Google will begin redirecting its country code top-level domain names (ccTLD) versions of its Google domain to Google.com. That means if you frequent google.fr (in France), google.ng (in Nigeria) and so on, you will be redirected to Google.com.
Why the change. Google said, “Over the years, our ability to provide a local experience has improved. In 2017, we began providing the same experience with local results for everyone using Search, whether they were using google.com or their country’s ccTLD.” “Because of this improvement, country-level domains are no longer necessary,” Google added.
Google said, “we’ll begin redirecting traffic from these ccTLDs to google.com to streamline people’s experience on Search.”
The impact. For the most part, most searchers should not notice any difference. When you are redirected, there is a chance you may have to login to Google again and also reconfigure some of your search settings.
But overall, there won’t be any significant changes. Google wrote, “It’s important to note that while this update will change what people see in their browser address bar, it won’t affect the way Search works, nor will it change how we handle obligations under national laws.”
Timing. This change will begin today but “will be rolled out gradually over the coming months,” the company said.
Why we care. You may notice slightly different referral traffic from Google Search, related to this change.
This may also impact your signed in experience with Google.com in the short term.
But outside of that, there should be no other large changes with these ccTLD changes for Google Search.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/google-logo-1920-800x457-BocqJl.jpeg?fit=800%2C457&ssl=1457800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-15 13:00:072025-04-15 13:00:07Google Search to redirect its country level TLDs to Google.com
You’ve probably been hearing a lot about AI agents lately – whether in your workplace conversations or scrolling through your social feeds (hopefully both).
While there’s no shortage of articles discussing their general benefits, there’s surprisingly little coverage on what they mean specifically for SEO – where their impact is not just significant, but amplified.
Before we dive into the two key reasons AI agents are so important for SEOs to understand (and yes, you’re probably already using them – even if you don’t realize it), let’s first get clear on what AI agents actually are.
What are AI agents?
At their core, AI agents are autonomous systems equipped with access to external tools, data, functions, and more.
They operate with a clear understanding of an end goal and are provided with the resources needed to achieve it.
In some cases, they’re also given instructions on how to use those tools. In others, they’re left to figure it out on their own.
Rather than diving into a chart or technical diagram of a sample agenting system, I think a simpler – and surprisingly accurate – illustration can be found in one of nature’s most complex yet overlooked lifeforms: the humble ant.
Imagine an ant colony: the queen, much like a master AI algorithm, sets the overarching goal. The worker ants – each equipped with their own specialized tools – are the individual agents tasked with specific functions.
Consider the parallels:
Queen = Agent operator: Directs and adjusts the overall strategy.
Worker ants = Sub-agents: Each has a specialized tool or function, whether it’s gathering data, analyzing content, or communicating findings.
Colony efficiency = System optimization: As ants work together, the system optimizes resources and information flow, mirroring how AI agents coordinate to achieve complex tasks.
The queen communicates the goal to each “tool,” which each ant then tries to accomplish.
They return with their requested resource, communicate and assess their status, share information to accomplish their macro goal faster and report back.
An overall status is reported to the queen, who communicates adjusted commands to her tools.
This is not all that different from an AI agent, other than being generally more sophisticated (though not as impressive to us, as it only sustains a species and doesn’t automatically make a stock trade 56 nanoseconds faster after catching a new trend and applying the sentiment as positive).
I’ll poorly parallel this to AI agents below.
But before I do that, let me answer why one of my assertions above is true.
Why the impact of AI agents in SEO is multiplied many times over most other professions
I can’t think of an industry that won’t be touched by agents, at least indirectly.
Lawyers will use agents to look up and summarize judgments and analyze loopholes used for their clients.
Software engineers will use them to assist in developing code and systems, referencing their internal docs, repos, and external knowledge.
Bakers will receive their ingredients through shippers coordinated using agents.
SEOs will use them as tools to do their jobs faster and better – as I’ll illustrate below.
On top of that, we also need to learn and adapt to marketing into agentic systems.
But what it is evolving into is something different — something far more powerful.
Something that takes us past optimizing for an algorithm, even one driven by an LLM like AI Overviews or ChatGPT, and into optimizing for agents, their functions, and their tools.
