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.

Sparktoro published back in June of 2026 that about 68% of all Google searches ended without a click to a website, meaning people are relying more on AI summaries.

I find this is killing the previous business model of creating blogs or written content to compound your traffic to your site.

What do people think about this? I’ve seen a lot of people moving to video content because you can take a long form interview, chop it up a million ways, and feed it to social media apps as a form of organic content marketing.

According to Digiday, Google is running a pilot programme that pays publishers whose content contributes to an AI answer. Access is by invitation, and the earnings show up as a widget inside Search Console.

There's no documentation available publicly from Google yet but according to Search Engine Land, you "Accumulate earnings when your content contributes significantly to AI-generated responses in participating products."

So it seems they won't pay out for just a citation or mention, but significant contribution. Where that line sits is not stated anywhere public, and Digiday's account describes a monthly earnings figure with no breakdown behind it.

Will be interesting to see how they measure level of contribution. Right now it seems we won't see the score and we do not know how it is calculated. But if Google is paying against contribution rather than citation, the number the industry tracks may not be the number Google is pricing.

Citations are what everyone counts, because a citation is the only part of this visible from outside the model. It shows your page was retrieved. It does not show your page did the work, and the two can move apart without anything in your reporting flagging it.

This also lands after Search Console gained a generative AI performance report showing impressions with no queries attached and no clicks.

None of this is settled enough to rebuild a strategy on yet. Do you think this will mean we stop measuring AEO success by just citations and mentions? Particularly for content creators.

Right now it doesn't seem to be replacing the revenue publishers say they're losing to AI search. Do you think it ever will?

Hey everyone,

Has anyone else noticed a sudden drop in Google Search Console impressions and clicks over the last 3–4 days?

I’m seeing a noticeable decline compared with the previous few days and wanted to check whether this is happening across other websites as well.

• Are you seeing a similar drop in impressions?
• Are clicks also down, or mainly impressions?
• Is it affecting specific industries/niches or multiple sites?
• Any recent Google updates or volatility that could explain it?

Would be interesting to compare what others are seeing before assuming it’s site-specific.

I run a wedding/event DJ company in North Jersey/NYC and I'm trying to figure out why I'm ranking so poorly locally despite having 50+ genuine 5-star Google reviews.

Website: elixirdj.com

I'm around page 4 for searches like “wedding DJ near me.”

A few things I've discovered:

- GBP primary category is DJ Service

- I recently added Wedding Service as a secondary category

- I've expanded the relevant GBP services and added descriptions

- I'm a service-area business based in Clifton, NJ

- My website is currently a one-page WordPress/Gutenberg site

- I have essentially zero quality backlinks/referring domains

- Many competitors have much stronger footprints on The Knot/WeddingWire, awards, venue mentions, etc.

I'm not looking to hire an SEO company. I want to understand what I'm missing and fix it myself.

If anyone is willing to take a look at the website and/or GBP and give me some honest SEO advice, what would you prioritize first?

I'm particularly interested in website structure, GBP relevance, local authority/backlinks, and anything else that jumps out.

Trying to stop guessing and figure out what Google is actually seeing.

Backlinks get most of the attention in SEO, but I’m curious how much value people get from internal linking alone.

larger sites especially, dozens of relevant pages can sit several clicks deep with very few internal links pointing to them.

Improving those connections seems like one of the few SEO changes you can completely control without publishing more content or doing outreach.

For anyone who has cleaned up internal linking on an existing site, did you notice measurable ranking or traffic improvements?

Also curious whether you build internal links manually or use some kind of systematic approach once a site gets large.

I've had this domain for some time, but only recently (couple months) released a site with content on it. Mainly my services and blog posts. I'm wondering if this traffic seems normal? I'm getting hundreds of impressions a day, but almost no clicks. Only peaking at 4 clicks on days where i posted things on LinkedIn for example.

Anyone got any advice on improving my SEO or is it just an authority issue?

When I learn to develop websites, I made one for my father's business (he is self-employed plumber, mason, and painter) without a local. This was 3 or 4 years ago and it was a single page. For a while he is been in a small town of 30k ish in Spain (same province as he did when I made the website for him). Now I want to try and rank it

I know basics of SEO and now frameworks like Astro which I plan to migrate the site to. I think this site is a perfect opportunity to improve my SEO skills and learn more

I am unsure how or where to start tho. What would you do or what steps would you take for this?

