2021

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....

For the last 13 years we have continuously improved SISTRIX with free updates to the SEO toolkit. In 2021, we saw one of our most productive years in expanding the tools, features and data analyses across more than just one search engine. Here’s a look at the what we’ve added […]...

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....

Rituals and festivities are particularly important in dynamic times like these and that’s why our Christmas Ferris wheel is turning again this year and we’re donating 10,000 euros. ...

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....

The user agent is freely configurable for HTTP (S) access, which means there aren’t just “real” Googlebots our there on the Internet, but also third parties who hope to benefit from calling their crawlers Googlebot. In the past, the only way to determine the authenticity of Googlebot access was through […]...

As home delivery and fast-track grocery delivery services come-of-age, competition in the grocery retail sector increases. Understanding the true leaders becomes more important, but more difficult, and it’s easy to make false assumptions. In this article we look at the leading players from various ‘basket’ perspectives. You’ll see classic supermarket […]...

Microsoft (Bing) and Yandex have defined a simple interface (API) with IndexNow via which website operators can use to inform search engines about new, changed or deleted URLs. IndexNow is explicitly not an indexing API: it is not the content of the website that is sent via the interface, but only the URL. The crawler of each participating […]...

Founded in 2009, Nerdwallet.com is now aiming for an IPO. Speculation is that the company could launch with a valuation of 5 billion US dollars. According to Similarweb.com, Search (Google) is responsible for around 86% of visitors to the website. Of the 21 million visits per month to the IPO according to […]...

Links and the resulting incoming recommendation are still one of the most important ranking factors on Google. In the last few weeks, Google has put two oft-discussed points into concrete terms. In the Office Hours from 17.09. John Müller confirms that neither the traffic that flows via a specific link nor […]...

Google’s Page Experience Update, that started its rollout in June, is now complete. After two and a half months the effects are now visible in the search results. In this blog post we analyse the data and show you what happened in the Google SERPs....

Up until now, the separation has been clear – if a visitor clicks on a SERP result, they end up on a web page and only leave it when the back-button is clicked. That may change with a new feature in the Chrome browser. Under the name “Continuous Search”, Google […]...

The displayed title of search hits has a decisive influence on which result is clicked on in the search results. This week, Google adjusted the method for selecting the title....

In the official developer documentation on search topics, Google has, for a few days now, been explicitly stating that article authors can be identified in structured data using the author.url property. In the past, Google has tried many approaches to making content authors machine-readable but both the Google+ channel and […]...

In addition to Google data, we have been collecting Amazon data for a number of years now. The reason is obvious: anyone who buys online today is more than 50 percent likely to do so on Amazon. We have now overhauled our free tool for keyword research on Amazon. It […]...

Purina, the pet food brand, has set a good example with their purina.co.uk SEO content. It has shown all the signs of an organic and sustainable growth pattern, until recently, when instability preceded a downward trend. The domain has lost over 40% of its visibility over just 2 months. In […]...

In the USA there has been a menu option called “About this result” for every search result for several months now. It contains basic information about the result such as how long has Google known about the domains and whether the connection is encrypted. New information has now been added. […]...

Google has announced that, over the next few weeks, it intends to implement improvements in the detection of bought and unnaturally built links. Google is calling this the “link spam update”....

Exactly one month ago today, Google released the Page Experience Update. Since then, good websites should have be boosted, bad ones disadvantaged. In this article, we will examine whether there have been any initial developments after the first month....

We had hardly got into July when the expected July Core Update hit. After a few days of rollout the data for the UK is now available for analysis. We take a look at affected domains, winners and losers in this article....

Google had a busy June. After the Core Update, the start of the Page Experience Update and the first part of the Spam Update last week, part 2 of that update had been completed....

The summer of Google Updates is living up to its name. In addition to the Core Update at the start of June, and the start of the Page Experience update, Google unexpectedly announced a two-part spam update....

With Brave Search, Brave is now offering a new, proprietary search engine as a beta. The combination of browser and search engine could provide a helpful counterweight to Chrome / Google and Edge / Bing. The highlight: almost all results come from their own index. While other Google competitors such […]...

Search engine optimisation is a multidisciplinary function: the work of many different departments has an impact on a company’s SEO success. In this post we look to define the core of SEO....

Third party cookies and thus large parts of user-based Internet advertising are about to be dampened. Some time ago, Google presented an alternative: FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) which is intended to bring together groups of similar people and thus make them targets for ads. With this approach, Google hopes […]...

Long since announced, then postponed, now the time has finally come: Google has started rolling out the Page Experience update (which also includes Core Web Vitals). However, very little will change in the short term and the long-term effects are going to be manageable....

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....

Researchers at Goethe University in Frankfurt are developing new data-driven approaches to competitive analysis using data from SISTRIX. Find out the most important details in a nutshell here....

There are many ways to build links but this example shows one of the most natural ways to achieve it, through new, original and relevant content that people want to know about. It’s newsy, so it comes with natural traffic decay, but the links gained from it will remain for […]...

In recent years, Google has reliably announced the rollout of new Core Updates. We are currently seeing movements in the SERPs that look like a Core Update “Light” that has not been announced or confirmed by Google. More details below....

We have analysed billions of searches to better understand the evolution of search from desktop to mobile devices. The result: Mobile search is already much more important than you previously thought. Let’s go directly to the evaluations:...

While Google is conspicuously communicative about corporate ranking factors such as page experience, we hear far less about relevant ranking factors. However, we now have some helpful clarification on links....

Google starts displaying information from the Ministry of Health in a special integration above organic search results. The Munich Regional Court considers this to be a cartel infringement and prohibits the procedure. Read more about this here....

A case-study in buying and migrating digital assets is unfolding in the UK this week. ASOS is merging multi-channel Topshop into its fashion empire as a digital-only offering. This isn’t a simple domain move, but it’s one we can all learn from....

When monitoring SEO visibility, it is important to contextualize lists of winners by analyzing what happened to the losing domains as well. Throughout 2020, there were a variety of factors that caused visibility declines, but not all of them were the result of a poorly executed SEO strategy or any […]...

An analysis of the years SEO losers in UK search. 500 domains listed. Includes analysis of significant SEO losers in 2020....

2020 proved to be an interesting and unusual year. Aside from the standard visibility changes we’ve come to expect from Google due to its ongoing algorithm updates and an always-improving understanding of user intent, the coronavirus pandemic also created drastic shifts in user behavior and market forces....

The year was full of changes and surprises, and this can also be seen in the Google search results. In this post we show you the domains that have gained the most visibility on Google in the last year....