I’ve been swamped these last few weeks and ended up missing two issues of our SEO newsletter. But not to worry—I’m back on track and ready to fill you in on all the SEO scoop from the recent weeks.

This summary’s got everything you need to get caught up without feeling like you’re drowning in SEO updates.

P.S. Super excited about the Barbados SEO conference coming up in two weeks—hope to see some of you there!

Alright, let’s jump into the SEO news; there’s a bunch to talk about!

🙏 Before we delve into the latest news, I’d like to ask a small, ongoing favor. Would you consider rating my SEO podcast? I pour immense effort into it, striving for continuous improvement. If you believe it’s worthy, a five-star rating would be immensely appreciated.

In return I will keep doing my best and allowing you to learn from me for free. Thank you for your support… ❤️

Let’s Talk About The Biggest Google Update Ever, The Killer Whale… (With Jason Barnard)

I had an insightful conversation with Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy, about Google’s biggest algorithm update ever – the Killer Whale update. We discussed how Google made massive changes to its Knowledge Graph in July 2023, focusing on people entities and EEAT credibility signals. This then rolled out into core updates in August and September 2023.

SEO Audits: Building a Website Recovery Roadmap After Google Updates

I had the pleasure to be a guest on the “dofollow” SEO podcast by SE Ranking where I had a chance to talk a bit about Google algorithm updates, SEO audits and how to recover your site.

Top SEO news

Here is the most important SEO & AI news from last week.

3 new ways to check images and sources online

Google Search has built-in tools to help you find high-quality information and make sense of what you’re seeing online. Google has announced three new ways you can get more context about the images and sources you’re finding.

Google search antitrust trial updates: Everything you need to know (so far)

The landmark court case brought by the US Justice Department could spell huge changes for Google and the future of the Internet.

Inside Google’s massive 2023 E-E-A-T Knowledge Graph update

Dive deep into the latest Knowledge Graph update’s impact on person entities and how Google’s focus on subtitles enhances E-E-A-T signals.

Data providers on the Google October 2023 core and spam update

Now that both the Google October 2023 core update is done rolling out and the October 2023 spam update is done rolling out, SEL wanted to take a deeper dive on how this core update differed from previous Google core updates.

Top news from October 2023

Did you know that FAQ and HowTo structured data is mostly no longer being used in Google Search? Learn about structured data, search ranking updates, and more with the October ‘23 episode of Google Search News!

Vehicle listing structured data for car dealerships

Vehicle listings on Google allows car dealerships to show their for-sale inventory on Google Search and other Google surfaces. It is currently available in the US and US territories. Today, we’re announcing a new and simpler way to provide for-sale vehicle inventory data to Google.

Google Search Algorithm Ranking Update October 27 (Unconfirmed)

On the heels of the last unconfirmed Google Search ranking algorithm update that touched down on October 25th, Barry Schwartz is seeing signs of another tremor this morning – October 27th.

Check my interview with Ted Kubaitis, the creator of Cora.

Watch my interview with Ted Kubaitis, the creator of Cora, to learn more about how game-changing this tool is.

More AI & SEO news

Here is other SEO news, less breaking but equally important.

Google Provides Signs That You’re Writing Unhelpful Content

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, has provided examples of unhelpful content types. He also provided examples of strategies writers may use to write unhelpful content. As a reminder, the general line of what is unhelpful content to Google is when you write to have that content rank well in search and not for your end users.

Google syntax graph merge for structured data

Google Search now supports what is called supports syntax graph merge. Essentially this means different syntaxes of structured data can now connect together as one. Google has updated validator.schema.org, the Google rich result test and “all Google ingestion” to support this.

Google fixes issue with serving Search results

Google had an issue serving or showing search results to some searchers today. You may have seen error pages when searching on Google.com.

Google Drops Favicon User Agent & Requires Googlebot-Image and Googlebot Crawling

Google has updated its favicon search developer documentation to remove the section for the Google Favicon user agent and to clarify that if you want Google to show your favicon you must allow both Googlebot-Image and Googlebot to crawl your pages.

New Version Of ChatGPT Gives Access To All GPT-4 Tools At Once

OpenAI to release updated version of ChatGPT that gives users access all GPT-4 tools – including browsing and DALL·E 3 – without switching.

Google Lighthouse 11.2.0 Updates Coming To PageSpeed Insights

Google Chrome Lighthouse is updated to version 11.2.0, bringing numerous changes to performance scores and a design touchup as well

Ahrefs again calls out Semrush for ‘unethical practices’

Ahrefs seems to believe an article endorsing Semrush over Ahrefs on the Backlinko website may violate FTC’s endorsement guidelines.

