The Internet Marketing Driver - Covering the latest in online marketing strategy.

True Destination – Demystifying the confusing, but often accurate, true destination url for redirects in Google Search Console’s coverage reporting

November 4, 2022November 3, 2022 Glenn Gabe

If you are confused when Google reports redirects as other categories, like “blocked by robots.txt”, “soft 404s”, “noindexed”, “404s”, and others, it could be Google silently following the redirect and reporting the status of the true destination url instead. My post covers the situation in detail, and provides examples of this happening in the wild. … Read more

Google’s September 2022 Broad Core Product Reviews Update (BCPRU) – The complexity and confusion when major algorithm updates overlap

October 20, 2022October 19, 2022 Glenn Gabe

Well, SEOs and site owners had a heck of an end to the summer of 2022. It all started with the Helpful Content Update (HCU), which rolled out on August 25, 2022. The rollout of Google’s new site-wide signal took a little more than two weeks to complete (and it only seemed to impact the … Read more

Google Multisearch – Exploring how “Searching outside the box” is being tracked in Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA)

October 5, 2022October 5, 2022 Glenn Gabe

Google first announced multisearch in April 2022 (right before Search I/O 2022) and it was really the beginning of Lens entering the spotlight. With multisearch, you can use Google Lens to analyze a photo and then add to your search by typing in a query. Then Google will display more results based on the query … Read more

Sitebulb Server – Technical Tips And Tricks For Setting Up A Powerful DIY Enterprise Crawler (On A Budget)

January 20, 2023September 26, 2022 Glenn Gabe

When performing SEO audits, crawling is ultra-important. For SEOs and site owners, there are several options available from local crawlers to enterprise crawlers (SAAS services). I’ve been extremely vocal over the years about my favorite crawling tools, which are Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, DeepCrawl, and more recently, JetOctopus. Screaming Frog and Sitebulb are typically local crawlers, … Read more

Google’s Helpful Content Update Introduces A New Site-wide Ranking Signal Targeting “Search engine-first Content”, and It’s Always Running

August 25, 2022August 18, 2022 Glenn Gabe

I was able to speak with Google about the Helpful Content Update, which introduces a new site-wide ranking signal that’s targeting “unhelpful content” (which is content primarily created to rank in search engines versus help users). Keep your arms and legs in the vehicle at all times, the next few weeks in Google Land are … Read more

The Google May 2022 Broad Core Update – 5 micro-case studies that once again underscore the complexity of broad core algorithm updates

November 24, 2024July 18, 2022 Glenn Gabe

Google’s May 2022 broad core update rolled out on May 25, 2022 and the rollout completed on June 9, 2022 (taking about 15 days to fully roll out). It was a massive algorithm update with many sites seeing a ton of volatility early in the rollout. But that was just the beginning, as we saw … Read more

Amazing Search Experiments and New SERP Features In Google Land (2022 Edition)

November 4, 2022June 29, 2022 Glenn Gabe

This post is based on my presentation at the Google SEO Meetup in New York City in June of 2022. On Monday I had the opportunity to present at the Google SEO Meetup in New York City, which was set up by Google’s Daniel Waisberg. I had a great time speaking with a number of … Read more

Analysis of Google’s March 2022 Product Reviews Update (PRU) – Findings and observations from the affiliate front lines

July 20, 2022May 2, 2022 Glenn Gabe

Almost four months since the last Product Reviews Update (PRU) rolled out, Google released the third in the PRU series on March 23, 2022. PRUs can cause a lot of volatility for sites with reviews content, and the first two were core update-like for some. With each PRU, Google is looking to continue its evolution … Read more

How NewsGuard’s nutritional labels can help publishers avoid manual actions for medical content violations (Google News and Discover)

April 16, 2022April 15, 2022 Glenn Gabe

In July of 2021, Google issued a number of warnings for sites publishing medical content that went against its guidelines (for Google News and Discover). The potential for a manual action was clear and some publishers scrambled to figure out what to do. I mentioned this on Twitter in September: And six months from the … Read more

What Discover’s “More Recommendations”, Journeys in Chrome, and MUM mean for the future of Google Search

March 21, 2022March 18, 2022 Glenn Gabe

How Google is building a true Search assistant that can provide a wealth of recommendations based on the topics users are searching for. And it’s partially live now in Google Discover with a focus on products. I’m a heavy Google Discover user and have covered many of the features rolling out, or being tested by … Read more

How to extend a multi-site indexing monitoring system to compare Google-selected and user-selected canonical urls (via the URL Inspection API and Analytics Edge)

March 17, 2022March 16, 2022 Glenn Gabe

Last month I published an article on Search Engine Land explaining how to use the new URL inspection API to build a multi-site indexing monitoring system. By using Analytics Edge in Excel with the new URL Inspection API from Google, you can check the indexing status for the most important urls across multiple sites on … Read more