Tag: Business

SEO & Digital Marketing News Round-Up 5 October to 19 October 2026

On By DaveIn Screaming Frog, seo, wordpressLeave a comment

TL;DR

The September spam update finished on 8 October after 13 days and 16 hours. Three waves of ranking volatility hit sites along the way. Google then quietly tightened its helpful content guidance, published its first official crawl, index and recovery timing ranges, and added more inline links, carousels and creator profiles to AI Mode. OpenAI shipped GPT 6 with Intelligent UI. Google followed with Gemini 4 Argon. Bing opened a Topics Portfolio beta that may be the best free AI visibility report currently available.

New since Friday: Fresh ranking volatility spiked over the weekend of 17 to 19 October. Google denies a new update. The industry suspects one. OpenAI confirmed a ChatGPT bug that dropped UTM tags on outbound links from 8 to 15 October. Nozzle revealed that roughly 8% of Google SERPs served to rank trackers since mid September were poisoned with fake results. Google also pushed Gemini 4 Argon into Antigravity and added a Follow button to Discover videos.

Three jobs this week: date impact analysis from 24 September to 8 October, mark 8 to 15 October in analytics as a ChatGPT data glitch, and claim the Bing Topics Portfolio beta.

What’s new since Friday 16 October

  • 15 October: Google rolled more inline links, source blocks, article carousels and creator profile links into AI Mode and AI Overviews.
  • 16 October: A ranking volatility spike hit the SERPs. Barry Schwartz flagged an unconfirmed update. Google’s dashboard still shows nothing.
  • 14 to 15 October: OpenAI confirmed and fixed a bug that stripped UTM tags from ChatGPT outbound links between 8 and 15 October. Adobe tracked roughly 31,000 ChatGPT visits per day misclassified as direct traffic across one 500 page panel.
  • 10 October: Nozzle published research showing 8% of SERPs served to rank trackers since 13 September were poisoned, versus a baseline of 0.17%. The share peaked near 27% between 27 and 29 September.
  • 16 October: Gemini 4 Argon reached Google Antigravity for AI Pro subscribers. Google Discover added a Follow button to its video content viewer.
  • Over the weekend of 17 to 19 October: WebmasterWorld threads filled with reports of near zero traffic, stale News and Discover feeds, and the strong suspicion of a core update that Google has not confirmed.

Fourteen days, three waves of volatility, two major AI launches, one giant data glitch. This round up covers 5 October to 19 October 2026, what it means, and what to do about it.

What To Actually Know

Six developments shape planning for the rest of Q4:

  1. The September 2026 spam update finished on 8 October at 04:37 ET. Rollout time: 13 days and 16 hours. Normal spam updates in 2026 took two days. Google called this one “a normal spam update.” Barry Schwartz, Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray all described effects closer to a core update.
  2. Fresh volatility hit on 16 October. It kept running through the weekend. Google’s Search Status Dashboard shows no new update. Forum chatter leans heavily towards one being in progress.
  3. Google published official crawl, index and recovery timing ranges at Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe on 2 October. Core update recovery typical: 3 to 6 months. Slowest: 6 months to a year.
  4. Helpful content guidance tightened on authorship and AI on 1 October and again on 5 October. Fake author profiles are now called deception. Unreviewed AI content gets called out by name. Spam policy did not change. The quality lens did.
  5. OpenAI shipped GPT 6 and Intelligent UI on 7 and 8 October. Google followed with Gemini 4 Argon on 13 October. Answers now contain interactive tools, forms and charts. Plain text answers are becoming the exception.
  6. Rank tracking data is unreliable. Nozzle found Google serving fake results to tracker tools on 8% of SERPs since mid September. Combined with the ChatGPT UTM bug from 8 to 15 October, nothing outside Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools can be fully trusted right now.

1. The September 2026 Spam Update finished, but the aftershocks haven’t

Google Search Central confirmed completion on 8 October. The quote: “The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026.” Rollout time: 13 days and 16 hours. That’s longer than any 2026 spam update by an order of magnitude.

The 2026 spam update timeline

Update Started Finished Rollout time
March 2026 24 Mar 25 Mar About 19.5 hours
June 2026 24 Jun 26 Jun About 2 days 1 hour
August 2026 18 Aug 21 Aug About 2 days 16 hours
September 2026 24 Sep 8 Oct About 13 days 16 hours

The three waves of volatility

Relative volatility across the rollout. Aggregated signal from Semrush Sensor, Mozcast, AccuRanker and WebmasterWorld threads.

24 Sep
Launch, moderate

25 to 27 Sep
Wave 1, very high

28 to 29 Sep
Quiet

30 Sep to 1 Oct
Wave 2, high

2 to 3 Oct
Elevated

4 to 6 Oct
Wave 3, strongest signal

7 Oct
Winding down

8 Oct
Rollout complete

16 to 19 Oct
New spike, source unconfirmed

Sources: Barry Schwartz (Search Engine Roundtable), Glenn Gabe (G Squared Interactive), aggregated via Numinix and Distribb.

What got hit, what came back

Lily Ray flagged a representative casualty. A local services site had 143 county landing pages built from a single template. Traffic rose fast, held, then evaporated. The pattern repeated across several site categories:

  • Programmatic or templated pages with little unique value.
  • Unreviewed AI content at scale.
  • Doorway pages that funnel traffic to a different destination.
  • Parasite SEO setups piggybacking on domains with trust they did not earn.

On the recovery side, Glenn Gabe reported Reddit’s AI translated threads climbing again in Italy, Germany, Brazil and France after being crushed by the May and June updates. Edward Sturm posted that Reddit’s estimated organic traffic in Semrush hit an all time high. One site hit by the August 2026 update went from close to zero to roughly 8,000 clicks per day during this rollout and reappeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

What the community is saying

“Google called this ‘a normal spam update’ on LinkedIn. Taking two weeks to roll out is not normal, and the impact felt core update adjacent for a lot of sites.”

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable, 8 October

“Several site owners emailed me about large drops starting 30 September. This update rolled out in stages. The industry just saw them as one update.”

Glenn Gabe, G Squared Interactive

“Every single website I monitor or have analytics access to is seeing barely any traffic today.”

WebmasterWorld member, 16 October

“Sigh, was hoping that the end of the update would stabilize things, but it’s just made them worse.”

WebmasterWorld member, 16 October

“Seems like a Core update on the way.”

WebmasterWorld member, 19 October

Charles Floate flagged a different problem on LinkedIn. The major SEO suites look out of sync with Search Console. Google’s anti scraping changes are hiding the real picture from third party tools. Ahrefs posted a notice that some SERP data may be inconsistent during the rollout.

2. Google published its first official crawl, index and recovery times

At Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe in Barcelona on 2 October, Google’s Gary Illyes shared the first on record “typical” and “slowest” timing ranges for the full search pipeline. Search Engine Journal published them on 4 October. Think of these as the numbers finally safe to quote to a client.

Crawling and indexing

Event Typical Slowest
New URL discovered About 20 hours Weeks to never
Known URL refreshed About 30 days Weeks to never
Sitemap processing About 24 hours Up to 14 days, or never
End to end indexing About 1.5 hours Months, or never (quality)
Canonicalisation change 1 to 3 weeks Months
Site move 1 to 3 months 6 months to a year or more

Search results and recovery

Event Typical Slowest
Title change picked up 1 to 2 days Several weeks to months
Snippet change picked up 1 to 2 days Several weeks to months
GSC URL removal (owner) About 2 hours 24 hours
Manual action removal 1 to 2 weeks 4 to 6 weeks, longer for dormant sites
Core update recovery 3 to 6 months 6 months to a year

Illyes was clear that these are reference points, not deadlines. The typical core update recovery of 3 to 6 months is the single most useful stat Google has volunteered this year. It settles plenty of nervous conversations.

3. Google quietly tightened its helpful content and AI guidance

No new algorithm was announced. Instead, Google edited two Search Central documents on 1 October and again on 5 October. The pages: helpful content, and generative AI content. Barry Schwartz surfaced the authorship change on 6 October.

Three changes that matter

  1. Fake author profiles are now explicitly deception. The updated page calls out AI headshots, invented names and false credentials. Deception makes a page untrustworthy to users and to automated quality systems. The last phrase is new.
  2. Unreviewed AI content gets named directly. The generative AI guide tells teams to manually fact check AI output before publishing. Titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text all included.
  3. Main Content got elevated. The helpful content page now defines Main Content as the primary thing that answers the user. Four quality markers follow: effort, originality, skill and experience, and accuracy.

At a separate European event on 5 October, Google reportedly told attendees that spam updates now use AI to detect AI spam. The most 2026 sentence of the year, and a strong hint at what the September rollout targeted.

Second order effects came fast. On 2 and 3 October, affiliate networks began asking publishers for proof of human authorship. By week two, some unionised newsrooms reportedly signed contracts banning synthetic bylines. Any content supply chain that includes third party writers now faces a compliance headache for Q4.

4. AI search: GPT 6, Gemini 4 Argon, and the end of plain text answers

The biggest week for AI search product news in 2026. Six releases in nine days:

Date Release Why it matters
5 Oct OpenAI visual ads in ChatGPT Native ad units alongside image generation. First US advertisers testing this month.
7 Oct GPT 6 and Intelligent UI for paid tiers Answers now contain interactive tools, forms, charts and mini apps.
8 Oct GPT 6 extends to Free and Go tiers About 1.2 billion weekly users now on Intelligent UI.
13 Oct Gemini 4 Argon rolls out in AI Mode AI Pro and Ultra get it worldwide. More direct answers, less hedging.
13 Oct Bing Topics Portfolio beta The first free report naming AI topic clusters where competitors show and other sites don’t.
15 Oct AI Mode and AI Overviews get more inline links, source blocks, article carousels and creator profiles Google says preferred source usage grew 7x this year.
16 Oct Gemini 4 Argon reaches Google Antigravity AI Pro subscribers only. Agentic coding workflows get the latest model.

Intelligent UI matters most

For most of ChatGPT’s history the output has been text. GPT 6’s Intelligent UI changes that. The model now picks the format. Plain text, buttons, forms, calculators, labelled diagrams, cooking timelines, playable games. Ask for a dinner for twelve and a quantity calculator appears. Ask about splitting a bill and a bill splitter builds itself in the conversation.

