SEO 101 Ep 505 - Local SEO Shifts, Core Update Effects, and What AI Means for Site Rankings

Summary

SEO 101 Ep 505: Local SEO Shifts, Core Update Effects, and What AI Means for Site Rankings

Hosted by Ross Dunn and Scott Van Achte, SEO 101 Episode 505 delves into the latest developments in search engine optimization, focusing on the June 2025 Google Core Update, shifts in Local SEO, the burgeoning role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in content creation, and updates to Google Search Console. Released on July 17, 2025, this episode provides valuable insights for SEO beginners and seasoned professionals alike.

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1. Introduction and Listener Feedback

The episode kicks off with Ross and Scott sharing heartfelt listener feedback. Dominica from Wroclaw, Poland, praises the podcast for its helpfulness and humor, stating:

"Your podcast helps me so much in my daily work, and I really appreciate the knowledge you share, the quality, and your sense of humor. Keep it up." ([02:06])

Scott and Ross emphasize the importance of listener reviews, encouraging their audience to leave testimonials to support the show.

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2. June 2025 Google Core Update

Overview of the Update

Scott introduces the main topic:

"The June 2025 core update is now underway. Not much to say as usual. It's a core update." ([03:36])

The update began on June 30 and is expected to take three weeks to complete. While specifics remain unclear, signs indicate significant changes and shuffling within search rankings.

Impact and Recommendations

Ross advises affected website owners:

"If you're feeling the hit, just do your best to improve anything you've already, you know, needs to be improved on your site. That way you're not overreacting, you're just doing good, smart things to your site and you can't lose." ([04:36])

The hosts recommend focusing on enhancing existing site elements rather than overreacting to ranking fluctuations.

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3. AI-Generated Content in "People Also Ask"

Study Insights

John Mueller references a study by Mark Williams Cook of Also Ask, revealing that:

"Nearly 13% of People Also Ask answers are AI generated." ([04:36])

This marks the first comprehensive study of its kind, highlighting Google's integration of AI in generating concise answers within search results.

Discussion and Concerns

Scott and John debate the implications:

"It's almost like that needs to be a little more human-driven, I think." ([04:57])

Scott clarifies that it's the answers, not the questions, being AI-generated. They express concerns about the transparency and authenticity of AI-generated content in search features.

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4. Google Search Console Updates and Bugs

New Features

Google Search Console now offers 24-hour comparison views, allowing users to:

• Compare the last 24 hours to the previous period.
• Compare week-over-week performance.

Ross notes the gradual rollout:

"If you do not see this ability now, you should soon." ([07:34])

Reported Bugs

John discusses a potential bug affecting Core Web Vitals:

"Good and need improvement URLs have plummeted on these charts, but the bad URLs have not gone up. They stayed at zero." ([07:59])

This anomaly suggests that Google might be sampling fewer pages or experiencing processing issues. John reassures listeners:

"If you see these drops, don't panic. Focus on improving where you see a need." ([09:28])

Advice for Users

The hosts stress the importance of verifying anomalies through forums and authoritative sources before making drastic changes, emphasizing not to react solely based on potentially flawed data.

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5. Local SEO Shifts and Challenges

Impact of Core Update on Local Search

Scott highlights significant drops in local search impressions reported on localsearchforum.com:

"People are seeing 61 to 92% drops in search impressions." ([14:20])

However, many businesses noted no negative impact on sales, suggesting that visibility metrics might not always correlate directly with performance.

Consumer Alerts on Google Business Profiles

Ben Fisher's client experienced a new consumer alert:

"Suspicious high rated reviews were recently removed from this place." ([17:11])

This feature, previously available in the UK, is now rolling out in the US. Scott points out that the alert's subtle placement might limit its effectiveness in deterring fraudulent review practices.

Handling Fake and Irrelevant Reviews

Scott and John discuss the frustration with fake reviews on platforms like Facebook and Amazon, emphasizing the need for improved moderation:

"It's just so flawed. I know you complain a lot about Google and the local issues and bugs and it seems so easy to fix." ([19:43])

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6. Link Building and the Disavow File

Clarifying the Role of the Disavow File

John addresses misconceptions about the disavow file:

"The order of links in a disavow file does not matter. They don't process the file per se." ([21:13])

He emphasizes that the disavow file has become less critical as Google's algorithm advancements render the removal of bad links less impactful.

