audits.com

“Google is dead” has a lot less impact when it comes from the same people who sold the trillion-dollar metaverse story.

What’s worse than meetings? Scheduling them across multiple time zones. Trying to find a suitable time in Google Cal always felt more painful than it should be, and a lot of the alternatives felt dated, slow, or cluttered with ads. So I built my own: BestMeetingPlanner.com

Attribution is getting blurrier every day, but one of the simplest tools for understanding audience behaviour is probably gathering dust: the humble “Where did you hear about us?” pop-up. Most still list outdated search or social platforms - none mention LLMs or AI-search.

Pretty cool to see @audits referenced on the Wikipedia Search Engine Optimization page.

There’s been a lot of false claims about the Spy Dogs website and schools emailing parents. The site wasn’t hacked, and neither was Penguin - the domain simply expired and was re-registered. Here’s what actually happened:

PSA: Surprised this even needs saying.

My first public “vibe-coded” idea-to-product: storeratings*co Building this was fun but definitely tested my patience. A combination of @vercel , @github , and @cursor_ai, I got there in the end. I am not a developer or designer, go easy.

Google is once again reiterating that all these new acronyms for SEO are just SEO. Danny Sullivan (former Google Search Liaison) reiterated on stage at the WordCamp US event that “Good SEO is good “GEO”. This echoes messaging from Google’s John Mueller a few weeks back.

Finally upgraded the Google Knowledge Graph search tool on @audits. - Upgraded to Enterprise Knowledge Graph API - Captcha box removed - Export of results to CSV - Google KG URLs fixed - Images in results fixed (when available) The tool should now be a little smoother now.

If you’re in media, this is worth a watch. Cloudflare handles ≈20% of global traffic, so when CEO Matthew Prince warns at Cannes that AI bots are reshaping the web, publishers need to adapt or risk being left behind.

Five years since I unexpectedly achieved one of my career highlights. I was on some flaky airplane WiFi when I spotted a tweet from Steven Jenkins, who was then at Future PLC. I replied, excited by the possibility of appearing in Net Magazine - a publication I grew up reading.

Quietly, @DuckDuckGo sends 30x more traffic to most brands I work with than ChatGPT ever has.

Seemed relevant again.

What’s Working (and What’s Not) in SEO Consulting This Year These are few of my personal observations across a broad range of clients in different verticals, all at various stages with Google. Here’s what’s driving results this year: What’s Working: ✅ Stop Talking About “SEO” – The less I mention “SEO” to stakeholders and companies, the easier conversations become – but that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing SEO. ✅ Prioritising Intent – Reducing noise and mixed-intent content, especially on B2B and eCommerce landing pages. ✅ Decluttering old content – Less is more. Be ruthless in removing outdated, underperforming pages. ✅ Deoptimisation – Spending vast amounts of time undoing past aggressive SEO manipulation efforts. ✅ Stricter early comms – Setting realistic expectations upfront leads to better client relationships and fewer headaches. ✅ Saying no – Not every client or SEO project can recover from HCU or a weak brand/product offering. ✅ Long-term focus – Quick wins help, but sustainable SEO wins. This means strategy, not just long-term retainers. ✅ Server log audits – @screamingfrog Log File Analyser delivers fast, actionable insights. Developers appreciate evidence-based SEO. ✅ Indexing & crawling control – Over-crawling and under-indexing and vice versa req. investigating. ✅ Reducing tech costs – Do you really need a full SEO suite just for keyword rankings? ✅ Balanced AI discussions – Use AI where it makes sense, not just for hype. Assess risks and opportunities. ✅ UX & UI – Improving layouts, headings, and cutting SEO filler is paying off. ✅ Reviving aged quality content – Older, credible content still holds SEO value. ✅ Staying up to date – Mark Williams-Cook @candouragency and @aleyda's newsletters consistently provide concise, valuable insights and roundups. ✅ Leaner documentation – Most clients no longer need extensive SEO education. What’s Struggling: ❌ Analytics & reporting – Still tough to get clear insights from multiple data sources. No AI magic fix yet. Big data never happened. ❌ SEO without business/user focus – “SEO for SEO’s sake” or unnecessary tinkering. ❌ Siloed SEO – SEO must align with other business channels, not just token weekly catch up meetings. ❌ New guide-based content – Harder to stand out unless it’s genuinely valuable or for those that love new SEO phrases "Information Gain". ❌ Developer resources – Always a bottleneck, especially for large, aging websites. AI distractions. ❌ Industry noise and shiny objects – With all the changes in Google SERPs, AI, and the growing mainstream discussion around Google Search quality, I’ve definitely spent more time discussing “Search Trends” this year than ever before. I find myself becoming less dependent on 'SEO platforms' and increasingly looking to leverage specialist tools, APIs, and AI. SEO tool providers that embrace community-driven SEO, like @suganthan at KWI and Matthew Mellinger at @seogets, will be the ones that thrive in the future.

