Stephen Mahaney's Articles

Stephen Mahaney

CEO & Founder of Planet Ocean
Virtual Space

Stephen Mahaney founded Planet Ocean in 1990, published 'The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars' in 1996 (the Web's *original* $97 eBook) and established SearchEngineNews.com—the longest running membership-based publication site on the Internet—in 1997.

These days he's traveling and living in virtual space.

Articles by Stephen Mahaney

1. A Practical Guide to Preferred Sources, Highly Cited Labels, and the New Perspectives Carousel
2. What Google's Own Users Are Telling Us About the Future of Search
3. Google's Liz Reid on Search, AI, and the Future of the Web: A Candid Review (With Receipts)
4. Google Charged $400 for a Current Client Call
5. Why You Should Care About Claude's Expanding Coding Capabilities
6. AI Chatbots & Advertising
7. Google Says Opting Out of AI Overviews Is a "Huge Engineering Project"
8. Why AI Detection Will Never Scale Universally
9. The Inevitable Pivot: Why SEO Is Becoming GEO
10. Remembering
11. Schema + LLMs: What It Means for AI Visibility
12. The Slow, Inevitable Death of Google’s Profit Model
13. AI Mode—Already Creepy, Potentially Evil?
14. ChatGPT's Politeness Problem: Sycophantic, Expensive, & Maybe All Your Fault
15. Train Your Staff to Use AI & Watch Your Sales Skyrocket
16. Google Shopping's AI Vision Match
17. Why Classic SEO is More Vital Than Ever for AI Search Optimization
18. Google's Reverses Policy Against Fingerprinting
19. DeepSeek—Interview With A Chatbot
20. 28 Years of SEN
21. The 12 Days of OpenAI: A Holiday Tech Wonderland
22. Leveraging ChatGPT for SEO
23. The Verge Is Laughing at Google's Guidelines
24. The Man Who Killed Google Search
25. The Answer Engine That Just Might Give Google A Run For Its Money!
26. Beware The Japanese Keyword Hack
27. 27 Years of SEN
28. How to Build Your Own GPT Without Any Coding
29. Bing Chat Introduces Multimodal Visual Search & Enterprise Pricing for Copilot
30. Report: Generative AI is Quickly Evolving Superpowers
31. Google Releases New AI Tools to Help Small Businesses
32. ChatGPT Development Being Challenged by Advocacy Group
33. A.I. Vaults Image Creation to a Whole New Level
34. The Algo Masters Who Pick the Winners
35. A.I. Bots Can Improve Your Work But They Cannot Critically Think
36. A Virtual Army of A.I. Tools Are Marching Us Into the Future
37. Interview with ChatGPT
38. 26 Years of SEN & Counting
39. Google Is Good! ...Very Good — but not as good as they pretend to be
40. And the Award for 'Lame Advice of the Year' goes to...
41. Lead Generation Sites Report Problems with Performance Max, and then...
42. 5 Great Keyword Discovery Tools You Can Use for FREE
43. Be Careful That AdBlockers Aren't Blocking Your Images
44. Google's Launches Helpful Content Update
45. Never Give Up!
46. John Mueller Tells Us What He Really Thinks
47. Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines
48. Google's Data Grab Masquerading as Minority Empowerment
49. Google is Picking Winners & Congress has Noticed
50. Startpage – Google Results Without Google's Crap!
51. Finally! A Secure, Encrypted Email Provider That Doesn't Exploit It's Users
52. If You Aren't Using a VPN, Maybe You Should Be
53. Local Search Update in March Corrects "Vicinity" Update
54. Never Mind Market Research, Just Pay Attention & Follow The Leader
55. It's Time to Focus Your Efforts on Collecting First Party Data
56. When Alt-Text is a Story in The NYTimes, THAT's Your Wake-Up Call
57. Be Careful Your "Stop Lines" Aren't Crippling Your Conversions
58. 25 Years of SEN & Counting
59. Beware the Graphic Artist!
60. Rare Penalty Limbo Can Last Several Years
61. November Core Update 2021
62. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for November 2021
63. Google says 'NeverMind' to Mobile-Indexing Deadline
64. Google Officially Says Mixed Reviews Are More Trustworthy
65. Google Logo Structured Data Changes
66. Why do my pages keep falling in and out of Google's index?
67. Can Googlebot crawl speed be controlled to avoid server overload?
68. GMB becomes GBP
69. High Profile Sites Slamming the Brakes on AMP Pages
70. WordPress Sites At Risk Due to Plugin Vulnerability
71. Do bold tags help SEO?
72. Bonus Bytes from John Mueller
73. Official Googlebot IP Addresses Now Available In JSON File
74. Page Experience Algorithm Coming To Desktop
75. How Key Moments Work In Videos In Search
76. Place Videos on Dedicated Pages For Maximum Exposure
77. MS Advertising Introduces Microsoft Clarity Insights
78. UPI Limited Enforcement in Google Merchant Center
79. Help Documentation Changes for October