Shift in Link Building Strategies

Scott and John agree that building quality links and creating exceptional content are more effective strategies than worrying about disavowing low-quality backlinks. They advocate for focusing efforts on:

• Creating exhaustive, high-quality content.
• Building authoritative and relevant backlinks.
• Enhancing overall site expertise and trustworthiness.

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7. The Role of AI in SEO Content Creation

AI Content Adoption

John references a study indicating that over 86% of high-ranking pages contain some level of AI-generated content:

"More than 86% of the high ranking pages did contain some level of AI generated content." ([32:09])

Content Quality and AI

Scott reassures that AI-generated content isn't detrimental as long as it's paired with human expertise and unique insights:

"If the content's great and it's unique because it comes down to the prompt... there's no reason it shouldn't." ([33:23])

Future of Content Strategy

The hosts suggest that the future of SEO lies in:

• Utilizing AI for efficiency while maintaining high content quality.
• Crafting comprehensive, evergreen content that stands out.
• Continuously updating cornerstone content to maintain relevance and authority.

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8. Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts

Ross and Scott conclude by reiterating the importance of adapting to ongoing SEO changes, leveraging AI responsibly, and maintaining a focus on quality and user intent. They encourage listeners to subscribe to their newsletter and leave testimonials to support the podcast.

"Remember, we have a Shownotes newsletter you can sign up [e-mail] and please, you know, whatever platform you're listening to us on, take a moment and leave us a testimonial." ([33:03])

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Key Takeaways:

• June 2025 Core Update: Significant but unspecified changes; focus on improving existing site elements.
• AI in Search: Increasing presence of AI-generated answers and content; ensure content remains high-quality and unique.
• Google Search Console: New comparison features and potential bugs; stay informed through reliable sources.
• Local SEO Challenges: Visibility drops may not directly impact sales; be cautious with consumer alerts and manage reviews diligently.
• Link Building: The traditional disavow file is less critical; prioritize building authoritative links and creating exhaustive content.
• Content Strategy with AI: Embrace AI for efficiency while maintaining human oversight to ensure content quality and relevance.

This episode of SEO 101 provides a comprehensive overview of current SEO trends and challenges, equipping listeners with actionable strategies to navigate the evolving digital landscape.

Transcript

[John Mueller]

Warning. The following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words.

[Ross Dunn]

When you're hiring, we at ZipRecruiter know you can feel frustrated, forlorn, even, like your efforts are futile. And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, ZipRecruiter figured out how to fix all that, and right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com Zip with ZipRecruiter you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

[Scott Van Hack]

Fantastic.

[Ross Dunn]

So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com zip to try ZipRecruiter for free. Don't forget, that's ZipRecruiter.com zip Finally, that's ZipRecruiter dot com zip.

[Scott Van Hack]

There's a time and a place for a filet of fish, but breakfast is for sausage biscuits. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Hello and welcome to SCO 101 on WMR FM. Episode number 505. That's 505 or 505. I can't believe you did that.

[John Mueller]

I made so much fun of him before we started recording about that. And then he goes and does it.

[Scott Van Hack]

I.

[John Mueller]

By the way, if anyone's looking for an SEO and podcaster, my email is.

[Scott Van Hack]

Oh yeah, usually we edit this out, but it's too fun. It just makes sense. You did the 5 with the hand and the 05. It looks like it should be some sort of.

[John Mueller]

Today's show is entitled Fun with Numbers.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yes. Anyway, this is Ross Dud, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my co host. My friendly dork. Here is my company.

[John Mueller]

This is how the next half hour is going to be.

