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