We’re seeing this evolution in its toddler years right now, and if you’re on the ground floor, that’s a great place to be.
While there are exceptions, for the most part, generative engines are performing a lot like search engines in their presentation of solutions.
The user enters a query.
The user receives a reply.
That reply might have a few links in it.
Sure, the system might check on the web for additional references outside of its current knowledge base, but nothing revolutionary.
Again, it functions a lot like traditional search with a better user experience.
I expect the next steps in this evolution will be gradual, as tools like Google and ChatGPT add new capabilities – such as the recently announced feature where an AI-driven system can call a store to gather additional information for you.
However, new pieces will gradually fall into place until we reach a point where providing your agent with insights into your goals or needs will trigger actions in ways we likely can’t fully understand yet.
Here’s a simple example.
You give the Google agent (for example) your goal, want, or need.
Let’s say you need new shoes for a wedding. The agent can then:
Check your calendar for the wedding date.
Check the weather in that city on that date, or likely weather based on the time of year if specifics are unavailable.
Ask what you’ll be wearing.
Knowing your size, general style, and preferred brands and stores – source options that will arrive in time for the wedding.
Source and store a local backup, in case something goes wrong with the delivery or fit, to have that information ready in case it detects a problem.
Ask if you would like to see the options:
If yes, send them to a display of your choosing.
If not, move on to the next step.
Once the shoe is selected, complete the order.
Check what other common items might be needed for weddings, based on your status at it (guest, best person, bride or groom, etc.), and optionally send an email list of these to you if it doesn’t have evidence these are completed.
Imagining this world, I have a couple of questions for you:
How do you attribute that to Google?
Was it their crawler that surfaced the information to them? What kind of optimization does that take with LLMs?
Was it a product feed through Google Merchant Center?
Did they use an operator to navigate your site to get to it? Is there optimization you need to apply to filters to simplify that?
If you sell umbrellas, how do you ensure you’re part of those emailed suggestions from earlier in the event that it’s going to rain.
Oh, and how do you even get attribution for that?
This simple example highlights the immense complexity of what lies ahead.
New technologies will emerge that companies and teams will need to adopt and optimize.
Additionally, with the development of new protocols like Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), adding your store’s feed to a marketplace – or even creating your own tools for other agents to use – will become much easier.
This opens the door to greater distribution, though it may come with challenges like difficult attribution and untested effectiveness.
The question is:
Do you really want to wait and see if your competitors dive in first, or will you seize the opportunity now?
While I can’t predict the exact shape of the marketing world in the next two weeks, let alone a year from now, I can confidently say that we’ve already entered the agentic era.
The rate of adoption and development in this space is unlike anything I’ve seen in over two decades of online marketing.
It’s even more disruptive than the changes brought on Google’s Panda and Penguin updates.
And on the other side of the coin, we also have SEOs using their own agentic systems.
As an example, I’ll share an agenting system I created to help generate article outlines for authors at Weights & Biases.
What started as a simple replacement for a script I had previously written for the same task has since evolved.
I’ll also highlight a few upcoming expansions to better illustrate the potential of AI agents.
This agentic system begins by asking the user for five things:
The primary phrase they are hoping to rank for with an article.
Any secondary terms.
The type of article they were writing.
The title (if they have one in mind).
The author.
It uses this information to inform the other agents within the system what to do and what data to access.
I’ve created several agents and data sources for the agent to access.
The main ones (including a few still being finished after some testing) are:
A search agent
This agent has access to Google search and removes social platforms, which tend to block our web scrapers.
An analysis agent
This agent does a few things:
Extracts the entities from the pages using Google’s Natural Language API.
Summarizes content.
Extracts questions from the content.
I’ll likely separate these into their own agents as I expand the capabilities, but combining them works well in the current iteration.
A data store of examples
For each author, I created a folder with 10 markdown files that include:
The inputs they provided (primary phrase, secondary terms, title, etc.).
The outlines generated by the system.
The final outlines I handed off after manual editing.
The first paragraphs from the published articles, based on my criteria for how section intros should read.
This collection trains the agentic system to understand each author’s preferred structure and tone. It also helps suggest first paragraphs that align with their writing style.