OpenAI also claims GPT 6 Instant starts answering web search questions 44% sooner than GPT 5.6 Instant on average, with better instruction following and less hedging. The Chat tab moved to GPT 6 Sol (paid) and GPT 6 Luna (free) across 7 and 8 October. Work and Codex are unchanged for now.

The SEO problem Intelligent UI creates

When the answer is a built in tool rather than a sentence with a citation, less surface area remains for a link to appear. Expect a two to three month lag before anyone has solid data on how much this reduces citations. Any brand actively tracking AI visibility in ChatGPT should assume the citation to tool ratio shifts against sites, not in favour of them.

Bing Topics Portfolio is the sleeper hit

For practical value, the quietest release of the fortnight was Microsoft’s. Bing Topics Portfolio sits inside Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI performance reports. It groups the grounding queries where a site appears into thematic clusters. Each topic shows:

  • Topic Size: total citations across all sites for that topic.
  • Sites Cited: how many sites appear in that topic cluster.
  • Queries: how many distinct AI queries sit within the topic.

The killer feature: Top Opportunity Queries. A list of strong AI queries where competitors appear and a given site does not. One free report, one claim, one Q4 content brief half written.

What Google added to AI Mode on 15 October

Google rolled a fresh set of changes into AI Mode and AI Overviews:

  • More inline links. Links appear inside words and phrases within AI responses, and higher up than before.
  • Source blocks. When only a few official sites answer a query, a dedicated section at the top lists them with a short explanation.
  • Article carousels. Shown in more locations, more languages and for a wider range of queries. Preferred sources get the spotlight.
  • Related articles with thumbnails. Images and card style layouts aim to feel more clickable.
  • Creator profile links in AI Mode videos. Clicking a creator’s name sends traffic to a Google Search profile page, not the creator’s own site.

The headline figure: Google reports that preferred source usage grew 7x this year. The caveat: no click data has been published, and Barry Schwartz suspects the overall effect on publisher clicks is small.

5. The measurement layer broke twice this fortnight

Two separate stories, same conclusion. Trusting anything outside first party data right now is risky.

Nozzle: 8% of SERPs served to rank trackers were fake

Nozzle published research on 10 October analysing 17.8 million SERPs since 13 September. The headline numbers:

Metric Baseline 13 Sep onwards
Share of SERPs poisoned 0.17% 8.0% average, peaking at 27% on 29 Sep
Organic results kept from previous SERP 88.5% 20.7%
Tracked site falls out of top 10 2.7% 58.6%

In short, Google appears to be serving fake pages to rank trackers rather than refusing their requests. Social sites and forums fill the gap. Reddit visibility rose by 8.0 points on poisoned pages. 77.9% of poisoned SERPs returned to normal within three days. Nozzle credits Google’s broader fight against AI scraping, with rank trackers caught in the collateral damage.

OpenAI’s UTM bug misclassified ChatGPT traffic as direct from 8 to 15 October

Between 8 and 15 October, ChatGPT stopped adding its utm_source=chatgpt.com tag to outbound links. Because ChatGPT also normally strips the HTTP referrer, GA4 and Adobe recorded those visits as direct traffic.

OpenAI acknowledged the error on 14 October and finished the fix roughly 24 hours later. Tagged links are now back to about 95 to 100% of normal levels.

Adobe’s Cedric Huesler analysed 500 pages where ChatGPT normally drives at least 5% of visits. Reported ChatGPT traffic fell by around 31,000 visits per day. Direct traffic rose by around 26,000. Two in every three pages that lost ChatGPT traffic also saw direct traffic rise.

The practical fix: mark 8 to 15 October as a known data glitch in GA4 or Adobe Analytics. Do not change attribution models or channel rules based on that week. Keep UTM parameters on anything AI driven.

6. Google Discover is becoming an “AI concierge,” plus the quick hits

On 12 October, Search Engine Land, PPC Land and Search Engine Journal all picked up a Google job listing for a Principal UX lead on Discover. Salary: up to $382,000. The brief: turn Discover into a proactive, hyper personalised concierge with tighter AI integration. The signal: Discover is being rebuilt as the feed side entry point to AI Mode, in the same way Search was rebuilt as the query side one.

Any publisher relying heavily on Discover traffic should watch this more carefully than any upcoming core update. Previous Discover rebuilds have been brutal on traffic. A Follow button quietly appeared in Discover’s video content viewer on 16 October, which hints at the direction of travel.

Quick hits (dated)

Date Story Action
5 Oct Google appeals the US search monopoly ruling No near term SEO impact. Watch Q1 2027.
5 Oct Dark mode confirmed for Google Search Console Cosmetic. Enjoy.
7 Oct Review rich results disappearing for healthcare pages YMYL health sites should re check schema and expect lower CTR.
8 Oct UGC Fresh Data Program opens applications Only relevant to UGC platforms. Paywall and login content is out.
10 to 12 Oct GSC Performance report lagged about 60 hours Longest delay since Dec 2025. Back to normal by 12 Oct.
13 Oct Google: site migrations can run beyond 4 months Factor into migration planning. Old URLs may still rank for months.
16 Oct Google Ads: online gambling category certification rollout starts Affected advertisers should begin applications.
16 Oct Google Ads: lead forms support lead scoring (up to 12 qualifying answers per question) Review lead form questions for high intent filters.
16 Oct Google Ads API moves to twice monthly releases Factor into dev team sprint planning.
16 Oct Google Dataset Search outage (restored same day) No lasting effect reported.
16 to 19 Oct Fresh ranking volatility, unconfirmed update rumours Check Search Console. Do not act on third party data alone.

What To Actually Do

A short list for the next ten working days, in rough priority order:

  1. Date impact analysis from 24 September to 8 October. Pull clicks, impressions and average position by page type for that window. Compare against the previous four weeks. Pages that lost traffic across both waves are the real spam signal casualties. Pages that dropped in wave one and recovered are noise.
  2. Mark 8 to 15 October as a ChatGPT data glitch in GA4 and Adobe Analytics. Any apparent ChatGPT traffic drop that week was the UTM bug. Direct traffic rose by roughly the same amount it fell. Do not change attribution models based on it.
  3. Run a fake author and AI hallucination audit on the top 20 pages. For each: is the author real and verifiable? If AI assisted, is a documented human review step on record? Flag any page that fails either test.
  4. Claim the Bing Topics Portfolio beta inside Bing Webmaster Tools. Pull the Top Opportunity Queries list. That is a Q4 AI visibility content brief, half written.
  5. Set recovery expectations using Google’s own numbers. 3 to 6 months typical for core update recovery, 6 months to a year worst case. 1 to 2 weeks for manual action removal. Up to 14 days for sitemap processing. All on record now.
  6. Add a GPT 6 citation check to the AI visibility tracker. Run the fixed prompt set after 8 October and compare citation share to the pre GPT 6 baseline. Falling citations alongside rising tool based answers signal what happened.
  7. Do not trust rank tracking data alone for the next 3 to 4 weeks. Nozzle’s research puts 8% of SERPs served to trackers as fake. Cross check against Search Console before any ranking based decision.
  8. Diversify away from Discover. The move to an AI concierge model is coming, and prior rebuilds have hurt traffic badly.
  9. Watch the Search Status Dashboard this week. If Google confirms the 16 October volatility as an update, impact analysis should run from that date, not the end of the spam update.

The fortnight’s summary in one line: Google finished the harshest spam update of the year, raised the bar on authorship and AI content on paper, broke the measurement layer twice, and watched OpenAI and its own Gemini team rewire what an answer looks like.

Next round up in two weeks. Comments welcome on recovery playbooks for the spam update, GPT 6’s effect on AI citations, or how to use the Bing Topics Portfolio properly.

Sources: Google Search Central (@googlesearchc, 8 October); Google Search Status Dashboard, checked 19 October 2026; Search Engine Roundtable (Barry Schwartz, 8, 13 and 16 October); Search Engine Land (crawl timing ranges reporting; AI Mode and AI Overviews changes, 15 October; Bing Topics Portfolio, 13 October; ChatGPT UTM story, 16 October); Search Engine Journal (Google timing ranges, 4 October); Search Engine Watch (unconfirmed October update, 16 to 19 October); 9to5Google (Gemini 4 Argon, 13 October); Unite.AI (GPT 6 Intelligent UI, 7 and 8 October); TechCrunch (OpenAI visual ads, 5 October); PPC Land (fake author profiles; Google Discover job listing); SearchHerald (October 2026 archive); DesignRush SEO Roundup (8 October week); Distribb (September 2026 spam update retrospective); AEOSoup (helpful content guidance updates); WebmasterWorld (September and October 2026 observations threads); Numinix (October 2026 SEO news); Nozzle (Poisoned Google SERPs research, 10 October); Marketing4eCommerce (OpenAI UTM bug analysis).

SEO & Digital Marketing News Round-Up Late September to Early October 2026

On By DaveIn seoLeave a comment

If you read our Mid-September 2026 round-up, you’ll remember we closed by saying the back half of the month was going to be noisy. It was noisier than expected. Google launched its fourth spam update of the year, AI Overviews quietly swallowed another chunk of click-through traffic, ChatGPT lost its 50% market-share crown for the first time since launch, and the EU and UK both moved on search data in ways that could reshape AI search competition inside twelve months.

Here’s what actually happened between 21 September and 5 October 2026, what it means, and what to do this week.

1. The headline event: Google September 2026 Spam Update

Google began rolling out the September 2026 Spam Update at 09:15 PDT on 24 September. It’s the fourth spam update of the year (after March, June and August) and is being rolled out globally, in every language.

Two things make this one different:

  • The two-week window. Every other 2026 spam update was estimated at “a few days” and none finished slower than 2 days and 16 hours. This one was given up to two weeks from the start – and as of 2 October, Google’s Search Status Dashboard still shows it as active.
  • It arrived in phases. The first wave of volatility hit between 25–27 September. A second, equally large wave was reported on 30 September and 1 October by Barry Schwartz, Glenn Gabe and other trackers. If your rankings moved on either of those dates, it was almost certainly this update.

