michael512.bsky.social

New post, and my first on Substack! "The AI SEO Playbook for Google Click Signals" How user click signals drive website visibility for both Google rankings and AI answers What exactly are these click signals, and can marketers influence them? Read & subscribe: signal.zyppy.com/p/google-cli...

I created a free tool that generates LocalBusiness schema automatically, from the Google Business Profile: www.michaelcottam.com/localbusines...

NEW research: sparktoro.com/blog/new-res... If you give ChatGPT the same request for product recommendations 100X, will you ever get the same list twice? And what does that answer mean for folks who try to track their brand presence in AI tools? Finally, some real answers 🧐

📣 Announcing The "Trending Campaigns" Newsletter: Receive the most effective PR campaigns and coverage opportunities with the Trending Campaigns Newsletter. A free weekly newsletter curating standout PR campaigns and timely news hooks you can use. Subscribe now for free: trendingcampaigns(.)com 🙌

I'm supporting this again this year, and you should too. Awesome cause, awesome people.

AGENCY OWNERS! Help yourself & your fellow agencies out: randfish.typeform.com/to/eFoJ3tXz Paddy Moogan is once again running the Digital Agency Owner Survey for 2025. Last year's results were incredibly compelling; this year's will be, too.

I finished reading the 230-page Google antitrust remedy ruling and put together my thoughts from an industry perspective. I think a lot of the data-sharing details are critical -- moz.com/blog/google-...

The AI Search Content Optimization Checklist [With Google Sheets to copy/paste] 👇 Going through: 1. Optimize for Chunk-Level Retrieval 2. Optimize for Answer Synthesis 3. Optimize for Citation-Worthiness 4. Optimize for Topical Breadth and Depth * Much more: www.aleydasolis.com/en/ai-search...

This makes perfect sense....unlinked recommendations of businesses in AI answers (plus social posts, e.g. TikTok, IG, etc.) lead to brand searches...which gets home page traffic.

Love thy neighbor doesn’t come with fine print.

> @jemelehill.bsky.social

📣 NEW COURSE ALERT! 📣 I'm excited to announce my comprehensive GA4 Audit Course is now LIVE! 🚀 Is your GA4 property collecting garbage data? You might be making critical business decisions based on completely inaccurate numbers... 🗑️

Dawn's done some awesome work for a bunch of people I know!

You have acquired a business and need to rebrand it. How do you transition the Google Business Profile without getting it suspended? Here’s what you need to know 👇 (1/10) #LocalSEO #SEO

Optimizing for Traditional VS AI Search (SEO vs GEO) - I've created a chart featuring the differences/similarities between them 👇 ….

Super useful stuff from Dana here!

Responding to a prompt from Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, Musk's "maximally truth-seeking" AI, which is built into X, said after an analysis that the probability of the president being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin is between 75 and 85 percent. www.msn.com/en-us/news/p...

Google updated its Search Console docs to say AI mode impressions/clicks data is not data included in the Search Console reports - as we knew but clarified in my story www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-mo... hat tip @lilyray.nyc and @searchliaison.bsky.social

Hey friends! I made a cool new free SEO tool with AI. I'd love any feedback you have. Check it out at freshnessdistancecalculator dot com #localseo #seo

Excellent analysis of the incredible increases in changes to Google's algo from Dr. Pete here.

The #1 ranking site within Google's AI Overviews for "healthy movie snacks" is google.com Turns out the content on this Google Store blog was written by a self-proclaimed freelance writer. AKA the same thing that got many sites penalized for Site Reputation Abuse. #SEO

Learn to spot and report 6 signs of local business review spam, including signs that a fake review has been generated by AI. My column today at @gatherup.bsky.social will walk you through recognizing red flags and reporting review fraud to Google: gatherup.com/blog/recogni...

Kamala was right. And it only took him less than 30 days to roll over for Putin.

Links still matter to Google (no matter what they say), and so it's no wonder there's lots of companies selling links. But I'm amazed at how many really bad linkbuilding still goes on...and how many people charge for complete garbage. www.michaelcottam.com/laughably-ba...

And here we go! The 1st episode of The Search Session is live on Advanced Web Ranking website. It was a great pleasure to chat with Andrea Volpini of WordLift about #AI, Agents, LLMs.txt and the central role of humans in the evolution of Search. www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/agentic...

