Hat/tip to u/rustybrick for ringing the alarm bells!

Google has just announced the release of the August 2026 spam update and said it should only take a few days to roll out. This is a global update and is expected to impact all languages. This only impacts sites that spam, but with any update, there may be collateral damage.

Google wrote:

>Released the August 2026 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take a few days to complete.

Google added on LinkedIn

>Today we released the August 2026 spam update to Google Search.

For my b2c website, is there a need to hire a SEO agency or can some ai agent do it for me?

• We use a method of watermarking that does not have any practical impact on the quality or content of Claude’s outputs;
• The difference between watermarked and un-watermarked text will not be distinguishable to readers;
• Nothing is added to the text and there are no hidden characters;
• Watermarking doesn’t require extra tokens, and will not be more expensive;
• Watermarking carries no identifying information and can’t be traced to a specific person, organization, or chat;
• Watermarking won’t be specific to Claude. As of August 2, the EU requires AI providers serving its market to mark AI-generated content. Other major model developers have signed the same Code of Practice and will be implementing their own watermarks.

Hey everyone, quick SEO question.

I’ve got two pages clashing in the SERPs:
A commercial “[subject] service” page
An informational “What is [subject]?” page

At the moment, the “What is” article is ranking better, but ultimately I want to drive more visibility and enquiries through the money/service page.

Would you consolidate the informational content into the service page and redirect the “What is” URL, or keep both pages live and work on differentiating the intent/internal linking?

Interested to hear how others would approach the cannibalisation.

We get good positions and GEO visibility from India. US is always 2 pages back but recently picking up. My 8 year experience says, grow the backlink profile as its the weakest with a AS of 19. Direct traffic signals show India heavy company as most of our employees are from India.

Content cant be localized much cause of the kind of niche we are in. Is backlinks the only trick in the sleeve to push this forward. What can I do to get US traffic/visibility fast.

Traffic is really slow to come tbh with most people using generative engines these days. I bet US positions could bring in those numbers. Any tips on moving the needle fast from this situation to breaking into US traffic?

I see a lot of gatekeeping around the knowledge graph and knowledge panels, as well as people "fishing for work" showing how they created it using profile sites....

I watched a few YT videos and saw that nobody was covering how to do it - either jsut showing them or editing them or talking about them.

I think there's a lot of mystery and a lot of myths - like "Google trusts" authors with a schema or an entity but its far from the case.

Anyway - its not that hard - its mid-level SEO stuff - Just wanted to gauge if folks in the community wanted to learn more.

Identify Which Keywords Trigger AIOs

The first step in identifying how much of your website’s traffic is lost due to the presence of AI Overviews is seeing which of your previously high-traffic-generating keywords are now triggering AIOs to appear.

There are a couple of ways you can do this.

You can manually search some of your keywords, using a VPN to determine what the SERPs look like in your target geographies.

Or you can use your keyword tracking software – many of which provide detail on the types of SERP features that are triggered for a particular keyword.

The key is to identify a group of keywords that are of a similar topic and search interest that do and don’t trigger AI Overviews.

Cami Clark, the wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, has maintained a low public profile despite reportedly playing an influential role in Anthropic and serving as a strategic adviser to her husband. Though she does not work at Anthropic, Clark is often seen at major industry events and interacting with investors.

A recent Wall Street Journal report, along with emails from the Epstein files, has now brought parts of her earlier business career into focus.

Hey everyone,
I’m hitting a wall with a hard money lender website and could use a fresh pair of eyes or suggestions from anyone who has worked in high-scrutiny YMYL niches recently.

The Situation

Niche: Hard money / asset-based real estate lending (B2B/investor focus).

Search Console Data: GSC shows solid impressions and an average position hovering between 15 and 20 for relevant commercial intent keywords over the last 60–90 days.

Manual Search Reality: When performing manual SERP checks (incognito, cache cleared, localized search via geo-spoofing / GS Location Changer / VPN to the exact service area), the site doesn't appear anywhere in the top 50–100 results.

What We’ve Already Done (YMYL & E-E-A-T Focus)

Because hard money falls squarely under Your Money or Your Life (YMYL), we went heavy on trust and transparency from day one:

Entity & Transparency: Full business registration, physical office addresses, phone numbers, state licensing/disclosures clearly displayed in footer and dedicated legal pages.

Author & Team Bios: Complete profiles for loan officers/principals with verifiable LinkedIn profiles, industry experience, and direct contact details.

