Proof that SEO is far from dead. Is epic being able to reflect back on this sustained non-branded traffic growth for my client Bed Bath N' Table. I've been their sole SEO resource for their in-house team for almost 2 years now, starting back in October of 2023. They have ~200 stores throughout AU, NZ and SG, with eCommerce stores for AU and NZ in particular. Thankfully, we were able to achieve some extreme results quite quickly, going from ranking very low for queries like "bed sheets" (position 43 at the start) to consistently appearing in the top 3 positions. While the sharp increase that occurred at the beginning of May 2024 looks like the impact of a core update, there wasn't an official update that was announced around this date, but Google did later hint that a small update happened. This Semrush screenshot is of AU, with NZ showing similar results. The team and I were able to implement a significant amount of changes spanning across content, technical, and product feeds in particular during the ~6 months in the lead up to this change, which we believe had a significant contribution to Google's re-classification. Even better, the in-house team is awesome to work with and I thoroughly enjoy helping them to ensure they remain a market leader. Can see my full list of client testimonials here: brodieclark.com/#testimonial…

Check out the free tool to compare Google store ratings developed by @carlhendy here: storeratings.co

If you work in eCommerce, this should be your new favourite free tool for competitor research. This tool allows you to quickly develop your own Google Shopping Experience Scorecard and compare against top domains for your region. The tool puts to work metrics that Google use as an input to rank stores within Organic Shopping results by uncovering the relevant datasets in quite a smart and effective way. Another major benefit of the tool is that it includes its own score (out of 100) to show where a store rates overall. This is especially useful if you already have the Top Quality Store badge or are close to achieving it. As an example, JB HI-FI appear to be very close to achieving the TQS badge at a score of 82, whereas Harvey Norman still has a lot of work to do with a score of 51, being quite far off from achieving the associated benefits. For JB HI-FI, it appears as though there could be some room for improvement within the 'website quality' category. There will be clearer hints as to where the gaps are within the 'store quality' report in GMC Next, but it likely relates to comparative Core Web Vitals metrics, or something like PDP image resolution. For Harvey Norman, there look to be some foundational aspects that are holding them back related to shipping, returns, and pricing not being competitive enough. This may be harder to influence, so they would likely look to improve their Seller Rating (which is quite low), and then first look to an aspect such as 'returns', which might be a more reasonable internal discussion to have to start – considering the industry benchmark is clearly 30-day returns for most items. Oftentimes, sites will have some form of a returns policy in place, but it is not detailed (either intentionally or unintentionally) on their website. This is something that you can't skirt around, as Google validates this information itself through their Shopping Bot, with the information that is inputted within GMC Next needing to match up with what is detailed on the website. Highly recommend bookmarking this free tool for safekeeping for a time when you want to complete a competitor analysis across core metrics within your segment. Link in the comments.

If you work in eCommerce SEO, make sure you're getting the credit you deserve. Misattribution is common with free listings within Google Search due to sites misusing old tagging methods within their feeds. This can apply to features such as product grids, product knowledge panels, the shopping tab, AI Mode, and more. All being organic surfaces that generally have a higher conversion rate compared to non-free listing surfaces. While auto-tagging within Merchant Center generally does the job for attribution in GA4 (in terms of tracking sales for specific URLs), what can happen is a misuse of the [link] and [mobile_link] attributes being assigned to "google" and "cpc" for all results within the feed itself. The correct approach should be to use [link] and [mobile_link] for free listings for "google" and "organic" instead. This would mean that the parameters within the example provided would then be attributed to SEO. Otherwise, it is also completely fine to use the standard autotagging settings within Merchant Center for tracking free listings. With this approach, this traffic is automatically categorised as ‘Organic Shopping’ in GA4, which can be refined even further to ensure the data is clear (such as only filtering by PDPs). Note: the only downside to enabling auto-tagging is that your standard organic listings will likely start to show with the auto-tagging parameters in search results. This isn’t something to be concerned about from a ranking perspective, but it is a consideration. If your settings are incorrect, then I would suggest getting this fixed. Clicks on these organic features should be attributed to SEO, not Paid Search activities.