I log all of this – inputs, extracted entities, questions, and outlines – to W&B Weave to monitor performance and guide improvements.
An outline agent
This agent takes in the information from the user, the search results, entities, questions, and summaries and generates an article outline.
Coming soon
Some agents I’m adding in presently are:
A keyword agent that will have access to the Google Ads API to get additional keyword ideas and search volumes.
A social listening agent that will monitor social channels for trending topics and auto-generate and outline when one crosses a threshold of likely importance.
A Slack/email agent: When an article outline is generated automatically, the agentic system will inform me – including a list of notable people talking about the topic and a summary.
A competitor agent that will check to see if known competitors are ranking for the content and send them to me with the outline.
I’m sure there’s more to come. (I considered waiting until everything was finished before writing this, but new ideas keep popping up, and this article would never get written.)
You should (and can) build agents too
I’m not alone in developing agents, and while some SEO tools claim to be agentic, I haven’t found any worth paying for yet.
The real benefit of building agents is that they help me understand the environment I’m marketing in.
If you want to try developing one, I’ve used obot.ai, which is simple and great for creating basic, useful agents for various tasks.
Big thanks to Marc Sirkin, CEO of Third Door Media, for introducing me to it.
At the very least, it’ll give you a feel for how agents work, which is a big advantage over competitors who don’t understand what’s happening behind the scenes.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Ant-colony-and-AI-agents-d0qwdP.png?fit=1540%2C880&ssl=18801540http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-15 13:00:002025-04-15 13:00:00AI agents in SEO: What you need to know
SEO reporting transforms raw data into actionable decisions. It shows clients and teams exactly what’s working — and what isn’t.
But here’s the painful truth:
You can waste hours each month collecting data from various platforms. Like copying numbers from Google Analytics, Search Console, and rank trackers into spreadsheets.
Then struggling to make it look presentable.
Oh, and this is for one website. If you’re managing many projects, reporting can get VERY tedious (and costly).
That’s why I’ve handpicked a list of four dedicated SEO reporting tools that:
Save time by automatically collating data from your favorite SEO and analytics platforms
Help you build client-ready reports without starting from scratch every time
Let you track and visualize SEO performance in a way that actually makes sense for you
Here’s a quick rundown of our favorite SEO reporting tools:
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok Ads: Combine all your social media ad metrics with SEO results in one report
Note: You can connect Semrush to Looker Studio for free. Many other third-party connectors need a separate paid subscription.
Report Fast with Templates or Build Custom SEO Dashboards
Looker Studio gives you the flexibility to choose how you want to set up your SEO reports. Whether that’s in a streamlined or more hands-on way.
Here’s how:
If you want a quick start, you can use pre-built templates from the gallery.
For example, you could choose a Google Search Console performance template.
It visualizes impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position:
With this template, you simply need to connect your Search Console account, and you’re good to go.
But if you need something more tailored, you can easily build custom dashboards from scratch in three simple steps:
Choose exactly which metrics to show
Pull in multiple data sources (Google Analytics, Semrush, Shopify, etc.)
Design the layout to fit your team’s or client’s needs
Tip: If you’re showing these reports to clients, you can also fully customize your SEO dashboards to reflect your (or their) brand. Do this by adding logos, brand colors, and any visual elements specific to your projects.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Visualizes data with interactive charts, scorecards, and tables
It’s primarily a visualization tool that relies entirely on other data sources for its reports
Refreshes data in real-time — you can set up the report and forget about it
Option to embed interactive reports on your website
2. Semrush
Best for SEO professionals who want an all-in-one solution to track, analyze, and report SEO performance in one place
Pricing: Starts at $139.95 per month; Backlinko-exclusive 14-day free trial available
Semrush’s My Reports lets you build customizable SEO reports. It’s designed to help you merge data from across Semrush’s various tools and present it in an easy-to-understand format.
Here’s what I love about My Reports:
Combine Multiple Semrush Tools in One Report
Semrush’s My Reports tool lets you pull data from across the platform’s entire SEO toolkit and present it in a single, cohesive report.
You can include insights from tools like:
Position Tracking to highlight keyword performance
This feature is perfect if you want to avoid bouncing between separate dashboards. Or manually merging data sources.
