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. The Big Publishers That Feed Google Are Now Thinking About Starving It
2. Google Sued a SERP Scraper Under Copyright Law and Lost
3. Side-by-Side Previews for Text Customization & URL Expansion — See Before You Enable
4. EU Slaps €890M Fine on Google for Rigging Results
5. Fake DMCA Takedowns "Out of Control" — Here's How to Protect Your Pages
6. A Practical Guide to Preferred Sources, Highly Cited Labels, and the New Perspectives Carousel
7. What Google's Own Users Are Telling Us About the Future of Search
8. Google's Liz Reid on Search, AI, and the Future of the Web: A Candid Review (With Receipts)
9. Google Charged $400 for a Current Client Call
10. Why You Should Care About Claude's Expanding Coding Capabilities
11. AI Chatbots & Advertising
12. Google Says Opting Out of AI Overviews Is a "Huge Engineering Project"
13. Why AI Detection Will Never Scale Universally
14. The Inevitable Pivot: Why SEO Is Becoming GEO
15. Remembering
16. Schema + LLMs: What It Means for AI Visibility
17. The Slow, Inevitable Death of Google’s Profit Model
18. AI Mode—Already Creepy, Potentially Evil?
19. ChatGPT's Politeness Problem: Sycophantic, Expensive, & Maybe All Your Fault
20. Train Your Staff to Use AI & Watch Your Sales Skyrocket
21. Google Shopping's AI Vision Match
22. Why Classic SEO is More Vital Than Ever for AI Search Optimization
23. Google's Reverses Policy Against Fingerprinting
24. DeepSeek—Interview With A Chatbot
25. 28 Years of SEN
26. The 12 Days of OpenAI: A Holiday Tech Wonderland
27. Leveraging ChatGPT for SEO
28. The Verge Is Laughing at Google's Guidelines
29. The Man Who Killed Google Search
30. The Answer Engine That Just Might Give Google A Run For Its Money!
31. Beware The Japanese Keyword Hack
32. 27 Years of SEN
33. How to Build Your Own GPT Without Any Coding
34. Bing Chat Introduces Multimodal Visual Search & Enterprise Pricing for Copilot
35. Report: Generative AI is Quickly Evolving Superpowers
36. Google Releases New AI Tools to Help Small Businesses
37. ChatGPT Development Being Challenged by Advocacy Group
38. A.I. Vaults Image Creation to a Whole New Level
39. The Algo Masters Who Pick the Winners
40. A.I. Bots Can Improve Your Work But They Cannot Critically Think
41. A Virtual Army of A.I. Tools Are Marching Us Into the Future
42. Interview with ChatGPT
43. 26 Years of SEN & Counting
44. Google Is Good! ...Very Good — but not as good as they pretend to be
45. And the Award for 'Lame Advice of the Year' goes to...
46. Lead Generation Sites Report Problems with Performance Max, and then...
47. 5 Great Keyword Discovery Tools You Can Use for FREE
48. Be Careful That AdBlockers Aren't Blocking Your Images
49. Google's Launches Helpful Content Update
50. Never Give Up!
51. John Mueller Tells Us What He Really Thinks
52. Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines
53. Google's Data Grab Masquerading as Minority Empowerment
54. Google is Picking Winners & Congress has Noticed
55. Startpage – Google Results Without Google's Crap!
56. Finally! A Secure, Encrypted Email Provider That Doesn't Exploit It's Users
57. If You Aren't Using a VPN, Maybe You Should Be
58. Local Search Update in March Corrects "Vicinity" Update
59. Never Mind Market Research, Just Pay Attention & Follow The Leader
60. It's Time to Focus Your Efforts on Collecting First Party Data
61. When Alt-Text is a Story in The NYTimes, THAT's Your Wake-Up Call
62. Be Careful Your "Stop Lines" Aren't Crippling Your Conversions
63. 25 Years of SEN & Counting
64. Beware the Graphic Artist!
65. Rare Penalty Limbo Can Last Several Years
66. November Core Update 2021
67. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for November 2021
68. Google says 'NeverMind' to Mobile-Indexing Deadline
69. Google Officially Says Mixed Reviews Are More Trustworthy
70. Google Logo Structured Data Changes
71. Why do my pages keep falling in and out of Google's index?
72. Can Googlebot crawl speed be controlled to avoid server overload?
73. GMB becomes GBP
74. High Profile Sites Slamming the Brakes on AMP Pages
75. WordPress Sites At Risk Due to Plugin Vulnerability
76. Do bold tags help SEO?
77. Bonus Bytes from John Mueller
78. Official Googlebot IP Addresses Now Available In JSON File
79. Page Experience Algorithm Coming To Desktop
80. How Key Moments Work In Videos In Search
81. Place Videos on Dedicated Pages For Maximum Exposure
82. MS Advertising Introduces Microsoft Clarity Insights
83. UPI Limited Enforcement in Google Merchant Center
84. Help Documentation Changes for October