[Scott Van Hack]

Scott Van Hack. Yeah, we have to have fun like this once in a while. And you know what? Apparently we're fun to listen to. All right, so I'm going to start off with a big thanks to Dominica. Thank you for listening, she says. Then she posted this to Spotify and Brasco kindly notified of us, notified us of this. And he's our producer, he says, she said, I've been listening to you for about three years now and today I decided to finally leave a comment. I'm listening all the way from Wroclaw, Poland. Poland. And I just wanted to say thank you for all the great work you're doing. Your podcast helps me so much in my daily work, and I really appreciate the knowledge you share, the quality, the. And your sense of humor. Keep it up. Yeah, yeah. She may change her mind after.

[John Mueller]

We're.

[Scott Van Hack]

We're.

[John Mueller]

We're on her blocked list now.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah. Anyway, we really appreciate it. Any reviews, you guys can leave it. It really makes our day. We've been doing this a long time and, and, you know, you may not believe it, but we really don't know how many people are listening to us. The. The tracking systems these days suck. We really don't know. And when we hear from you, it's just a real push. So thank you.

[John Mueller]

I do have to point out, because this is critically important, the comment she left was on an episode that I did solo. So just. Just saying.

[Scott Van Hack]

Oh, did you?

[John Mueller]

Anyways, yes. I don't think it was directed at me, but yeah, I'm gonna pretend it was.

[Scott Van Hack]

All right, well, let's jump into the SEO news now. And first is about the June 2025 core update, which is now underway. Not much to say as usual. It's a core update. It's currently underway and about halfway complete. It started on June 30 and is expected to take three weeks to complete. I do have a note later on to talk to you guys about in terms of local, how it perhaps is affecting that, but otherwise, really, we're just getting in intel and we're not sure what it's doing. Other than that it does seem to be a big one and there's lots of shuffling going on. So if you're feeling the hit, just do your best to improve anything you've already, you know, needs to be improved on your site. That way you're not overreacting, you're just doing good, smart things to your site and. And you can't lose. Right. So, good way to push that energy somewhere useful. What's next here?

[John Mueller]

Yeah, so this could have gone under AI, but I didn't. I put it here. So there's been a little study from a. I guess I should say what it is Google is generating. Nearly 13% of people also Ask answers. There's a study by Mark Williams Cook, who's the founder of an SEO tool called Also Ask. They analyzed 8.4 million English language People Also Ask results and found that 12.6 of the answers are AI generated. This is, as far as we know, the first study of this type. So hopefully there are more of them and we can see how this data changes. Google did start showing AI overviews within people also ask back in November. I don't know how I feel about this one because people or sorry, AI overviews is clearly AI doing its thing and that's fine. We accept that we know what's happening and people also ask. I feel like it's kind of sneaky. It's almost like that needs to be a little more human driven, I think.

[Scott Van Hack]

But I don't know now isn't he saying though the answers are AI generated not the people also ask questions questions. I believe they're saying that answers specifically.

[John Mueller]

So the an. Oh, that's a good point. Well now see, now I sound like an idiot because I should know the answer to that question. It's a very short article over on Search Engine Land.

[Scott Van Hack]

Well that makes it even smarter, you know.

[John Mueller]

No, no, this, this is good because I feel less stupid because AI generated answers appear in. Yeah, it's not saying where the questions are based. So it doesn't actually say.

[Scott Van Hack]

Okay, okay.

[John Mueller]

So it might just be the. Either way, I don't know.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah, we have to keep our egos down. Right. Pummel each other a bit here so we don't get inflated heads.

[John Mueller]

I guess so.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah.

[John Mueller]

It doesn't specify yet.

[Scott Van Hack]

Okay, so as far as we can tell, they're talking about just the answers which are AI generated instead of sort citing other sites.

[John Mueller]

Correct.

[Scott Van Hack]

Makes sense to me that that would be a negative to see. We don't want that. We want them citing us because we have the proper content. We did the work. I don't like the idea of AI just taking over all of this and of course it will because we don't like it. All right, well let's jump into Google Search Console. It is now adding 24 hour comparison views. This is your bit here, but enough for me cover here. So it's added two new comparison methods to performance reports in Google Search Console. Now you can Compare the last 24 hours to the previous period or the last 24 hours compared week over week. This is just a small change which is helpful for anyone who wants to easily compare their time periods. If you do not see this ability now, you should soon Google know they're rolling out all the changes to properties over the next few few months.