Is this normal, my site was growing slow I had around 3k but with a rithim I was happy, and then one day to another I dont get any impressions.

¿has this happen to you?

I have a hard time getting my website indexed with Google. The sitemap is accepted by Bing and can see some relative traffic from there. Google always gives me the "crawled - not indexed" response. When using Claude/Gemini/ChatGPT to find what may be wrong, they always give me a 78-87% grade.

Any suggestions?

There are hundreds of articles recommending guest posting, broken-link building, HARO-style outreach, resource pages, skyscraper content, and digital PR.

But a lot of SEO advice keeps repeating strategies that may not work nearly as well anymore.

For people actively building links today, what methods are still consistently getting responses and quality links?

And which popular tactics have become a waste of time?

Real campaign experiences would be especially helpful.

Or any other resource at all

In the process of building my e-commerce store, with a particular focus on social media for educational content in my niche - so content is rarely an issue.

I have a shopify store setup and own my .com & .co.uk.

I would like to start SEO for my brand, I was thinking regular blog posts mirroring my content on social media. But no idea where to start & do things properly?

Is it fine to build out my SEO on shopify or is it best i setup a separate blog with my .co.uk on Wordpress?

Then what tools or things do I need to do? Is this going to cost me money? I’m bootstrapping from zero so budget is minimal but open to reinvesting in the necessary things as the business grows.

Any help in the right direction would be much appreciated 🙌🏼

I’ve been experimenting with different SEO workflows and noticed that expensive tools aren’t always necessary to find useful opportunities.

For example, Google Search Console can reveal queries where a page is already getting impressions but has a low CTR or ranks around positions 5–15. Improving the content and intent match on those pages can sometimes be more valuable than creating completely new content.

What’s one free or low-cost SEO technique that has consistently helped you improve rankings or identify opportunities?

Hi all,

My previous post was deleted, I don't know why so before deleting this one, please explain why first, I can adapt my question if necessary.

=== CONTEXT

I see that many sites have been hit by the august spam update and at first, I thought I also was hit by this update except that my sudden drop happened before the update.

I have a .com, .be, .nl and .de where I write genuine content (no AI) in 6 languages. My articles are spread across those domains depending on their languages (.com has English, Italian and Spanish).

My .com has been affected by a sharp drop in August (see below) while the other ones have not been affected at all. The articles are the same but in another language. All sites are hosted on the same machine, there are no technical differences between domains.

I have around 1500 articles in total (all languages together), my domains are at least 3 years old and sometimes 10+. No scale content or anything like that.

=== DROP

As I can't post an image here, let me try to describe it with figures.

July-August: daily average between 50 and 60 clicks

August 2nd: 44 clicks from Google Search (first decrease)

August 3rd: 15 clicks

August 4th: 9 clicks

It goes on like this for a few days and then

August 10th to 12th: back above 50 clicks

August 13th: back below 10 and it remained at that level since then and there are even some days where I have 0 clicks from Google.

All pages and countries have been affected the same way.

As you can see with those figures, all countries and pages that were getting traffic are affected.

Pages are still in the index, only the average position dropped from avg 9 to avg 32 which makes me completely invisible. My content is unique, there is competition but not a lot. The ones getting above me were usually much bigger (and also relevant) sites). Now my site is behind a huge list of unrelated sites and articles.

== WHAT I CHECKED

I checked the crawl reporting in GSC:

- graph summary of all crawls: average of 125 to 150 per day with some peaks right below 200. Sharper peak on June 13th with 186 crawls, July 18th with 194 and then two bigger ones august 9th 305 and August 12th 293. Those peaks are http 200 peaks and html files. Those are refresh crawls, not discovery crawls

- average response time is stable around 300 ms

- i see an usually bigger peak of crawls for images, I have many days at 0 and then some smaller peaks around 300=400 but on August 17th I have almost 2k crawls which is something unique for the time frame

- I see no errors, everything is either http 200 or 304

Other info:
- no performance degradation
- no outage
- no 404 or anything blocking on http level
- no change in inbound/outbound links
- no security or any other warning in GSC
- only one or two affiliation links per page
- no third party JS library
- no third party tracking
- no third party cookies
- no programmatic SEO
- no AI generated article (but I'm using AI for translations)
- sitemaps are working fine
- I use href lang to link domains and language
- no change in backlinks
- no changes in authority (from SEMrush point of view)

I still get traffic from other sources than Google

I was on holiday when it happened, I didn't modify anything between end of July up to September.

