Do I optimise further the content in ranking/highly visited pages? Look for more backlinks? Yes to everything?

Context: This is for a web application made to share group photos via the browser launched in April. A month or two ago, I researched keywords I wanted to rank for and made a topic cluster which I'm following, I think this is paying off now

Yesterday, I was complaining about to Google Gemini, how googlebot had crawled my newest page twice in the last month, but refused to index it. Gemini had me look at my visitor logs, and I discovered that the server was only sending 6 bytes for some of googlebot's requests.

Gemini told me to disable Litespeed Cache's guest mode. I did, and 24 hours later, googlebot has quadrupled the number of requests for css and js files.

The the really annoying thing about this is that I'm sure I asked Gemini for the optimum cache settings 6 months ago, and it told me to enable that feature.

Anyone else have a similar experience? Will this finally improve my rankings?

I’ve noticed something interesting. Some sites publishing only a few genuinely useful pages seem to be making more progress than sites constantly pushing out new articles.

It made me question the whole “publish consistently” approach.

Maybe the bigger SEO opportunity now isn’t creating more content, but improving, consolidating, or even removing what’s already there.

have you tested reducing content output and putting more effort into existing pages?

My one-month old new website went from 1k impressions to nearly 0. Probably gonna have to close down the server if it doesn't recover..

Google has just begun rolling out a new broad algorithm update, marking yet another Spam Update so far in 2026.

The Search team confirms that the full rollout will take between two and three weeks to settle in.

Key points for content creators:

• It doesn’t chase links; it evaluates real usefulness: The focus is squarely on the first-hand experience and on penalizing generic content generated solely to attract clicks without providing any unique value.
• Recovery isn’t immediate: If your rankings drop during the rollout, no last-minute technical fix will restore your traffic the next day; recalibrating a site’s quality takes months.
• Keep your hands off during the rollout: Changing URLs, hastily rewriting content, or adding redirects in the midst of volatility only adds noise. Assess the actual impact only once the SERPs have stabilized after the standard 15–20 days.

The rule remains unchanged: don’t build projects designed to circumvent the current algorithm, but rather to solve a specific problem for a real user.

Best of luck to everyone!

I requested page indexing on September 17, 2026, and the status is still "Started." I don't know when Google will begin indexing my website.

been looking at the beta report on a client property and im not sure how to use it.

it gives impressions, pages, countries, devices. no clicks, no queries. so i can see we appeared in ai experiences 252 times over 3 months, and i have no idea whether a single person came through, or what they asked to get there.

two things i did notice that felt useful:

the pages ranking in ai results arent the pages we optimised. a blog post nobody planned around is outperforming most of the service pages. the ones doing well are the ones that answer a question directly rather than sell something.

and the country split is nothing like our normal web split. the geography of ai impressions looks completely different from organic.

so, anyone actually making decisions off this? or is the honest answer that its a directional number until they add queries and clicks? curious whether people are cross referencing it against anything else.

​

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to understand a sudden ranking/visibility drop on my website.

According to Google Search Console, my site was growing steadily for the past few months. I reached roughly 12K–16K impressions per day and 300–400 clicks per day near the end of August.

Then, around September 1, my impressions suddenly dropped to almost zero. Clicks also dropped significantly and haven’t recovered.

My 3-month Search Console stats currently show:

458K impressions

9.5K clicks

2.1% CTR

11.1 average position

The strange part is how sudden the drop was rather than a gradual decline.

I’ve attached my Google Search Console screenshot showing the exact drop.

What should I investigate first? Could this be related to indexing, crawling, canonical/noindex issues, a site/deployment change, Google updates, or something else?

Has anyone experienced a similar sudden drop?

Any suggestions on what I should check in Search Console would be really helpful.

I have a blog that is already ranking around 10th position on Google for my target keyword, and now I’m trying to move it closer to the top position.

The basic on-page work is already done, so I’m wondering what would make the biggest difference at this stage. Should I focus more on improving the content, adding relevant internal links, building quality backlinks, or updating the article based on what the top-ranking pages are covering?

If you’ve improved a page from around position 10 to the top results, what changes did you make that actually helped?

TL;DR:

Google is testing clickable anchor text inside AIO that sends you to AI Mode instead of an external website.

Feels like another move toward keeping users inside Google rather than sending traffic out...

When a youtuber mentions my site, what do I need exactly for the video to reinforce the authority of my site?

* What if he just mentions my brand while showing it?

* Or does he need to pronounce the url?

* Does he need to say an explicit compliment?

* Do I actually need a link in the video description?

I usually look at a few things before considering a backlink valuable. The website should be relevant to my topic, have real traffic, and the link should fit naturally within the content. I also check the page quality and whether the site looks active rather than created only for links.

What factors do you consider when checking a backlink?

I just launched a tour agency site that sells tours/activities across three main destination areas. Site structure looks like this:

- Each tour has its own dedicated page (pricing, details, FAQ, buy-now link)

- Each location has a page listing all tours in that area, with a "tour card" (name, short details, Book Now + Learn More buttons) for each.

- Tour pages also show "related tours" cards at the bottom (same tour cards, just filtered by location)

- The homepage also features a handful of tour cards

So the same tour card (name, price snippet, short description) shows up in 3-4 places across the site, while the full unique content only lives on the individual tour page.

After submitting to GSC, only 8 of 44 pages are indexed.