How this update compares to the rest of 2026

Spam Update Start date Rollout duration
March 2026 24 March 19 hours 30 minutes
June 2026 24 June 2 days 1 hour
August 2026 18 August 2 days 16 hours
September 2026 24 September Ongoing (expected ~8 October)

What to do: Don’t finalise an impact analysis until Google confirms the rollout is complete. Pull your Search Console data from 24 September onwards, filter by page type and query cluster, and keep a note of any site changes (deployments, redirects, content pushes) you shipped in that window so you don’t blame or credit the wrong thing.

2. AI search is now genuinely eating Google – and ChatGPT

Three numbers landed in the last fortnight that I’d pin to the wall if I were running an in-house SEO team:

  • Google AI Overviews now appear on 80% of branded queries, up from 26% earlier in the year.
  • Google AI Mode has crossed 1 billion monthly users, per Google’s own figure reported on 29 September – a number that rivals ChatGPT’s estimated 1 billion MAUs from May.
  • ChatGPT’s share of the generative AI chatbot market slipped below 50% for the first time in September, finishing the month at 52.1%, with Gemini climbing to 26.9%.

ChatGPT market share through 2026

Monthly share of the generative AI chatbot market. ChatGPT held above 65% through Q1, lost ground to Gemini all summer, and dipped below 50% for the first time in July before stabilising.

Jan 26
67.1%

Feb 26
65.7%

Mar 26
62.6%

Apr 26
61.8%

May 26
59.1%

Jun 26
58.6%

Jul 26
51.3%

Aug 26
51.5%

Sep 26
52.1%

Source: First Page Sage / Sensor Tower, October 2026 report.

Where that lost market share went

AI assistant Market share (Sep 2026) Quarterly user growth
ChatGPT 52.1% +5%
Google Gemini 26.9% +10% (approx.)
Microsoft Copilot 1.32% Highest reading of 2026
Perplexity 1.9% Down from 5.3% in Jan
Claude (not listed in top table) +15% (fastest growing)

The pattern is clear: ChatGPT is still the market leader by a comfortable margin, but the “AI = ChatGPT” era is over. Any AI-visibility tracking programme that only measures ChatGPT is now missing roughly half of the signal.

The one that gave me the biggest pause this fortnight was a separate report that Reddit citations in ChatGPT Search dropped 86% in four days. If you have a strategy that leans on Reddit as a source of AI visibility, go and re-check it – the mix of citation sources is less stable than any of us assumed.

3. Google Search Console: three real changes in two weeks

Search Console had more product news in September than it had in most of H1. Three things worth knowing:

a) Generative AI performance report now worldwide

Google’s Generative AI report in Search Console – showing impressions and clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode – rolled out globally. If you don’t see it yet, it should appear in the next few days. It’s not perfect (more on that below), but it’s the first time most of us have had any first-party AI-visibility data at all.

b) New multimodal filter for image-based searches

A new filter – sitting under the Web search type – now splits out performance for searches where someone used an image (think Google Lens, Circle to Search). The global rollout began on 24 September and applies to both the standard Search results and the Generative AI reports.

c) Google is fixing a long-running impressions bug

Google has confirmed a logging error that inflated impression counts since 13 May 2025. The fix is now rolling out. Clicks are unaffected. If your impressions suddenly drop in the next few weeks, don’t panic – it’s probably Google’s numbers quietly correcting themselves, not a traffic loss.

A caveat on the AI reporting

An important caveat on this new data: Search Console treats an entire AI Overview as a single block and assigns the same ranking position to every link inside it, regardless of where the link actually appears in the answer. John Mueller acknowledged on Reddit on 16 September that AI Mode and AI Overviews position/impression tracking will “evolve over time” and that there are “edge cases”. Translation: these numbers are directionally useful, not literally correct – don’t build your Q4 reporting around a position-based metric for anything AI yet.

4. The AI Overviews / AI Mode drift continues

The product story keeps moving in one direction: AI Overviews behaving more like AI Mode, and both of them keeping users inside Google rather than sending them to publishers.

  • In-text links in AI Overviews now sometimes open AI Mode queries, not the external publisher. Peec AI’s chart showed the share of AI Overviews containing an external in-text link climbing from near zero on 10 September to 26.2% by 20 September. Some of those links go to the web – others pre-fill a new AI Mode conversation and keep the user inside Google.
  • AI Mode’s click-out rate is now around 4.5%, versus roughly 24% for traditional search, per analysis published this fortnight.
  • Gemini 3.8 Flash launched inside AI Mode, briefly without citations (now fixed), followed by Gemini 3.8 Live.
  • Google began testing “practice quizzes” in AI Mode on 2 October – a prompt that carries content from a search result into a pre-filled quiz. Another reason for the user to stay in AI Mode rather than click out.
  • Google is testing “Sponsored” text link ads inside AI Mode (spotted 15 September), so the commercial model for AI Mode is quietly being built in public.

Growth of external in-text links in AI Overviews

Daily share of AI Overviews containing an in-text external link, 25 August – 20 September 2026. Source: Peec AI.

25 Aug
~0%

5 Sep
~1%

10 Sep
~3%

15 Sep
~14%

20 Sep
26.2%

Values between 25 Aug and 15 Sep are illustrative based on Peec AI’s reported curve shape – Peec confirmed the near-zero baseline and the 26.2% peak on 20 September.

A separate randomised field study published this fortnight found Google’s AI search features reduced external click referrals and that users forced into AI Mode were more likely to try Bing, DuckDuckGo or Yahoo. Removing AI Overviews increased external clicks without a measurable decline in user satisfaction. That’s a difficult data point for Google to carry around.

5. Regulators actually moved

Two regulatory stories that matter more than they look:

  • The EU has ordered Google to share search data with rival search engines – and explicitly with AI-powered search tools and chatbots. This is the first time European competition law has treated conversational AI as a search engine for the purposes of data access. Expect challengers (Perplexity, You.com, Mistral-based tools and others) to put in requests before year-end.
  • The UK CMA’s consultation on search choice screens closes on 9 October. The proposals would show Android and Chrome users a choice screen at setup and annually, and AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity would be eligible for listing. The CMA also wants to cover fair attribution of publisher content. A final decision is expected by the end of 2026.

On the publisher side, Google launched its AI Contribution pilot in Search Console – paying selected publishers when Google judges their content to have “significantly contributed” to an AI response. The payouts are reportedly small. The precedent is not.

6. Quick hits: everything else worth knowing

Date Story Why it matters
22 Sep Google AI Mode vs AI Overviews explainer wave Industry is finally treating them as two different surfaces to optimise for.
23 Sep UK CMA publishes search choice screen proposals AI assistants eligible for the choice screen. Consultation closes 9 October.
24 Sep September 2026 Spam Update begins Fourth of the year. Still rolling as of 2 October.
24 Sep GSC multimodal (image search) filter rolls out First real visibility into Lens / Circle to Search performance.
25–27 Sep Wave one of spam update volatility High volatility reported across all major tracker tools.
28 Sep “7 AI search myths debunked” data piece Worth the read if you’re arguing internally about AI search strategy.
29 Sep TIME: Google quietly made 1bn+ people AI users AI Mode now at ChatGPT scale, largely by UI nudges.
30 Sep Yext acquires Flamel.ai Local paid campaigns across Google, Meta and ChatGPT – multi-location brands take note.
30 Sep – 1 Oct Wave two of spam update volatility Second ranking jolt, confirmed by Schwartz & Gabe.
1 Oct Contentstack launches Canoe (AI visibility tool, free tier) The “GEO stack” is now crowded enough that free tiers are the entry point.
2 Oct Google tests practice quizzes in AI Mode Another on-SERP retention mechanic.
5 Oct DoubleVerify launches attribution for ChatGPT ads ChatGPT ads are becoming measurable – expect budgets to follow.

7. What to do this week

A short, honest to-do list for the next seven days:

  1. Date-stamp the spam update impact. In Search Console, filter by 24 Sep onwards, compare pages and queries, and resist the urge to decide anything until Google marks the rollout complete (expected around 8 October).
  2. Note the GSC impressions correction. Expect a drop in impressions over the next few weeks that has nothing to do with your rankings. Tell your stakeholders now.
  3. Build a fixed AI-visibility prompt set. 20–30 queries, run across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Not just ChatGPT. The Reddit-citation collapse is a reminder of how fast the citation mix shifts.
  4. Audit your in-SERP presence, not just your rankings. With AI Overviews now covering 80% of branded queries and in-text links sometimes keeping users inside AI Mode, “position 1” is doing less work than it did in Q1.
  5. If you’re in the UK, respond to the CMA consultation before 9 October. If you publish anything, the attribution rules matter directly to you.

The one-sentence summary of the fortnight: Google’s organic ranking surface got noisier, Google’s AI surface got bigger, and the measurement layer around both is still catching up.

We’ll be back with the next round-up in two weeks. If there’s a specific story from the last fortnight you’d like us to go deeper on – the spam update, AI Contribution payouts, the CMA proposals, or the Reddit-citation shift – leave a comment below.

Sources: Google Search Status Dashboard; Search Engine Roundtable (Barry Schwartz, 24 Sep & 1 Oct 2026); Search Engine Land; Search Engine Journal; TIME (29 Sep 2026); First Page Sage / Sensor Tower (Oct 2026); Ignite Visibility weekly round-up (2 Oct 2026); MarketingProfs AI Update (2 Oct 2026); Peec AI chart (via ALMcorp, 30 Sep 2026); MarTech.org (1 Oct 2026); AgileBrandGuide (1–2 Oct 2026).

SEO & Google Ads/PPC: News – Sept 2026

On By DaveIn Business, seoLeave a comment

SEO & Digital Marketing News Round-Up: What UK Small Businesses Need to Action Right Now (Late August / Early September 2026)

If you’ve blinked in the last three weeks, you’ve missed a lot. Here’s the plain-English rundown of what actually changed, what it means for your business, and more importantly: what you should actually do about it.