Must-read if you’re wanting to audit and improve your visibility within LLMs. Learn how @semrush nearly tripled their AI Share of Voice using their own tools (optimization tactics included). -> How We're Driving LLM Visibility at Semrush semrush.com/blog/how-we-are-…

More details within my guide to free local listings, which is a great starting point if you want to make the most out of this feature: brodieclark.com/google-free-…

Ecommerce SEO Tip: if you work with a site that has an online store and physical locations, this is a no-brainer to have in place (many sites don't). Many stores use their GBP listings to load products manually using the 'edit products' section within the profile manager. This is not an approach I would advise using, as it overrides the ability to have the SWIS (See What's In Store) unit display on your listings. Within Google Merchant Center Next, there is a section that you can access under Settings > Add-ons to enable "free local listings". This is a good first step to get the process started for allowing the SWIS unit to display on your listings. To make the connection, you'll need to send a request to the email that manages the GBP listings from Merchant Center, which will arrive under the 'Linked accounts section' in Google Business Profile Manager (which should be instantaneous). Note: make sure the email you're requesting *only* has the relevant GBP profiles attached to it. Once you've made the connection, in my experience, it is up to Google as to whether the unit will display or not. If you really want to guarantee that it will show, integrating a local inventory feed for your locations is the path forward - which can be quite complex to execute on. It is also good to note that the free local listings feature can overlap with local inventory ads, which is an important consideration in all of this. There is quite a bit to learn and experiment with in this feature of GMC Next that I would highly recommend looking into to gain more visibility for your products in Google's free listing surfaces. Start with simply connecting your GBP listings to GMC Next, then start the process of investigating the integration of a local inventory feed (so your products show with product details based on the stores, such as the distance to the physical store). I've written about this topic quite extensively for anyone that is interested. It hasn't been without its challenges in integrating this for clients of mine, so make sure to check out my guide if you manage an eCommerce store that also has physical locations. See the comments for a link to my guide on this topic to help you get started.

Technical SEO: don't just submit the sitemap index file in Google Search Console, you'll need to submit all important sitemaps individually also. When I get access to a clients GSC, often for very large sites, I unfortunately don't always have access to the indexing data that I need from the get-go. A core reason for this is when only the sitemap index file has been submitted, and not the individual sitemaps for core parts of a site e.g. products, categories, articles, guides etc. This approach effectively applies to all types of sites. Whether it be news publishers (where articles are often grouped within sitemaps by date), eCommerce sites, marketplaces, or sites of any kind. When you think about large sites that are maxing out on the amount of pages that they're squishing into a sitemap (50K is the limit), you're losing a great deal of insight along the way, especially if you're only able to view page indexing for millions of URLs at a time. I actually think that Google should really do this automatically when sitemaps are detected within the index, due to the usefulness of the reporting, but I do also understand there it does require input from the site owner in the first instance. If you haven't added your sitemaps to GSC in this way yet, get it over and done with and make the change now. If you end up working with someone in a technical SEO engagement, they will be thankful that you did (if they understand the importance of this reporting view).

International SEO: expanding a website into new regions and languages can get messy real quick without the correct foundations. The language/region selector is a good example of this, where it is not uncommon for large sites to link to the related variant in ineffective ways. For instance, this site links directly to the related page (being better than a lot of sites that just link to the homepage by default) within the selector, but the URLs include a ?locale= parameter at the end. Granted, the ?locale= URLs have a canonical pointing to the page that should be indexed in search results, but this approach just causes an unnecessary mess and dilutes the focus considerably. A helpful way of seeing the impact of this approach is in the 'alternate page with proper canonical tag' flag in the GSC page indexing a report, where the majority of the pages being categorised in this way are from this approach alone. The good news is that this is quite a straightforward fix that will have a far-reaching effect across the domain, which already has millions of pages within Google's index. This is just one of the many signals that are important to pay attention to with international SEO at scale, with GSC being an invaluable tool for highlighting when changes are required.