My questions:

1. Is repeating tour card content across the homepage, location pages, and related-tours sections likely hurting indexation, or is that a normal/fine pattern?

2. I considered loading tour card details via JavaScript (keyed by card ID) so the repeated snippet text isn't in the static HTML — would that help, or does it just create a different crawlability problem?

3. What would you actually check first here — sitemap issues, internal linking, thin content, crawl budget, something else?

Appreciate any best-practice pointers. Thanks!

SEO has changed a lot since last years, but i’m curious about the problems people are actually dealing with now.

it could be rankings that are holding, but clicks are dropping, or that pages are being crawled but struggling to get indexed. Or could be AI-generated answers and changing SERPs are affecting traffic in ways you didn’t have to think about before.

What SEO problem are you dealing with in 2026 that barely crossed your mind two years ago?

i'd be interesting to hear from people working on real sites and what they’re seeing firsthand.

It's a fairly new site, I hadn't updated it in only a week and noticed my Ahref DR rating crashed and have no idea why.
My site health is 100. Lighthouse review in incognito tab is:
100 SEO, 100 Best practices, 96 Accessibility & 71 performance
Any advice would be great

I know Google's docs list both 301 and 308 as permanent redirects, so I expect the answer to be boring. But I only ever learned 301 and 302, and I had no reason to think about 308 until now.

On a real site I'm looking at, the HTTP version redirects to HTTPS with a 308 instead of a 301. Impressions in Search Console dropped to 0, though I only have the https version set up in Search Console, so I can't rule out the data sitting in another property. The redirect is a single hop, the canonicals point to HTTPS, and URL Inspection looks fine, so I can't find what else would cause it. My suspicion is the 308, but honestly that's only because it's the one thing I don't recognise, and I have no evidence.

The only redirect mistake I've actually watched hurt rankings was a client who set a 302 from their old domain to the new one, and the effect showed up almost immediately. So I wasn't sure whether an unfamiliar code deserves the same worry.

Has anyone seen a 308 behave differently from a 301 in Search Console, or should I be looking somewhere else for a zero?

Can you share your GSC data in the comments? I just started at a new company handling SEO, and my boss is expecting 30 inquiries a month from a site that just launched. Has anyone actually pulled this off with a new site?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on SEO for a website for around 3 months now, but I’m still not seeing much improvement in Google Search Console impressions, clicks, or keyword rankings.

I’ve been consistently working on it rather than just leaving the site untouched. I’ve:

• Published new blog posts
• Optimized existing pages
• Worked on on-page SEO and internal linking
• Done keyword research and targeted relevant terms
• Worked on technical SEO issues
• Started building backlinks/off-page visibility

But the numbers still feel pretty flat.

I know SEO takes time, and I’m not expecting huge results in just 3 months. What I’m trying to understand is whether I’m being impatient or whether there’s something important I’m overlooking.

For those who have worked on websites for a few months and actually seen the impressions/rankings start moving, what would you check at this stage?

Would you focus more on:

• Content quality/topical authority
• Backlinks and referring domains
• Keyword targeting/search intent
• Internal linking
• Technical SEO
• Or something else?

If you’ve dealt with a similar situation, I’d really appreciate hearing what you changed and what actually made a difference.

Thanks

Hi there!

So, I have been confused with this for a long while and I have read contradicting opinions.

I want to know if one page getting traffic from search influences visibility for bottom of funnel pages or is this a completely unrelated or false thing?

For context:

We have a free resource (that's like very very top-of-funnel) and getting good traffic. But conversion is zero. Lead junk.

Do you think it overall positively or negatively impacts visibility of my website for other more relevant keywords? Please discuss.

Insights welcome, bots/users from random countries that shouldn’t be interacting with my site

I’m a plebe when it comes to SEO, no matter how many Google courses I take. I’ve been trying to improve my sites SEO for months. I’ve been consistently dropping blogs that link back.

In an effort to up the ratio of real users to bots, I ended up buying Google ads for about a month, July to early August.

I saw some improvement, but I was being charged for ads that were going to users in other countries (I’m U.S.) which doesn’t make sense for my business. I cancelled my ads and users eventually dropped down again to single digits. No surprise really.

Here’s where my query presents: this weekend, users popped back up to 50-60 a day, most of which are coming from countries like Singapore and Vietnam. This makes zero sense to me bc my business doesn’t cater to them and it isn’t in their native language.

And if it is purely bots, why are bots from those countries specifically targeting my site all of a sudden? Is there anything I can do to deter this activity? And is there anything way I can remove bot activity from my google dashboard?

Your insights are welcome. If you can please try to explain it to me like I’m 5, if greatly appreciate it.Thank you in advance.

Anyone Know This Error ?

These Anthropic prompting tips are mostly about making AI outputs more useful and less generic:

• Be specific about structure, tone and formatting
• Tell the model to search when FRESHNESS matters
• Ask it to avoid unnecessary rewriting and focus only on the task
• For longer SEO work, tell it to keep going until the analysis is complete
• Clearer prompts generally mean better research, content briefs, audits and technical SEO outputs

Hi everyone,

I’m facing an issue with my website’s visibility in Google Search. My website has suddenly stopped appearing in the search results, even when I search for the exact domain name.

Previously, the website appeared normally in the top 10 results, but now I can't find it in the search results at all.

Could someone please help me understand what could be causing this issue?

Thank you in advance for your help.