
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
- DeepSeek—Interview With A Chatbot
- 28 Years of SEN
- The 12 Days of OpenAI: A Holiday Tech Wonderland
- Leveraging ChatGPT for SEO
- The Verge Is Laughing at Google's Guidelines
- The Man Who Killed Google Search
- The Answer Engine That Just Might Give Google A Run For Its Money!
- Beware The Japanese Keyword Hack
- 27 Years of SEN
- How to Build Your Own GPT Without Any Coding
- Bing Chat Introduces Multimodal Visual Search & Enterprise Pricing for Copilot
- Report: Generative AI is Quickly Evolving Superpowers
- Google Releases New AI Tools to Help Small Businesses
- ChatGPT Development Being Challenged by Advocacy Group
- A.I. Vaults Image Creation to a Whole New Level
- The Algo Masters Who Pick the Winners
- A.I. Bots Can Improve Your Work But They Cannot Critically Think
- A Virtual Army of A.I. Tools Are Marching Us Into the Future
- Interview with ChatGPT
- 26 Years of SEN & Counting
- Google Is Good! ...Very Good — but not as good as they pretend to be
- And the Award for 'Lame Advice of the Year' goes to...
- Lead Generation Sites Report Problems with Performance Max, and then...
- 5 Great Keyword Discovery Tools You Can Use for FREE
- Be Careful That AdBlockers Aren't Blocking Your Images
- Google's Launches Helpful Content Update
- Never Give Up!
- John Mueller Tells Us What He Really Thinks
- Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines
- Google's Data Grab Masquerading as Minority Empowerment
- Google is Picking Winners & Congress has Noticed
- Startpage – Google Results Without Google's Crap!
- Finally! A Secure, Encrypted Email Provider That Doesn't Exploit It's Users
- If You Aren't Using a VPN, Maybe You Should Be
- Local Search Update in March Corrects "Vicinity" Update
- Never Mind Market Research, Just Pay Attention & Follow The Leader
- It's Time to Focus Your Efforts on Collecting First Party Data
- When Alt-Text is a Story in The NYTimes, THAT's Your Wake-Up Call
- Be Careful Your "Stop Lines" Aren't Crippling Your Conversions
- 25 Years of SEN & Counting
- Beware the Graphic Artist!
- Rare Penalty Limbo Can Last Several Years
- November Core Update 2021
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for November 2021
- Google says 'NeverMind' to Mobile-Indexing Deadline
- Google Officially Says Mixed Reviews Are More Trustworthy
- Google Logo Structured Data Changes
- Why do my pages keep falling in and out of Google's index?
- Can Googlebot crawl speed be controlled to avoid server overload?
- GMB becomes GBP
- High Profile Sites Slamming the Brakes on AMP Pages
- WordPress Sites At Risk Due to Plugin Vulnerability
- Do bold tags help SEO?
- Bonus Bytes from John Mueller
- Official Googlebot IP Addresses Now Available In JSON File
- Page Experience Algorithm Coming To Desktop
- How Key Moments Work In Videos In Search
- Place Videos on Dedicated Pages For Maximum Exposure
- MS Advertising Introduces Microsoft Clarity Insights
- UPI Limited Enforcement in Google Merchant Center
- Help Documentation Changes for October
- Google Aligns Search Console Testing Tools with URL Inspection Tool
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for October 2021
- Never "Meta" Worse Company in My Life!
- The Google "Unannounced Updates" Buzz for October
- Search Analytics API Now Supports Discover, Google News, and Regex
- Manual Deep Linking No Longer Required for Google Ads App Campaigns
- Microsoft Advertising Partners with Shopify
- BigCommerce Merchants Can Now Sync Product Catalogs to Google
- Job Posting Structured Data Errors Report Changes in GSC
- Search Quality Raters Guidelines Updated
- The One True Google Competitor Over Next 10 Years?