With everything in one place, it’s also easier to spot patterns and draw connections. Like how ranking improvements might correlate with new backlinks. Or how technical issues could be holding your keyword performance back.
Create SEO Reports from 20+ Marketing Data Sources
You can go beyond just Semrush data by connecting 20+ other marketing data sources to further enhance your reports.
For example, you can pull keyword rankings and backlink data from Semrush. Then combine it with Google Search Console data to highlight clicks and impressions.
All in one report:
This makes it easier to present a holistic view of your SEO performance. And show not only where you rank but also how those rankings translate into actual search traffic.
Save Time with Ready-Made Templates
If you’re short on time and don’t want to build your SEO reports from scratch, Semrush has you covered with ready-made templates:
These templates help you quickly generate reports for common SEO tasks.
For example, you can select:
Monthly SEO Reports: Use these to update clients about your SEO performance
Site Audit: This gives you a quick overview of your domain’s technical health
Backlink Audit: This lets you analyze your website’s backlink profile and spot new link opportunities
You can use your selected template as is:
Or you can customize it further with the drag-and-drop tools.
Quickly Build SEO Reports with Drag-and-Drop Widgets
Semrush’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to build your own custom reports or build on templates.
Just drag the data widgets you need from the left panel and drop them wherever you need them.
Let AI Summarize Your Report
One of the standout features of My Reports is the built-in AI Summary tool.
Once you’ve built your SEO report, you can click “Add AI Summary,” and Semrush will automatically generate a clear, concise overview of the key takeaways:
You can also choose whether you want the AI to generate a brief or detailed summary, depending on your audience:
Easily schedule recurring reports and receive them via email
You can’t edit the AI-generated summary
White label reports with your logo and branding
Share reports as a PDF or via dashboard link
3. AgencyAnalytics
Best for freelancers and SEO agencies to share real-time reporting dashboards with clients
Pricing: Starts at $79 per month; 14-day free trial available
AgencyAnalytics is a reporting platform built specifically for agencies managing SEO and digital marketing clients.
It lets you create customizable SEO reports by pulling data from 80+ tools, including:
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Semrush
Moz
Bing Webmaster Tools
Here’s what I like most about Agency Analytics:
Choose From Four Report Starting Points
AgencyAnalytics gives you four ways to start building a report:
Blank report: Start fresh and create a fully customized SEO report
Smart report: Auto-generate a report with your connected integrations (like Semrush, Shopify, Google Search Console, and Salesforce)
Template: Use a pre-made reporting template
Clone existing report: Copy any report you’ve already created
If you manage multiple clients or create recurring SEO reports, cloning an existing report is a HUGE time-saver.
You can duplicate the layout, data sources, and widgets from any previous report. This way, you don’t have to start from scratch every time.
And if speed is your priority, the Smart Report option gives you a great baseline. It pulls in data from your connected tools automatically.
But if you’re building something new or one-off, starting with a blank report or a premade template still gives you all the flexibility you need.
Track Your Client’s SEO Goals
AgencyAnalytics lets you set and track specific SEO goals for each client. You can then keep track of the progress in your reports.
Whether it’s hitting a target number of organic sessions, ranking for priority keywords, or increasing revenue, you can define it as a goal.
Simply choose the metric you want to track and set your conditions.
Let’s say your goal is exceeding 100k sessions per month:
You just drag and drop that goal into your report to track it alongside your SEO performance:
And just like that, you can track your goal right next to your current performance.
Have Full Control of How Your Reports Look
AgencyAnalytics also lets you adjust the size and placement of each widget to fit your reporting style.
You can resize and rearrange your charts, tables, and graphs to fit your preferred style and showcase what’s most important to your audience.
This level of granularity lets you fully customize your SEO reports to make them visually appealing and easy to understand.
Give Clients Real-Time Access to SEO Dashboards
AgencyAnalytics also lets you create custom logins for your clients. This gives them real-time access to their SEO dashboards any time they need.
