30-Year SEO Pro Shows How To Adapt To Google’s Zero-Click Search via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Search marketer Michael Bonfils recently discussed how AI is disrupting search marketing and shared insights into what he feels is an appropriate response to one of the most difficult search environments he’s seen in his thirty years of experience.

Brutal Environment For Digital Marketing

Gianluca mentioned there’s a perception gap with AI where on one side are marketers who are heralding the end of SEO and PPC and on the other side are the “AI bros” who cheerlead that everything is going to become even better, with better leads from ChatGPT, etc.

He shook his head and said:

“It’s neither going to be a disaster and it’s neither going to be an AI paradise.”

Gianluca asked him what trends he’s seeing. Michael responded that the trends he’s seeing is that click volume has gone down since the introduction of AI. He said during other times when volume is down the click through rates go up, like during the pandemic. But that’s not happening now. Click through rates are down, volume is down but Cost Per Clicks are at historic highs.

Michael observed,

“But now, …the level we’re at now is the worst time since 2019 during the pandemic and prior to that it was never that bad.

…If you want throw the CPC factor in, the CPC’s are historically higher than they have been for years. So now we’ve got this perfect problem, click through rates down, volume down, CPC’s up. What does that mean? ROI is getting hit and clients are leaning on organic to try to make up for whatever shortfall there is and they can’t find it, they can’t find the traffic.

So to answer your question, …now that we’re going into Europe with AI overviews, are they impacting things? One hundred percent. And they’ll continue to change. “

Later on they discussed how a lot of what Google is doing is reactionary, a response to external pressures from companies like Perplexity AI and OpenAI, and the search industry is caught in the middle of it.

AI Overviews Leads To Loss Of Strategic Data

Michael Bonfils discusses how AI overviews leads to zero-click behavior and while most SEOs stop right there, Michael points out that this situation affects the data that’s available to marketers and as a consequence impacts content strategy.

Use IndexNow For AI Search And Shopping SEO via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Microsoft Bing published an announcement stating that the IndexNow search crawling technology is a powerful way for ecommerce companies to surface the latest and most accurate shopping-related information in AI Search and search engine shopping features.

Generative Search Requires Timely Shopping Information

Ecommerce sites typically depend on merchant feeds, search engine crawling and updates to Schema.org structured data to communicate what’s for sale, new products, retired products, changes to prices, availability and other important features. Each of those methods can be a point of failure due to slow crawling by search engines and inconsistent updating which can delay the correct information from surfacing in AI search and shopping features.

IndexNow solves that problem. Content platforms like Wix, Duda, Shopify and WooCommerce support IndexNow, a Microsoft technology that enables speeding indexing of new or updated content. Pairing IndexNow with Schema.org assures fast indexing so that the correct information surfaces in AI Search and shopping features.

IndexNow recommends the following Schema.org Product Type properties:

• “title (name in JSON-LD)
• description
• price (list/retail price)
• link (product landing page URL)
• image link (image in JSON-LD)
• shipping (especially important for Germany and Austria)
• id (a unique identifier for the product)
• brand
• gtin
• mpn
• datePublished
• dateModified
• Optional fields to further enhance context and classification:
• category (helps group products for search and shopping platforms)
• seller (recommended for marketplaces or resellers)
• itemCondition (e.g., NewCondition, UsedCondition)”

Read more at Microsoft Bing’s Blog:

IndexNow Enables Faster and More Reliable Updates for Shopping and Ads

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Paper piper

Googler’s Deposition Offers View Of Google’s Ranking Systems via @sejournal, @martinibuster

A Google engineer’s redacted testimony published online by the U.S. Justice Department offers a look inside Google’s ranking systems, offering an idea about Google’s quality scores and introduces a mysterious popularity signal that uses Chrome data.

The document offers a high level and very general view of ranking signals, providing a sense of what the algorithms do but not the specifics.