- Get Faster Indexing with IndexNow
- Google Search Adds Continuous Scrolling on Mobile
- On ecommerce pages, should the product name be put into headline tags?
- How can I prevent Google from showing specific content in my search result description snippet?
- Search On '21 Reveals New Features, More Details About MUM
- New Budget Report in Google Ads
- Mysterious Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update?
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for September 2021
- Google Adds Some Data, Drops Some Data In Search Terms Report
- Unique Product Identifiers Now Required on Free Merchant Listings
- New Ecommerce SEO Guide Documentation
- Google Reveals How YouTube Recommends Videos
- Lighthouse 8.4 Upgrades LCD, FID, PageSpeed Insights
- Page Experience Tutorial - Improving First Input Delay
- Google Expands 'About This Advertiser' Initiative
- Is shared hosting ok?
- How long should it take for a site to get re-crawled and re-ranked after cleaning out low quality pages?
- What's the best way to redirect a short domain name to a longer one without having duplicate content issues?
- Titlepocalypse Update
- The SEO Impact of WordPress Themes
- Google Shows How to Optimize for Discover's Follow Feature
- Which page title is Google using for ranking, my original or their autogenerated one?
- GSC Permanently Loses Performance Report Data for August 23rd and 24th
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for August 2021
- Google Publishes Video on Getting a "Great" Page Experience
- Reporting Channel for Indexing Bugs in the US Now Available in GSC
- Titlepocalypse! Google Updates How They Generate Web Page Titles
- Google Removes Safe Browsing and Ad Experience Widgets from Page Experience Report
- Behind the Curtains of Google Search Console Insights
- Large Images in Discover Improve CTR and Increase Traffic
- 15 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Google Trends
- Why are most of my site's pages missing in a Google site query?
- Will changing an IP address or DNS cause us to lose our first page rankings?
- What's the best type of website for SEO optimization purposes?
- Why your GMB listing might be filtered out of Google Maps
- CWVs More Than "just" A Tiebreaker
- Google Publishes Copyright Guidelines Video
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for July 2021
- Multiple Instances of Fact Check Markup Not Allowed
- How to Succeed With Google Posts: Case Study
- Facebook Expanding Access to AR Try On
- Facebook Pay Extends Availability to Streamline Checkout on Your Site
- Microsoft Advertising Now Offering Video Extensions
- Multimedia Ads Now Available on Microsoft Advertising
- Microsoft Ads Expands Verticals For Dynamic Remarketing
- Link Spam Update Rolling Out Until Aug 10th
- Showcase Product Promotions Across More Surfaces during Seasonal Shopping Moments
- GSC Links AMP Debugging to AMP Page Experience Guide
- AdSense Releases Faster New Embed Code
- Google Graphs & Explains Search Traffic Drops
- Ad Policy Violators: Three Strikes, Yer Out!
- Google Announces New Privacy Sandbox Timeline
- Google's Search Rankings Explained
- How long should a 301 redirect be kept in place?
- July 2021 Core Update
- How can product schema be added to a page when the price of the product is variable?
- Are Local Services Ads a good deal for service type businesses?
- Are reciprocal links OK if they are relevant and useful?
