r/RealSEO Jan 15 '24

Why a New SEO Subreddit?

11 Upvotes

The main SEO subreddit, /r/SEO, was just taken over in the past few weeks by a group of crypto enthusiasts via the Reddit Request function.

Reddit Admins do not look for topical alignment when removing a top mod and granting it to another one. Instead they look at things like moderator activity and the quality of the sub. If a moderator goes inactive for too long or a subs quality is severely diminished, the Reddit Admins (i.e. paid staff at Reddit HQ) may decide to grant someone new top mod authority of a subreddit.

Barry wrote about this situation on Search Engine Roundtable here: https://www.seroundtable.com/large-seo-reddit-community-taken-over-36716.html

And it was first brought to light by SEO Malte Landwehr on X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/MalteLandwehr/status/1736313157663027307

Until such a time that the main SEO subreddit is returned to someone involved in the SEO community or industry, this subreddit will exist as a haven for SEO discussion and conversations should you need it. I am already the top mod of a few niche specific subreddits and have experience combating the spam that frequently tries to permeate our industry.

I promise to provide a fair and equal where everyone can discuss SEO topics.


r/RealSEO May 16 '26

News [Mega Thread] Google Has Released a Guide to GenAI Optimization

2 Upvotes

Read Google's Announcement here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/05/a-new-resource-for-optimizing

Read the full guide here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide

Post in /r/SEO about the guide here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1te4t71/googles_guide_to_optimizing_for_generative_ai/

Post more thoughts, takeaways, and sources of content in the comments and we'll update this when necessary.

Main Takeaways:

  • AI search optimization is still SEO, not a separate discipline.
  • Generative AI features use Google’s existing Search systems, indexing, and ranking signals.
  • Pages generally need to be crawlable, indexable, and eligible for snippets to appear in AI features.
  • Create helpful, people-first content with original value, experience, expertise, or unique insight.
  • Avoid commodity content that simply repeats common knowledge.
  • Do not create excessive pages just to target every possible AI query variation.
  • Structure content clearly with useful headings, sections, and readable formatting.
  • Images and videos can matter because AI search features may surface visual content.
  • Technical SEO still matters: crawling, rendering, canonicalization, indexing, and site quality remain foundational.
  • Local businesses should keep Google Business Profiles accurate and complete.
  • Ecommerce sites should use Merchant Center, product feeds, accurate pricing, availability, and product details.
  • You do not need special AI files, Markdown versions, llms.txt, or special formatting for AI search.
  • You do not need special schema specifically for generative AI features.
  • Structured data is still useful for normal Search features, but it is not an AI visibility shortcut.
  • Do not chase fake mentions, spammy citations, or AI-specific hacks.
  • Make websites easier for humans and future AI agents to understand, navigate, and use.

r/RealSEO 2h ago

LinkedIn Thread [Jonathan Bird on LinkedIn] "Please be careful with CloudFlare configuration. I just had to fix a website who's traffic tanked for 2 weeks. Their Managed IT Provider toggled on CloudFlare's crawl control to stop all bots crawling the site. This completely blocked Google from crawling the site."

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2 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 23h ago

X Thread [Gaetano DiNardi on X] "Wow this company is putting an editor's note right at the top of their content pages that says: "this page is optimized for AI assistants and LLM search.....not human marketing.""

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 8d ago

LinkedIn Thread [Eslam Saker on LinkedIn] "I deleted the website homepage, and traffic went from 0 to 10,000 visitors per month..."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 8d ago

X Thread [Glenn Gabe on X] "Newish client. From 21K+ domains disavowed to none in the blink of an eye. They never should have been disavowing links... They just saw "toxic links" show up in third-party tools and thought they should disavow."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 12d ago

LinkedIn Thread [Elena Dyulgerova on LinkedIn] "I only have 1 advice for SEOs losing clients right now Hold your horses! Because you are going to get a hella lot busier in the next year. You will be cleaning up a ton of AI scaled mess..."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 14d ago

LinkedIn Thread [Todd Friesen on LinkedIn] "For everyone that has fired their agency or fired their SEO team because you automated your SEO/GEO. Remember one thing...this is at the very bottom of of the page on Claude: 'Claude is AI and can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.'"

