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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

So yet another company joining the party in lawsuits against Google's anti-competitive behavior. It seems unlikely that this one will prove successful (especially if there's precedent for featured snippets).

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

As part of the statement, Chegg mentioned that their non-subscriber traffic is down -49% in January 2025. This is compared to a -8% decline in Q2 2024 (this is quarter that Google launched AI Overviews).

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

In Chegg's official statement, they provide three arguments: 1. Reciprocal Dealing 2. Monopoly Maintenance: 3. Unjust Enrichment

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

This was a story that was was written by CNBC and reported on by @rustybrick.com in Search Engine Land. Yesterday, Chegg officially launched a lawsuit against Google, specifically citing their AI Overviews and the impact on their business. searchengineland.com/google-sued-...

searchengineland.com

Google sued by Chegg over AI Overviews hurting traffic and revenue

Will other companies follow suit and go after Google for sending less traffic to sites and publishers with these new AI Overviews?

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Big SEO News: Chegg is suing Google over AI Overviews. They claim that AIOs have had a "profound impact on Chegg’s traffic, revenue, and workforce":

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Very in-depth article on a niche aspect of structured data that I haven't explored too much before. Also big shout out to @aleyda.bsky.social for including this in her newsletter: momenticmarketing.com/blog/id-sche...

momenticmarketing.com

Using @id in Schema.org Markup for SEO, LLMs, & Knowledge Graphs | Momentic

The complete guide to using @id for SEO and Knowledge Graphs

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

6. He also gives best practices when using the "@id" property. Some of these include using descriptive fragments ("Organization", not "ID1"), using the same format across pages and testing markup through the Rich Results Tool.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

5. In a very interesting snippet, he talks about using the "@graph" property of structured data when connecting multiple entities on the same page. You define the "@graph" property at the top of the structured data, then define each subproperty's "type" and connect them by using "@id".

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

4. Tyler also recommends paring "@id" properties with "sameAs" schema. The "sameAs" schema can be used to reference external profiles (author pages, social profiles, Wikipedia). This helps pair your internal ID function with external references that Google can easily connect.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

3. Tyler recommends that to reference entities cross-pages, it's best to pair an "@id" property with a URL. This allows for a more explicit connection between the two properties. The URL would be formatted as a URL, while the ID would be formatted as as fragment.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

2. The "@id" property acts as a "variable" that you define in one place and reference in other aspects of your site. For example, you could link your website to an "Organization" ID property. In another markup, you reference that "Organization" variable when defining the Publisher of an article.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

1. The "@id" property can be used to uniquely identify nodes in your site's data graph. It is actually an INTERNAL reference system for your site, generally using URL or URL fragments.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

This is a super interesting article from @tylereinberger.com on the benefits of the "@id" structured data property. By using this property in your structured data more, you're able to created strong + more direct connections between your site's entities: momenticmarketing.com/blog/id-sche...

momenticmarketing.com

Using @id in Schema.org Markup for SEO, LLMs, & Knowledge Graphs | Momentic

The complete guide to using @id for SEO and Knowledge Graphs

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Advanced Schema SEO: This article showcases how to use "@id" schema to create powerful connections between your site's entities:

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

We're also seeing trends that sites that limit the use of JavaScript tend to perform better in the commerce results.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

For the record, loading content through JavaScript isn't necessarily bad. However, it means you need to double check the indexation of those sections to be 100% sure Google is seeing it properly.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

You'll then want to verify the indexation. Perform some "site:" searches for the content to see if Google actually records the content in it's index. Or utilize the Rich Results Tool to ensure Google can render the whole page.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

From an SEO perspective, we know that Google can have trouble indexing JavaScript - especially if there's a lot to process or it creates major conflicts between the raw HTML. developers.google.com/search/docs/... You'll be able to assess the sections most "at risk" from an SEO perspective.

developers.google.com

Understand JavaScript SEO Basics | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers

Discover how Google Search processes JavaScript and explore best practices for improving JavaScript web apps for Google Search.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

For this reason, it's critical to analyze any commerce site with JavaScript turned off. You'll be easily able to visualize the content that requires JS in order to load. You can use the Web Developer extension to do this: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-d...

chromewebstore.google.com

Web Developer - Chrome Web Store

Adds a toolbar button with various web developer tools.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

During my time in SEO, I've found that retail sites are the biggest culprits of using JavaScript to load content. There are just so many technologies that use it nowadays to insert content. Review platforms, headless CMS, personalization software and more.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Ecommerce SEO Tip: Always analyze your product and category pages with JavaScript turned off. You'll easily spot content that's JS-dependent:

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Also worth noting that I was quoted in this along with some other great SEOs such as @Michael King, Crystal Carter and Kevin Indig

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

So the biggest takeaway to me is that A LOT more people have the "Search" function turned on than what I thought. This means that there's a ton of opportunities for SEOs as the search feature is the one you can control the most.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

7. Finally, they analyzed the site's that are most likely to get traffic from ChatGPT Search. They found that Online Services, Education and Mass Media were the biggest industries. Entertain, travel and real estate were at the bottom of the list.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

6. They also analyzed websites that were more likely to get traffic from ChatGPT than Google. They found that a lot of AI-related sites (AIPRM, RANKIQ were cited) are more likely to get traffic.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