More details on some of the history of this particular experiment: brodieclark.com/notes/?query… and a link to my monthly newsletter if you haven't subscribed yet: serpalert.com

So... Google is now testing AI-generated page snippets that are unmarked. Recently, we've seen Google testing similar AI summaries for various websites as an extension to normal snippets (sometimes based on the meta description). The same goes for an experiment contained to Reddit only, where the AI 'star' icon is used to highlight that the snippet is being summarised by AI. But this is the first time we've seen Google develop summaries in this way for a page without clearly labelling it to users with an AI-related icon. From what I can see, this particular experiment is contained within the 'discussions and forums' unit, but I wouldn't be surprised if it expands beyond this feature in the near future. Keep an eye out. The snippets that you see in Google's search results that were historically based on exact content from the page could now start to transition to AI summaries instead. More details on the history of this test in the comments, and make sure to subscribe to my monthly newsletter if you haven't already where I discuss major updates to SERP features on Google.

SEO Tip: when it comes to using Schema for the homepage on a site, there are two types that I gravitate towards and recommend (especially for eCommerce stores). The two types are Organization and WebSite Schema, being tags that I see genuine utility in for sites when added, but I regularly see as missing from the homepage for sites. WebSite Schema is a special one in particular, having influence over the Site Name that appears in search results, where Google will often look to the name specified within this tag and present it in SERPs. For large eCommerce stores that may have various regional domains, while the homepage for the core region (such as the US) might have the correct tag, it is not uncommon for WebSite to be missing from the homepage across other regions. This can result in some messiness in Google's SERPs and confusion in the signals received. For instance, a site that I was working with recently didn't have WebSite on their AU domain, resulting in it randomly having the NZ domain (e.g. Example .co.nz) showing as the site name, when it should have just been 'Example' or 'Example AU' appearing. For Organization Schema, this is one that is effectively a no-brainer. I've seen it become quite influential in recent years, with an example being a site I was working with not being able to be shown as an entity within autocomplete. After adding Organization, the large card treatment within autocomplete for the brand started showing a week after implementing. Similar can be said about the brand/merchant knowledge panel for sites. The trend for the eCommerce version of this panel has been heavily skewed toward being influenced by Merchant Centre Next more recently, with there now being features such as payment options, trending products, shipping and returns, and even an AI Chat that serves free listing results. While there are various factors that come into play to have this panel consistently appear for your brand (prominence and size, along with a Wikipedia article often being a key step), I do find that the information provided within Organization is a core fallback signal to influence some of the inclusions. We saw the influence of Organization increase for merchant knowledge panels more recently, where Google now allows you to specify product policies such as 'returns' and loyalty program information within this markup, again solidifying the importance of having this markup located on the homepage of your site. On the most basic level for Schema implementation, I would suggest ensuring that you have both Organization and WebSite located on the homepage of your site. There are obvious benefits that shouldn't be ignored for SEO. And once you have the panel appearing, make sure to customise this information with the ‘brand profile’ feature in GMC Next.

Ecommerce SEO Tip: some great news for stores. Google has now rolled out a fresh set of invites to 'Brand Profiles' in Merchant Center. If you manage a store that gets a lot of branded traffic, then this is a great opportunity to help shape that experience – in the most direct way possible. Previously, to influence something like the description that shows for a brand queries within the merchant knowledge panel, it can often be at Google's whims. It's not uncommon for Google to take a description it likes from a completely different website outside of the ownership of the business, with only indirect methods such as modifying the structured data or on-site content having an impact. I've now tested out the new Brand Profile feature for a client that didn't have an optimal description, and it was reflected in search results in minutes. The same goes for other aspects such as images and videos from social media – both instantly reflected in search results for the brand query, another aspect that previously required quite indirect methods. The only catch: it seems that you need to have 'super admin' rights to update this information, likely because of how impactful the changes can be. If you're not an in-house SEO and already have these rights, then chat with your client now about what improvements can be made.