85. Google Aligns Search Console Testing Tools with URL Inspection Tool
86. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for October 2021
87. Never "Meta" Worse Company in My Life!
88. The Google "Unannounced Updates" Buzz for October
89. Search Analytics API Now Supports Discover, Google News, and Regex
90. Manual Deep Linking No Longer Required for Google Ads App Campaigns
91. Microsoft Advertising Partners with Shopify
92. BigCommerce Merchants Can Now Sync Product Catalogs to Google
93. Job Posting Structured Data Errors Report Changes in GSC
94. Search Quality Raters Guidelines Updated
95. The One True Google Competitor Over Next 10 Years?
96. Get Faster Indexing with IndexNow
97. Google Search Adds Continuous Scrolling on Mobile
98. On ecommerce pages, should the product name be put into headline tags?
99. How can I prevent Google from showing specific content in my search result description snippet?
100. Search On '21 Reveals New Features, More Details About MUM
101. New Budget Report in Google Ads
102. Mysterious Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update?
103. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for September 2021
104. Google Adds Some Data, Drops Some Data In Search Terms Report
105. Unique Product Identifiers Now Required on Free Merchant Listings
106. New Ecommerce SEO Guide Documentation
107. Google Reveals How YouTube Recommends Videos
108. Lighthouse 8.4 Upgrades LCD, FID, PageSpeed Insights
109. Page Experience Tutorial - Improving First Input Delay
110. Google Expands 'About This Advertiser' Initiative
111. Is shared hosting ok?
112. How long should it take for a site to get re-crawled and re-ranked after cleaning out low quality pages?
113. What's the best way to redirect a short domain name to a longer one without having duplicate content issues?
114. Titlepocalypse Update
115. The SEO Impact of WordPress Themes
116. Google Shows How to Optimize for Discover's Follow Feature
117. Which page title is Google using for ranking, my original or their autogenerated one?
118. GSC Permanently Loses Performance Report Data for August 23rd and 24th
119. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for August 2021
120. Google Publishes Video on Getting a "Great" Page Experience
121. Reporting Channel for Indexing Bugs in the US Now Available in GSC
122. Titlepocalypse! Google Updates How They Generate Web Page Titles
123. Google Removes Safe Browsing and Ad Experience Widgets from Page Experience Report
124. Behind the Curtains of Google Search Console Insights
125. Large Images in Discover Improve CTR and Increase Traffic
126. 15 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Google Trends
127. Why are most of my site's pages missing in a Google site query?
128. Will changing an IP address or DNS cause us to lose our first page rankings?
129. What's the best type of website for SEO optimization purposes?
130. Why your GMB listing might be filtered out of Google Maps
131. CWVs More Than "just" A Tiebreaker
132. Google Publishes Copyright Guidelines Video
133. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for July 2021
134. Multiple Instances of Fact Check Markup Not Allowed
135. How to Succeed With Google Posts: Case Study
136. Facebook Expanding Access to AR Try On
137. Facebook Pay Extends Availability to Streamline Checkout on Your Site
138. Microsoft Advertising Now Offering Video Extensions
139. Multimedia Ads Now Available on Microsoft Advertising
140. Microsoft Ads Expands Verticals For Dynamic Remarketing
141. Link Spam Update Rolling Out Until Aug 10th
142. Showcase Product Promotions Across More Surfaces during Seasonal Shopping Moments
143. GSC Links AMP Debugging to AMP Page Experience Guide
144. AdSense Releases Faster New Embed Code
145. Google Graphs & Explains Search Traffic Drops
146. Ad Policy Violators: Three Strikes, Yer Out!
147. Google Announces New Privacy Sandbox Timeline
148. Google's Search Rankings Explained
149. How long should a 301 redirect be kept in place?
150. July 2021 Core Update
151. How can product schema be added to a page when the price of the product is variable?
152. Are Local Services Ads a good deal for service type businesses?
153. Are reciprocal links OK if they are relevant and useful?
154. Here's How Long It Takes to Get New Content Indexed
155. Core, Page Experience, & Spam Updates All Rolled-out in June
156. New Guidance - Redirects, HTTP Status Codes, Network Issues, & DNS Errors
157. WordPress 5.8 adds WebP Support
158. Facebook's Publishes Ad Review Process Guidelines
159. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for June 2021
