I'm making some big changes to newsletter! Let me tell you why.

I've been writing a lot lately about producing content that meets the needs of your audience and adds original, insightful information to the body of knowledge that's on the web already.

It made me think about my own writing. I love writing newsletter so much. It started as a way to quickly inform people about Panda and Penguin updates. As I learned more, I realized that if I committed myself to sharing in a weekly newsletter, I'd understand the important things better. Then somehow it became a 70+ page giganto-document.

This week I had a revelation when watching the Google Cloud Next keynote video I've included below. They spoke of creating a chatbot from your website content. They said you could do it in under two minutes.

They were right.

You can see more information here on my use of the Vertex generative AI app builder.

The SGE answers are fascinating - they sound just like me.

There were some issues though. Some answers were not completely accurate. And it looks like it may be expensive to put it live on my site. But I bet a lot of businesses are going to do wild things with these tools. Here's a link to Google's VertexAI if you want to test this out.

What fascinated me most though was the internal site search. It was really good at finding content, even amongst my gigantic newsletter pages, that was would be good to read to give me even more information than the SGE answer.

Then I had my epiphany.

Why am I not blogging?

So, starting now, whenever I cover a topic and want to add some insight or thoughts, I'm writing that as a blog post. And I'll link to it from this newsletter.

What is changing:

• ​Paid subscribers still get a Google doc on Friday with one big long newsletter. Plus, the extra subscriber content.
• "Subscriber content" is going to be renamed next week to "Extra Content". The extra content will usually contain my thoughts on what I've learned from the QRG, Google documents, patents and research. More here on how to subscribe.
• There will be no more public version of newsletter on the web, only email. But there will be a few helpful new blog posts each week.
• Emails will be better! You can read everything in here instead of having to click through to my website. This week's is still really long...but next week's will be more concise.

Thank you for bearing with me as I know I've made a lot of changes in the last year. My goal is to continue to provide as much helpful information as I can.

The latest on the August Core Update

The update is still rolling out. I haven’t analyzed it yet as it’s still rolling but I’ve covered what the community is seeing so far.

I have several sites I monitor that are seeing what look like very nice recoveries.

Here are a few more from the community:

Jordan @JordanOmana @Marie_Haynes And This is last 29 days, If you ask me, this is weird, looks like they started first with me? IM CONFUNSED HAHA 😅 Marie Haynes @Marie_Haynes @JordanOmana I like the direction that chart is headed! 2:46 PM • Aug 28, 2023 0 Retweets 1 Likes Read 1 replies

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David Chen @yewie115 @Marie_Haynes Oh you're going to love this one. I removed all of my original images at the beginning of the year and replaced them with all stock photos on ~300 pages I started adding them back around May. Aside from that I haven't really worked on the site since last october. Marie Haynes @Marie_Haynes @yewie115 Nice! What have you been improving? 12:49 PM • Aug 28, 2023 0 Retweets 4 Likes Read 1 replies

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Once the update is finished, I'll be digging in to sites and sharing more of my thoughts.

Google's Cloud Next Keynote blew my mind

I'd encourage you to watch this whole talk.

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Most interesting to me were the bits about creating your own app with Google's generative AI capabilities. In this post I share how I created an SGE + Search app for my website in under two minutes.

Can Google really discount unnatural links?

Ooops.

Something strange is happening with canonicals in GSC

Rafa Martin brought a situation to my attention. Many people replied saying they were having the same issue.

Rafa Martin 👽🖖 @rafainatica Hello @Marie_Haynes . As of July 12, there is an increase in canonicals chosen by Google, which, for me, i think is wrong 🤔. Any reference of this case to compare with any other case? The pages are totally different products and manufacturers. The content pages does not match🤷‍♂️ 8:58 AM • Aug 29, 2023 0 Retweets 2 Likes Read 4 replies

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Advertisement How North Star Inbound Got 174 DA 75+ Links in Just 20 Months (This section is new. I'm not widely accepting advertisers, but you will see more content from Nicole in newsletter. I have sent her work for many years and highly recommend her for helping you get good links.) Hey everyone, ​ This week, I want to share a key strategy my team uses to land top-tier features in outlets like Fortune, Fast Company, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. The secret? Relatability. It's all about connecting through shared experiences. ​ So, when crafting your digital PR stories, focus on moments that impact our daily lives but often go unnoticed. You might wonder, how can you be sure these moments will make compelling stories if they haven't been widely discussed? Think about Seinfeld – a show about 'nothing' that became a massive hit. Relatable stories don't always need big buzz. ​ Take the subtitles campaign we ran, revealing how many Americans use them even for English shows. You might use them too – I certainly do. This story resonated with so many people, netting us around 700 placements. Or consider the angriest airports story. We delved beyond the obvious gripes, exploring issues like noise, cold, bathrooms, and parking. This campaign scored over 400 placements. Hope these insights help. For more tips, follow me here. To explore our work further, reach out here.   Nicole DeLeon · North Star Inbound

Thoughts on removing content if impacted by the helpful content system

I asked Danny Sullivan this question. His answer was vague.

Google SearchLiaison @searchliaison @Marie_Haynes People should self-assess their content to understand if they believe it will be helpful to visitors. Keep content on pages or entire pages or whatever they believe is helpful. Get rid of things that aren't, if they're looking critically at them as a visitor. Marie Haynes @Marie_Haynes Hi @searchliaison. Google's documentation on the helpful content system talks about recovering by "removing unhelpful content" in order to get the unhelpful content classification removed. Any chance we could get more clarity on this? Do you mean: -remove parts of pages that… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1697657046710051049 1:14 PM • Sep 1, 2023 9 Retweets 33 Likes Read 4 replies

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More interesting SEO news & tips

Brodie Clark @brodieseo Whoa, this is interesting timing. Right after announcing removal of FAQ rich results, Google is testing a 'mentioned in' drop-down. Clicking 'mentioned in' links takes you to the content shown in the snippet using scroll-to-text. More details & examples: https://brodieclark.com/notes/ style="color: #1B95E0">#aug-2023 9:16 PM • Aug 29, 2023 93 Retweets 254 Likes Read 13 replies

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Google Search is now blurring explicit imagery in search by default

John Mueller says it doesn’t matter if you use a 301 or 302 redirect​

Martin Splitt says that if a page was indexed, it means it was rendered by Google.

Danny Sullivan says core updates do not change Google’s autocomplete suggestions.

SGE News

​SGE is now available in Japan and India.​

Here are some screenshots from the community.

Andy Simpson 🇬🇧 @ndyjsimpson No local "5 pack" in SGE's local listing, probably just another test but... 🧐 #localSGE #localseo @lilyraynyc @Marie_Haynes @rustybrick 5:14 PM • Aug 31, 2023 7 Retweets 22 Likes Read 4 replies

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Phil Rozek @philrozek @rustybrick, is this new? (GBP page info getting pulled into YT description.) I work on SMBs' videos constantly, and have never seen it until now. 8:11 PM • Aug 29, 2023 0 Retweets 5 Likes Read 1 replies

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