Hand-Crafted Signals

For example, it begins with a section about the “hand crafting” of signals which describes the general process of taking data from quality raters, clicks and so on and applying mathematical and statistical formulas to generate a ranking score from three kinds of signals. Hand crafted means scaled algorithms that are tuned by search engineers. It doesn’t mean that they are manually ranking websites.

Google’s ABC Signals

The DOJ document lists three kinds of signals that are referred to as ABC Signals and correspond to the following:

• A – Anchors (pages linking to the target pages),
• B – Body (search query terms in the document),
• C – Clicks (user dwell time before returning to the SERP)

The statement about the ABC signals is a generalization of one part of the ranking process. Ranking search results is far more complex and involves hundreds if not thousands of additional algorithms at every step of the ranking process, from indexing, link analysis, anti-spam processes, personalization, re-ranking, and other processes. For example, Liz Reid has discussed Core Topicality Systems as part of the ranking algorithm and Martin Splitt has discussed annotations as a part of understanding web pages.

This is what the document says about the ABC signals:

“ABC signals are the key components of topicality (or a base score), which is Google’s determination of how the document is relevant to the query.

T* (Topicality) effectively combines (at least) these three signals in a relatively hand-crafted way. Google uses to judge the relevance of the document based on the query terms.”

The document offers an idea of the complexity of ranking web pages:

“Ranking development (especially topicality) involves solving many complex mathematical problems. For topicality, there might be a team of engineers working continuously on these hard problems within a given project.

The reason why the vast majority of signals are hand-crafted is that if anything breaks Google knows what to fix. Google wants their signals to be fully transparent so they can trouble-shoot them and improve upon them.”

The document compares their hand-crafted approach to Microsoft’s automated approach, saying that when something breaks at Bing it’s far more difficult to troubleshoot than it is with Google’s approach.

Interplay Between Page Quality And Relevance

An interesting point revealed by the search engineer is that page quality is independent of query. If a page is determined to be high quality, trustworthy, it’s regarded as trustworthy across all related queries which is what is meant by the word static, it’s not dynamically recalculated for each query. However, there are relevance-related signals in the query that can be used to calculate the final rankings, which shows how relevance plays a decisive role in determining what gets ranked.

This is what they said:

“Quality
Generally static across multiple queries and not connected to a specific query.

However, in some cases Quality signal incorporates information from the query in addition to the static signal. For example, a site may have high quality but general information so a query interpreted as seeking very narrow/technical information may be used to direct to a quality site that is more technical.

Q* (page quality (i.e., the notion of trustworthiness)) is incredibly important. If competitors see the logs, then they have a notion of “authority” for a given site.

Quality score is hugely important even today. Page quality is something people complain about the most…”

AI Gives Cause For Complaints Against Google

The engineer states that people complain about quality but also says that AI aggravates the situation by making it worse.

He says about page quality:

“Nowadays, people still complain about the quality and AI makes it worse.

This was and continues to be a lot of work but could be easily reverse engineered because Q is largely static and largely related to the site rather than the query.”

eDeepRank – A Way To Understand LLM Rankings

The Googler lists other ranking signals, including one called eDeepRank which is an LLM-based system that uses BERT, which is a language related model.

He explains:

“eDeepRank is an LLM system that uses BERT, transformers. Essentially, eDeepRank tries to take LLM-based signals and decompose them into components to make them more transparent. “

That part about decomposing LLM signals into components seems to be a reference of making the LLM-based ranking signals more transparent so that search engineers can understand why the LLM is ranking something.

PageRank Linked To Distance Ranking Algorithms

PageRank is Google’s original ranking innovation and it has since been updated. I wrote about this kind of algorithm six years ago . Link distance algorithms calculate the distance from authoritative websites for a given topic (called seed sites) to other websites in the same topic. These algorithms start with a seed set of authoritative sites in a given topic and sites that are further away from their respective seed site are determined to be less trustworthy. Sites that are closer to the seed sets are likelier to be more authoritative and trustworthy.