- Here's How Long It Takes to Get New Content Indexed
- Core, Page Experience, & Spam Updates All Rolled-out in June
- New Guidance - Redirects, HTTP Status Codes, Network Issues, & DNS Errors
- WordPress 5.8 adds WebP Support
- Facebook's Publishes Ad Review Process Guidelines
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for June 2021
- AdSense Site Approvals Video Tutorial Series
- New Tutorial Workflow Shows SMB's How to Advertise on YouTube
- Google Expands GMB Profile Editing & Adds Pointy for FREE
- Create A Web Story in 5 Steps in 5 Minutes
- You Can Now Edit Robots.txt in Shopify
- RSS-Powered Follow Button Being Tested in Chrome Canary
- Sunsetting the Generic Rich Results Search Appearance on GSC
- Google Updates GSC Help Docs For Robots.txt & Structured Data
- Google Limits FAQ Rich Results to Two Max Per Snippet
- PageSpeed Insights Showing More Field Data
- Lighthouse 8.0 to be Released With Chrome 93 in August
- Google Adds Negative Match Option to RegEx Filter
- Google Launches Search Console Insights
- Google Pauses FLoC & Extends Third Party Cookie Support Until Late 2023
- Yelp Releases New Yelp for Business Features
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for May 2021
- May 7th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- May14th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- May21st Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- May 28th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- Project Starline Brings The WOW Factor to Video Conferencing
- MUM's The Word On Search
- Breakthrough in Conversation Technology - LaMDA
- Google Reveals Four Pillars of User Experience
- Google Wants Everyone to Just Get FLoC'ed!
- Google I/O Showcases Data-Hungry Apps & Long Overdue Privacy Controls for Android 12
- 17 Pro-Tips You Need to Know About Core Web Vitals Going LIVE
- Facebook Rolling Out New Ad Measurement Protocols
- Indexing Issues Can Now Be Reported to Google
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for April 2021
- Google Discover Nixes Satire
- The Only Reasons Google Will Remove a Page
- Algorithm Update - Google Product Reviews
- Google Updates Cumulative Layout Shift Scoring
- Page Experience Algorithm Launching Mid-June
- Google Is Going All-IN on Web Stories
- April 23rd Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- April 16th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- April 9th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- April 1st Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- March 26th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- March 19th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- March 12th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- March 5th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- WordPress Elementor Vulnerability
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for March 2021
- Static Headlines Now Available for Dynamic Search Ads
- Bing URL Submission Plugin for WordPress
- Bing Upgrades Search to Include Visually Rich Imagery
- Sketchy One Star "Fake" Review Ratings Win in Court
- New GMB Review Management Tool
- Check your Business Profile Performance in GMB
- Best Practices For Videos
- Mueller on Image Optimization
- How To Get Your Products Into Search
- HTTP/2 Magically Improves Core Web Vital Scores
- Core Web Vitals: How Prepared Are Leading Industries Today?
- Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for February 2021
- Facebook Breaks the News in Australia to Prove a Point
- Facebook Knew for Years Ad Reach Estimates Were Based on 'Wrong Data' But Blocked Fixes Over Revenue Impact
- Facebook Puff Piece Stirs Controversy For NYTimes Writer
- GMB Auto Populating Services
- GMB Messaging Rolling Out For Desktop
- Years in Business Feature Added to GMB
- GSC Changes To Web Story Performance Report
- Search Console Discover Report Adds Chrome Data
- Updated Metric Boundaries for Core Web Vitals
- Use 503 To Avoid Losing Rankings While in Social Statement Mode
- Official Google Video On Duplicate Content
- New Manual Action Penalties for Google News and Discover Policy Violations
- Google Expands Phrase Match To Include Broad Match Modifier Traffic
- Google Launches Passage Ranking
- Google Announces Price Enforcements for Merchants
- February 26th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- February 19th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- February 12th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- February 5th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
- WebSite Cleanup Tips for a faster, better-indexed site
- How to relocate a GMB attorney listing
- Tips for getting listed in People Also Ask
- Does using the disavow tool indicate to Google that a site might be shady?
- What, exactly, is Core Web Vitals?