You can also adjust permissions for each user individually to control exactly what each client sees:
This gives clients a transparent view of their performance. And it cuts down on back-and-forth reporting requests.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Set and track specific SEO goals for clients
A bit of a learning curve
Schedule reports and track delivery history
Give clients real-time dashboard access with custom permissions
4. DashThis
Best for creating customizable SEO dashboards and helping clients understand what the data means
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month; 15-day free trial available
DashThis lets you create SEO reports fast, or fully customize them when you need more control.
In other words: it’s suitable for those that want a streamlined solution OR a highly tunable one.
You can also pull data from 30+ tools. These include the usuals like Google Analytics, Search Console, and Semrush. But also the likes of Google Ads, CallRail, and YouTube.
Here’s what I love about DashThis:
Build an SEO Report Your Way
DashThis gives you multiple widget types to build exactly the kind of SEO report you want.
Whether you’d like to craft a report quickly or need full control, DashThis gives you this flexibility:
For example:
You can drop in preset widgets that auto-populate common SEO key performance indicators (KPIs):
But if you need something specific, you can use custom widgets to pick your graph type, tweak the settings, and fully control how your data looks:
You can also use static widgets to add context or structure to your report.
For example, you can:
Add a custom header
Write comments
Upload a CSV to add more data to your report
Manually enter numbers
You can also use widget bundles to quickly add a group of related widgets at once.
For example, you can add a bundle of five related widgets that give you an overview of your image or organic search performance:
This makes it easy to quickly set up important reports.
Leave Notes in Your SEO Dashboards
DashThis lets you add notes right inside your dashboards. This way, you can explain what’s happening without sending a separate email to your client:
You can use notes to:
Call out key wins
Clarify sudden traffic drops
Guide your client through the data
Comments live right next to your charts. So clients can see your notes in context as they review their performance:
Add Formatted Insights
At the end of your report, you can drop in a rich text comment block.
Here, you can write your own notes, style the text, add images, and even structure sections with bullet points:
It’s perfect for:
Summarizing key takeaways
Highlighting recommendations
Making your report easier for clients to act on
Group Dashboards to Stay Organized
If you manage lots of SEO dashboards, you can organize them into groups. These work like folders for easier navigation.
For example, you could create a group for each client (e.g., “Client A — Monthly Reports”).
Or you could create them for different report types. Like “Local SEO” and “Ecommerce SEO.”
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
In-line notes and comment blocks to add insights and context for clients
Somewhat outdated overall design
White-label your reports
Plenty of flexibility
Ready to Choose Your SEO Reporting Tool?
The best SEO reporting tool for you really comes down to how much flexibility you need, and how quickly you want to get things done.
If you’re comfortable with a bit of setup, Looker Studio gives you endless customization.
But if you prioritize speed and being able to work with just one tool for many key SEO tasks, Semrush’s My Reports is the better option.
With Google’s introduction of its vision match feature, users can now describe a product they’re looking for, and AI will generate suggestions similar to that item.
The real kicker is that the product generated likely doesn’t exist.
The AI will create something that you want, show you the product, and then try to match the AI product with items from the real world.
It sounds like a streamlined, user-friendly shopping experience that could revolutionize online shopping yet again.
But does it actually enhance our shopping journey?
Are these AI-generated results truly more effective than the product results we get from traditional Google search?
What does this mean for advertisers?
To find out, I tested the feature myself, comparing vision match results with standard search results for a few product categories.
What I found may give you a new perspective on the role AI plays in online shopping.
Test 1: Vision match ‘suggested query’
To start, I choose one of vision match’s “suggested queries.”
Search query: “holographic platform boots with metallic highlights”
Vision match results
Sponsored shopping results
Free listing results
Interestingly, my AI-generated image results are more accurate than the “shop similar-looking product” results.
While the product recommendations included some metallic holographic platform boots, they also included a mix of non-metallic boots and even a prom dress.
So, what’s the point of the AI-generated images if they’re not actually helping me find the product I want but instead creating a fake version of it?
Wouldn’t it be more sensible to expand the “Shop Similar” section beyond six products and give us more real options?
What also stands out to me is the selection of retailers.
I’ve never heard of most of these retailers. Some results come from resale platforms like eBay and Poshmark.
And then there’s the cost difference. The average price of the AI-generated product recommendations?
A whopping $230, with some listings going as high as $954.
