Marc Agate

Love all tech innovations, everything SEO & marketing in general. 🇬🇧

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

@rustybrick Nice, thanks Barry

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Interesting new SERP format. I’ve never seen each listing broken out into its own box, including ads. Also the bigger banner per listing for the name, URL and favicon.

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Everyone at @brightonseo, what are your key takeaways from all of the amazing talks?

#seo #brightonseo #seobrighton

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

@tobydonut No problem, thanks so much, really appreciate that. It’s for someone on my team, she is super excited so anything would be great.

[Addy Osmani @addyosmani]

In @ChromeDevTools, AI via Gemini can now help you understand what the problem is and how to fix it, straight from the Console!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Absolutely

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Any recommendations for lakes in Surrey or West Sussex where I can go paddle boarding for free with my own board?

I’m amazed that everywhere is so expensive to do it!

#paddleboarding #paddle #Surrey #westsussex

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Does anyone have the link to the @GoogleAds course on Google Garage or Skillshop please? For some reason when I look on Skillshop it has been removed? #googleads #googleskills #googlegarage #googleacademy

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

@priteshpatel9 My son's team use Spond, not really too involved with it though so not sure how good it is.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Thread of photographers who patiently waited to capture the shot of a lifetime 🧵

1. Leonardo Sens (3 years)

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

With Search Console setting up on LinkedIn and a quieter than usual few weeks from the reps, are we going to see Search Console shift to LinkedIn for updates and releases?

Makes sense to me, it’s where trolls and haters can be held accountable in a professional environment. #seo

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Great feedback and open response by @dannysullivan here. Really worth a read and love to hear SC potentially becoming more transparent on what the algo thinks of the site, whilst also appreciating the huge challenge of other people using it to try and game the system.

[Google SearchLiaison @searchliaison]

Two different things. A site could have an algorithmic spam action. A site could be not ranking well because other systems that *are not about spam* just don't see it as helpful.

I've looked at many sites where people have complained about losing rankings and decide they have a algorithmic spam action against them, but they don't. That's why I'm supportive of the idea we'd perhaps share as much in Search Console. That maybe you could go into Search Console and if you have an algorithmic action, you'd see a notice just like if you have a manual action. I was just talking about this with some folks on the search team last week, and I expect to revisit the idea.

It's not a new idea, either. It's challenging, however, in two key ways. First, there are some sites that do really bad spamming. Anyone who thinks that's not them -- you're right, it probably isn't. Those that do, they know. And if you tell them what the algorithm thinks is spam, then they can adjust and try to game it -- not good for anyone, searchers or other sites. Second, there's no way to "manually" lift an algo action. It's the algorithm. It's not focusing on a specific site. It doesn't have a list of sites added to it. It's automatically understanding patterns that make it think "across all this content, I see these patterns, and this makes me think generally I see spam here." So there's no way to go in and somehow "remove" a site, if that makes sense. With an actual manual action, we can -- because an action was placed against a specific site.

And ... I'm greatly sympathetic to the idea that with a manual action, you can file for reconsideration and get the manual action removed versus with the algo, a sense of not only do I not know, but if I did, I can't even talk to someone about it. One thing I'm wondering is if there's a way, at least as a start, that we could let people who got notifications say "Not spam!" kind of like with email. And maybe we could use those reports in aggregate to better improve the automated spam systems overall. Of course, the challenge is actual people who are knowingly spamming might say the same thing, so it takes some thinking about how we might come up with a system that would be useful. Part of what I'm hoping to talk to folks more internally about.

Before I leave the spam thing -- you don't really want to think "Oh, I just wish I had a manual action, that would be so much easier." You really don't want your individual site coming the attention of our spam analysts. First, it's not like manual actions are somehow instantly processed. Second, it's just something we know about a site going forward, especially if it says it has change but hasn't really.

Moving away from spam, we do have various systems that try to determine how helpful, useful and reliable individual content and sites are (and they're not perfect, as I've said many times before, anticipating a chorus of "whatabouts....." Some people who think they are impacted by this, I've looked at the same data they can see in Search Console and ... not really. Some of them ranking really well. But they've moved down a bit in small positions enough that the traffic drop is notable. They assume they have fundamental issues but don't, really -- which is why we added a whole section about this to our debugging traffic drops page: https://t.co/Gk2298Z0Gv

But some clearly have had large drops. Another thing I've been discussing, and I'm not alone in this, is could we do more in Search Console to show some of these indicators. This is all challenging similar to all the stuff I said about spam, about how not wanting to let the systems get gamed, and also how there's then no button we would push that's like "actually more useful than our automated systems think -- rank it better!" But maybe there's a way we can find to share more, in a way that helps everyone and coupled with better guidance, would help creators.

Which is a lot of words. But I'll end on this, I've spent a huge amount of time looking at the feedback over the past few months, diving deep into sites, writing up thoughts and talking with people internally. I fully recognize that there are "small" or "independent" or whatever you want to call them sites that are diligently producing great content but our systems aren't recognizing it as well as they should (there's also a lot of really poor content that our systems are indeed recognizing, and there's also great content that is doing very well -- but those doing very well with great stuff tend not to talk about that on the socials). I'd like to see us do better with that subset I mentioned, the great content not well recognized. Better in helping to guide away from maybe unhelpful things that have been learned by others? By better guidance. Maybe better reporting. And some other things I'm pondering we might try.

I just can't do that overnight, nor can I do it myself, nor is is the primary thing I'm responsible. I work with other teams and suggest, encourage, recommend -- but other teams have to go-ahead on stuff. And they also have to balance various trade-offs and other things. But why I can do -- have been doing and will continue to do -- is take the external feedback, channel that back to various teams and provided advocacy and recommendations in ways that I think would help all around.

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

@GrantonJasmine Spent way more on the honeymoon than the wedding and regret nothing. Best 3 weeks and priceless memories

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

@annamorrish Hi, can I please get the 2 tickets? 2 of my team are desperate to go this year! @annamorrish 🙏

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Can I get some recommendations for SEO slack channels please?

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

@Sadache Thanks Sadek, appreciate the quick response 👍

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Hey @Sadache, any chance you could point me towards a staff member who could help me with an import issue please? We have been trying for quite a while now with no joy and support replies have been few and far between. Keen to try the new Migration API but hitting an error.

[Marc Agate @MJAgate]

Also very nice seeing considerably less get rich quick schemes being pumped, where people use spammy dreadful tactics for their niche site.