Author Archives: Ben Murphy
April 6, 2026
Core Update Drift
Why Perth’s Construction, Legal, and Healthcare Sites Are Splitting in Two Google confirmed that the March 2026 core update began rolling out on March 27, 2026, with a rollout window of up to two weeks. Google’s own guidance has not changed in principle: core updates reward more helpful, reliable, people-first content, and for higher-stakes topics […]
April 3, 2026
Why Ranking #1 in the Map Pack No Longer Guarantees Traffic
For years, local SEO had a simple promise. Get into the Map Pack. Push to position one. Collect the clicks. That worked when Google behaved like a directory, whereas it now behaves more like a recommender, and this is a difference that matters as the Map Pack is no longer the first decision layer. In […]
April 1, 2026
Google Is Extracting Answers, Not Ranking Pages
For years, SEO worked on a simple assumption. Google ranked pages. Users clicked results. Traffic followed rankings. That model is breaking. Google is no longer just deciding which page deserves position one. It is increasingly difficult to decide which fragment of information deserves to be extracted, summarised, and surfaced directly inside the search experience. That […]
March 31, 2026
Googles 20 Hour Spam Update
Why Google’s 20-Hour Spam Update Matters More Than It Looked The Speed Signal: This Was Not a “Small” Update For years, Google updates ran like slow marathons, often stretching across 10–14 days. This one finished in roughly 20 hours. That is not a minor detail. It signals a fundamental infrastructure shift. Google has moved past […]
March 19, 2026
Google’s Disavow Tool Just Got More Powerful
For most websites, the disavow tool is already misunderstood. Now it just got more dangerous. Google has quietly confirmed you can disavow an entire top-level domain. Not just a page or a domain, but an entire TLD. In one line, you can tell Google to ignore every link from a whole slice of the internet. […]
March 13, 2026
Why Product Data Optimisation Is Becoming an SEO Discipline
For years, product feeds lived in the paid ads department. If a retailer wanted to improve Google Shopping performance, someone in PPC would tweak product titles, fix feed errors, and adjust attributes inside Google Merchant Center. SEO teams rarely touched it but now, that separation is starting to break. Google no longer treats product data […]
February 9, 2026
February 2026 Discover Core Update
Google Launches the February 2026 Discover Core Update Google has begun rolling out a Discover-specific core update for February 2026, and this one hits differently. This is not a Search update. Your rankings can stay perfectly stable while Discover traffic collapses. For many businesses, that means leads dry up before anyone realises why. Discover is […]
January 12, 2026
AI Overviews: What Marketers Must Know
For years, the search strategy was simple enough. Rank well, earn the click, keep the user. The page was the destination, and almost every metric in the report revolved around that click. AI Overviews change that. In 2026, a growing share of search journeys is shaped by answers users read without ever leaving the results […]
January 9, 2026
Brand Mentions: The New Link Building for AI SEO
For more than twenty years, SEO treated backlinks as the main currency of trust. If another website linked to you, Google assumed you were credible. Agencies built their service offerings around earning, trading or quietly acquiring links to lift authority. In 2026, things are changing significantly. Search moves away from counting how many links point […]
December 30, 2025
How to Measure Brand Visibility in AI Search
For years, visibility in search was easy to define. Rankings, impressions, clicks, and traffic told a clear story. That model is breaking. As search systems shift towards AI-driven retrieval, brands are being surfaced, summarised, and referenced in ways that do not always result in a traditional click. Visibility still exists, but it is no longer […]
December 28, 2025
Why Keyword Brand Names Are a Liability in 2026
Brand Names, SEO, and Google’s Reality Check Who this affects Startups, rebrands, and business owners are about to spend serious money on a keyword-heavy brand or domain. If you are considering names like “Best Perth Plumber” or “Top SEO Agency Melbourne”, this matters more than you think. In 2026, these names are no longer a […]
December 23, 2025
Reputation as Verified Data in 2026
Surviving Google’s 2026 Review Purge For years, local SEO treated reviews as social proof. A star rating, a growing count, and the occasional response were usually enough to support visibility. That model is breaking. As Google’s search systems shift towards AI-driven retrieval, reviews are no longer just something people read. They are now data points […]