[John Mueller]

One thing that's interesting actually in that article Glenn Gabe noted that he had put out a tutorial on how to get this data elsewhere because Google didn't allow it in Search Console. So I mean, good for him for having done it, but now it's useless because you can actually do it, which is good.

[Scott Van Hack]

It's good. All right, more information from Google Search Console. What's this?

[John Mueller]

Yeah, so there might be a bug. This is kind of a weird one. Possible core web Vitals related bug in Google Search Console. So there are a lot of reports of core web vital. A core web vitals update occurring in Search Console that began on July 11. Many people are reporting that it's got to be a bug. I'm actually finding this as well. When I looked at a number of client Search Console accounts. This occurs in every single one, like across the board that I've checked. And what's happening is when you look at the core web vitals report, it lists how many URLs you have that are good, how many need improvement, and how many are bad. And in all cases, good and need improvement. URLs have plummeted on these charts, but the bad URLs have not gone up. They stayed at zero. So that's kind of weird because if the good and the need improvement go down, the bad should go up, obviously because they're swapping out.

[Scott Van Hack]

Right?

[John Mueller]

So that makes me think that maybe pages are not being indexed or we're losing indexing. So if this happened on one account, I might be a little bit more worried. But then I went in and checked our client accounts where we're seeing this happen, which is all of them. And I'm not seeing the number of pages index drop at all. In some case, in most cases are going up. So it's the. It just doesn't make logical sense. So then I think, well, maybe Google's just not analyzing as many pages. And I found a quote from John Mueller that backs up what I think. So I like that he says these reports are based on samples of what we know for your site. And sometimes the overall sample site. Overall sample size for a site changes. That's not indicative of a problem. I'd focus on the samples with issues rather than the absolute counts. The only thing I don't like about this is that it does kind of reinforce that. I'm saying like their sample size has gone down. But John says the overall sample size for a site. But it seems it's happening for everybody, not just a couple sites. It's like across the board. So it's a bit interesting. Is it a bug? Is it. Are they just sampling fewer pages for everybody? I don't know. But the main reason I'm Bringing this up is because if you go into your performance reports and you're checking out your search console stats and stuff in or, sorry your core web vital stats and search console and you see these drops, don't panic. It's literally everybody. Ross and I of course are in a nice position where we can check a number of client sites. So if we see something happen and we think it's an anomaly, we can comp against a whole bunch. As a site or business owner, you might only have access to one site and one piece of data. So a drop like this could look incredibly concerning. But it seems to be everybody. So don't panic, don't worry about the counts that you're seeing in that tool. Just focus on improving where you see a need to.

[Scott Van Hack]

So yeah, it's a good, a good use case for these or good need needs case for these forums. I mean they really do help people out by having a place to talk about this and, and getting a better idea of what, what they're seeing may be real. What isn't that I, I just wonder how much data or how much of the things that happen in this, the webmaster central, whatever they call them in at Google. John knows, I mean there must be so much going on. Maybe he didn't even know this was happening. Maybe he'll come back with some insight that he wasn't even aware of. It does seem really weird when things don't make sense like that. They typically come out in the wash as, as a mistake on their end.

[John Mueller]

Yeah.

[Scott Van Hack]

So let's hope.

[John Mueller]

But it does also bring up another point that if you ever do see any kind of anomaly at all, whether it be in your traffic stats, in your rankings, in, in a report, in search console, whatever, if you see something that looks bad or even very good and it just doesn't fully make sense, go into the forums, go into the, you know, search engine land, search engine roundtable, the places and see if it's like a, a bug or an update or something is going on that's bigger than just your site. If you're concerned about it, don't act without verifying that it's, you know, not more wide scale. If it's only your site and it turns out to be only your site, obviously you're going to want to act on whatever the thing is that you find. But.

[Scott Van Hack]

All right, cool. Well, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we're going to touch on some local SEO foreign Welcome back to SEO 101 on WMR FM hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my company senior SEO Scott Vanack. Okay, so I was mentioning before that the Google update in June 2025 has.

[John Mueller]

Warning the following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to.

[Scott Van Hack]

Be filled with F words when you're hiring.