Meanwhile, the average price from a regular search? Just $75.
Looking at my shopping results, every product in the first carousel (and beyond) is a pair of holographic platform boots with metallic highlights and nothing else.
Now, I’m not planning on attending a disco party anytime soon, but if I were, I’d know where to go: Google Search.
Contender
Grade
Vision match
D+
Traditional search
A
Next, I tried a broader query, hoping for more accurate results.
Test 2: Non-specified search (statement piece)
Search query: “mens red button down shirt”
Vision match results
Sponsored shopping results
Free listing results
The first AI-generated image and product suggestions did show a red button-down shirt (though some may argue it’s an orange-red.)
From there, I got a mix of red button-downs, some with patterns and textures.
Overall, it wasn’t bad, but the price range was still all over the place.
I still find myself drawn to the traditional search results.
When I search for “men’s red button-down shirt,” I get exactly what I asked for.
No guesswork, no unnecessary variations.
Plus, I’m given valuable details upfront, like:
Discount percentages.
Customer ratings.
Product attribute callouts (“comfortable,” “easy to clean”).
These elements make the listings far more compelling and trustworthy, which incentives my click – unlike the AI-generated results, which feel more like a best guess than a true recommendation.
You’d expect that searching for a specific brand name would surface products primarily from that brand’s official website, right?
Not quite.
I ran this search multiple times just to be sure I wasn’t imagining things – and still, less than 3% of the results actually came from Nike’s own site.
Search query: “Nike sneakers”
Vision match results
Sponsored shopping results
Free listing results
Even worse, I was given additional irrelevant results – New Balance sneakers, socks, leggings, and blue polka dot blankets – definitely not Nike sneakers.
Sponsored shopping is a different story.
Since other major retailers carry Nike products, it makes sense to see them appear alongside Nike.
However, when looking at the free listings, all my results come from nike.com.
So, what does this mean for brands?
If Nike, one of the world’s largest retailers, is hardly featured in the vision match results, what does this mean for smaller brands?
Will they struggle even more to get visibility in vision match and possibly other future AI-generated product recommendations?
Contender
Grade
Vision match
D-
Traditional search
A+
Test 4: A trending search
For my final test, I wanted to see how AI would handle a fashion trend rather than a standard clothing item.
Trends come and go quickly, creating a high demand for a short period of time, unlike staple pieces like a “men’s red button-down shirt,” which remain relevant year after year.
This felt like an important test, given how fast fashion moves and how crucial it is for shopping tools to keep up with ever-changing styles.
Search query: “barrel jeans”
Vision match results
Sponsored shopping results
Free listing results
If you haven’t heard of the “barrel jean” trend, don’t worry; you’re not missing much in the vision match results because they’re completely wrong.
I only included three screenshots, but after scrolling through everything, I didn’t spot a single pair of actual barrel jeans.
Instead, I got jeans in every color and pattern imaginable, along with some random dress slacks.
Meanwhile, a simple Google Search gave me exactly what I was looking for: a variety of barrel jeans from well-known retailers available in different price ranges and washes.
It’s pretty clear that when it comes to keeping up with fashion trends, AI might be trending, but vision match still isn’t fashion-forward.
Contender
Grade
Vision match
F
Traditional search
A+
The final verdict
In my experience, while vision match offers an interesting new way to search for products, it still has a long way to go in terms of accuracy and relevance.
In each test, it struggled to provide precise matches for the products I was looking for, often offering unrelated items or a confusing mix of options.
On the other hand, traditional search results from Google gave me exactly what I wanted: clear product options, price ranges, and relevant details that helped me make an informed decision.
Let’s take a look at the final results of our test:
Contender
Grade
Vision match
D
Traditional search
A
I understand that these results are subjective, but anyone with search intent would agree that a D average is generous in this case.
So, what does this mean for advertisers?
As AI-generated results grow, advertisers must continue to adapt their strategies to ensure their products are accurately represented.
However, with limited control over what’s featured in vision match, this will be very difficult.
Given that the current vision match results seem subpar, users will likely still prefer the traditional search results, which continue to provide more accurate and relevant options.