Laptop screen showing digital marketing analytics dashboard with charts and data
Photo by Unsplash. Swap for your own or upload to your Media Library.

TL;DR The Five Things That Actually Matter This Month

If you only read one thing, read this table. Everything else is context.

# The Change Deadline Who It Affects Urgency
1 Google Ads AI Max auto-migration 1 Sept 2026 Anyone running Google Search Ads with broad match or auto-created assets 🔴 Critical
2 Google Performance Max AI video auto-resize 4 Sept 2026 (opt-out) Anyone running PMax with video assets 🔴 Critical
3 Cloudflare AI crawler default changes 15 Sept 2026 Anyone hosting a site on Cloudflare (especially free-tier) 🟠 High
4 Google August 2026 Spam Update (finished rolling out) Complete – 21 Aug 2026 Sites relying heavily on AI/programmatic content 🟠 High
5 Bing Webmaster Tools old API retired 31 Aug 2026 Anyone using dashboards/tools that pull Bing data 🟡 Medium

1. Google Ads AI Max: The Silent Migration You Might Have Missed

This is the single biggest paid-media change of the year, and Google has been remarkably quiet about it.

From 1 September 2026, Google is automatically migrating Search campaigns using either “Automatically Created Assets” (ACA) or the campaign-level broad match setting over to its new AI Max system. There is no advance decline – you either configured it yourself before the deadline or Google configures it for you.

What actually changes

When AI Max flips on, Google’s AI can:

  • Rewrite your ad text – new headlines and descriptions generated based on your website and existing ads (words you didn’t write and didn’t approve)
  • Match queries beyond your keyword list – using “search term matching” similar to how Performance Max already works
  • Swap landing pages – potentially pointing traffic to different pages on your site

Your brand inclusions/exclusions, budget and bid strategy do carry over.

The uncomfortable data

Google says AI Max delivers a +7% conversion lift. Independent testing tells a different story:

Source Finding
Google’s own aggregate data +7% conversions at similar CPA (excludes retail)
Smarter Ecommerce (250+ retail campaigns) Median 13% increase in conversion value, 0% median ROAS change
Independent test of 30,000 search terms 99% of AI Max impressions produced zero conversions
Lunio (nine-month study) Invalid-traffic rates rose from 2.46% to 5.28%

Not exactly a slam dunk.

Your action list

  • ☐ Before 1 September: Log into every Google Ads account and audit whether campaigns use ACA or campaign-level broad match
  • ☐ Decide per campaign whether to opt in deliberately (Campaigns → Settings → AI Max) or disable the legacy feature first
  • ☐ Warning: Once you disable the legacy ACA feature, you can’t turn it back on. AI Max itself is reversible; ACA disablement is a one-way door.
  • ☐ Export current search term reports and conversion data now so you’ve got a clean before/after baseline
  • ☐ Audit “Limited by budget” campaigns – Google explicitly said it won’t adjust bid targets for you

Regulated industries (health, finance, legal): AI-rewritten ad copy could breach your compliance rules. Take this seriously.

2. Performance Max: Google’s AI Will Reframe Your Videos

If you didn’t already have enough to worry about, there’s a separate PMax change with an even earlier deadline.

From 4 September 2026, Google will use generative AI to auto-create missing aspect ratios (vertical, square) from your existing horizontal video assets in Performance Max campaigns. This applies to video you’ve already uploaded and approved, not just new uploads.

Why this matters

A 16:9 original cut down to 9:16 vertical keeps roughly a third of the width. That means:

  • Burnt-in text overlays likely disappear
  • Logos at the edges get cropped out
  • Legally required disclaimers can vanish
  • Generative AI invents the rest

How to opt out

Contact your Google account team or submit Google’s opt-out form before 4 September. Video settings can still be changed inside your account after that date, but the default from that point is “on”.

If your PMax video has your premises, staff, or actual product on screen – look at what the AI produces before letting it run in your name.

3. Google’s August 2026 Spam Update: What Got Hit

Google’s third spam update of the year ran from 18–21 August 2026. It rolled out globally in every language over about two days and 16 hours.

What Google said

  • No new spam policies were added
  • It re-scores sites against existing rules
  • Link spam and site reputation abuse were explicitly excluded from scope
  • Recovery is measured in months, not weeks

What actually got hit

According to SE Ranking’s study of 100,000 keywords across 20 industries:

  • 16.71% of URLs that had ranked in Google’s top 10 fell beyond position 100 during the update
  • That’s roughly 1.8 times more than a comparable baseline period
  • Common patterns among impacted sites: programmatic content at scale, AI-generated content published without meaningful human review, thin affiliate pages, near-duplicate content hubs

What to do if you were hit

Priority Action
1 Wait until rollout completed (it has – 21 Aug) before making changes
2 Check Search Console dates. Line up traffic drops with 18–21 August
3 Audit pages with low engagement, near-duplicate content, or high AI-probability scores
4 Consolidate or remove thin content rather than mass-rewriting good pages
5 Don’t file a reconsideration request, those are for manual actions, which this isn’t

One thing NOT to do: Don’t panic-rewrite perfectly good pages because an AI detector scored them highly. Detection tools are noisy and rewriting well-performing content in a panic is how you make things worse.

4. Cloudflare AI Crawler Changes: 15 September Deadline

This is the one everyone’s got slightly wrong. Let’s clear it up.

From 15 September 2026, Cloudflare’s new defaults kick in for:

  • New domains being onboarded
  • New sites added by existing customers
  • Existing free-tier accounts that haven’t touched their settings

On pages that show ads, Training and Agent crawlers will be blocked by default. Search crawlers stay allowed.

The actual risk (this is important)

Multi-purpose crawlers like Googlebot, Applebot and Bingbot crawl for both Search AND Training under a single user agent. Cloudflare’s new rule is: the most restrictive setting wins.

Translation: If someone on your team ticked the old “Block AI Bots” toggle in 2025, from 15 September you could accidentally be blocking Googlebot too, which would quietly disappear you from Google Search.

Your ten-minute check

  1. Log into Cloudflare → Security → Settings → AI bot policies
  2. If you see the old blanket “Block AI Bots” toggle, that’s your risk. Change it to the granular Search / Agent / Training controls
  3. Allow Search crawlers unless you have a very specific reason not to
  4. Make a deliberate choice on Training (are you happy for your content to train AI models?) and Agent (do you want ChatGPT, Perplexity etc to fetch your pages when users ask?)
  5. Save. Even saving your current choice explicitly protects you from the new defaults being applied

If your growth loop includes getting cited in AI answers, blocking Training and Agent bots is an SEO own-goal. Most small businesses should probably allow all three.

5. ChatGPT Ads: Now Live in the UK (and 30 Other European Markets)

OpenAI has quietly turned ChatGPT into a self-serve ad platform, and as of 31 August 2026, self-service Ads Manager access is now live across 31 European markets, with the UK already included in the earlier launch cohort.

The state of play

Fact Detail
Where ads appear Free and Go tier users, logged in, adult accounts
UK availability Live (self-serve Ads Manager)
Bidding oCPC (conversion-optimised) now available
Formats Sponsored product cards, multi-product carousel (new in August)
Partners Etsy, Shopify integrations for in-chat checkout
Early UK/US CPM Around $30 (down from initial $60 estimate)

Should you actually spend on this?

Honestly? Not yet, for most small UK businesses. Here’s why:

  • Ads only reach Free and Go tier users (Plus and Pro users see none)
  • Independent tests have been mixed at best – one agency test recorded 8,940 impressions, 58 clicks and zero leads
  • The channel behaves more like brand awareness than direct response
  • Measurement stack is still immature

But: get your OAIQ pixel installed and Conversions API wired up now, so you’re ready to test cheaply in Q1 2027 when the data will be clearer.

6. Quick-Fire Round-Up: The Other Stuff That Happened

Update What Happened What To Do
Bing Webmaster Tools API SOAP/POX interfaces retired 31 Aug 2026 Migrate any dashboards to REST/JSON API
Google Search Console Third-party views for IG, YouTube, TikTok now showing Check your GSC – new data source for social attribution
GA4 & Google Ads AI Overviews and “Ask Advisor” rolling out for benchmarking Explore the new prompts for quick insights
Google Assistant Being replaced by Gemini on Android from 4 Sept Test how your business appears in Gemini responses
Reddit citations in ChatGPT 86% drop reported by Promptwatch in mid-August Diversify – Reddit was a huge citation source for many niches
EU AI Act Watermarking rules for AI content now in force If you use AI-generated marketing content in EU markets, comply with disclosure rules
DaVinci Resolve, CapCut, Premiere Pro All shipped major AI-powered updates Genuine time-savers for video content teams

The Bigger Picture: Three Themes Worth Internalising

1. “Doing nothing” is now an active choice

Google, OpenAI and Cloudflare are all shipping changes with defaults that apply if you don’t act. Small businesses without dedicated marketing ops are the most exposed. Put September deadlines in your diary this week.

2. AI search rewards the same things good SEO always has

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) – getting cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity – rewards clear answers, structured content, real expertise and trustworthy brand entities. The tactics haven’t changed as much as the terminology.

Data point worth knowing: SE Ranking found AI-referred visitors spend around 68% more time on site, and Semrush has reported they convert roughly 4.4 times higher than standard organic. AI referrals are still a trickle – but they’re a trickle of pre-qualified people.

3. Your Google Business Profile decays faster than you think

Recent local SEO data suggests GBP impressions drop noticeably for businesses that haven’t posted an update or added a photo in over 30 days. If you haven’t touched yours in a while, that’s a 10-minute Sunday-evening job.

Your September Action Checklist

Screenshot this, save it, tick it off.

Before 1 September:

  • ☐ Audit Google Ads accounts for ACA and campaign-level broad match usage
  • ☐ Export current search term reports as your baseline

Before 4 September:

  • ☐ Decide on Performance Max video auto-resize opt-out
  • ☐ Contact Google account team or submit opt-out form if needed

Before 15 September:

  • ☐ Log into Cloudflare and set explicit AI bot preferences (don’t leave on defaults)
  • ☐ Confirm Googlebot is not accidentally blocked

By end of September:

  • ☐ Review Search Console for August spam update impact
  • ☐ Post fresh content to your Google Business Profile
  • ☐ Test how your business appears in ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Overviews
  • ☐ Audit your service pages for clear, extractable answers to buyer questions

Final Thought

Most of the damage in a month like this comes from the reaction rather than the news itself. Panic-rewriting content, changing settings without measuring, buying tools that “fix” problems you don’t have. Check your data against Search Console before you change anything. Put the September dates in your diary. Then get back to running your business.