[Ross Dunn]

We at ZipRecruiter know you can feel frustrated, forlorn even, like your efforts are futile and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, ZipRecruiter figured out how to fix all that and right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com Zip with ZipRecruiter you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

[Scott Van Hack]

Fantastic.

[Ross Dunn]

So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com Zip to try ZipRecruiter for free. Don't forget that ZipRecruiter.com finally, that's ZipRecruiter.com Zip Shopify is a global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business and sell more with less effort thanks to the Shopify Magic, your AI powered all star. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.comredcircle all lowercase go to shopify.comredcircle now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com RedCircle Lowe's knows that more projects.

[John Mueller]

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[Scott Van Hack]

Caused some issues with local search results. Now the only way I found out about this I think, well, I shouldn't say that. I have talked to Rose in house and she's noted some ups and downs, but I don't think she realized this is something that's everyone's Seeing Rose is our local SEO in house here. But a significant and uniform drop in search impressions has been reported across multiple users. This is closely aligned, although not conclusively connected to the June core update. They noticed it starting June 29, so that's pretty coincidental. I don't know. And unfortunately it's still not being resolved and there's no certainty when or if it will be. People are seeing 61 to 92% drops in search impressions in this one example picture we have. So what does that mean? Well, in this case the good news is the most of the people who reported this and this is on localsearchforum.com they had found that it didn't impact their sales. In fact their sales were better. So. But everyone tracks these things. I mean Google Local is so different than the standard search results. We have our own analytics platform for practically. I mean it is so different. And when you, when you see drops like this, it's concerning because you keep them separate in your mind. Obviously in this case there is sort of some kind of connection here and until we really know what it is, we're all bit in the dark. In addition, there was a new thing. I've never seen this before but it's brand new. I'm kind of happy it's out there, but we'll see how it washes. Ben Fisher reported that one of Steady Demand's clients received a consumer alert from Google regarding suspicious reviews. The alert is visible on Google Business Profiles when consumers navigate to the reviews section. This discussion on again local search form reveals that this warning feature has been available in the UK for some time and is now spreading to the us. The screenshot is for a weed dispensary and under it says 4.9 out of 5 of 565 reviews. But just below that is a fairly significant banner with a red exclamation mark and that sort of red triangle saying suspicious high rated reviews were recently removed from this place. Now the only time that appears according to what I was reading online, what was the site called? I think it's called review fraud.org I think anyway they have a bit of an article on this particular issue is when you look at the knowledge panel in a search or let's say you not the knowledge panel. When the local maps page for the specific business shows up you have to on the side, gosh, I can't speak today on the right side of a search result you'll get a longer write up about that business. You have to scroll all the way down to the get to reviews before you see this alert. And it's not showing up very prominently either on the review results. So, you know, I, I think there's a case there that if this is true and they aren't just throwing this out there at people who literally didn't have any negative or any false reviews, that could be bad. But if it's all legit and people are being caught spamming reviews, this should show up higher. It should be really obvious to anyone looking at the business, because I don't want to hire someone who's been paying for reviews. It's just not the kind of company I want to work with.

[John Mueller]

I would hope that you would get that same warning if they were poorly rated reviews as well. You do see that happen when you know, somebody does something stupid and it comes out who they were and then the world just goes crazy and starts flaming their Google reviews, even though they don't have any personal business experience with them. Like, you see that sort of scenario play out sometimes, which, sure, sometimes it's kind of justified, but it's still not really tied to the business necessarily.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah, what drives me crazy are when you have irrelevant reviews. We have a number of them on Facebook. Not sure I haven't checked lately to see if my attempts have worked, but I've been trying to get them removed. They're like talking about us and they say, yes, Kathleen's the best accountant. We love her. We have, like, I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there. It's just like, what the blazes? Where did that come from?

[John Mueller]

Yeah, when did you hire Kathleen? I don't know.

[Scott Van Hack]

When did we do accounting? What's going on? I mean, how obvious can you be that it's fake and yet or wrong and still Facebook doesn't remove it. They're just crap.