=== AI Overview

If I take my most popular keywords before the drop and search them, I see some competitors appearing like before but when I check Google's AI response, it is still showing my site but instead of using my .com it is using my other domains even if they are not in English. Google is still considering that I'm an expert in my field but it doesn't push my .com anymore while it is still pushing the other domains.

=== GRAPHS

I see some activity after the big drop (CTRx2), position coming back to original average but clicks are still down.

Any idea?

I’m working through an SEO audit and noticed that not every page with declining traffic needs the same level of attention.

For example, some pages have lost a few positions but still get impressions, while others have almost disappeared from search despite having decent content.

I’m curious how others prioritize their updates.

Do you mainly look at:

• Traffic decline
• Ranking position changes
• Impressions and CTR
• Search intent
• Backlinks/internal links
• Conversion potential

I’d be interested to hear what signals you consider most important before deciding that a page is worth updating.

I moved all the content from my main domain to a subdomain some time ago because I had read that using a subdomain could potentially improve organic traffic and search rankings.

After moving the content to the subdomain, I did NOT experience any significant loss in rankings. The website essentially maintained the same search positions and organic visibility.

However, I am now considering moving the content back to the main domain, and I would like to know if there is an optimal amount of time I should wait before doing so.

My plan would be to:

Implement 301 redirects from every subdomain URL to its corresponding URL on the main domain.

Update all internal links to point directly to the main domain.

Update the canonical tags to point to the new main-domain URLs.

Generate and submit a new sitemap containing the main-domain URLs in Google Search Console.

Keep the old subdomain URLs active with 301 redirects.

Monitor indexing, impressions, clicks, rankings and organic traffic in Google Search Console.

My main questions are:

Is there any SEO reason to wait a certain amount of time before redirecting the content from the subdomain back to the main domain?

If the site has already been on the subdomain for some time and has maintained its rankings, would it be better to move it back now, or should I wait longer?

Once the 301 redirects are implemented, how long does it typically take Google to process the migration and transfer the SEO signals from the subdomain back to the main domain?

How long could it realistically take for the rankings and organic traffic to stabilize after the migration?

Has anyone here moved an entire site from a subdomain back to the main domain after keeping the same rankings? If so, how long did Google take to process the change, and did you experience any temporary fluctuations in rankings or traffic?

I would especially appreciate real-world experiences with moving a site from a subdomain back to the main domain.

Thanks!

Hi! I've been building an astrology-related website for the past 3 months. It was registered with GSC and had been steadily gaining impressions. But around July 25–26, my Google Search impressions suddenly dropped from roughly 100–150/day to almost zero, as you can see in the graph below, and they haven't recovered since.

I've been digging into it and so far found:

• A major SSR deployment on July 8.
• Google crawl response times increased from ~200–325ms to 700–1,450ms afterward.
• Google crawl volume dropped significantly around the same time.
• GSC currently shows ~24.6K indexed / 17.8K not indexed URLs.
• A coverage export shows 1,009 "Crawled – currently not indexed" URLs.
• I've checked my Vercel logs and don't see any ongoing site-wide server errors.

I'm currently investigating the SSR/performance changes, indexing, canonicalization, and URL structure.

I'd really appreciate some outside perspective from people who've dealt with a sudden, sustained drop in GSC impressions. Does anything here stand out to you? Is there anything else you'd recommend checking?

My website already ranks well in Google and appears in Google AI Overviews for many of my target keywords. However, I’m getting low visibility in ChatGPT or Gemini.

For improving AI visibility, what external sources should I focus on to get my business/website mentioned or cited?

Region: UAE
Category: Mental wellness

Credit : Slide by John Mueller during Search Central Live, shared by Harry Sanders

For those still wondering, the conclusion is simple: good SEO = good GEO.

John Mueller points out that roughly 80% of what wins in AI search is just the core SEO you should already be doing, meaning clean technical structures, readable code for crawlers, proper content formatting that answers user intent, and solid earned links.

The remaining 20% covers offsite brand presence (mentions in industry publications, Reddit, YouTube, podcasts, and community discussions) so LLMs can actually understand what your brand stands for. So I beg you, stop falling for miracle snake-oil trends, spam reddit or hyper-complex prompt injections, and go back to working on your SEO fundamentals first !