The businesses that win in AI-era search aren’t the ones with the biggest content machines. They’re the ones with clear money pages, real expertise, strong local signals, and settings they’ve actively chosen rather than defaults they’ve inherited.

Any questions on any of this or want help auditing your setup ahead of the September deadlines? Drop a comment below.

Sources for this round-up include Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Google’s own Ads and Commerce Blog, OpenAI, Cloudflare, SE Ranking, Yoast, and reporting from Two Octobers, Seafoam, ROI Revolution, Ignite Visibility and Digital Loop. Snapshot as of early September 2026 – this stuff moves fast, always sense-check dates before acting.

OfferCatalog Schema Example for eCommerce Product-Listing / Category Page [2024]

On By DaveIn seoLeave a comment

Below is an example for a webpage which lists different soccer balls for sale:

<script type="application/ld+json">

  {

    @context: "https://schema.org/",

    @type: "OfferCatalog",

    name: "Cakes for Sale",

    description: "A catalog of cakes offered by our online store",

    url: "https://www.example.com/all-cakes",

    numberOfItems: 2,

    itemListOrder: "https://schema.org/ItemListOrderAscending",

    itemListElement: [{

      @type: "Offer",

      itemOffered: {

        @type: "Product",

        name: "Cake1",

        image: "https://www.example.com/images/product1.jpg",

        description: "Description of cake 1",

        sku: "sku1",

        manufacturer: "Manufacturer 1",

        brand: "Brand 1",

        offers: {

          @type: "Offer",

          price: "9.99",

          priceCurrency: "USD",

          availability: "https://schema.org/InStock"

        }

      }

    }, {

      @type: "Offer",

      itemOffered: {

        @type: "Product",

        name: "Product 2",

        image: "https://www.example.com/images/product2.jpg",

        description: "Description of product 2",

        sku: "sku2",

        manufacturer: "Manufacturer 2",

        brand: "Brand 2",

        offers: {

          @type: "Offer",

          price: "199.99",

          priceCurrency: "USD",

          availability: "https://schema.org/InStock"

        }

      }

    }]

  }

</script>

once you’ve done your own code, you can check it using the schema testing sheet – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dDqJ9_qrTVoJOZRxieJDp9XE3Q1TCq4ixNVudVtgp2M/edit#gid=0

Here’s another example:

<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org",

  "@type": "OfferCatalog",

  "name": "Competition Tennis Balls",

  "description": "High-quality competition tennis balls for professional and amateur players.",

  "url": "https://www.example.com/tennis-la/balls/competition-tennis-balls.html",

  "itemListElement": [

    {

      "@type": "Offer",

      "itemOffered": {

        "@type": "Product",

        "name": "Pro Tournament Tennis Ball",

        "image": "https://www.example.com/images/pro_tournament_tennis_ball.jpg",

        "description": "Premium quality tennis ball designed for professional tournaments.",

        "brand": "example Pro",

        "sku": "NWPRO123",

        "offers": {

          "@type": "Offer",

          "priceCurrency": "USD",

          "price": "20.00",

          "availability": "http://schema.org/InStock",

          "url": "https://www.example.com/pro-tournament-tennis-ball.html"

        }

      }

    },

    {

      "@type": "Offer",

      "itemOffered": {

        "@type": "Product",

        "name": "Championship Level Tennis Ball",

        "image": "https://www.example.com/images/championship_level_tennis_ball.jpg",

        "description": "High-performance tennis ball suitable for championship level play.",

        "brand": "Example La",

        "sku": "NWCHAMP456",

        "offers": {

          "@type": "Offer",

          "priceCurrency": "USD",

          "price": "15.00",

          "availability": "http://schema.org/InStock",

          "url": "https://www.example.com/championship-level-tennis-ball.html"

        }

      }

    }

  ]

}

</script>

Instead of Offercatalog, you may want to consider using CollectionPage schema…

Here’s an example of CollectionPage Schema for an eCommerce category page:

<script type="application/ld+json">



{



  "@context": "http://schema.org",



  "@type": "CollectionPage",



  "name": "Shopify Apps",



  "url": "https://sherpas.design/pages/shopify-apps",



  "description": "We build apps that function and feel natively Shopify",



  "image": "https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0085/8515/0560/files/logox2_500x500.png?v=1555661781",



  "isPartOf": {



    "@type": "WebSite",



    "name": "Sherpas Design",



    "url": "https://sherpas.design"



  },



  "relatedLink": [



    "https://sherpas.design/about-us",



    "https://sherpas.design/contact"



  ],



  "mainEntity": {



    "@type": "ItemList",



    "itemListElement": [



      {



        "@type": "ListItem",



        "position": 1,



        "url": "http://example.com/coffee_cake.html",



        "name": "Coffee Cake",



        "image": "http://example.com/images/coffee_cake.jpg",



        "description": "product is yummy",



        "brand": "NanesBakes"



      },



      {



        "@type": "ListItem",



        "position": 2,



        "url": "http://example.com/apple_pie.html",



        "name": "Apple Pie",



        "image": "http://example.com/images/apple_pie.jpg",



        "description": "product is yummy",



        "brand": "MumsCakesYo"



      },



      {



        "@type": "ListItem",



        "position": 3,



        "url": "http://example.com/blueberry-pie.html",



        "name": "Blueberry Pie",



        "image": "http://example.com/images/blueberry_pie.jpg",



        "description": "product is yummy",



        "brand": "NanesBakes"



      }



    ]



  }



}



</script>

More info on CollectionPage Schema for eCommerce in my other blog post here.

Google Analytics 4 – Quick Notes & Introduction 

On By DaveIn Analytics, BusinessLeave a comment
GA4

Image Source (google.com)

An Analytics account is your gateway to Analytics. An account can include multiple properties and property types, but a property can belong to only one Analytics account.

A property lives within an account. Properties are the containers for your reports based on the data you collect from your apps and sites. It’s the level at which Analytics processes data and where Analytics can connect with other Google products, like Google Ads.

A data stream lives within a property and is the source of data from your app or website. A property can have one or many data streams.

Info taken from the GA 4 Course here

The guiding principle of account structure

When structuring your Analytics account, remember this guiding principle: Each property should represent a specific user base.

Use separate properties to collect data from each user base you’re interested in understanding better — for example, a specific brand or region.

The new version of Google Analytics – Google Analytics 4 – has less pre-made reports and users are prompted to customise their own dashboards and use the search function.

You can literally ask questions, using the search bar. Which is fun.

Instead of pageviews and sessions, GA 4 is built around events.

Pre-configured reports are limited in GA 4. It’s a good idea to have Universal Analytics in addition to GA4

  • You can’t yet link GA 4 to Search Console
  • You can Can store raw data in BigQuery

when you install GA4 on your site, the reports don’t import data from GA universal – start from scratch – no historical data is passed over to GA4 when you install it on your site.

  • GA4 is Built Around Events.

Events:

You can track pageloads, elements clicked, product details, and loads more

Parameters:

Parameters are info that are sent to GA4 with the events. 

Eg. Pageview is sent to GA4 with URL of the page, page title and the referral details

Automatic Events:

First Visit – first time someone visits site (this even populates the new user report too)

Page View – same as normal pageviews

Session Start – new session after 30 mins of inactivity

User Engagement – starts whens someone on your site for at least 10 secs

Enhancement Measurement

GA4  automatically tracks:

Scrolls – 90% of a page

Outbound Clicks –

Site Search – search queries

Video Engagement – for embedded YouTube videos

File Downloads

ga4 enhanced measurement

To edit the Enhancement Measurement reports go to “Data Streams” in the Admin area:

Google analytics 4 admin

Click on data stream and check to see that “Enhanced Measurement” is switched to the on position. If you click on the cog icon, you can then switch different measurements on and off.

They’ll be set to “on” by default.

There are advanced settings for pageviews and site search – just click “Show advanced settings”. 

Google provides a list of recommended events for all websites and apps, and then by industry.

Retail & eCommerce

Jobs, Education, Local Deals & Real Estate

Travel 

Games

Custom Events

Custom events allows you to name your events.

Google’s naming convention is probably best to copy – [action]_[object/item]

For example, if you create an event to track when people rate your website, call it:

Rate_item 

Instead of

Product-rate

Add parameters such as product, item_id and rating – so you know which product is rated and what rating the user gave it.

You’ll need to register the parameters as custom dimensions or metrics

To make a new event – in the left hand nav/side bar – click – 

Events – Create Event – Name the event

Enter the parameters to tell Google when to trigger the new event

E.g. page_location – contains – thank-you

Click “create” in top right corner.

You can create brand new events in Tag Manager – rather than basing them on existing events

Data Settings>Data Retention

By default GA4 only stores data for 2 months – in the Admin area, you can change this to 14 months.

Go to Admin>Data Settings>Data Retention and change it to 14 months on the drop down menu.

Brief Run Down of GA4 Reports (in the left hand side-menu)

REPORTS

Acquisition Reports – Where are visitors coming from? Looks at channels e.g. organic, and New Users Vs Returning Visitors

  • Click the “+” above the table, to add an additional dimension

    1. Click the + above the table on one of the reports:

2. Add an additional dimension to the table, e.g. Page/Screen > Landing Page

Engagement Reports – What are visitors doing on your site?

To see pageviews and users per page:

  • Reports>Engagement>Pages and Screens

Monetization – New term for eCommerce Reporting in GA 4

See what items people are buying and how much money their spending

Retention – Looks at new users/visitors and returning visitors. See what percentage of different cohorts come back to the site etc

Demographics – Where are people based and what type of people are coming to your site?

Tech – what computers, tablets and phones are people using?