[John Mueller]

Well, it's like there was one not long ago I saw and it, it was one out of five stars on Google and it says, I've never actually been here, but I don't think I want to go, or something like that. That was the review. You've never even been and you admitted in the review and it's posted and how has it not been removed? Like, clearly, like there's. It's just so flawed. I know you complain a lot about Google and the local issues and bugs and it, it seems so easy to fix to me and I don't know why they can't seem to fix it.

[Scott Van Hack]

It's not enough money for them. I guess that's the Only thing I can think of. The other ones are just one from Amazon I saw recently and I see this all the time, but it just really made me laugh scornfully was when you see, like you're looking at the reviews about a product you're considering buying and it says, I bought this. I haven't used it yet, but it looks great.

[John Mueller]

Yeah. Oh, all the time. Or I bought it. I'm still waiting for it to arrive. Five out of five stars.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah, I'm sure it's going to work great. Well, what the.

[John Mueller]

There's so many of them. I don't even read Amazon reviews anymore. They're so bad. And they've got to be 95% fake. I don't know, there's got to be some stat somewhere that says how. How many are fake.

[Scott Van Hack]

But no, that would be a great use of AI. AI should be able to go through those and just remove anything that looks dumb. Yeah. Really, Those shouldn't be showing. Yeah.

[John Mueller]

Even if they're.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways. All right, what's next here?

[John Mueller]

So this is kind of funny, and I really questioned if I should even place it in here at all, but John Mueller. Yeah, he's not even just John, but when Google contradicts itself a little bit, I just get a bit of a chuckle. So this might matter to some people out there. Maybe some people. I don't know, whatever. So what basically John is saying is that the order of links in a disavow file do not matter. So if you have your disavow file because you have a bunch of bad incoming links, it doesn't matter if you put the link at the bottom of the list, the middle, the top, the order is irrelevant. They don't process the file per se. It's not an immediate filter of the index. We take into account that we recrawl other sites. Natural, naturally. Why I find this funny is because in the past, on multiple occasions, John has said that the disavow file is a waste of time and suspects that Google will remove the tool at some point. So why he's even bothering to talk about the order and how it doesn't matter. Obviously it doesn't matter. The file doesn't do anything. It's a waste of time.

[Scott Van Hack]

And we've caught him doing that multiple times, talking about the disavow file and saying how you should use it if you use it more like he's. He's responding to questions, to be fair. But still, it's.

[John Mueller]

He should preface them, though, because he doesn't do this. He should preface it, be like, okay, the disavow file is a waste of time. It's probably going to go away. But if you're going to do it, this is how it used to matter, but it doesn't. I don't even know. I wouldn't, I don't even know how I would address it if I were him. But. So if you do use it and you were wondering, yeah, it doesn't matter, but do something else with your time. Build links, write good content. A million things you could be doing other than worrying about disavow file and.

[Scott Van Hack]

Worrying about such micro issues. Don't worry about the order. I mean people over analyze this stuff. I just, I was trying to think of any way I shouldn't say that, but I guess it could be someone submitting a 30 million page site and then they worry about the order. But I mean that's about the only reason I can think of. And if you're submitting God knows how many million URLs do you disavow. Wow, you're in really big trouble. I don't know.

[John Mueller]

Anyhow, I wonder now about the effects of negative link building and that I'm pretty confident there's zero effect at this point. Basically, there's no such thing as a bad link. It'll either not help you or do nothing. Kind of thing. We have seen in the distant past where lots of bad links definitely mattered and we're definitely bad, but I think we're way beyond that now. I haven't seen a case study or report or anything anywhere in years where someone talks about a bunch of bad links impacting their rankings. They did a disavow, got rid of the links, whatever, and things returned. I just haven't seen that play out in a very long time. So I don't know.

[Scott Van Hack]

No, they finally, finally implemented what we've been talking about for John and I talked about for Upteenth episodes. I was losing my pardon, I swear.

[John Mueller]

Darn it.

[Scott Van Hack]

Anyway, I, I'm trying not to do that in the show. I, I, I, but it was just ridiculous that they were penalizing people. Just ignore them. So they finally said they're ignoring them and, and just taking all the power out of them, which is exactly what they should have done from the beginning instead of destroying people's websites by banning them and blocking. I just, that's just mean. Especially if they were taken advantage of by someone else who were building links for them anyway.

