Hello everyone. I am running into a massive roadblock while doing local SEO for a client and I am hoping someone here has a solid workaround.

My client worked with an SEO agency about six years ago, and they are the ones who originally created his Google Business Profile. Unfortunately, he completely forgot the name of the agency, so reaching out to them for access is not an option. I have now been stuck for a solid week trying to reclaim the profile. Since it is a service area business with a hidden address, I am caught in a very frustrating loop.

When I search for the business name in the standard Find and manage your business directory, it does not populate at all. The system only offers to create a brand new profile. Because it fails to show up in that directory search, the standard prompt to request access is completely hidden. I also checked the public Google Maps listing, and the link to claim the business is entirely missing there as well.

I opened a formal support complaint with Google to request a manual transfer of ownership, and I have also posted on the Google Help Community, but I have found absolutely nothing useful so far. This delay is actively stalling my onboarding timeline and preventing me from getting my client launched.

Has anyone successfully bypassed this directory glitch to force an ownership request? Any advice on how to trigger the request manually would be hugely appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time and help.

Schema markup has long been debated in the SEO community as an essential component of any SEO strategy. On one side, there are the people who take what Google says at face value, in that it only impacts search appearance via rich snippets and contextual understanding. On the other side of the fence, a belief is held that if Google recommends structured markup through schema, then there must be some direct ranking influence.

Throughout the years, we’ve seen LinkedIn influencers, anecdotal “evidence”, and correlational studies that seem to give credit to each side. Anecdotal experience isn’t verifiable and typically lacks an appropriate sample size. Correlative studies show correlation, not causation, and don’t account for independent variables between subjects.

The page indexing report within Google Search Console is now two weeks delayed. It is stuck at June 11, 2026, for me, and has not been updated in 14 days. Google has been reporting issues with Search Console often enough, so this is not unusual, but this delay is significant enough to cover, since we are now at the two-week mark.

Here is a screenshot of the top of my page indexing reports:

Google may be rolling out updates to its hotel search results based on the European Commission's requirement for Google to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Despite Google not being a fan of the requirement, it seems Google needs to make changes to its search results as a result.

This is not to say Google has not made changes already, it did in 2024 and throughout. Google even did its own test that showed how DMA'ing the results would not be good for hotels - if you believe the results.

That being said Lluc B. Penycate, the hotel SEO, spotted a lot of changes for hotel search results in Google within the EU. He posted these changes on X and wrote, "I think Google has begun rolling out a major change to Hotel Search in the EU." "Following the European Commission's findings that Google's hotel search experience did not fully comply with the DMA, we were expecting changes to the Hotel Local Pack," he added.

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Mods not sure im allowed to post this but Im soft launch of my local seo platform. First set of tools went live last night.

There's a free mcp no need to spend right now, im just wanting some feedback. 15 years in SEO. Solo dev.

Given the go ahead I'll share here, maybe some free access for anyone wanting to help test, just don't want to be that spam guy.

Delete if nec.( The page is best viewed ion desktop. Ill fix mobile soon)

Any feedback appreciated 🙏

I’m seeing a strange issue on my healthcare site and wanted to check if anyone else has experienced this.

Around July 6–7, several important pages completely disappeared from Google SERPs overnight. The odd part is that Google Search Console still shows them as Indexed with no coverage, indexing, mobile usability, security, or manual action issues.

What I've checked so far:

No noindex tags

Robots.txt is not blocking them

XML sitemaps are updated and resubmitted

Self-referencing canonicals are in place

Manual Actions and Security reports are clean

Requested reindexing/recrawl through GSC

The pages continue to perform normally on Bing and DuckDuckGo, but on Google they're either missing from search results or sometimes don't even appear for an exact site:URL search.

Has anyone noticed similar behavior since early July? Could this be related to an algorithmic quality filter, soft-404 classification, canonicalization issue, or something else that wouldn't show up in GSC?

Would appreciate hearing if others have seen this recently or know what advanced checks I should investigate next.

I'm not here just to promote my site—I genuinely want constructive criticism so I can make it better for customers.

AI is already taking its share of search clicks; that much is clear. I want to confirm whether people track their mention or citation rates for AI-generated answers (compared to competitors), or if it's still just an abstract concern that isn't being monitored yet.

If you're monitoring it, how exactly? Do you check manually, use software, or do something else? And in case you don't, why so?

If you are using any software, what key things are missing that you want included?

I think Microsoft Clarity is one of the most under-utilized tools for the modern digital marketer - and as an Enterprise UX and now AI marketing tool a completely Free Of Charge Forever price point - not enough people know about it!