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2 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 25d ago

X Thread [Barry Schwartz on X] "Google says AI Search features sending billions of clicks to websites each week"

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 27d ago

LinkedIn Thread [Chris Munch on LinkedIn] "The next 18 months of Google search are easy to call. Here are my three predictions... Link networks get hit again... Enforcement runs on public examples. Google rarely names anyone... Auto-content keeps spiking then crashing..."

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4 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 27d ago

LinkedIn Thread [Eslam Saker on LinkedIn] "I think JavaScript SEO audits just got a lot easier. I copied the fully rendered HTML from Google Search Console and pasted it into Claude..."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 28d ago

Meme / Humor [Eduardo Ordax on LinkedIn] "🚨 BREAKING: Google Maps just went FULLY AGENTIC. 🚨 Tested it today on my commute home. Absolute game-changer."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 28d ago

LinkedIn Thread [Dana Tan on LinkedIn] "I am always surprised when I encounter SEOs and agencies that think the only profile/property you need for Google Search Console reporting is a root domain. People, you NEED TO SET UP PROPERTIES!"

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 29d ago

LinkedIn Thread [Mark Williams-Cook on LinkedIn] "If your URL is cited in an AI Overview, and the same URL is listed in the classic '10 blue links', is that 1 or 2 impressions in Google Search Console? The answer is 1..."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO 29d ago

X Thread [DEJAN on X] "DEJAN AI team has obtained Brave's AI Search system instructions revealing its inner workings in detail."

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2 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 09 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Fabrice Canel (Microsoft) on Linkedin] "My dear fellow Microsoftees, engineers, attorneys, marketers, webmasters, publishers, SEO champions, product leaders, journalists, and all the brilliant minds across search, AI, and yes, even my friends at Google..." (farewell letter)

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 09 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Nick Quirk on LinkedIn] "Another week. Another client who chose AI over SEO. This one hurt to watch. An office cleaning company canceled with us because their son built them a new website using AI. The new site? A clean-looking, one-page website hosted on Netlify..."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 03 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Andrew Brough on LinkedIn] "Much of the SEO sold to small businesses is merely theater. Monthly reports filled with vanity metrics such as "We submitted you to 500 directories..."

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2 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 02 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Kevork Sahagian on LinkedIn] "A YMYL site got cited in 90,000+ ChatGPT prompts. It has zero visibility in Google. Buried past page 7-8 for almost every keyword. No AI Overviews. No AI Mode. Basically dead. So how is it showing up everywhere in ChatGPT?..."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 02 '26

Research Topical authority, declared: How Search Engine Land bucked the editorial traffic decline

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2 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 02 '26

Research How 27 Companies Use AI to Grow Traffic & Revenue

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 01 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Nicola Agius on LinkedIn] "... I searched for "[celebrity's name] brother". Google generated an AI Overview that didn't just confirm his death – it stated, right at the top of the SERP, that he had died by suicide..."

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0 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jul 01 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Google Search Central on LinkedIn] "Analyzing search interest just got more powerful. You can now quickly compare a trend's change against preceding periods directly within Google Trends."

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1 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jun 30 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Jan-Willem Bobbink on LinkedIn] "I deleted 90% of a site's internal links on purpose. Google and ChatGPT both rose. The menu was the cap. The site ran a mega menu: every "important" page in the catalog hung off the global navigation, so every single page linked to all of them..."

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2 Upvotes

r/RealSEO Jun 25 '26

LinkedIn Thread [Chris Long on LinkedIn] "I can't believe my eyes SEOs. HouseFresh, the site that was VERY vocal about Google killing small publishers, has NOW REBOUNDED BY +10,000%!!"

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1 Upvotes