- DuckDuckGo Hits 100 Million Searches Per Day -- Updates Privacy Protections
- GMB Updates Flag Review Options
- Google to Invite Advertisers to Test Alternative to 3rd Party Cookies
- URL Removal Tool in GSC Doesn't Actually Remove Pages
- Price Drop Added to Google Rich Results
- Google to Stop Collecting Ad ID's To Avoid Pop Up Warning in iOS Apps
- Google Notifies Site Owners About New HTTP/2 Protocol Crawling
- Google Wants Web Stories, not Web Teasers
- Google Threatens to Leave Australia
- WordPress Launches New Website Building Service
- High-severity Vulnerability in WordPress Plugin Contact Form
- Facebook Moving UK Users to US Privacy Terms & Conditions
- Facebook Attacks Apple's Plan to Give Users a Privacy Choice
- Twitter Relaunching Verified Accounts
- Update on the Structured Data Testing Tool
- Noindexed Pages Can Impact Core Web Vitals
- Google Placing UK Users Under U.S. Jurisdiction
- Why Ad Heavy Pages Might Still Rank Well in the SERP
- Copied Content is Sometimes More Relevant
- Request Indexing Tool Reenabled in GSC
- Google Rolls Out Dec 2020 Core Algorithm Update
- Top Google Searches for 2020
- An Important Message from The Founder of Planet Ocean / SEN
- Would owning a new top level domain (TLD) with keywords provide a ranking advantage?
- Are keyword heavy titles a problem?
- Free Online Video Converter Tools
- Editorial: Subscribe With Google / The Google News Initiative
- Google for Jobs is LIVE & Based on Schema Markup
- Google Launches 'Ad Experience Report Tool' in their Fight Against "Bad" Ads
- Google Launches Free 'Website' for GMB Participants
- AdWords Expands Language Options for Structured Snippets Globally
- Need to Know Details of 'Ads Added by AdWords'
- SEO for Voice Search: Digital Assistants
- SEN Celebrates 20 Years!
- OMG! Here Comes A Whole New Can Of Black-Hat Whoopass!
- Why is America so polarized? ...it's the Echo Chamber!
- A Virtual Paradi$e of Low Hanging Fruit
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Eleven
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Ten
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Nine
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Eight
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Seven
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Six
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Five
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Four
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Three
- Search Engine Book - Chapter Two
- Search Engine Book - Chapter One
- How to track customers without hurting your Local Listings in Google
- Once They Find Your Page How Do You Get Them to Take Action?! Common Mistakes Marketers Make.
- Once They Find Your Page How Do You Get Them to Take Action?
- The Missing Link To Writing Effective Ad Copy
- The Missing Link To Writing Effective Ad Copy
- How to Easily Analyze your Competition in Seconds Using the Site Strength Indicator Tool
- The 'Local Search' Gold Rush Begins
- The Top 12 Link-Offenders You Should Avoid Like A Ticking Bomb!
- Google's Local Business Center
- Advanced SEO Tutorials
- Essential Title Tag Strategies for Top Ranking Pages in 2009
- Entrepreneurial Thoughts on the so-called Financial Meltdown
- 7 Ways to Boost Your Sales and Build More Links By Increasing Your Site's Speed!
- 9 Critical Steps to Evaluating Incoming Link Quality
- Proof Positive that Run-of-Site 'Paid' Links are BAD for your Website!
- How to Use Flash in Top Ranking Pages
- Your 4 Week Step-by-Step Link Building Task Planner
- Wikia Search Launch
- The Ultimate Link Building Quick-Start Guide, Part II
- How to Legally and Instantly Download All of Your Competitor's Top-Secret PPC Keywords!!!
- How to Leverage Your Company's Most Powerful Asset
- How to Automatically Build an AdWords Campaign
- How to Craft a Money Making Home Page
- There are Some Lists You Just Don't Want to be On
- "The Most Effective, Yet Overlooked, Marketing Strategy on the Internet"
- Are you ignoring 350,000 potential customers?
- Check your Popularity!
- Guide to Infoseek's ESP Search Engine
- How to get your pages to "Stick" in Excite
- The Best Kept Secret on the Internet?
- Making Money the Easy Way
- The Best Way to Sell Products or Services On The Internet
- Mining "Gold" from your "Back-End" Market
- Creating Web Sites that Load Fast & Sell
- Once they find your page how do you get them to take action?