While vision match has potential, its current limitations likely won’t sway many users away from the search results for now.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Google-Shopping-Vision-match-4R7LFC.png?fit=1208%2C689&ssl=16891208http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-08 13:00:002025-04-08 13:00:00Google vision match vs. traditional search: Early insights on AI shopping tool
Google announced it has refreshed and renamed the Search Console report now known as the Merchant opportunities report. Previously, this report was named the Search Console Shopping tab listings report, when it was introduced in November 2022.
The Merchant opportunities report within Google Search Console can show you recommendations for improving how your online shop appears on Google.
What Google said. Google posted on LinkedIn about this report saying:
“Today we’re refreshing the Search Console Shopping tab listings report to also include details about payments methods and store ratings. To bring the report name in line with its functionality, we’re renaming it to be the “Merchant opportunities report”.
Check it out and make sure to add important info about your store, so customers can see it when shopping on Google.”
The report. Here is a screenshot of this report:
As you can see, this report will tell you what you are missing when it comes to Google Merchant Center and your fields in that area. The help document goes on to explain:
Adding store information can improve the display of your products and help people when they’re shopping on Google. If you’ve created and associated your Merchant Center account under Merchant opportunities in Search Console, you’ll see suggested opportunities, including:
You can return to the report to see if your information is pending, approved, or flagged for issues that need fixing.
Why we care. If you sell product on your site, this is a report you want to make sure to review and see what opportunities you are missing with your e-commerce site setup. You can then plug those items and hopefully get more exposure within Google Search, Shopping and even local results.
Google is crediting its AI advancement, such as Gemini, to help detect and remove fake reviews and listings within Google Maps. “AI has been a pivotal tool in helping us stop scammers in their tracks, and we’re now using it to scale our protections even more,” Google wrote.
The metrics. Google shared these metrics for its battle over Google Maps spam:
Google blocked or removed more than 240 million policy-violating from 2024. Google added that “the vast majority of which were removed before they were seen.”
Google blocked or removed more than 70 million policy-violating edits to places on Google Maps.
Google removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles.
Google placed posting restrictions on more than 900,000 accounts that repeatedly violated our policies.
When you compare the metrics to last year’s report, Google removed about 40% more policy-violating reviews.
Disabling reviews. Google also spoke about its newish feature to disable the ability to post reviews on some business profiles. The notice says “Posting reviews is turned off for this place” and was actually launched in December 2023, from what I can tell. But Google seems to be mentioning it now.
Google said it “rolled out alerts in the U.S., U.K. and India to let you know if we’ve recently removed suspicious five-star reviews in certain circumstances. These warnings — which will expand globally starting next month — help you understand quickly if a place may be engaging in unfair review practices.”
Here is what it looks like:
Crediting Gemini. Google said:
“AI has been a pivotal tool in helping us stop scammers in their tracks, and we’re now using it to scale our protections even more. Last year, we removed over 10,000 listings managed by a group of bad actors who impersonated real locksmiths to take over unclaimed Business Profiles and overcharge unsuspecting customers. Beyond removing the fraudulent content, we filed a lawsuit against the bad actors and are actively applying what we learned to enhance our detection systems.”
“This new model has already helped us block thousands of suspicious Business Profile edits this year,” Google added.
Why we care. If you are in the local SEO space, none of this is probably new to you. You’ve all seen the swarm of complaints about business edits placing a business in a suspension, reviews not being able to be added to a business profile, listings confusion and so much more.
Much of this is likely associated with Google’s new methods to detect and fight spam on Google Maps. Some of these changes may be a bit overzealous but Google has a tough job with fighting spam on Google Maps.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/google-reviews-places-scaled-KLXTzd.jpeg?fit=2019%2C2048&ssl=120482019http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-07 13:00:002025-04-07 13:00:00Google credits Gemini for better detection of fake business reviews and maps spam
With customers now discovering content across traditional search engines, LLMs, social media, and beyond, the need for an integrated, omnichannel strategy is more important than ever.
Relying on isolated channel strategies no longer works.
Customers engage with brands across multiple touchpoints before making decisions, and they expect seamless, personalized experiences.
An effective omnichannel approach aligns all marketing efforts – ensuring consistency, maximizing visibility, and driving meaningful interactions.