[John Mueller]

Yeah, exactly.

[Scott Van Hack]

Okay, so barely indexed sites can mean Google isn't convinced of the site overall. A user on Bluesky, which is by the way a good social platform, it isn't. One of the big guys I like that asked a question about indexing. They stated that they've had their wix site live for a few months now and only four pages have been crawled and indexed. That claim they are not appearing at all in search either. John's response is if you're hosting your site on a strong hosting platform in a technically valid way and it's barely getting indexed often, that's a sign that our systems aren't convinced about the site overall. Obviously every site and business is different. It just sometimes feels like focus, like folks focus on building out a topic, ranking pages for the topic, when their business is actually not directly tied to random web traffic for that topic. So you had a few thoughts here.

[John Mueller]

Yeah. So the first thing that came to mind here is I think John's right, but it sounds like this site is only a couple months old. So it takes longer than a couple months to perform well on a site. I don't remember what the exact numbers were, but Google used to say it was right in their help guide. Somewhere something to the effect of it can take 6 to 12 months or something like that for any SEO to do anything.

[Scott Van Hack]

Six to eight is what I recall.

[John Mueller]

Was it six to eight? Yeah, either it starts at six, not a few. So either way we're more than a few months old for the site. So this just might be a waiting game. I wish I knew who this person was, but it might just be a waiting game. Like you've got a brand new site. Yeah, it's probably not going to rank for a while. It's probably not going to be indexed for a while. Just wait, keep working, keep building. Well, I even have this down here. Like, yeah, continue working on great content, highly relevant content, and to what John even says, make sure that that content is tied to your products, your service, whatever it is you're trying to sell. Don't be building out a bunch of content that's kind of parallel to what you're selling. Make sure it's highly connected and relevant. And then also work on links and citations and external signals that they really help get a new site indexed. So you know, tell Google, show Google that you're an authority and, and do that with your content and external signals and it will, they will get indexed. They will start to. And, and if they're not, you can go into search console and inspect the URL and request Indexing and that if your page deserves to be indexed, it will. If it's really bad content, I don't know, probably won't, but I don't know. Like, I, I wish, I wish I had examples when we see these sorts of things of the actual URLs that they're asking questions about. I'd like to see the website and, and see is there a valid reason why it's not being indexed? Like maybe it's terrible or maybe it will just take time and stuff.

[Scott Van Hack]

So, yeah, and we'll be talking more about this in the future, but just if this is your website, focus on Google looking at who you're targeting, so the Personas and then create content around it in a topical format. You know, get into creating content that's, let's say, targeting pain points, but for the different Personas and make them exhaustive. You know, Backlinko is a good example of a site that has a phenomenal amount of traffic and it's mainly on just a few major articles they wrote that are simply exhaustive on links they've made their name that way. They're not creating a ton of content. Volume is not the way. It's about quality and it's about expertise. And by doing it that way, you're really going to win out. So it's a lot of work, but that's the reason why it stands out. It's like any way that it makes things hard generally is the way to go. Because if it's hard, people aren't going to do it and you're going to have an edge.

[John Mueller]

Sad to say, I've never really thought about it that way, but that's totally right.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah. And you're also making Google happy.

[John Mueller]

If you can create an article using AI in 30 seconds published to your site, it's probably not going to do well because like you said, it doesn't get easier than that, so.

[Scott Van Hack]