Happy to announce *Zyppy List* - A reimagined directory for marketing companies and consultants 🆓 Free Verification 💸 No Pay-to-Rank 🎯 Highly Specialized Categories 🤝 Community-powered endorsements 👥 People-Powered Profiles 🔗 Followed link(!) Let me know what you think! zyppy.com/marketing/an...

Google Local Reviews Decreasing Over Past 24 Hours<br><br>https://www.seroundtable.com/google-local-reviews-decreasing-38873.html

There's something only great marketers do. But there's no agreed-upon standard for doing it. It's audience research. And very likely, they're doing this without really knowing what it is. Studying and getting to know their audience is just part of their DNA. In this long overdue guide…

Facts. Love Adam’s insights

Worst new Google idea in a long time: searchengineland.com/google-searc... Google should pay these businesses $100 a call for wasting their employees' time.

Nice overview on the challenges of tracking ChatGPT traffic ...

Hubspot’s Blog Organic Search Traffic Drop: What happened? Is it really that bad? What does it mean for SEO? I've gone through it and shared some outcomes in this analysis. Read 👇 www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-en...

Google issued a new definition of *Site Reputation Abuse* "An established first party site branches out into a new area primarily using freelance content because this content will rank better on the first-party site than it would have otherwise" This seems to apply to vast swaths of publishers

My one wish for the inauguration is that there is a gift bag under the seats of Bezos, Zuck, Elon etc, with a single, embroidered , padded knee pad Need to protect themselves when they are on bended knee, kissing the ring 🤷😆

Amanda wrote a short blog post that I really liked, because it reminded me of the old days of blogging, when we'd share how we felt and what was going on, regardless of keywords or "business impact" or whatever blogs have become now. You should read it, too. sparktoro.com/blog/the-dig...

Google Maps is now embedding images and products nearby related to your query

Remember Russians messing up the underwater cables? They cut a wrong one and now Russian internet is down.

NEW: sparktoro.com/blog/why-do-... You've heard me and @amandanat.bsky.social talk a lot about moving from traffic-focused marketing to Zero-Click Marketing. But why? This week's new 5-minute Whiteboard has the answers.

Possibly the best clap back against ignorant antivaxxers.

Just used ChatGPT (via Poe) to generate and customize a workout program. OK, fine. Then I asked it to give it to me in a Todoist-compatible format. That's kinda cool. #AI

I JUST used the New Google Gemini 2.0 Real-time to coach me through a Google Analytics 4 problem, things are changing!! Sorry for the width youtu.be/gjJWLryLWYw

Fill out our short content trends survey and win a free $500 gift card! We’ve done this the last two years and we look forward to comparing the data YOY given all that’s changing in our industry. Thanks in advance! Shares are appreciated. 2025-content-marketing-trends-survey.paperform.co

I wrote a thing about how to translate Brand and Branding into signals that can make them being understood by Google and AI.. it is not a short read, but I am convinced you will find it interesting: www.iloveseo.net/the-role-of-...

I wrapped up our internal findings on Site Reputation Abuse into something that I hope gives people a little guidance. It's an evolving situation, but here's what we know so far and a framework for assessing your risk (explained in detail in the post) -- moz.com/blog/site-re...

Made a new visualization of 27.3M searches from September 2024. I put all the queries into 9, similar-demand-sized groups, and it really tells a story. This project has changed how I think about Google forever.

NEW research: sparktoro.com/blog/new-res... We looked at: - 332 million searches - Over 21 months - From ~130K mobile & desktop, Google searchers And published: - 13 charts & graphs - including data on many never-before-answered Qs about how people use Google Here's a little sample 👇

I know BlueSky is on to something because all the worst people you know are raging against it

The one and only @AnnieCushing has just released her new service “404 No More”: An AI-Powered Redirect Concierge: “Using NLP and automation, 404 No More service identifies broken pages and suggests redirects using a series of rules.” Read: annielytics.com/services/404...

If they lose Chrome, the link game would be back to 2011 let’s goooo www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/...

When comparing the changes in Google's "Site reputation abuse" Spam Policy wording you can clearly see how now is all about the "purpose" of the content and how it's aligned to the site's main goal, independently of how it was created. From what I see with this change in policy...