Google profiles now open at 10,000 followers
Google just cut the bar for a Search profile from 100,000 followers to 10,000, so a lot of small publishers suddenly qualify. Meanwhile the ranking trackers lit up again and Google has said nothing.
Read the whole week in one goThe September traffic crash fully reversed
Why your traffic moved
You may now qualify for a Google profile at 10,000 followers
Search profiles are the Google pages that show who you are and list your articles in search. Google dropped the requirement from 100,000 followers to 10,000 on a single platform across Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube, added one login to manage several profiles, and changed the article layout with bigger thumbnails and longer headlines.
More publishers and creators have access to profiles, as we’ve expanded eligibility to 10k followers on a single platform across Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.
Google lowered the requirements to just 10,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram, X, or TikTok (previously 100,000).
Who this affects: Anyone who publishes articles on their site and has a following on social media.
- Count your followers on your biggest platform. If you are over 10,000, check whether you can claim a Search profile.
- Claim it with the Google account you want to keep long term. Barry Schwartz claimed his other channels with a second account and then could not move them to his main one.
Rankings are unsettled again and AI answers are showing up more
The third party tools that watch for ranking movement (they sample results all day and score how much they shift) jumped again, with Semrush the loudest. Separately, Glenn Gabe is seeing more AI Overviews (the AI written answer at the top of results) appearing in some niches outside the US. Google has not announced an update.
the Google tracking tools are getting more heated today - in fact @semrush is way more heated today - something is brewing over at Google
Had some sites owners reach out yesterday saying that AIOs surged internationally for their niche.
Who this affects: Everyone with a website that gets Google traffic.
- Our take: note today's date and compare your Search Console clicks in a week before you change anything.
- Do nothing else. No update has been confirmed and movement often settles.
Do not do this
Bulk pages get judged on quality, not on how they were made
The Google speaker said the issue with pages built in bulk from a template or data feed is not the setup, it is what those pages actually contain, and that using a language model to write is not the problem either. Lily Ray's notes also say he still wants important content inside the page's HTML, partly because other systems read it. The SEO Guy made the same point about sites built with AI tools.
The problem is never the programmatic setup, it’s what the programmatic setup is generating.
The problem is not that they use LLMs, it’s the quality of the pages
Who this affects: Anyone publishing pages from a template or with AI help.
- Open two of your template built pages side by side. Our take: if the only difference is a swapped city or product name, merge them into one real page.
- Right click a key page and view the source. If your main text is not in there, ask your developer to render it server side.
The short list
ChatGPT is testing ads you can chat with
OpenAI is testing an ad format called Sponsored Agents, where a business sponsors an agent that users can chat with and then visit the advertiser's site. Barry Schwartz posted the email OpenAI sent advertisers, and Glenn Gabe expects Google to do something similar before long.
PDF files dropped from Google are coming back
Google removed a lot of PDF files from its index at the end of August, which cost some sites real traffic, and Glenn Gabe now sees many of them reindexed. He also published a tutorial for working out exactly which of your PDFs dropped out and which returned.
Two AI tools barely name the same local businesses
Ben Fisher says Gemini and ChatGPT cite the same sites on only 8.3% of matched local searches, and a fresh run six weeks later gave the same 8.3%. Being visible in one of them tells you almost nothing about the other.