Ecommerce SEO: for large domains, there are various ways of managing product variants. Here's an important aspect of the feed component: Within free listing surfaces, Google will often develop individual grid items for specific product variants that are popular items for customers, instead of a generic grid that includes all variants. A similar situation can happen where the user is presented with a drop-down directly in search results (ChatGPT Shopping is working on similar), where you're then able to filter by in-stock items for that variant. The outcome of this situation is that customers can already decide which variant they want before clicking through to the Product Detail Page for the retailer, increasing the intent even further. While many large stores have a technically correct implementation of their feed variants (in terms of stock levels and different pricing), the experience can often fall flat when landing on the PDP itself. Smart retailers will manage this experience with variant parameters of some kind, resulting in a pre-selection of the variant on the PDP, without having to link to a completely different indexable product page. In my experience, the retailers that nail this approach for variants from a content, structured data, and feed level tend to get the best results out of free listings in the long-term due to the effectiveness of the overall experience.

New SEO Research: the first AI Mode user behaviour study and what it reveals about the future of Search. Based on 250 user sessions, showing which features result in the most external visits + plenty more insights. Read the full study via @Kevin_Indig: growth-memo.com/p/what-our-a…

Google is now testing out an AI summary extension for mobile snippets in addition to the standard description section for web pages. This test is separate but related to the Reddit AI description summaries, but can apply to websites outside of Reddit, with this variation also first spotted by @fighto. Details: brodieclark.com/notes/#oct-2… -- 📧 Stay on top of changes to Google's SERPs by subscribing to the SERP Alert Newsletter. Join 2,900+ subs for monthly updates: serpalert.com

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SEO News: Google is now testing out a new type of AI-generated description for some pages. Is this the end of the meta description? Instead of using a snippet of text from the page to generate the description, Google is generating the description itself based on the indexable content found on the page. The description (which included the 'More >' link) takes users directly to the thread, which is different to a normal description that only has the title for the snippet as the link. This experiment was also spotted by @fighto, with it looking like the experiment is contained to just Reddit at this stage. Will it expand to other types of websites? I wouldn't be surprised, given Google's emphasis on AI features in recent times. Writing meta descriptions manually is a low-value task for SEO, which shouldn't take up too much time, with Google often replacing it with other text from the page with relevant content to the query. With AI descriptions, this could potentially remove the need to write meta descriptions in the first place, if the Reddit experiment is anything to go off. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter in the comments for a full rundown of SERP feature changes from this past month (it goes out next week).

Brilliant new (and free) SEO tool for eCommerce stores, allowing you to compare Top Quality Store metrics against competitors. I've been writing about Google's TQS metrics a lot recently, with the emphasis increasing even further with the introduction of a widget that store owners can add to their website, resulting in an 8% uplift in sales. @carlhendy has now gone ahead and created a free tool for store owners to get in-depth insight into the metrics that Google cares about most for the TQS rating, then allowing you to compare against sites within your niche. I had the pleasure of doing some early testing of this tool and am very impressed with how how useful it can be to store owners, with achieving the TQS badge having not only benefit to sales but also direct impact on rankings. Make sure to check out the free tool and bookmark it now to see how your store shapes up compared to others within your niche: storeratings.co Note: there is currently a subtle bug related to the TQS rating on Google's end that appeared today related to some of the sub-metrics (shipping/returns in particular) which is preventing the badge from showing for some sites right now – this tool is even helpful for seeing if you or your competitors were impacted.

And finally the details of the job ad discovered by @Jammer_Volts and covered by @martinibuster: searchenginejournal.com/goog…

Here's the statement from Google written by @rustybrick: searchengineland.com/google-…, and one that we can potentially read into: seroundtable.com/google-comm…