160. AdSense Site Approvals Video Tutorial Series
161. New Tutorial Workflow Shows SMB's How to Advertise on YouTube
162. Google Expands GMB Profile Editing & Adds Pointy for FREE
163. Create A Web Story in 5 Steps in 5 Minutes
164. You Can Now Edit Robots.txt in Shopify
165. RSS-Powered Follow Button Being Tested in Chrome Canary
166. Sunsetting the Generic Rich Results Search Appearance on GSC
167. Google Updates GSC Help Docs For Robots.txt & Structured Data
168. Google Limits FAQ Rich Results to Two Max Per Snippet
169. PageSpeed Insights Showing More Field Data
170. Lighthouse 8.0 to be Released With Chrome 93 in August
171. Google Adds Negative Match Option to RegEx Filter
172. Google Launches Search Console Insights
173. Google Pauses FLoC & Extends Third Party Cookie Support Until Late 2023
174. Yelp Releases New Yelp for Business Features
175. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for May 2021
176. May 7th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
177. May14th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
178. May21st Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
179. May 28th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
180. Project Starline Brings The WOW Factor to Video Conferencing
181. MUM's The Word On Search
182. Breakthrough in Conversation Technology - LaMDA
183. Google Reveals Four Pillars of User Experience
184. Google Wants Everyone to Just Get FLoC'ed!
185. Google I/O Showcases Data-Hungry Apps & Long Overdue Privacy Controls for Android 12
186. 17 Pro-Tips You Need to Know About Core Web Vitals Going LIVE
187. Facebook Rolling Out New Ad Measurement Protocols
188. Indexing Issues Can Now Be Reported to Google
189. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for April 2021
190. Google Discover Nixes Satire
191. The Only Reasons Google Will Remove a Page
192. Algorithm Update - Google Product Reviews
193. Google Updates Cumulative Layout Shift Scoring
194. Page Experience Algorithm Launching Mid-June
195. Google Is Going All-IN on Web Stories
196. April 23rd Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
197. April 16th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
198. April 9th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
199. April 1st Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
200. March 26th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
201. March 19th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
202. March 12th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
203. March 5th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
204. WordPress Elementor Vulnerability
205. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for March 2021
206. Static Headlines Now Available for Dynamic Search Ads
207. Bing URL Submission Plugin for WordPress
208. Bing Upgrades Search to Include Visually Rich Imagery
209. Sketchy One Star "Fake" Review Ratings Win in Court
210. New GMB Review Management Tool
211. Check your Business Profile Performance in GMB
212. Best Practices For Videos
213. Mueller on Image Optimization
214. How To Get Your Products Into Search
215. HTTP/2 Magically Improves Core Web Vital Scores
216. Core Web Vitals: How Prepared Are Leading Industries Today?
217. Google Ads Developer Blog Summary for February 2021
218. Facebook Breaks the News in Australia to Prove a Point
219. Facebook Knew for Years Ad Reach Estimates Were Based on 'Wrong Data' But Blocked Fixes Over Revenue Impact
220. Facebook Puff Piece Stirs Controversy For NYTimes Writer
221. GMB Auto Populating Services
222. GMB Messaging Rolling Out For Desktop
223. Years in Business Feature Added to GMB
224. GSC Changes To Web Story Performance Report
225. Search Console Discover Report Adds Chrome Data
226. Updated Metric Boundaries for Core Web Vitals
227. Use 503 To Avoid Losing Rankings While in Social Statement Mode
228. Official Google Video On Duplicate Content
229. New Manual Action Penalties for Google News and Discover Policy Violations
230. Google Expands Phrase Match To Include Broad Match Modifier Traffic
231. Google Launches Passage Ranking
232. Google Announces Price Enforcements for Merchants
233. February 26th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
234. February 19th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
235. February 12th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
236. February 5th Digest - John Mueller's Hangouts - Search Central Office Hours
237. WebSite Cleanup Tips for a faster, better-indexed site
238. How to relocate a GMB attorney listing
239. Tips for getting listed in People Also Ask