This is what the Googler said about PageRank:

“PageRank. This is a single signal relating to distance from a known good source, and it is used as an input to the Quality score.”

Read about this kind of link ranking algorithm: Link Distance Ranking Algorithms

Cryptic Chrome-Based Popularity Signal

There is another signal whose name is redacted that’s related to popularity.

Here’s the cryptic description:

“[redacted] (popularity) signal that uses Chrome data.”

A plausible claim can be made that this confirms that the Chrome API leak is about actual ranking factors. However, many SEOs, myself included, believe that those APIs are developer-facing tools used by Chrome to show performance metrics like Core Web Vitals within the Chrome Dev Tools interface.

I suspect that this is a reference to a popularity signal that we might not know about.

The Google engineer does refer to another leak of documents that reference actual “components of Google’s ranking system” but that they don’t have enough information for reverse engineering the algorithm.

They explain:

“There was a leak of Google documents which named certain components of Google’s ranking system, but the documents don’t go into specifics of the curves and thresholds.

For example
The documents alone do not give you enough details to figure it out, but the data likely does.”

Takeaway

The newly released document summarizes a U.S. Justice Department deposition of a Google engineer that offers a general outline of parts of Google’s search ranking systems. It discusses hand-crafted signal design, the role of static page quality scores, and a mysterious popularity signal derived from Chrome data.

It provides a rare look into how signals like topicality, trustworthiness, click behavior, and LLM-based transparency are engineered and offers a different perspective on how Google ranks websites.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/fran_kie

How Referral Traffic Undermines Long-Term Brand Growth via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Mordy Oberstein, a search marketing professional whom I hold in high esteem, recently shared the provocative idea that referral traffic is not a brand’s friend and that every brand, as it matures, should wean itself from it. Referrals from other websites are generally considered a sign of a high-performing business, but it’s not a long-term strategy because it depends on sources that cannot be controlled.

Referral Traffic Is Necessary But…

Mordy Oberstein (LinkedIn profile), formerly of Wix, asserted in a Facebook post that relying on a traffic source, whether that’s another website or a search engine, offers a degree of vulnerability to maintaining steady traffic and performance.

He broke it down as a two-fold weakness:

• Relying on the other site to keep featuring your brand.
• Relying on Google to keep ranking that other site which in turn sends visitors to your brand.

The flow of traffic can stop at either of those two points, which is a hidden weakness that can affect the long-term sustainability of healthy traffic and sales.

Mordy explained:

“It’s a double vulnerability…

1) Relying on being featured by the website (the traffic source)
2) Relying on Google to give that website …traffic (the channel)

There are two levels of exposure & vulnerability.

As your brand matures, you want to own your own narrative.

More referral traffic is not your friend. It’s why, as a brand matures, it should wean off of it.

Full disclosure, this is my opinion. I am sure a lot of people will disagree.”

Becoming A Destination

I’ve always favored promoting a site in a way that helps it become synonymous with a given topic because that’s how to make it a default destination and encourage the kinds of signals that Google interprets as authoritative. I’ve done things like created hats with logos to give away, annual product giveaways and other promotional activities, both online and offline. While my competition was doing SEO busy work I created fans. Promoting a site is basically just getting it in front of people, both online and offline.

Brand Authority Is An Excuse, Not A Goal

Some SEOs believe in a concept called Brand Authority, which is a misleading explanation for why a website rank.  The term Brand Authority is not about Branding and it’s not about Authoritativeness, either. It’s just an excuse for why a site is top-ranked.

The phrase Brand Authority has its roots in PageRank. Big brand websites used to have a PageRank of 9 out of 10 and even a 10/10, which enabled them to rank for virtually any keywords they wanted. A link from one of those sites practically guarantee a top ten ranking. But Google ended the outsized influence of PageRank because it resulted in less relevant results, which was around 2004-ish, about the time that Google started using Navboost, a ranking signal that essentially measures how people feel about a site, which is what PageRank does, too.

