ai-search

Gemini with personalization is a step towards Jarvis.

Gemini with Personalization: Google takes another step towards Jarvis by tapping into your Search history for Chatbot answers. And just wait until AI Mode gets involved.

Google just released Gemini with personalization two weeks ago, which enables its AI chatbot to tap into your Search history to help answer questions. Back in February of 2023 I wrote a post about Google’s “Code Red” based on OpenAI launching ChatGPT. In that post I mentioned that AI chatbot advancements had us quickly headed … Read more

AI mode tracking in Google Search Console

How Google’s AI Mode Could Be Tracked In Google Search Console (Desktop and Mobile Examples)

AI Mode officially started rolling out as a labs experiment on March 5, 2025, and I received access late the following day. Needless to say, I’ve been testing AI Mode heavily since gaining access. I’ll provide some screenshots in this post, but you can always check my X thread where I’ve been providing videos of … Read more

How to track featured snippet prevalence as AI overviews expand

Are Featured Snippets Losing Their Feature? How To Track Featured Snippet prevalence over time (as AI overviews take over)

I’ve noticed a trend across a number of sites where the prevalence of featured snippets is dropping over time while AI overviews replace them. And that can obviously lead to a decrease in traffic since click-through rate from AI overviews is inherently going to be lower, and sometimes a lot lower. I haven’t seen this … Read more

AI overviews and manual actions.

The Twiddler That Didn’t Twiddle – How To Track Clicks and Click Through Rate For Google’s AI Overviews (if you have a manual action)

Yes, you read that correctly. There’s a loophole in Google right now where sites with manual actions are removed, or heavily demoted, from the 10-blue links but can still rank in AI overviews. And in a weird twist, that creates a unique opportunity to better understand clicks and click through rate for AIOs. That’s until … Read more

Mark Zuckerberg about machine learning classifiers.

Mark Zuckerberg Talks Classifiers, Confidence, and Algorithmic Collateral Damage (And it relates to Google Algorithm Updates)

A recent appearance by Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan podcast provides a great explanation of how classifiers, confidence levels, and precision work with machine learning algorithms. He also covered how adjusting confidence can impact the amount of collateral damage occurring when updates roll out. And if you swap “Social” for “Search”, Zuckerberg could be … Read more

Google December 2024 spam update

Google December 2024 Spam Update Analysis – 5 Case Studies Covering Scaled Content Abuse, AI Content, Doorway Pages, and more

The end of 2024 was a crazy time SEO-wise with Google pushing multiple major updates at the end of the year (and throughout the holiday shopping season). First, we had the November 2024 core update, which rolled out on November 11th and took over three weeks to complete. Then we had one week off before … Read more

New features in ChatGPT Search for December 2024

ChatGPT Search creeps closer to Google – OpenAI’s Ship-mas brings maps for Local Search, improved results for navigational queries, and live mode with Search

We are quickly witnessing the Googlization of ChatGPT and the ChatGPTization of Google Search. It’s a fascinating time to be involved in Search, that’s for sure. I cover several new ChatGPT Search features announced as part of OpenAI’s Ship-mas. Update 2/7/25: OpenAI announced that ChatGPT Search is now available for all users, even non-logged in … Read more

How to remove content and links from Google's AI Overviews

How to remove content and links from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode by using ‘preview controls’ like nosnippet, data-nosnippet, and max-snippet [Case Study]

Update: May 21, 2024 – My post is BACK in the AI overview, even when using nosnippet. I have provided more information below about that, including a screenshot. Update: May 22, 2024 – Google’s John Mueller replied to me after checking with the team working on AI overviews. The link card should drop out over … Read more

The Google “Code Red” That Triggered Thousands of “Code Reds” at Publishers: Bard, Bing Chat, And The Potential Impact of AI in the Search Results

In this post I cover if AI will cite, or not cite, sources in the search results, and the potential impact to publishers that rely on that traffic for revenue. i.e. Will clicks from the SERPs get pummeled like we think it might? Last week, both Google and Bing announced AI chat in the search … Read more