80. Google Aligns Search Console Testing Tools with URL Inspection Tool
81. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for October 2021
82. Never "Meta" Worse Company in My Life!
83. The Google "Unannounced Updates" Buzz for October
84. Search Analytics API Now Supports Discover, Google News, and Regex
85. Manual Deep Linking No Longer Required for Google Ads App Campaigns
86. Microsoft Advertising Partners with Shopify
87. BigCommerce Merchants Can Now Sync Product Catalogs to Google
88. Job Posting Structured Data Errors Report Changes in GSC
89. Search Quality Raters Guidelines Updated
90. The One True Google Competitor Over Next 10 Years?
91. Get Faster Indexing with IndexNow
92. Google Search Adds Continuous Scrolling on Mobile
93. On ecommerce pages, should the product name be put into headline tags?
94. How can I prevent Google from showing specific content in my search result description snippet?
95. Search On '21 Reveals New Features, More Details About MUM
96. New Budget Report in Google Ads
97. Mysterious Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update?
98. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for September 2021
99. Google Adds Some Data, Drops Some Data In Search Terms Report
100. Unique Product Identifiers Now Required on Free Merchant Listings
101. New Ecommerce SEO Guide Documentation
102. Google Reveals How YouTube Recommends Videos
103. Lighthouse 8.4 Upgrades LCD, FID, PageSpeed Insights
104. Page Experience Tutorial - Improving First Input Delay
105. Google Expands 'About This Advertiser' Initiative
106. Is shared hosting ok?
107. How long should it take for a site to get re-crawled and re-ranked after cleaning out low quality pages?
108. What's the best way to redirect a short domain name to a longer one without having duplicate content issues?
109. Titlepocalypse Update
110. The SEO Impact of WordPress Themes
111. Google Shows How to Optimize for Discover's Follow Feature
112. Which page title is Google using for ranking, my original or their autogenerated one?
113. GSC Permanently Loses Performance Report Data for August 23rd and 24th
114. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for August 2021
115. Google Publishes Video on Getting a "Great" Page Experience
116. Reporting Channel for Indexing Bugs in the US Now Available in GSC
117. Titlepocalypse! Google Updates How They Generate Web Page Titles
118. Google Removes Safe Browsing and Ad Experience Widgets from Page Experience Report
119. Behind the Curtains of Google Search Console Insights
120. Large Images in Discover Improve CTR and Increase Traffic
121. 15 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Google Trends
122. Why are most of my site's pages missing in a Google site query?
123. Will changing an IP address or DNS cause us to lose our first page rankings?
124. What's the best type of website for SEO optimization purposes?
125. Why your GMB listing might be filtered out of Google Maps
126. CWVs More Than "just" A Tiebreaker
127. Google Publishes Copyright Guidelines Video
128. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for July 2021
129. Multiple Instances of Fact Check Markup Not Allowed
130. How to Succeed With Google Posts: Case Study
131. Facebook Expanding Access to AR Try On
132. Facebook Pay Extends Availability to Streamline Checkout on Your Site
133. Microsoft Advertising Now Offering Video Extensions
134. Multimedia Ads Now Available on Microsoft Advertising
135. Microsoft Ads Expands Verticals For Dynamic Remarketing
136. Link Spam Update Rolling Out Until Aug 10th
137. Showcase Product Promotions Across More Surfaces during Seasonal Shopping Moments
138. GSC Links AMP Debugging to AMP Page Experience Guide
139. AdSense Releases Faster New Embed Code
140. Google Graphs & Explains Search Traffic Drops
141. Ad Policy Violators: Three Strikes, Yer Out!
142. Google Announces New Privacy Sandbox Timeline
143. Google's Search Rankings Explained
144. How long should a 301 redirect be kept in place?
145. July 2021 Core Update
146. How can product schema be added to a page when the price of the product is variable?
147. Are Local Services Ads a good deal for service type businesses?
148. Are reciprocal links OK if they are relevant and useful?
149. Here's How Long It Takes to Get New Content Indexed
150. Core, Page Experience, & Spam Updates All Rolled-out in June
151. New Guidance - Redirects, HTTP Status Codes, Network Issues, & DNS Errors
152. WordPress 5.8 adds WebP Support
153. Facebook's Publishes Ad Review Process Guidelines
154. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for June 2021