This insight, that Google uses signals about how people feel about a site, is important because the feelings people have for a business are what being a brand is all about.

Marty Neumeier, a thought leader on how to promote companies (author of The Brand Gap) explained what being a brand is all about:

“Instead of creating the brand first, the company creates customers (through products and social media), the customers build the brand (through purchases and advocacy), and the customer-built brand sustains the company (through “tribal” loyalty). This model takes into account a profound and counterintuitive truth: a brand is not owned by the company, but by the customers who draw meaning from it. Your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.”

Neumeier also explains how brand is about customer feelings:

“The best brands are vivid. They create clear mental pictures and powerful feelings in the minds and hearts of customers. They’re brought to life through their touchpoints, the places where customers experience them, from the first exposure to a brand’s name, to buying the product, to eventually making it part of who they are.”

That “tribal loyalty” is the kind of thing Google tries to measure. So when Danny Sullivan talks about differentiating your site to make it like a brand, he is not referring to so-called “brand authority.” He is talking about doing the kinds of things that influence people to feel positive about a site.

Getting Back To Mordy Oberstein

It seems to me that what he’s saying is that referral traffic is a stepping stone towards becoming a destination, it’s a means to an end. It’s not the goal, it’s a step toward the goal of becoming a destination.

On the other side of that process, I think it’s important to maintain relevance with potential site visitors and customers, especially today with the rapid pace of innovation, generational change, new inventions, and new product models. Relevance to people has been a Google ranking signal for a long time, beginning with PageRank, then with additional signals like Navboost.

The SEO factor that the SEO industry has largely missed is the part about about getting people to think positive thoughts about your site and your business, enough to share with other people.

Mordy’s insight about traffic is beautiful and elegant.

Read Mordy’s entire post on Facebook.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Yunus Praditya

Google Clarifies: AI Overview Links Share Single Position In Search Console via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s John Mueller has clarified that all links within AI Overviews (AIOs) share a single position in Google Search Console.

SEO consultant Gianluca Fiorelli asked Mueller how Search Console tracks position data for URLs in Google’s AI-generated answer boxes.

Mueller referenced Google’s official help docs, explaining:

“Basically an AIO counts as a block, so it’s all one position. It can be first position, if the block is shown first, but I don’t know if AIO is always shown first.”

This indicates that every website linked in an AI Overview receives the same position value in Search Console reports.

This occurs regardless of where the link appears in the overview panel, whether immediately visible or hidden until a user expands the box.

What Google’s Documentation Says

Google’s Search Console Help docs explain how AI Overview metrics work:

• Position: “An AI Overview occupies a single position in search results, and all links in the AI Overview are assigned that same position.”
• Clicks: “Clicking a link to an external page in the AI Overview counts as a click.”
• Impressions: “Standard impression rules apply. To be counted as an impression, the link must be scrolled or expanded into view.”

The docs also note:

“Search Console doesn’t include data from experiments in Search Labs, as these experiments are still in active development.”

The Missing Data Behind Google’s Click Claims

This discussion highlights an ongoing debate in the SEO community regarding the performance of links in AI Overviews.

Lily Ray, Vice President of SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive, recently pointed out Google’s year-old claim that websites receive more clicks when featured in AI Overviews, stating:

“I would love to see a single GSC report that confirms this statement, because every study so far has shown the opposite.”

“We see that the links included in AIO get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query.”

I would love to see a single GSC report that confirms this statement, because every study so far has shown the opposite.https://t.co/I1MVzr0vVi

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 14, 2025

Ray’s statement reflects the concerns of many SEO professionals, as Google has not provided data to support its claims.

Looking Ahead

While we now understand how position metrics are recorded, the question remains: Do AI Overview placements drive more or less traffic than traditional search listings?

Google claims one thing, but many people report different experiences.

Since all AIO links share the same position, it’s difficult to determine which specific placements perform better.

This debate highlights the need for more precise data about how AIOs affect website traffic compared to regular search results.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock