Johannes Beus

ChatGPT has officially introduced a new feature. Its own AI web search is now integrated directly into the existing interface. Instead of launching a completely new platform or a separate product, the user interface remains familiar. This new feature is initially only available to paying users, but general availability for […]

In a current article, Lars Lofgren shines a light on the impressive SEO-dominance of the Forbes Marketplace. Even though Forbes is traditionally known for high quality economic journalism, the website now also shows up in the Google search results for topics for which Forbes doesn’t have in-depth expertise – like […]

Since 2020 a lawsuit in the US has been in the works, in which the US Department of Justice, as well as multiple states, have accused Google of establishing Google as the default search engine by paying browser and platform providers, creating “significant barriers that protect Google’s market dominance”. Lawyer […]

Google has publicly announced major algorithm updates for quite a few years now. It remains to be seen whether the motivation behind this is an intrinsic desire for transparency or rather the watchful eye of the regulators in Europe and the USA but it’s been useful to have notification before they […]

If you’re responsible for developing an SEO strategy, you’ll first need to intensively analyse your competitors. There are many reasons why you should do this but it’s not always easy. In this article we’ll give you concrete information, step-by-step.

Google is in a difficult situation – rapid advances in AI development. If Google does nothing it ends up, very soon, with search results being flooded with mediocre, regurgitated and popular content. After some time for reflection, it is now becoming clearer how Google intends to escape from this AI […]

Around half a year after the last major core update, Google is currently rolling out a new core update. In the SISTRIX blog here we have the first numbers, analyses and explanations.

Microsoft has announced that it will significantly increase the prices for using the Bing search engine interface. Depending on the intensity of use, the costs will increase by up to 1,000 percent, automatically, from May 2023. This surprising step could massively restrict competition in the search engine market. Apart from Google and Microsoft, […]

After this week’s AI presentations from Microsoft and Google , it’s clear – Search will see more changes in the near future than in the previous ten years. Although it is still unclear what the future will look like, we’ve already had the first glimpses.

Bankrate.com, a US financial site, has been publishing AI-generated content for a few months. Does this work in Google Search? How could Google deal with AI-content in the future? More importantly, is this a model that can be recommended?

Concluding the SEO strategy guideline, there are two more important aspects when it comes to SEO – especially for Google: the efficient use of the Google Search Console and optimisation for the different verticals.

For good rankings, it is still important for a website to have good incoming, external links. Unfortunately, these links do not arise by themselves in the right quantity and at the right speed.

It made a strong start, then took a nosedive; the first Helpful Content Update did not fulfil the expectations of the SEO community. The following article, from two industry experts, includes observations and a conclusion that we can all learn from.

A week ago today, Google started to officially roll out the extensively announced Helpful Content Update. As a reminder: with these new types of updates, Google wants to target content created purely for the search engine. After one week of roll-out we can see that the update has not (yet) […]

A new type of Google update will be rolled out for the first time next week: the Helpful Content Update. Contrary to the name however, Google does not aim to improve the rankings of helpful content rankings, but punish bad content in a targeted manner. Update: The roll-out started on 25th […]

Featured snippets , i.e. a highlighted search result at the beginning of the SERP, are a guarantee for a high level of attention and click-through-rate in the search results. Google has announced changes. Google will now use its current AI model – “Multitask Unified Model (MUM)” – to check featured snippets that are displayed […]

International SEO is an important topic, especially for export nations. However, it is also a topic that is often taken lightly because people are not aware of many strategic aspects, especially with regard to SEO.

Internal links are very essential for search engines like Google to find content and to find out which contents of a website are relevant.

Links continue to be an important part of Google rankings, as Google sees them as external confirmation and recommendation of the linked page. So, it’s no wonder that link counting has always been high on SEO’s agenda. However, Google’s John Mueller has now confirmed again that there is no correct […]

Google’s latest quarterly figures show concisely that after the Corona tailwind of recent years, turbulent times now lie ahead for the online advertising market. While search revenues increased by 14%, YouTube recorded growth of only 5%. YouTube suffers both from the fact that advertising there takes place further up the […]

So far, much of this strategy guide has been about “doing the groundwork”: researching keywords, planning website structure and also thinking about the presentation in the search results. All of this is certainly important, but still: content is king. So, what should the content on a page ideally look like?

Time travel to the year 2002 when the first Euro coins and bills were put into circulation and there were still 5 years to go until the first iPhone. Within this environment, exactly 20 years ago in 2002, I registered the domain sistrix.com. Even then, small SEO tools existed on […]

The back-story to the ancillary copyright law in the EU, aimed at protecting publishers from content re-use, is long and complex. Some of its roots were set in Germany over 20 years ago and today, despite an agreed EU law, it’s still being argued. We have been following this since […]

Search results are always Darwinian: you always have quite a few competitors around you that you need to compete against. This fourth part of the SEO strategy guide shows you exactly how to do this and why this is important.

The term “search intent” is used by SEOs to signal that there is an intent behind every search query. In this part of our series on SEO strategy, you will learn what search intent is and why it is so important for SEO.

Fake product reviews are a big problem for Amazon. Customers trust the platform and the reviews, and are disappointed by products and end up turning their backs on Amazon. Amazon has therefore been active in the fight against fake product reviews for some time and has now been able to […]

Until now, content in the Knowledge Panels has always come from third parties, often as excerpts from Wikipedia, sometimes from other domains, but always with a link to these sources. For some search terms such as “london”, Google has now started to write its own texts. Only “Google” is named […]

The use of artificial intelligence has made great strides in recent years. Advanced models like GPT-3 can now produce content that is difficult to distinguish from that written by humans. However, in the last Google Search Central Hangout, John Mueller from Google commented on the use of such tools from the […]

SEO without keyword research is basically pointless. Only by knowing what is entered into the Google search bar can you optimise accordingly. Part 2 of our SEO strategy guide is about keyword research – perhaps the most important input to an SEO strategy because if you act too hastily at […]

Successful SEO consists of many interdependent components. This SISTRIX guide shows you the most important SEO components and explains the first steps.

Google has announced, that it will be discontinuing the URL parameter tool within the next month. With the help of this component of the former Google Webmaster Tools, one could tell Google, which URL parameters of the own page to ignore during crawling. As it has become significantly easier to […]

It’s rare for websites to be dropped completely from the Google index but following sanctions by the EU Commission, this can now be seen for rt.com, the domain for the Russian propaganda channel Russia Today.

Having the right measurements helps to reliably evaluate SEO success. This blog post is about why Domain Authority, Authority Score and Domain Rating can be misleading and encourage incorrect decisions.

Third-party cookies for tracking advertising purposes are dying out. Some time ago, Google introduced FloC (“Federated Learning of Cohorts”) in order to be able to show users advertising that corresponds to their interests and shopping habits. The idea: the surfing behavior of the users is analysed directly in the browser and […]

The search results are becoming more and more complex in their structure – normal organic results, numerous vertical results boxes, structured, semantic data and more are brought together on one search result page. With this, it is inevitable that the same content will be found in several locations. To ensure that […]

2022 is a few hours away and, as with the last year, we are not facing a revolution, but a steady and rapid evolution. In this post: three theses and a set of opinions on current SEO trends.

As of today we are offering SISTRIX data, analyses and functions in new packages. All users will now be able to perform important SEO workflows, and there’s a very special offer for existing customers.

After a good four months of waiting, the time has come again – another Google Core Update. The search engine is making major changes to the organisation of search results. You can find all data, analyses and help in this blog post.

Google has taken its time because only now, almost halfway through the year, has the first officially confirmed Core Update of 2021 started. We take a look at the effects of this update, and consider what it going to be quite the summer of updates.

The Page Experience ranking factor comprises three important measurements known as the Core Web Vitals. In this article you can find out more, and how to improve.