155. AdSense Site Approvals Video Tutorial Series
156. New Tutorial Workflow Shows SMB's How to Advertise on YouTube
157. Google Expands GMB Profile Editing & Adds Pointy for FREE
158. Create A Web Story in 5 Steps in 5 Minutes
159. You Can Now Edit Robots.txt in Shopify
160. RSS-Powered Follow Button Being Tested in Chrome Canary
161. Sunsetting the Generic Rich Results Search Appearance on GSC
162. Google Updates GSC Help Docs For Robots.txt & Structured Data
163. Google Limits FAQ Rich Results to Two Max Per Snippet
164. PageSpeed Insights Showing More Field Data
165. Lighthouse 8.0 to be Released With Chrome 93 in August
166. Google Adds Negative Match Option to RegEx Filter
167. Google Launches Search Console Insights
168. Google Pauses FLoC & Extends Third Party Cookie Support Until Late 2023
169. Yelp Releases New Yelp for Business Features
170. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for May 2021
171. May 7th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
172. May14th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
173. May21st Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
174. May 28th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
175. Project Starline Brings The WOW Factor to Video Conferencing
176. MUM's The Word On Search
177. Breakthrough in Conversation Technology - LaMDA
178. Google Reveals Four Pillars of User Experience
179. Google Wants Everyone to Just Get FLoC'ed!
180. Google I/O Showcases Data-Hungry Apps & Long Overdue Privacy Controls for Android 12
181. 17 Pro-Tips You Need to Know About Core Web Vitals Going LIVE
182. Facebook Rolling Out New Ad Measurement Protocols
183. Indexing Issues Can Now Be Reported to Google
184. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for April 2021
185. Google Discover Nixes Satire
186. The Only Reasons Google Will Remove a Page
187. Algorithm Update - Google Product Reviews
188. Google Updates Cumulative Layout Shift Scoring
189. Page Experience Algorithm Launching Mid-June
190. Google Is Going All-IN on Web Stories
191. April 23rd Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
192. April 16th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
193. April 9th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
194. April 1st Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
195. March 26th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
196. March 19th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
197. March 12th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
198. March 5th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
199. WordPress Elementor Vulnerability
200. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for March 2021
201. Static Headlines Now Available for Dynamic Search Ads
202. Bing URL Submission Plugin for WordPress
203. Bing Upgrades Search to Include Visually Rich Imagery
204. Sketchy One Star "Fake" Review Ratings Win in Court
205. New GMB Review Management Tool
206. Check your Business Profile Performance in GMB
207. Best Practices For Videos
208. Mueller on Image Optimization
209. How To Get Your Products Into Search
210. HTTP/2 Magically Improves Core Web Vital Scores
211. Core Web Vitals: How Prepared Are Leading Industries Today?
212. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for February 2021
213. Facebook Breaks the News in Australia to Prove a Point
214. Facebook Knew for Years Ad Reach Estimates Were Based on 'Wrong Data' But Blocked Fixes Over Revenue Impact
215. Facebook Puff Piece Stirs Controversy For NYTimes Writer
216. GMB Auto Populating Services
217. GMB Messaging Rolling Out For Desktop
218. Years in Business Feature Added to GMB
219. GSC Changes To Web Story Performance Report
220. Search Console Discover Report Adds Chrome Data
221. Updated Metric Boundaries for Core Web Vitals
222. Use 503 To Avoid Losing Rankings While in Social Statement Mode
223. Official Google Video On Duplicate Content
224. New Manual Action Penalties for Google News and Discover Policy Violations
225. Google Expands Phrase Match To Include Broad Match Modifier Traffic
226. Google Launches Passage Ranking
227. Google Announces Price Enforcements for Merchants
228. February 26th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
229. February 19th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
230. February 12th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
231. February 5th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
232. WebSite Cleanup Tips for a faster, better-indexed site
233. How to relocate a GMB attorney listing
