-may-2013/ Google’s NLP tool https://cloud.google.com/natural-language Knowledge graph API https://carlhendy.com/knowledge-

In this episode, Marie shares her thoughts on semantic search. Semantic search is search that’s based on understanding the meaning of words and the connections between them. In 2013, the Hummingbird algorithm made it possible for Google to expand their semantic search capabilities. With each new advancement in AI and NLP, they get a little closer. Semantic search could possibly explain how Google can algorithmically tackle the questions they give us in their article on what site owners should know about core updates. This episode discusses how SEOs can use a knowledge of semantic search to improve the quality of their websites in Google’s eyes. Links mentioned in this episode: Sponsor: https://contentfly.com/searchnews Newsletter episode 232 https://www.mariehaynes.com/newsletter/episode-232-light-version/ MHC’s algo update list: https://mariehaynes.com/algo Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land writing about Hummingbird: https://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816 WSJ article with Amit Singh

In this special episode of Search News You Can Use, we welcome Glenn Gabe to the show! Glenn has been assessing traffic drops in websites for many years. He and Marie discuss the types of issues that can cause a site to see traffic drops in conjunction with a Google core update. Glenn breaks these down into three areas: Relevancy adjustments Intent shifts Overall site quality problems Glenn and Marie share examples of the types of problems they have encountered when analyzing traffic drops and what lead to sites recovering after making changes. Glenn’s post on traffic drops: https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-broad-core-updates-difference-between-relevancy-adjustments-intent-shifts-overall-site-quality/ Contact Glenn: https://twitter.com/glenngabe Newsletter episode 230 https://www.mariehaynes.com/newsletter/episode-230-light-version/ Past episodes https://mariehaynes.com/seo-newsletter/seo-podcast Contact MHC https://mariehaynes.com/contact Book on Unnatural Links and Manual Action Remov