A bumper edition of the Monitor sees Scott Longley unpack the fallout from Google’s demotion of affiliates’ newspaper partnerships in the rankings alongside all the need-to-knows from the most recent round of earnings calls.
If our experts’ prediction that Google turning down the volume on legacy newspaper partnerships will hasten the move towards owning or partnering media brands driven by newer channels such as influencers, social, podcasts and video, that likely plays well for the affiliates already moving in that that direction, including Better Collective.
This is also taking place against the backdrop of a sector seemingly starting to edge away from reliance on Google and SEO affiliates. The relationship between Google and igaming SEOs has gone into reverse of late, mainly due to the perceived growing gap between what Google and its liaisons have been promoting as best practice and how this is rewarded in the SERPs, with reams of ‘helpful’ websites wiped out by successive updates.
The mistrust also escalated with the leak of what Google is using as ranking signals and its continued push of generally poor AI-generated overviews to the top of results.
The most robust advice emanating from the SEO community amid all the confusion and flux came from the original recipient of the leaked doc, SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin. Which is that for marketers looking to improve organic search rankings and traffic, “build a notable, popular, well-recognised brand in your space, outside of Google search.” So Google-first, no longer Google-only, basically.
As always, I would love to hear your feedback on this and other iGBA content at stephen.carter@clariongaming.com.