234. Tips for getting listed in People Also Ask
235. Does using the disavow tool indicate to Google that a site might be shady?
236. What, exactly, is Core Web Vitals?
237. DuckDuckGo Hits 100 Million Searches Per Day -- Updates Privacy Protections
238. GMB Updates Flag Review Options
239. Google to Invite Advertisers to Test Alternative to 3rd Party Cookies
240. URL Removal Tool in GSC Doesn't Actually Remove Pages
241. Price Drop Added to Google Rich Results
242. Google to Stop Collecting Ad ID's To Avoid Pop Up Warning in iOS Apps
243. Google Notifies Site Owners About New HTTP/2 Protocol Crawling
244. Google Wants Web Stories, not Web Teasers
245. Google Threatens to Leave Australia
246. WordPress Launches New Website Building Service
247. High-severity Vulnerability in WordPress Plugin Contact Form
248. Facebook Moving UK Users to US Privacy Terms & Conditions
249. Facebook Attacks Apple's Plan to Give Users a Privacy Choice
250. Twitter Relaunching Verified Accounts
251. Update on the Structured Data Testing Tool
252. Noindexed Pages Can Impact Core Web Vitals
253. Google Placing UK Users Under U.S. Jurisdiction
254. Why Ad Heavy Pages Might Still Rank Well in the SERP
255. Copied Content is Sometimes More Relevant
256. Request Indexing Tool Reenabled in GSC
257. Google Rolls Out Dec 2020 Core Algorithm Update
258. Top Google Searches for 2020
259. An Important Message from The Founder of Planet Ocean / SEN
260. Would owning a new top level domain (TLD) with keywords provide a ranking advantage?
261. Are keyword heavy titles a problem?
262. Free Online Video Converter Tools
263. Editorial: Subscribe With Google / The Google News Initiative
264. Google for Jobs is LIVE & Based on Schema Markup
265. Google Launches 'Ad Experience Report Tool' in their Fight Against "Bad" Ads
266. Google Launches Free 'Website' for GMB Participants
267. AdWords Expands Language Options for Structured Snippets Globally
268. Need to Know Details of 'Ads Added by AdWords'
269. SEO for Voice Search: Digital Assistants
270. SEN Celebrates 20 Years!
271. OMG! Here Comes A Whole New Can Of Black-Hat Whoopass!
272. Why is America so polarized? ...it's the Echo Chamber!
273. A Virtual Paradi$e of Low Hanging Fruit
274. Search Engine Book - Chapter Eleven
275. Search Engine Book - Chapter Ten
276. Search Engine Book - Chapter Nine
277. Search Engine Book - Chapter Eight
278. Search Engine Book - Chapter Seven
279. Search Engine Book - Chapter Six
280. Search Engine Book - Chapter Five
281. Search Engine Book - Chapter Four
282. Search Engine Book - Chapter Three
283. Search Engine Book - Chapter Two
284. Search Engine Book - Chapter One
285. How to track customers without hurting your Local Listings in Google
286. Once They Find Your Page How Do You Get Them to Take Action?! Common Mistakes Marketers Make.
287. Once They Find Your Page How Do You Get Them to Take Action?
288. The Missing Link To Writing Effective Ad Copy
289. The Missing Link To Writing Effective Ad Copy
290. How to Easily Analyze your Competition in Seconds Using the Site Strength Indicator Tool
291. The 'Local Search' Gold Rush Begins
292. The Top 12 Link-Offenders You Should Avoid Like A Ticking Bomb!
293. Google's Local Business Center
294. Advanced SEO Tutorials
295. Essential Title Tag Strategies for Top Ranking Pages in 2009
296. Entrepreneurial Thoughts on the so-called Financial Meltdown
297. 7 Ways to Boost Your Sales and Build More Links By Increasing Your Site's Speed!
298. 9 Critical Steps to Evaluating Incoming Link Quality
299. Proof Positive that Run-of-Site 'Paid' Links are BAD for your Website!
300. How to Use Flash in Top Ranking Pages
301. Your 4 Week Step-by-Step Link Building Task Planner
302. Wikia Search Launch
303. The Ultimate Link Building Quick-Start Guide, Part II
304. How to Legally and Instantly Download All of Your Competitor's Top-Secret PPC Keywords!!!
305. How to Leverage Your Company's Most Powerful Asset
306. How to Automatically Build an AdWords Campaign
307. How to Craft a Money Making Home Page
308. There are Some Lists You Just Don't Want to be On
309. "The Most Effective, Yet Overlooked, Marketing Strategy on the Internet"
310. Are you ignoring 350,000 potential customers?
311. Check your Popularity!
312. Guide to Infoseek's ESP Search Engine
313. How to get your pages to "Stick" in Excite
314. The Best Kept Secret on the Internet?
315. Making Money the Easy Way
316. The Best Way to Sell Products or Services On The Internet
317. Mining "Gold" from your "Back-End" Market
318. Creating Web Sites that Load Fast & Sell
319. Once they find your page how do you get them to take action?