EVENTS

Conversions – conversions can be customised. But typically include “Begin_checkout” and “purchase”

All Events – basically less important events – compared to conversions. Include clicks, scrolls etc.

EXPLORE

Analysis – There is a Template Gallery (top right of screen) 

You can look into funnels, acquisition etc and get cool reports

CONFIGURE 

Audiences – you can build different audiences by location, device etc and analyse them

Notes from the GA4 Course from Google

Google uses identity spaces to track users.

How to use data streams

Remember, a property is the container for your reports based on the data you collect from your apps and sites. 

A data stream lives within a property and is a source of data from your app or website.

Once you’ve identified a user base you’re trying to measure, create a property for that user base. 

Then create a data stream for each of the ways these users interact with your business. For example, if you’re an app developer, you could create one data stream for your iOS app, one for your Android app, and one for your app’s marketing website.

Conversions are events that are assigned a value – such as a purchase, a lead or a download.

To mark events as conversions

In the left-hand side-menu, go to the bottom option “configure” – then “go to admin”

Click “events”

You can now turn on events like 100% scroll, to conversions.

Modelled Conversions

Browsers that don’t allow conversions to be measured with third-party cookies have conversions modeled based on a website’s traffic. Browsers that limit the time window for first-party cookies have conversions (beyond the window) modeled.

Some countries require consent to use cookies for advertising activities. When advertisers use consent mode, conversions are modeled for unconsented users.

Google

Identity Spaces

When trying to understand user journeys, Analytics can use several different user identifiers, such as the IDs you assign users logged into your website, Google signals, and device ID. These groups of identifiers are called identity spaces.

Reports & Explorations

Free From Exploration

The free form exploration allows you to visualize your data with flexibility and ease.

To conduct an ad hoc analysis, just drag and drop the variables you’re interested in onto a canvas to see instant visualizations of your data. Don’t see the variable you’re looking for? Select the plus icon to view the full list of dimensions and metrics you can use.

This tool presents your data in a cross-tab layout, where you can arrange the rows and columns as you like and add the metrics you’re most interested in. You can also apply different visualization styles, including bar charts, pie charts, line charts, scatter plots, and maps.

If you spot a significant data point, right-click on that data point to easily create an audience or segment from it and use it in other explorations. If you use the line chart visualization, you’ll see an automatic feature enabled called anomaly detection. This feature uses machine learning to identify outliers in your data according to your parameters.

Funnel Exploration

Funnel exploration lets you visualize the steps your users take toward a key task or conversion. This tool helps you identify sequences of key events and understand how your users navigate these steps. You’ll be able to see where users enter your funnels, as well as where they drop off.

You can use this information to improve your site or app and reduce inefficient or abandoned customer journeys. You can also easily create audiences of users based on where they enter or exit the funnels you define.

With this tool, you can define up to 10 steps in your funnels, up from five steps in UA properties’ Custom Funnels. Plus, you can now analyze both closed funnels (where users must enter at the beginning of the funnel) and open funnels (where users can enter the funnel at any point).

Path Exploration

Path exploration lets you understand how people progress from one stage in the customer journey to the next. 

Like funnel exploration, path exploration uncovers the steps users take through your site or app. But while funnels only analyze a single, predefined path, path exploration is free-flowing and can follow any number of undefined paths, even ones you weren’t aware of or didn’t intend. For example, it could uncover looping behavior, which may indicate users becoming stuck.

Plus, you can define paths using either a starting point or an ending point. This helps you understand how users got to a certain step on their journey and shows you what they did after.

Segment Overlap

Segment overlap lets you compare up to three user segments to quickly see how those segments overlap and relate to each other. This can help you isolate specific audiences based on complex conditions. You can then create new segments based on your findings, which you can apply to other exploration techniques and Google Analytics reports.

Copy taken from the Google Course here.

google analytics 4 user exploration

Explorations are private by default. If you’re the creator, only you can view and edit them unless you choose to share.

Understand the Analytics property structure

You can use GA4 properties exclusively for web data, exclusively for app data, or for both app and web data together. No matter what your setup is, it’s important to understand how to structure your new Analytics property.

Introducing data streams

Data streams are a feature of GA4 properties that allow you to connect a single Analytics property to the various places where your users interact with your business. For example, a company that has both a website and an app would need a separate data stream for each platform to combine their reporting and insights into a single Analytics property.

Once you have set up your GA4 property and data stream(s), you can add different events.

For an eCommerce store, Google recommends setting up:

Google Analytics 4 filters are applied at the property level, and affect data from all data streams in that property. All reports for a property use the same filtered data.

Analytics collects and stores user interactions with your website or your app as events. Events provide insight into what’s happening on your website or app, such as page views, button clicks, user actions, or system events.

Conversions

It’s easy to create conversions, from events.

Got to EVENTS in the side-bar/menu on the left of GA4, then “All events”.

You can then mark existing events as conversions:

See also:

GA 4 SEO Reports – for step by step instructions on setting up some useful SEO reports in Google Analytics 4

Data Studio – Data Blending

On By DaveIn Data StuidoLeave a comment

Bit of a ball ache to work out

There are a few ways to blend data, here’s my fave:

  • Go to “Resources” in the main menu at the top
  • Click “manage blended data” option
  • Click “Add a Data View”
  • Choose a Data Source e.g. Search Console
  • Then “Add a Table” and include another data Source for blending – e.g. GA
    or click “blend data” on an existing table or chart – and select another data source
  • Choose a common “key” to both data sources e.g. “Date”
  • Choose the metrics you want from each Data Source – I wanted to get daily revenue into my search console reports:

Using the blended data above, I can now add Revenue from Google Analytics to my search console reports. I have to remember however, that the revenue is simply attributed to each day and not any queries

**Update to the screenshot –

add a table filter to get organic only revenue from GA.

To be able to filter Revenue to organic only – you need to add a “Dimension” to the table on the right – click the “+” next to “Add dimension” in the GA data and then “Default Channel Grouping” – you can then create a filter in the report:

Blending Search Console Data in Data Studio

Another common reason to blend data – is to get average position data from Search Console “Site Impression reports, added to “URL Impression” data:

URL impression vs site impression

Incidentally –

the main difference between Data Studio Search Console URL Impression Vs Site Impression data – is that Site Impression contains the Average Position metric and URL Impression contains the Landing Page metric. So when you’re blending the data from both sources, make sure you have “Landing Page” as a metric and “Average Position”.

Get Content Ideas from Competitor Websites (SEMRush)

On By DaveIn Business, seoLeave a comment

Requires:

  • SEMRush
  • A computer
  • The internet

If competitor has articles and blog posts inside a subfolder e.g. “buyers-guides” or “/blog” – make a note of the sub-folder name

  • Add Competitor’s homepage URL in “Search Bar” on SEMRush Homepage
  • Click “Organic Research”
  • Click on the “Positions” tab
  • Click on “Advanced Filter” and add the subfolder name e.g. “blog” as a URL filter
  • Export Results into Excel
  • Create a Pivot Table
  • Use the settings below – you’ll need to change position to “average” instead of “sum of”:
  • Tick the check-box for “URL” at the top
  • Drag search volume, traffic and position into “Values” box at the bottom right
  • Click the little arrow on the right of “Sum of Position” – go to “Value Field Settings” and choose “average”
  • Analyse which articles get the most traffic (approximately) and have most potential

Obvs. the URLs of my competitor have been blacked-out in the image above

If the competitor has all their articles at the root domain level e.g.

12 Best Weightlifting Belts of 2024 (Tested and Reviewed)

Just use SEMRush – Organic Research – Positions tab and download and pivot the pages data – no need for advanced filter

  • Once you’ve found the blog posts with the most traffic, you can analyse the “Exact URL” in SEMRush
  • This analysis, should show you the keywords on the page that generate most of the search traffic
  • I personally like to go after KWs with a Keyword Difficulty score of less than 20 for my personal blog and under 30 for my employer’s blog

You can also use Reddit & Quora for Content Ideas

Unsolicited #SEO tip: You can get great ideas for specific content ahead of features like PAAs being generated by using Google site operators with specific sites. For instance, I can use the command:

site:reddit[dot]com/r/amateur_boxing “how do i”

or

site:reddit.com/r/bootroom “how do i”

To search just the amateur boxing subreddit for questions starting with “how do I?” You can apply this on any niche or on other sites like Quora to get up to the minute questions people are asking.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/markseo_seo-activity-6902220002146275329-MNVS/

How to Get More Followers on Linkedin (2021)

On By DaveIn marketingLeave a comment

I’ve made some notes from a few videos on YouTube – thought I may as well turn it into a blog post…

Summary – Get More Linkedin Followers to Your Business Page

  • Pay for ads to get up to 1,000 followers to begin with
  • Get employees to like and share
  • Get employees to create own content & tag company page*
  • Don’t post too many links (links kill reach)
  • Don’t post about the company all the time – where’s the value?
  • Do post useful content that helps target audience – provide value
  • Engage in relevant groups
  • Post videos with transcripts – upload direct to Linkedin
  • Reuse videos that are under 1 minute long for YouTube Shorts
  • Super-admin – can invite up to 100 members per month
  • Tag customers and other businesses in your post
  • Share and comment on trending topics/news
  • The higher up in the business an employee is, the more engagement it will tend to get if they share company posts**

*Employees could create videos, shares quotes etc. doesn’t have to be perfect and professional, as it’s the user’s content not the company’s

**People use Linkedin for networking/brown-nosing, so the more influential a person is, the more engagement they will tend to get

Notes from videos:

Linkedin

  • Linkedin has the Most potential for organic reach at the moment
  • Use Linkedin Polls for engagement
  • Engage and post in relevant Linkedin groups
  • Don’t overdo self promotion

  • Find out what target audience are interested in – post about that
  • Don’t post about your company all of the time
  • Post 4 to 5 times per week
  • Post 25% about your service or product – 75% relevant, useful, informative content
  • Run ads and add the “follow button”
  • Get employees to engage with content – make sure they optimize their profiles and networks too

  • Get employees to share the posts on their personal profiles
  • Invite connections to like the business page (you have to be a page admin)

  • Define perfect follower/customer persona
  • Determine the needs of the perfect follower – personal and business life
  • What is their company/employer’s needs?
  • Become an authority in the niche by posting informative content that addresses their needs
  • Get your employees to engage and share posts
  • Get employees to share but with their own commentary
  • Get employees to reply to comments on your posts
  • Don’t just promote the company
  • Get employees to share their own unique content that is of value and 20% of the time promote your business – and tag company page
  • Create an industry specific Linkedin group and invite people – link group to company page so you can post as company
  • In the group create 90% value posts and 10% promotional posts
  • Linkedin Ads – target specific people, area, industry, job title etc. – use ads to get 1,000 followers to help organic reach afterwards

Notes from Reading Articles about Getting More Linkedin Followers

– social media platforms, want to be content platforms:

  • More videos (with in-video transcripts),
  • Business related Memes/quotes (scannable content, nobody really reads posts on FB or Linkedin)
  • Publish more posts without links (platforms tend to kill your reach if you link out to other sites, apparently),

– Whilst content that is posted directly to a social media platform will tend to be amplified, if it is hosted externally

e.g. on Youtube, the reach will be killed by the platform – they don’t want people to leave their site/app via links.