Confirmed: Google Tests Ads Mixed Within Free Search Results

Google is testing showing ads within the organic (free) search results. Generally, Google would show the ads at the top of each page set, even within the continuous scroll interface. But now Google has confirmed it is experimenting with showing these ads in additional spots within the search results listings.

G7 Reported To Agree On AI Code Of Conduct

Code of Conduct is a stopgap before regulations, to encourage companies to mitigate risks and misuse of AI technology

SEO Interviews

New amazing interviews with SEO stars like Cyrus Shepard, Barry Adams, Kaspar Szymanski, Kristina Azarenko and more are coming! Stay tuned! Get notified when they air.

100 SEOs to follow

☝️ THROWBACK: One of the resources I’m creating is the list of 100+ SEOs to follow. I initially wanted to publish my own version, but that wouldn’t be objective enough, so I want to ask you to suggest SEOs to put on my list.

If you haven’t already done it, please fill in this Google form, and I will add you to the list together with a link to your site and your social media profiles. Thank you!

Top SEO Tips & Inights

And here are the Google SEO tips for you.

Google: Cumulative Layout Shift Not The Reason For Sudden Ranking Drops

Google’s John Mueller said that an issue with Cumulative Layout Shift scores would not be a reason why your website suddenly and significantly drops in the Google search results rankings.

Videos to watch this week

Here are the latest videos from other SEOs I find especially interesting and worth watching.

Must-read articles

And you need to allocate some time to read these articles from other SEOs. They are brilliant.

Google Search Console Data & BigQuery For Enhanced Analytics

Understand the benefits of Bulk Export from GSC to BigQuery in 15 minutes or less. Find out if it’s worth your time as an SEO.
By Myriam Jessier

Google officially removes ‘Indented Results’ SERP feature, but it didn’t go to plan

Indented Results (as we know it), have been a SERP feature on Google that launched in September of 2021. As of September 2023, exactly two years since launch, Google has now officially removed this feature of Search.
By Brodie Clark

Google’s Broad Core Algorithm Updates: Important Points And Frequently Answered Questions For Site Owners And SEOs

If you want to learn about Google’s broad core updates, Glenn Gabe’s analyses are probably the best resource you can find.
By Glenn Gabe

Google Core Update, Spam Update October 2023

Here is an essential analysis of the latest Google updates from Sistrix. You will get to know the winning domains, the losing domains, and much more.
By Steve Paine

Netpeak Spider Review

Here is an SEO consultant’s review of Netpeak Software: Netpeak Spider and Netpeak Checker.
By Olga Zarr

The Worst SEO Horror Stories in 2023 and How to Wake Up from these Nightmares

What scares SEOs the most in 2023? What are the new SEO nightmares that worry us and the persisting ones? I had the great opportunity to present about it a few days ago at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich, and would like to go through some of the top outcomes here too.
By Aleyda Solis

What we learned about SGE, Bard and Gemini from Google’s Q3 2023 Earnings call

Google’s latest earnings call gave us a little bit more of a glimpse of where Google is headed. Here is the summary by Marie Haynes.
By Marie Haynes

What are Regular Expressions (How to use RegEx)

In this tutorial, we will learn what regular expressions are and how to use them to process text.
By Jean-Christophe Chouinard

Is Google Looking for a Minimum Word Count on Webpages?

You’ve probably heard at some point that your webpages should have a minimum word count for SEO. And you’ve probably heard Google say that they don’t care about word count, only about quality.
By Bruce Clay

Shopify SEO Guide 2023

If you are looking for an ultimate Shopify SEO Guide, this is what you’ve been looking for.
By Matt Allen

I Deleted the Content From Two Posts To See if They’d Still Rank. Here’s What Happened

I removed content from two of our pages to try to measure the impact that content has on rankings. We lost a few positions for many terms, and it hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. These pages still ranked relatively well without any content.
By Patrick Stox

Crafting a Winning SEO Strategy: A Guide for In-House Marketers

Gain a comprehensive understanding of SEO strategy, covering key elements such as crafting effective strategies, creating actionable roadmaps, leveraging competitive advantages, and presenting your plans to secure support and buy-in.
By Kevin Indig

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If you haven’t already, I invite you to follow me across all these channels (to never miss any important SEO news, tip, or article and stay up-to-**** with the world of SEO).

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Thank you for reading my newsletter! I hope you found the information useful. If you enjoyed this issue, be sure to check out the next one next week.

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