240. Does using the disavow tool indicate to Google that a site might be shady?
241. What, exactly, is Core Web Vitals?
242. DuckDuckGo Hits 100 Million Searches Per Day -- Updates Privacy Protections
243. GMB Updates Flag Review Options
244. Google to Invite Advertisers to Test Alternative to 3rd Party Cookies
245. URL Removal Tool in GSC Doesn't Actually Remove Pages
246. Price Drop Added to Google Rich Results
247. Google to Stop Collecting Ad ID's To Avoid Pop Up Warning in iOS Apps
248. Google Notifies Site Owners About New HTTP/2 Protocol Crawling
249. Google Wants Web Stories, not Web Teasers
250. Google Threatens to Leave Australia
251. WordPress Launches New Website Building Service
252. High-severity Vulnerability in WordPress Plugin Contact Form
253. Facebook Moving UK Users to US Privacy Terms & Conditions
254. Facebook Attacks Apple's Plan to Give Users a Privacy Choice
255. Twitter Relaunching Verified Accounts
256. Update on the Structured Data Testing Tool
257. Noindexed Pages Can Impact Core Web Vitals
258. Google Placing UK Users Under U.S. Jurisdiction
259. Why Ad Heavy Pages Might Still Rank Well in the SERP
260. Copied Content is Sometimes More Relevant
261. Request Indexing Tool Reenabled in GSC
262. Google Rolls Out Dec 2020 Core Algorithm Update
263. Top Google Searches for 2020
264. An Important Message from The Founder of Planet Ocean / SEN
265. Would owning a new top level domain (TLD) with keywords provide a ranking advantage?
266. Are keyword heavy titles a problem?
267. Free Online Video Converter Tools
268. Editorial: Subscribe With Google / The Google News Initiative
269. Google for Jobs is LIVE & Based on Schema Markup
270. Google Launches 'Ad Experience Report Tool' in their Fight Against "Bad" Ads
271. Google Launches Free 'Website' for GMB Participants
272. AdWords Expands Language Options for Structured Snippets Globally
273. Need to Know Details of 'Ads Added by AdWords'
274. SEO for Voice Search: Digital Assistants
275. SEN Celebrates 20 Years!
276. OMG! Here Comes A Whole New Can Of Black-Hat Whoopass!
277. Why is America so polarized? ...it's the Echo Chamber!
278. A Virtual Paradi$e of Low Hanging Fruit
279. Search Engine Book - Chapter Eleven
280. Search Engine Book - Chapter Ten
281. Search Engine Book - Chapter Nine
282. Search Engine Book - Chapter Eight
283. Search Engine Book - Chapter Seven
284. Search Engine Book - Chapter Six
285. Search Engine Book - Chapter Five
286. Search Engine Book - Chapter Four
287. Search Engine Book - Chapter Three
288. Search Engine Book - Chapter Two
289. Search Engine Book - Chapter One
290. How to track customers without hurting your Local Listings in Google
291. Once They Find Your Page How Do You Get Them to Take Action?! Common Mistakes Marketers Make.
292. Once They Find Your Page How Do You Get Them to Take Action?
293. The Missing Link To Writing Effective Ad Copy
294. The Missing Link To Writing Effective Ad Copy
295. How to Easily Analyze your Competition in Seconds Using the Site Strength Indicator Tool
296. The 'Local Search' Gold Rush Begins
297. The Top 12 Link-Offenders You Should Avoid Like A Ticking Bomb!
298. Google's Local Business Center
299. Advanced SEO Tutorials
300. Essential Title Tag Strategies for Top Ranking Pages in 2009
301. Entrepreneurial Thoughts on the so-called Financial Meltdown
302. 7 Ways to Boost Your Sales and Build More Links By Increasing Your Site's Speed!
303. 9 Critical Steps to Evaluating Incoming Link Quality
304. Proof Positive that Run-of-Site 'Paid' Links are BAD for your Website!
305. How to Use Flash in Top Ranking Pages
306. Your 4 Week Step-by-Step Link Building Task Planner
307. Wikia Search Launch
308. The Ultimate Link Building Quick-Start Guide, Part II
309. How to Legally and Instantly Download All of Your Competitor's Top-Secret PPC Keywords!!!
310. How to Leverage Your Company's Most Powerful Asset
311. How to Automatically Build an AdWords Campaign
312. How to Craft a Money Making Home Page
313. There are Some Lists You Just Don't Want to be On
314. "The Most Effective, Yet Overlooked, Marketing Strategy on the Internet"
315. Are you ignoring 350,000 potential customers?
316. Check your Popularity!
317. Guide to Infoseek's ESP Search Engine
318. How to get your pages to "Stick" in Excite
319. The Best Kept Secret on the Internet?
320. Making Money the Easy Way
321. The Best Way to Sell Products or Services On The Internet
322. Mining "Gold" from your "Back-End" Market
323. Creating Web Sites that Load Fast & Sell
324. Once they find your page how do you get them to take action?