Schema Markup: Implemented robust ⁠FinancialService⁠, ⁠PostalAddress⁠, ⁠Person⁠, and ⁠FAQPage⁠ structured data with clean entity validation.

Content: No AI fluff. Comprehensive loan program pages (rates, LTVs, terms, application steps, requirements, fees) and practical investor guides written from an industry practitioner perspective.

Technical Health: Core Web Vitals are sorted, clean indexation (no canonical/noindex conflicts), HTTPS, and mobile-friendly.

What I’m Trying to Rule Out:

1. GSC Skew: Could GSC be logging impressions for non-standard features (image packs, universal snippets, or ultra-long-tail localized variations) that inflate the average position?

2. Geo-Targeting Mismatch: Are impressions coming from outside our service area, skewing the reported position while local results suppress the domain?

3. Algorithmic YMYL Filter / "Sandbox": Is Google testing the site in lower SERPs intermittently without committing to stable organic placement?

4. Intent Misalignment: Is the algorithm heavily favoring local map packs or major financial aggregators over independent lender domains?

Questions for the Community:

1. Have you seen this specific disconnect (GSC Page 2 average vs. complete absence in manual checks) in competitive YMYL spaces recently?
2. What specific filters or diagnostic steps would you run in GSC / third-party tools to isolate where these reported impressions are actually rendering?
3. Any specific off-page or brand entity signals that helped push your private lending/finance sites over the hump into visible SERPs?
4. ⁠It’s an .Io domain. Do you think that could be an issue?
   Appreciate any constructive thoughts or teardown ideas!

Ever heard the story about Google's Spider crawling your website from your home page and trying to understand your site? Its a fairy tale!

Here's the real story. Jonathan Denwood (WP-Tonic) talks to David Quaid about Googlebot and how crawling works.

David discusses how crawl pooling and prioritization works, how Google splits the web into tiers and assembles insights from Google Search Team members John Mueller, Gary Illes and Martin Splitt.

Also covered; How AI crawling works, cannibalization - what it is and why it happens

For a B2B service business with a longer sales cycle, what actually works for AEO?

Should the focus be on answering industry-specific questions, building topical authority, creating comparison/use-case content, optimizing FAQs, or something else?

Would love to hear from people who have actually tested AEO for B2B services. What worked, and what didn’t?

Great news - SEJ's u/rustybrick just shared on X today:

>
The Google Search Console generative AI performance reports seem to be live for everyone now. Google has not yet announced the full rollout of the generative AI performance reports but after checking all my profiles in Search Console, it seems to now be fully live.

>Yes, Google did expand access to this report a few weeks ago, but now it seems to be available for everyone. The report still does not include any click data or query data but it is fully live for all.

>Some are saying they do not see it, but I checked around 25 profiles I have access to and all of them have it. Google does say it won't show the report if, "Your site hasn't received enough impressions in generative AI features on Google Search."

Also in the post is a screenshot of how to see where to find the Google Generative AI Performance Report

u/rustybrick writes:

>After Google's lawsuit against SerpAPI, the Google Search scraper tool, was dismissed a month ago, Google has decided to amend the complaint. Google filed the amendment on August 10, 2026 as an "Amended Complaint." Google is now taking an approach around protecting licensed content within its search results.

• They openly ignore a lot of “accepted” SEO best practices and treat most checklist advice with heavy skepticism.
• Core philosophy: Test everything yourself. Understand why something works. Never treat SEO advice as universal rules.
• Pages with almost no content (or even accidentally published empty pages) can still rank #1.
• Technically poor sites that have unnatural link penalties can still rank for extremely competitive terms if authority is high enough.
• EEAT is heavily overhyped for most sites. Simply adding author bios rarely fixes a struggling site.
• EEAT matters more on high-stakes (YMYL) queries — finance, medical, gambling, etc. — and should be judged at the query level, not the whole industry.
• Google Quality Raters + RaterHub exist, but manual transparency actions and real ranking impact are limited for most niches.
• Advice from SEOs working on massive authority brands often fails completely on new or low-authority sites.
• Branded search volume and CTR can influence rankings. They actively test and seed brand associations via autocomplete and suggested searches.
• Exact-match domains (EMDs) and partial-match domains still have value, especially for reducing risk.
• They buy and evaluate aged/expired domains using data from multiple tools — not just relying on DR/DA.
• Using multiple sites is a deliberate strategy to avoid single points of failure.
• Topical relevance + authority is the real framework (Relevance × Authority).
• Contextual bridging (starting on easier topics and gradually moving into harder ones) is a key growth tactic.
• Parasite SEO still works in certain situations.
• Schema (especially FAQ) has limited impact outside specific cases; most schema debates are tribal noise.
• Big takeaway: Stop anthropomorphizing Google. Focus on testing, data, and what actually moves the needle for your site instead of repeating industry dogma.