No, exactly. And with AI getting smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter, it's going to be so hard to stand out. It's an uphill battle for everyone. So just getting ahead of the game here and creating exceptional content that is exhaustive is the way to go and include your own content, like include your own media. I mean, I always come to an example I saw years ago of a guy who's writing an article, kind of a how to. What was a how to? On lighting for video. And he had everything in there. Man, it was impressive. It was so in depth. It showed the different types of video or, sorry, lamps you could buy and the different Calvin for different lamps, pricing some of the reviews for them and then it would get into the different angles. I mean it was truly to the word, exhaustive. I mean it was just incredible. And yeah, that ranked. No duh. It probably took him a couple months to write to make it perfect, but and then he probably adds to it all the time. And that's the other thing you want to do is keep updating this cornerstone content and that's really what it is. It's cornerstone. It's, it's going to be one of the main drivers of interest to your website. Google will love it. They'll buggers will scrape it for AI overviews. You just know it. Yeah, but again that's showing that they're only doing that because they trust it. They think that you are, you have expertise. So it's going to pay off. We just don't know exactly how well or how quickly because things are changing so much right now. It looks like it'll be good long term so you know, go with the flow and we're going to have to do the same thing. In fact, I'm going to, I expect we're going to be consolidating clients content to less content with higher quality by merging content and totally avoiding cannibalization of keywords which is currently very, very common right now. We've all targeted different keywords and different pages of sites with different pieces of content where really topically maybe 30 of those pages are all relevant to each other and could be condensed into a single article. That's where I see a lot of SEO happening right now. And that's a big hint to all of you. This is where we're going with our clients and I see it being a lot of work I'm not looking forward to, but it is the way it is is moving. So. All right, in AI news here we have one last piece of news. What have you got to share?

[John Mueller]

Yes, we have a smallish8 href study that is finding so far no evidence that Google is penalizing AI content. Not a surprise, but it's nice to see some studies that sort of support that. This particular study consisted of 600,000 pages which were comprised of top 20 ranking URLs for 100,000 random keywords. And they found no correlation between AI content and Google rankings. More than 86% of the high ranking pages did contain some level of AI generated content which I'm not gonna lie, that quite surprised me. I didn't to see it being that high and that well adopted already.

[Scott Van Hack]

Yeah. You got to keep in mind they're using AI detection algorithms and they are not 100%. Right.

[John Mueller]

That's true. That's a good point.

[Scott Van Hack]

But yeah, they probably find a lot of pages out there. I mean they said they have 600,000 pages. The top ranking pages. I imagine people who are in any competitive market are probably using AI to enhance the pages. So they could be right too. That's fair.

[John Mueller]

Yeah. I've got some percentages here and I'm going to go through them fairly quickly, but some of the page stats they found about just over 4% of all pages they checked were entirely AI generated. A little over 13% were entirely human generated and about 82% were a combination of AI and human. So yeah, I guess it doesn't totally surprise me if it's a combination. You get a paragraph here, there. Who knows what they're looking at. Percentages of AI content versus the percentage of sites analyzed. They found about 13% had very minimal. 40% had moderate AI content. 11 to 40% of it was actual AI content. And then it was about 27% of all the sites they analyzed had more than 40% of the content was AI driven. So it's, it's there, there's no avoiding it, that's for sure.

[Scott Van Hack]

I like that. It's just confirmed what we have been told. Yeah. And what we know is a logical response from Google. Who gives a damn if it's AI? If the content's great and it's unique because it comes down if, if you're, you're good with AI, it comes down to the prompt. If you're providing the AI writer with a lot of unique, thoughtful and expertise laden tips to create the content, well, great. It's going to create even better content than you can have. I mean it's going to create content faster than you can and it's going to include all of your seasoned tips. That should rank. There's no reason it shouldn't. So that's good to hear. So don't be afraid of AI. Don't listen to anyone who says you're going to get penalized for it. It's just a bunch of BS that they will. It's 100% okay to do. I love prompt engineering and there's a lot to it. And yeah, I'm not going to get into it. I totally nerd out. I got a little endorphin rush just even thinking about it. So I'm not going to get into it. I'm such a nerd about prompt engineering, but it is amazing what you can do with it and create excellent, excellent outputs. Well, with that said, thank you for joining us today. Remember, we have a Shownotes newsletter you can sign up [e-mail] and please, you know, whatever platform you're listening to us on, take a moment and leave us a testimonial. It's so awesome when we get to read them and we really, really appreciate it. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes which air almost every week. WMR fm.

[John Mueller]

Yeah, thanks for listening everybody and we will see you in episode five. Oh six. The six was hard.

[Scott Van Hack]

That was hard. Not quite as smooth.

[Ross Dunn]

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[Scott Van Hack]

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