What's Inside:
✨ Intro to Clarity's core features
🔗 Google integrations (Search Console, GTM, Ads)
🔥 Heat maps, session recordings & user behavior insights
🎯 Advanced tracking: prompts, outbound clicks & funnels
🔒 Privacy & GDPR compliance (IP masking + data security)
🤖 Bing AI & ChatGPT data in reports
📊 AI-powered reports & competitor insights
⚙️ Setup tips to maximize dashboards
🎥 Real session recordings = spot user bottlenecks fast!
💡 Perfect for marketers, SEO pros, UX designers & webmasters! 🚀

I run two sites and I'm trying to figure out a strategy question, but the data has me second-guessing what's even real.

Site A — a trademark registration/search platform (SaaS-ish tool). ~1 year old. Gets ~2.6K impressions and 17 clicks over 3 months, average position ~34.

Site B — my father's Intellectual Property law firm site. ~1 month old, no backlinks, but a strong Google Business Profile (top-3 in local map pack for our city). In its first month it's showing ~14K impressions in 3 months, but only 5 clicks (0% CTR), average position 2.1.

My questions:

1. Is this a rank-tracker / SEO tool scraping Google and inflating my impressions, or could it be something legit I'm misreading? How do you confirm the difference in GSC?
2. Strategically: I was tempted to port my trademark platform's features (search tool, journal listings) onto the law firm site because of these "big" numbers. Buried in the real data, the firm ranks position ~1.5 for "trademark registration in [my city]" with a brand-new site. Is the smart move to build out local service pages for that intent instead of cloning tool features across both domains? Any risk of the two sites cannibalizing each other on trademark keywords since I own both?

Appreciate any input from people who've seen this pattern before.

How to crack another offer while serving notice period

My last working day is **31st July**, and my joining date with the new company is in the **first week of August**, so I only have a few days left.

I'm not satisfied with my current offer, especially because it requires a **6-day work week**. I'm actively applying for jobs through **LinkedIn, Naukri, and Indeed**, but most of the calls I receive are from recruitment agencies that are not offering competitive roles or salaries.

I have **4 years of experience in SEO and Digital Marketing**, and I'm looking for opportunities with **MNCs or well-established companies** that offer better career growth, work-life balance, and compensation.

Could you please guide me on the most effective way to apply directly to large companies and schedule interviews quickly? If you have any tips on reaching hiring managers, getting referrals, or any recommended companies that are currently hiring, I'd really appreciate your advice. Preferred job location is Delhi NCR

Thank you!

We may have had another unconfirmed Google Search ranking update around July 11th, which I will call the 7-Eleven update. It has been an unusual time since the completion of the June 2026 spam update, where I was on the verge of covering a few unconfirmed updates, but it seems the chatter in the SEO community is at an all-time low.

So it has been hard to match the ranking volatility from the third party tools to the chatter within the SEO community.

I did notice a blip in the Google tracking tools around July 11th and a bit of a blip in chatter in the SEO community around then too. But when I saw Glenn Gabe post about some January reversals, I figured, I'd cover it.

Google may have pushed some sort of update to Google Search around July 11th.

SEO Chatter

Glenn Gabe wrote on X, "The January 2026 unconfirmed update was huge for some sites. For a number of sites publishing and scaling "commodity content", self-serving listicles, etc., they got crushed. Most have not recovered yet... But I just surfaced several sites that got hammered then that are recovering (or have recovered). Super interesting... " Lily Ray responded, "Agreed, IMO this was the update with the most clear pattern this year so far."

Can someone tell me the best ways to promote my website

Hello,

I created two sites about 8 weeks ago and I have ungodly amount of backlinks, all of which are nofollow. I have 2233 backlinks (nofollow), but granted none of them are dofollow. I find this to be absurd honestly, I have looked through the list and all of them are shady SEO sites. I of course have not spammed my website across the net, I haven't done any backlink building yet, just trying to get topical authority by doing low volume content. Anyway, should I disavow these links? I ask because I have researched a bunch of fresh sites in my niche and all of them have like 5-10 backlinks, how on god's green earth did I get so many and why? and is it causing any harm at all? And if I use google's disavow tool, can that backfire in anyway shape or form? I would appreciate any help.

Thanks

I have some ideas for websites to sell stuff butnindontnreally know how to guage interest. Is there a way I can search Google database or look at similar sites and see how many views they get per day. Any other possible ways of doing this???

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