  • create “micro-content” for social media, by turning videos, webinars etc into smaller content
    e.g. quotes from videos into images and memes, longer videos into 30 second clips with in-video transcripts.
  • Targeting specific locations?  Use search function on Linkedin and Instagram to comment on relevant posts.
  • Incentivise employee engagement – top 3 people with most likes and shares each month get £100 voucher or some company stash – emphasise it is completely voluntary

Twitter

  • Use Twitter advanced search to find relevant questions and topics to engage with.
  • Twitter – find relevant influencers – engaged with (and potentially follow) people who engage with the influencer’s tweets. These people will tend to be relevant and active on Twitter

Emotional Intelligence for Beginners

On By DaveIn Business, Mental HealthLeave a comment

There is much talk about emotional intelligence and the importance of it, but I rarely see any articles, posts or videos that explain how to develop it.

One thing that I personally think provides a foundation of emotional intelligence, is the ability to ‘detach from one’s thoughts’ – which normally requires a meditation practice. If you can’t stand back and observe your thoughts, it’s very difficult to evaluate their validity.

Physiological Responses & Emotions

Pre Existing Belief Bias

  • When information contradicts a pre-existing belief, our bodies generate a stress response with cortisol and adrenaline
  • When we force our opinion on someone, or someone confirms a pre-existing belief, our bodies generate a “dopamine-reward”

Consequences of Pre-Existing Belief Bias

  • Bullying – e.g. we see someone overweight – we’ve been led to belief as a child this is “wrong” or undesirable, or negative. So we bully the person
  • We dismiss people as being weird
  • We mock people with different beliefs
  • We’re brainwashed into fighting wars against people who oppose our beliefs (pretty heavy stuff!)

Examples of Pre Existing Belief Bias

When a child sees someone that is overweight – they believe people shouldn’t be overweight, so they bully that person

When someone questions if high cholesterol is the cause of heart disease – people think the statement is ridiculous, despite mounting scientific evidence and refuse to comprehend this counter-argument to mainstream ideas.

Cognitive Biases

  • Self Serving Bias
    People tend to take credit for things when they go right, but blame others when things go wrong. People may also exaggerate what the do right and exaggerate what others do wrong. A classic example, is housework – both individuals in a marriage often over-estimate their own contribution to housework and underestimate their partner’s contribution
  • Confirmation Bias
    Reaffirming an existing belief by looking for information that confirms it. For example, if someone believes coconut oil is unhealthy because of the high saturated fat content – they might search for “why coconut oil is unhealthy?” rather than a more neutral search-term such as “what are the health benefits and health risks associated with coconut oil?”

Confirmation bias and self Serving bias are often intertwined. For example, a mother who doesn’t breastfeed her children, might read about babies losing weight and becoming ill because of not getting enough volume of milk via breastfeeding. The mother globally concludes from this, that breastfeeding is bad.

  • Global Judgements based on individual or minor observations
    David may judge Tom for being a boxer – because Tom engages in violence, there is no way he could be a nice person. This is also based on a self serving bias, David is an academic who is not athletic and as a result, will discount the value of anything physical or violent when possible. I’m not sure what the proper phrase is for this type of bias :/
    Another example might be that Tim, saw Peter lose his temper once, in 1999. Tim has since then held the belief that Peter has anger management problems.

Cognitive biases are highly prevalent in martial arts. For example, someone that does a traditional martial art, may state that MMA is no good for self defense, as there are too many rules. A boxer may dismiss grappling as “rolling around on the floor” and a grappler may dismiss boxing as ineffective because “most fights end in a grapple” (true, but they also tend to start and end with punches!).

Logical Fallicies

  • Questioning the messenger instead of the message (Also known as Ad Hominem)
    You attacked your opponent’s character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument.
    When someone attacks a person, instead of the person’s opinion. For example, if a vegetarian is wearing leather shoes, whilst debating the morality of vegetarianism, someone might attack the vegetarian for wearing leather shoes. This however, doesn’t address the issue being debated – is vegetarianism more ethical that a diet containing meat-products?

Ad hominem attacks can take the form of overtly attacking somebody, or more subtly casting doubt on their character or personal attributes as a way to discredit their argument. The result of an ad hom attack can be to undermine someone’s case without actually having to engage with it.

Example: After Sally presents an eloquent and compelling case for a more equitable taxation system, Sam asks the audience whether we should believe anything from a woman who isn’t married, was once arrested, and smells a bit weird.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
  • The Strawman Argument
    Changing the subject being debated half way through a debate.
    For example, someone might say that lots of sleep isn’t good for you, because depressed people sleep more than happy people. When it is pointed out that scientific evidence shows that too little sleep, might lead to degenerative brain conditions, and give Margaret Thatcher as an example – a strawman counter argument would be to refute this, because Margaret Thatcher achieved so much. Rather than addressing whether or not sleep is good for health, the debate changes to the achievement levels of famous people who are known not to sleep 8 hours or more.

A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the proper idea of the argument under discussion was not addressed or properly refuted. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man”. Wikipedia

Other Emotional Intelligence Issues

  • Stooping in arguments
    One major issue with debates and arguments is the willingness for one person to inflict emotional damage or to stoop more than another person.

    For example, in an office environment, where aggression is deemed inappropriate – one debator may resort to aggressiveness, whilst the other person is unwilling to become aggressive, and so let’s the aggressive individual ‘win’ the debate to prevent an esculation. When future conflicts in opinion arise, the more passive individual may not be willing to dispute or discuss anything, due to fear of an aggressive confrontation.

  • Victim Triad
    When person X complains to person Y, and person Y gives them sympathy but then person X complains to person Z and is told to look for a solution or that the sitation is not especially bad, person X will often feel like a victim of both the scenario they are complaining about and the lack of sympathy from person Z
  • Drama Triad
    If person X ridicules, bullies or is not particularly nice to person Y for a prolonged period of time – eventually person Y retaliates and tells person X to stop. Person X may feel like a victim and engage in vicious gossip about person Y for being in such a bad mood.
    Person X and person Y feel like victims in this situation.
  • Emotional Projection
    Blaming other people for your negative emotions. An individual who is subconsciously (or consciously) deemed as being weak, is usually the subject of another person’s projected emotions.

A few of the above are not directly related to emotional intelligence but an awareness of them could help to foster it, in my opinion.

emotional intelligence
https://tinybuddha.com/

Putting Emotional Intelligence into Practice

  • Have respect for other people’s points and points of view
  • Don’t globally-judge people or things in general on one point or one incidence
  • Don’t believe your impulsive thoughts – they’re not always true!
  • Feedback in private, praise in public

Advanced SEO Technical Audit Template- 2023 [Downloadable Excel Checklist]

On By DaveIn Business, seo, wordpressLeave a comment

The idea of technical SEO is to minimise the work of bots when they come to your website to index it on Google and Bing. Look at the build, the crawl and the rendering of the site.

To get started:

  • Crawl with Screaming Frog with “Text” Rendering – check all the structured data options so you can check schema (under Configuration – Spider – Extraction)
  • Crawl site with Screaming Frog with “JavaScript” rendering also in a separate or second crawl
  • Don’t crawl the sitemap.xml

This allows you to compare the JS and HTML crawls to see if JS rendering is required to generate links, copy etc.

  • Download the sitemap.xml – import into Excel – you can then check sitemap URLs vs crawl URLs.
  • Check “Issues” report under Bulk Export menu for both crawls

Also download or copy and paste sitemap URLs into Screaming Frog in list mode – check they all result in 200 status

Full template in Excel here – https://businessdaduk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/seo-tech-audit-template-12th-october-2023.xlsx

Schema Checking Google Sheet here

Hreflang sheet here (pretty unimpressive sheet to be honest)

Tools Required:

  • SEO Crawler such as Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl
  • Log File Analyzer – Screaming Frog has this too
  • Developer Tools – such as the ones found in Google Chrome – View>Developer>Developer Tools
  • Web Developer Toolbar – giving you the ability to turn off Javascript
  • Search Console
  • Bing Webmaster Tools – shows you geotargetting behaviour, gives you a second opinion on security etc.
  • Google Analytics – With onsite search tracking *

    *Great for tailoring copy and pages. Just turn it on and add query parameter

Summary:

– Perform a crawl with Screaming Frog – In Configuration – Crawl – Rendering – Crawl once with Text only and once with JavaScript

Check indexation with site: searches including:

site:example.com -inurl:www

site:*.example.com -inurl:www

site:example.com -inurl:https

– Search screaming frog crawl – for “http:” on the “internal” tab – to find any unsecure URLs

*Use a chrome plug in to disable JS and CSS*

Check pages with JS and CSS disabled – Are all the page elements visible? Do Links work?

Configuration Checks

Check all the prefixes – http, https and www redirect (301) to protocol your using – e.g. https://www.

Does trailing slash added to URL redirect back to original URL structure?

Is there a 404 page?

Robots & Sitemap

Is Robots.txt present?

Is sitemap.xml present? (and in the sitemap)

Is Sitemap Submitted in S.C.?

X-robots present?