Google decided to target “cheap flight” search queries. And you will never guess what happened next. Competitors spent years building their brands and products, only for Google to take 18–24 months to absorb a large percentage of that $ traffic into their platform via organic search rankings and preferential placement of their flight search product. Some SEO's might consider Google's efforts to be "over optimised"?

Excited to join @aleyda for #SEOFOMO Melbourne! linkedin.com/posts/aleyda_s… Ready to share some serious SEO knowledge. Mark your calendars - this will be epic! 🎯 @brodieseo, @amandaecking, @connections8, @GastonRiera, @DejanAuthority, @inkovic, @sallymills, @carlhendy, Nikita Singh, Chloe Chiang, Stephanie Terrett. #SEO #melbourne #meetup #seocollective

Is Digital PR Dead? Will we finally see the end of [location] + [rage-inducing topic] surveys linking to Bingo for Cats websites? Reporters at Mirror and OK publisher Reach have been told they could face dismissal if they add links to third-party commercial websites without approval. This article refers to the Digital PR industry as SEOs. Are they the same thing? When aren’t they the same thing? Apparently, Reach has a dedicated affiliate team that oversees approved commercial links, ensuring they align with the company’s monetisation strategy and editorial guidelines. Feel like we have been here before.

Just a month to go for the Free #SEOFOMO x @seocollective Meetup in Melbourne and there are only a handful of tickets left 💪 Don't miss out. The event is going to be 🔥 featuring two more guests panel speakers @DejanAuthority and Stephanie Terrett, who join an already fantastic group of Australian SEOs: @PeterMeadSEO, @inkovic, @amandaecking, @connections8, @brodieseo, @GastonRiera, Georgia Tan, @sallymills, Nikita Singh, Chloe Chiang, @carlhendy. The meetup will have it all: Insightful SEO panels, amazing networking, free drinks and snacks (thanks to our kind sponsor, @audits), quizzes with giveaways and awesome swag! Join us: eventbrite.es/e/the-seofomo-… 🙌

Visibility ≠ Traffic Every day, "traffic" charts get shared here that actually reflect organic visibility rather than real user traffic. For most large websites, these charts can be quite misleading. Even Mr. Musk shares "traffic" charts for X, completely misinterpreting the data. But hey, it’s not like him to spread misinformation, right? According to Ahrefs, X/Twitter branded search queries don’t even make the top 20 queries that contribute to X’s visibility score. And let’s not forget how Google forces X into search results. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if Google ever removes that feature, but I digress. A website can rank on page one for high-traffic search queries that have zero relevance to what users are actually looking for. If search intent doesn’t match, those rankings won’t drive real click traffic. So while high visibility looks good on social media, it often holds little commercial or tangible value. This isn’t a criticism of how these platforms report data, as there is significant high-level value. Rather, it’s a call to look deeper into what drives "visibility." Unless custom reports (e.g., brand vs. non-brand or audience-specific share-of-search reports) are created, or like-for-like folder comparisons are made, these high-level charts often inflate traffic numbers. Take them with a grain of salt and conduct your own research. This issue is especially problematic for user-generated content platforms. A delay or lack of moderation can create huge swings in visibility, making charts look volatile without actually impacting business performance. Given Google’s recent reluctance to tackle parasite SEO, this is becoming more common. These charts are often the ones that land on your boss's boss's desk from salespeople or investors, and without proper education and clear internal reporting, they can lead to a lot of unnecessary questions. 10x visibility ≠ 10x traffic. Here are a few example websites and their top non-branded search queries that inflate visibility charts:

Come join 11 smiley faces and me. The brilliant @aleyda and SEO Collective are organising a free SEO meetup in Melbourne. @audits are happy to be sponsoring an event that provides so much value to the SEO community.