5. When it came to transactional queries, Google and ChatGPT had similar ratios of about 8% of searches.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

4. They also compared the intents of ChatGPT interactions against Google searches. They found that 52.2% of ChatGPT prompts had "Informational" intent when compared to Google's 36.4%.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

3. When using ChatGPT Search, prompts tend to much shorter. They averaged only 4.2 words, compared to 23 words with Search turned off.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

2. They also looked whether users had the "Search" feature turned on our off. They found that 46% of people use ChatGPT with Search turned on. This is a lot more people than I would have thought.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

1. ChatGPT is rapidly expanding as a search referrer. In July 2024, Semrush found that ChatGPT sent traffic to less than 10,000 domains in a day. In November 2024, that increased to 30,000+ domains.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

This was a great study from Semrush that analyzed 80M+ clickstream records. With that data, they were able to analyze user prompts, where they would go and whether or not people used the "Search" feature: www.semrush.com/blog/chatgpt...

semrush.com

Investigating ChatGPT Search: Insights from 80 Million Clickstream Records

Discover how ChatGPT is reshaping search habits and web traffic patterns. Analysis of 80M clickstream records reveals changing user behaviors and referral trends in AI-driven search.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

SEO Data Study: By analyzing 80M+ clickstream records, Semrush found NEARLY HALF of users use ChatGPT like a search engine + more insights:

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

To be honest, this launch is both crazy exciting and a bit scary in terms of what could be automated. It's only available in ChatGPT Pro, so pricing might come into play. However, this feature might make the subscription worth it if you can save a ton of time on SEO research across teams.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

4. Reviewing competitor title tags to get an understanding of title tag templates 5. Understanding how frequently someone is posting new content

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

1. Analyzing a whole blog to understand a competitor's editorial strategy. 2. Reviewing competitor product and category pages at scale to understand common content sections. 3. Sharing SEO datasets and allowing Deep Research to generate insights

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

There are a ton of possibilities that SEOs could use with Deep Research. Think about all the tasks where you need to perform some types of analysis using the web. In theory you could have Deep Research serve as a starting point. For example:

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Well now they introduced a new feature called "Deep Research". With this feature, you can basically request that an AI agent go off and perform some type of analysis on your behalf. The agent will then go to the Internet and start perform the analysis that you wanted: openai.com/index/introd...

openai.com

Introducing deep research

An agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you. Available to Pro users today, Plus and Team next.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Last week, I made a post about how it was able to perform a search for a query and then ChatGPT could give me an outline for the query based on the search results it found. bsky.app/profile/chri...

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

So this is fresh off the heels of OpenAI's new operator function that allows ChatGPT to interact with the Web and perform functions on your behalf: openai.com/index/introd...

openai.com

Introducing Operator

A research preview of an agent that can use its own browser to perform tasks for you. Available to Pro users in the U.S.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Whoa, OpenAI launched "Deep Research" an AI-agent capable of conducting complex online research. This could automate a TON of SEO research:

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

I know a lot of people are going to mention that correlation isn't causation, but I appreciate any study that actually brings data to the table. Solid study from Patrick and Ahrefs here: ahrefs.com/blog/links-m...

ahrefs.com

Google Says "Links Matter Less"—We Looked at 1,000,000 SERPs to See if It's True

Google says links matter less than before. Our findings suggest this is true overall, but for certain types of queries, links matter more.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

7. I was also a bit surprised to see that keywords in the URL had such as negligible correlation (0.034) to rankings. While it's not a huge factor, I thought it would be a bit stronger.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

6. Surprisingly, links with Commercial intent had the lowest correlation for both referring domains and backlinks with approximately 0.20 for each. This might be because commercial queries are generally lower in volume compared to informational.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

5. The study also broke down the correlation by search intent. The data found that for Informational searches, referring domains (0.278) and backlinks (0.269) were most correlated.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

4. Interestingly, link mattered for local queries a lot. Both referring domains and backlinks had relatively high correlations of 0.33 for local rankings.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

3. Overall, links correlated with rankings slightly less than the last study. In their last study in 2019, links had a 0.27 correlation with rankings. In this study it was between 0.22–0.24.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

2. When segmenting down the data by search volume, Patrick found that links matter even more for high search volume queries. While there was a 0.2+ correlation for queries with 5K volume, it spiked to 0.3+ for searches with 100K+ in volume.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

1. In general, the study found that more links still correlated with better rankings. Data showed that both the number of referring domains (0.255) and the number of backlinks (0.248) had the strongest correlations to rankings of any other variable in the study.

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

He analyzed 1M queries across top 20 rankings for the correlations to different variables such as backlinks, followed links, referring domains, internal links and more. Here's what he found:

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Chris Long @chrismlong.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

This was a solid data study from Patrick Stox from Ahrefs on the importance of links in 2025. The study sought to ask the question "Do links still matter for SEO?". ahrefs.com/blog/links-m...

ahrefs.com

Google Says "Links Matter Less"—We Looked at 1,000,000 SERPs to See if It's True

Google says links matter less than before. Our findings suggest this is true overall, but for certain types of queries, links matter more.

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