SEO newsletter issue #475

Google AI Overviews rollout hits news publisher search visibility

Editors note: This article talks about visibility and makes no assumptions or has any data about impact on clicks (which is actually all that matters).

Via Dominic Ponsford

Gannett is shuttering site accused of publishing AI product reviews

Newspaper giant Gannett is shutting down Reviewed, its product reviews site, effective November 1st. 

Via Mia Sato

Anthropic publishes the ‘system prompts’ that make Claude tick

It’s all a bit strange to this human, these system prompts, which are written like an actor in a stage play might write a character analysis sheet.

Via Kyle Wiggers

Expert questions huge AI investments from Microsoft, Amazon and Google

Tech giants' investments in AI startups potentially returning as cloud revenue. 

Via Wayne Williams

New in Gemini: Custom Gems and improved image generation with Imagen 3

"You can customise Gems to act as an expert on topics or refine them toward your specific goals. Simply write instructions for your Gem, give it a name, and then chat with it whenever you want."

Via Dave Citron

Yelp sues Google, alleging illegal dominance of local search

The lawsuit alleges illegal monopoly practices related to local search and local search advertising.

Via Kim Davis

Major sites are saying no to Apple’s AI scraping

Less than three months after Apple quietly debuted a tool for publishers to opt out of its AI training, a number of prominent news outlets and social platforms have taken the company up on it. 

Via Kate Knibbs

Here’s how 7 news audience directors are thinking about Google’s AI Overviews

Google’s generative AI search feature is here to stay, but will it actually impact how digital outlets do business?

Via Andrew Deck

Advanced SEO Industry News 🤓

Google now may use your OG title for title links search snippets

The OG title is normally used by social sharing sites for the title of your posts, but Google may also use it for the title of your search result snippets in Google. 

Via Barry Schwartz

The sites dominating Google’s Top Stories SERP feature in 2024

In an analysis of ~45 million keywords in which Google displayed their Top Stories SERP feature, the 1,000 most prominent domains accounted for 97.3% of all listings.

Via Glen Allsopp

"AWS S3 blocked Googlebot from my image URLs - Here is my recovery"

"It led to a 76% drop in image search related clicks to this site."

Via Barry Schwartz

Google updates organisation markup search docs to clarify logo & other usage

Google said the update is to clarify "that some properties can influence which logo is shown, while others are used behind the scenes."

Via Barry Schwartz

Via Google: English Google SEO office-hours from August 2024

Should you be worried about bad actors sending fake traffic to a site to make that site appear untrustworthy (since site trustworthiness is binary)?

Via Glenn Gabe and via Google Search Central

Google Search now supports AVIF file formats

This means AVIF images will show in Google Search, Images, News, Discover and more.

Via Barry Schwartz

Google: We don't count words or links on your blog posts

Google's John Mueller reiterated that words on a page are not counted by Google but also said links on a page are not counted.

Via Barry Schwartz

Google Analytics 4 introduces benchmarking data

You can now compare your performance across key metrics with industry peers, providing crucial context for strategic decision-making.

Via Anu Adegbola

Blue Array News 💙

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