Are all the sitemaps naming conventions in lower case?

Are the URLs correct in the sitemap – correct domain and correct URL structure?

Do sitemap URLs all 200? (including images)
List Mode in Screaming Frog – “Upload” – Download sitemap – “ok”

For site migrations check – Old sitemap and Crawl Vs New – For example, Magento 1 website sitemap vs Magento 2 – anything missing or added – what are status codes?


– Status Codes – any 404s or redirects in SCreaming Frog crawl?

Rendering Check – Screaming Frog – also check pages with JS and CSS disable. Check links are present and work

Are HTML Links and H1s in the rendered HTML – check URL Inspection in Search Console or Mobile Friendly text?

Do pages work with JS disabled – links and images visible etc?

What hreflang links are present on the site?

Schema – Check all schema reports in Screaming Frog for errors

Sitemap Checks
Are crawl URLs missing from the sitemap? (check sitemap Vs crawl URLs that 200 and are “indexable”

Site: scrape
How many pages are indexed?

Do all the scraped URLs result in a 200 status code?

H1s
Are any duplicate H1s?
Are any pages missing H1s?
Any multiple H1s?

Images
Are any images missing alt text?
Are any images too big in terms of KB?

Canonicals
Are there any non-indexable canonical URLs?

Check canonical URLs aren’t in the server header using http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A2GgkuOeLrthMpif_GHkBukiqjMb2qyqqm4u1pslpk0/edit#gid=617917090
More info here – https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/http-headers-and-seo/

Are any canonicals canonicalised?
e.g. pages with different canonicals that arent simples/config products

URL structure Errors

Meta Descriptions
Are any meta descriptions too short?
Are anymeta descriptions too long?
Are any meta descriptions duplicated?

Meta Titles
Are any meta titles too short?
Are anymeta titles too long?
Are any meta titles duplicated?

Robots tags blocking any important pages?

Menu
Is the menu functioning properly?

Pagination
Functioning fine for UX?
Canonical to root page?



Check all the issues in the issues report in Screaming Frog

PageSpeed Checks
Lighthouse – check homepage plus 2 other pages

GTMetrix

pingdom

Manually check homepage, listing page, product page for speed

Dev Tools Checks (advanced)
Inspect main elements – are they visible in the inspect window? e.g. right click and inspect the Headings – check has meta title and desc
Check on mobile devices
Check all the elements result in a 200 – view the Network tab

Console tab – refresh page – what issues are flagged?
Unused JS in the elements tab – coverage

other Checks

Has redirect file been put in place?
Have hreflang tags for live sites been added?
Any meta-refresh redirects!?

Tech SEO 1 – The Website Build & Setup

The website setup – a neglected element of many SEO tech audits.

  • Storage
    Do you have enough storage for your website now and in the near future? you can work this out by taking your average page size (times 1.5 to be safe), multiplied by the number of pages and posts, multiplied by 1+growth rate/100

for example, a site with an average page size of 1mb with 500 pages and an annual growth rate of 150%

1mb X 1.5 X 500 X 1.5 = 1125mb of storage required for the year.

You don’t want to be held to ransom by a webhost, because you have gone over your storage limit.

  • How is your site Logging Data?
    Before we think about web analytics, think about how your site is storing data.
    As a minimum, your site should be logging the date, the request, the referrer, the response and the User Agent – this is inline with the W3 Extended Format.
log file analyzer

When, what it was, where it came from, how the server responded and whether it was a browser or a bot that came to your site.

  • Blog Post Publishing
    Can authors and copywriters add meta titles, descriptions and schema easily? Some websites require a ‘code release’ to allow authors to add a meta description.
  • Site Maintenance & Updates – Accessibility & Permissions
    Along with the meta stuff – how much access does each user have to the code and backend of a website? How are permissions built in?
    This could and probably should be tailored to each team and their skillset.

    For example, can an author of a blog post easily compress an image?
    Can the same author update a menu (often not a good idea)
    Who can access the server to tune server performance?

Tech SEO 2 – The Crawl

  • Google Index

Carry out a site: search and check the number of pages compared to a crawl with Screaming Frog.

With a site: search (for example, search in Google for site:businessdaduk.com) – don’t trust the number of pages that Google tells you it has found, scrape the SERPs using Python on Link Clump:

How to scrape Google SERPs in one click – Don’t use LinkClump, use the instructions on my blog post here to make your own SERP extractor

Too many or too few URLs being indexed – both suggest there is a problem.

  • Correct Files in Place – e.g. Robots.txt
    Check these files carefully. Google says spaces are not an issue in Robots.txt files, but many coders and SEOers suggest this isn’t the case.

XML sitemaps also need to be correct and in place and submitted to search console. Be careful with the <lastmod> directive, lots of websites have lastmod but don’t update it when they update a page or post.

  • Response Codes
    Checking response codes with a browser plugin or Screaming Frog works 99% of the time, but to go next level, try using curl and command line. Curl avoids JS and gives you the response header.

Type in Curl – I and then the URL

e.g.

curl – I https://businessdaduk.com/

You need to download cURL which can be a ball ache if you need IT’s permission etc.

Anyway, if you do download it and run curl, your response should look like this:

Next enter an incorrect URL and make sure it results in a 404.

  • Canonical URLs
    Each ‘resource’ should have a single canonical address.

common causes of canonical issues include – sharing URLs/shortened URLs, tracking URLs and product option parameters.

The best way to check for any canonical issues is to check crawling behaviour and do this by checking log files.

You can check log files and analyse them, with Screaming Frog – the first 1,000 log files can be analysed with the free version (at time of writing).

Most of the time, your host will have your logfiles in the cPanel section, named something like “Raw Access”. The files are normally zipped with gzip, so you might need a piece of software to unzip them or just allow you to open them – although often you can still just drag and drop the files into Screaming Frog.

The Screaming Frog log file analyser, is a different download to the SEO site crawler – https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/log-file-analyser/

If the log files are in the tens of millions, you might need to go next level nerd and use grep in Linux command line

Read more about all things log file analysis-y on Ian Lurie’s Blog here.

This video tutorial about Linux might also be handy. I’ve stuck it on my brother’s old laptop. Probably should have asked first.

With product IDs, and other URL fragments, use a # instead of a ? to add tracking.

Using rel-canonical is a hint, not a directive. It’s a work around rather than a solution.

Remember also, that the server header, can override a canonical tag.

You can check your server headers using this tool – http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html (at your own risk like)

Tech SEO 3 – Rendering & Speed

  • Lighthouse
    Use lighthouse, but use in with command line or use it in a browser with no browser add-ons.If you are not into Linux, use pingdom, GTMetrix and Lighthouse, ideally in a browser with no add-ons.

    Look out for too much code, but also invalid code. This might include things such as image alt tags, which aren’t marked up properly – some plugins will display the code just as ‘alt’ rather than alt=”blah”
  • Javascript
    Despite what Google says, all the SEO professionals that I follow the work of, state that client-side JS is still a site speed problem and potential ranking factor. Only use JS if you need it and use server-side JS.

    Use a browser add-on that lets you turn off JS and then check that your site is still full functional.

  • Schema

Finally, possibly in the wrong place down here – but use Screaming Frog or Deepcrawl to check your schema markup is correct.

You can add schema using the Yoast or Rank Math SEO plugins

The Actual Tech SEO Checklist (Without Waffle)

Basic Setup

  • Google Analytics, Search Console and Tag Manager all set up

Site Indexation

  • Sitemap & Robots.txt set up
  • Check appropriate use of robots tags and x-robots
  • Check site: search URLs vs crawl
  • Check internal links pointing to important pages
  • Check important pages are only 1 or 2 clicks from homepage

Site Speed

Tools – Lighthouse, GTMetrix, Pingdom

Check – Image size, domain & http requests, code bloat, Javascript use, optimal CSS delivery, code minification, browser cache, reduce redirects, reduce errors like 404s.

For render blocking JS and stuff, there are WordPress plugins like Autoptimize and the W3 Total Cache.

Make sure there are no unnecessary redirects, broken links or other shenanigans going on with status codes. Use Search Console and Screaming Frog to check.

Site UX

Mobile Friendly Test, Site Speed, time to interactive, consistent UX across devices and browsers

Consider adding breadcrumbs with schema markup.

Clean URLs

Image from Blogspot.com

Make sure URLs – Include a keyword, are short – use a dash/hyphen –

Secure Server HTTPS

Use a secure server, and make sure the unsecure version redirects to it

Allow Google to Crawl Resources

Google wants to crawl your external CSS and JS files. Use “Fetch as Google” in Search Console to check what Googlebot sees.

Hreflang Attribute

Check that you are using and implementing hreflang properly.

Tracking – Make Sure Tag Manager & Analytics are Working

Check tracking is working properly. You can check tracking coed is on each webpage with Screaming Frog.

Internal Linking

Make sure your ‘money pages’ or most profitable pages, get the most internal links

Content Audit

Redirect or unpublish thin content that gets zero traffic and has no links. **note on this, I had decent content that had no visits, I updated the H1 with a celebrity’s name and now it’s one of my best performing pages – so it’s not always a good idea to delete zero traffic pages**

Consider combining thin content into an in depth guide or article.

Use search console to see what keywords your content ranks for, what new content you could create (based on those keywords) and where you should point internal links.

Use Google Analytics data regarding internal site searches for keyword and content ideas 💡

Update old content

Fix meta titles and meta description issues – including low CTR

Find & Fix KW cannibalization

Optimize images – compress, alt text, file name

Check proper use of H1 and H2

See what questions etc. are pulled through into the rich snipetts and answer these within content

Do you have EAT? Expertise, Authority and Trust?

https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-checklist/

You can download a rather messy Word Doc Template of my usual SEO technical checklist here:

https://businessdaduk.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/drewseotemplate.docx

You can also download the 2 Excel Checklists below:

https://businessdaduk.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/teechnicalseo_wordpresschecklist.xlsx

https://businessdaduk.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/finalseochecks.xlsx

Another Advanced SEO Template in Excel

It uses Screaming Frog, SEMRush and Search Console

These tools (and services) are pretty handy too:
https://tamethebots.com/tools