A spike in manual penalties may signal an update
Marie Haynes says a wave of hand-issued Google penalties for thin and mass-produced pages looks like the run-up to Penguin in 2012, and she expects the next update to be "quite shocking" for some sites. Also: Google is now emailing you when readers pick your site as a favorite.
Read the whole week in one goSpam update done, penalties up, trackers unreliable
Why your traffic moved
More sites are getting hand-issued penalties right now
One well known SEO says she is getting a lot more requests for help with manual actions (penalties applied by a human at Google), for thin content, pure spam and scaled content.
I still think that a big update is on its way. And I think it may be quite shocking for sites that have thrived more on SEO knowledge than truly being the most helpful and reliable.
Who this affects: Anyone with lots of thin or near-duplicate pages on their site.
- Our take: check Search Console under Security and Manual Actions now.
- Our take: delete or rewrite thin, near-duplicate pages before an update lands.
Getting into AI answers
Google now emails you when readers favorite your site
Google has started emailing site owners a count of how many people have added them as a Preferred Source (readers choosing sites they want to see more of). Glenn Gabe says he received a flurry of the emails and wishes the number appeared inside Search Console instead.
When you encourage users to select your website as a "Preferred Source" in Google, the difference they see in search results can be significant
Who this affects: Any site that publishes content people might follow regularly.
- Ask your regular readers to add you as a Preferred Source.
- Watch your inbox for the Google email, nothing to set up.
Video subtitles may be feeding Google's AI answers
One SEO says YouTube transcripts (the text version of what you say on video) are being pulled into Google's AI Overviews, including from longer videos. Charles Floate credits the technique to James Dooley and says to treat transcripts like indexable documents, not just subtitles. This is one person's observation, not something Google has confirmed.
Who this affects: Small businesses that already publish videos or podcasts.
- Our take: if you post videos, upload a clean written transcript.