Building Your First SEO Agency Portfolio (The Right Way)

Benefit-Focused: Learn how to build an SEO agency portfolio that wins clients. Step-by-step guide with real examples, templates, and pro tips.

Learn how to build an effective saving strategy with our team discussion. See practical steps for planning and execution.

This session features Jonathan Denwood (the WP King), Kurt Von Ahnen (the Design King), and David G Quaid (the SEO King) conducting a collaborative business meeting discussion. We review a specific document outlining a comprehensive saving strategy, breaking down each lesson section to provide clarity on how to manage resources effectively. This is ideal for professionals looking to streamline their planning processes.

During this presentation training, we walk through the document step-by-step, ensuring every participant understands the core objectives. By analyzing this meeting screen share, you gain a clear view of how high-level goals translate into actionable tasks. Whether you are leading a team or refining your own professional strategy session, these insights offer a direct look at how to structure your next planning initiative.

Extract from Is SEO / content still worth it for tiny ecommerce in 2026 or should I just go all-in on ads?

I run a very small niche ecommerce shop (pet gear, mostly higher-ticket items). Last week a regular told me she only found us because she’d binged a bunch of blog posts about pet care and UX-ish “how to choose the right harness” type stuff from other sites, and it kinda hit me that I barely do any content beyond product pages.

Right now my “strategy” is basically Meta + Google ads and a couple of half-baked email flows. Margins are getting squeezed and I’m seeing more AI-driven ad optimization stuff, but I’m scared of being 100% dependent on paid traffic. I was reading random marketing articles at like 1am (including some on netpeak about pet campaigns and UX tweaks) and it made me wonder if I’m missing a big chunk of long-term growth.

For a tiny shop like mine, is it actually worth investing real time/money into SEO, content, and email psychology in 2026, or should I double down on paid and accept that as the main engine? How would you prioritize: content/SEO, email, UX changes, or better ad setups? Any “I was at your stage and did X” stories would help a ton.Extract from Is SEO / content still worth it for tiny ecommerce in 2026 or should I just go all-in on ads?

I run a very small niche ecommerce shop (pet gear, mostly higher-ticket items). Last week a regular told me she only found us because she’d binged a bunch of blog posts about pet care and UX-ish “how to choose the right harness” type stuff from other sites, and it kinda hit me that I barely do any content beyond product pages.

Right now my “strategy” is basically Meta + Google ads and a couple of half-baked email flows. Margins are getting squeezed and I’m seeing more AI-driven ad optimization stuff, but I’m scared of being 100% dependent on paid traffic. I was reading random marketing articles at like 1am (including some on netpeak about pet campaigns and UX tweaks) and it made me wonder if I’m missing a big chunk of long-term growth.

For a tiny shop like mine, is it actually worth investing real time/money into SEO, content, and email psychology in 2026, or should I double down on paid and accept that as the main engine? How would you prioritize: content/SEO, email, UX changes, or better ad setups? Any “I was at your stage and did X” stories would help a ton.

I'm looking into this because I noticed places around me need this and was wondering what daily, weekly, and monthly tasks look like.

I'm just starting and don't know what to offer I know the basics like the same info all around, categories, responding to reviews, and uploading high quality photos and updates.

That's all I know is there more to it? Any advice will help thank you

Something about LLMs and marketing is giving me déjà vu...

Every AI company is pretending GEO doesn't exist. All of them.

It's 2000 all over again. A complete information vacuum. Google is the only one publishing actual guides — and they're the incumbent being disrupted.

Into that vacuum? Pure fabrication. Ask a question, get an instant answer conjured from nothing.

Need content to promote your AI GEO tool? Just make it up. Even better: write something that 99% of brand marketers and CMOs - i.e. your ICP - have been wanting to hear since they left college.

Want to prove "brand alignment" matters? Have Gemini generate an infographic claiming you analyzed 245 million brands. Funny how the data always confirms what you were already selling.

And nobody can call it out — because there's no source material to check it against. The vendors' silence is the business model for the grifters.

The LLM companies seem to think staying quiet keeps their platforms an SEO-free zone. It doesn't. It just means the optimization happens in the dark, guided by snake oil instead of documentation.

It can't last.

Until then: set phasers to "critical thinking."