As omnichannel marketing continues to evolve, integrating SEO across all channels is essential for sustained growth.
This article explores why a unified strategy is critical and how SEO can work across channels to enhance the customer journey and drive results.
Why an omnichannel approach to SEO is critical in 2025
Here are seven trends that make an omnichannel approach vital to business success and growth.
1. The shift away from third-party cookies
The decline of third-party cookies has made it harder for brands to track users across the buyer journey.
An omnichannel approach to data collection and centralization helps mitigate these challenges and lays the foundation for an effective strategy.
2. Growth of LLMs and AI-powered search
The growth of alternate avenues for audiences to find information adds to the complexity of the buyer’s journey.
This presents additional attribution challenges.
3. Zero-click searches and decreasing top-funnel traffic
Due to the rise in zero-click searches,traffic to websites from top-of-the-funnel information-seeking terms is declining.
4. Importance of SEO
Despite the growth in zero-click searches, SEO remains the primary source of traffic for most businesses and the channel with the highest long-term ROI.
AI Overviews and AI-generated results mainly pull information from the top organic results.
5. Search is multi-modal
This means written content is not the only content you need to optimize.
Personalization is key to customer engagement. Up to 71% of consumers expect it, while 76% find generic content frustrating, per a McKinsey study.
Businesses that prioritize personalized marketing can see up to a 40% increase in revenue.
An omnichannel approach ensures marketers focus on customer intent rather than marketing channels.
7. Unified customer experience with agent economy
The growth of artificial intelligence has resulted in the emergence of an agent economy, where AI agents are beginning to revolutionize marketing and digital experiences.
They can easily connect dots across multiple channels to deliver a unified customer experience.
Tackling the visibility dilemma in customer journeys
With all the changes in the industry, consumer behavior, and technological advancements, we need to answer important questions that marketers are confused about.
How can you learn about audience intent even when they do not visit the site after a search?
How do you gather data on your audience’s behavior after they leave your site if they do not convert during their first visit?
How can you develop effective SEO, paid, zero-click, and content strategies with limited visibility into the customer journey and insights into customer intent and personas?
How can you provide personalized experiences without third-party data, limited traffic, and visibility into your customers’ journeys?
This is where an omnichannel approach can help businesses enhance visibility, drive meaningful interactions, and create a seamless path to conversion.
Building blocks of an omnichannel strategy
A true omnichannel strategy is no longer limited to traditional marketing channels like SEO, paid, email, social media, etc.
Today, it is about delivering a unified experience at every stage in the customer journey at every touchpoint.
It includes effectively using channel-agnostic strategies and tactics, such as personalization, AI agents, conversion optimization, A-B testing, and co-optimization.
Here are five building blocks for creating an omnichannel strategy that truly engages your audiences consistently across touchpoints in an AI-powered world.
Reliable data
Ensure you have the necessary infrastructure to gather and segment customer data accurately.
Having a digital asset manager that lets you centralize, optimize, and distribute all your digital assets across marketing channels is key to ensuring consistency and reducing duplication.
Search-friendly infrastructure and content management system are crucial for effectively crawling and indexing your content, and delivering an engaging, personalized experience to your visitors.
9 steps to integrating SEO into an omnichannel customer journey
You can start developing your omnichannel strategy while closing any gaps you have identified in the building blocks.
Step 1: Audience and intent mapping
Start with your audience and intent. Identifying target audience personas and their intent is the first step in audience mapping. It is important to review:
Content performance: Evaluate performance of page types or templates to understand gaps in content strategy (e.g., category pages vs. product details pages vs. location pages vs. blog content).
Search engagement insights: Search console data can help identify high-intent terms with low click-through rates. This information can inform zero-click and CTR optimization strategies.
Channel overlaps: Identifying how visitors overlap across channels is key to crafting an integrated and unified experience. For example, paid and organic channels must work together to saturate the full funnel and maximize ROI from both channels.
Conversion optimization: Content with high engagement can provide insights into visitor intent. This can help define A-B tests, UI/UX enhancements, and personalization strategies.
Step 2: Define clear strategic goals
The next step is to have clear and smart goals that you want your omnichannel strategy to achieve:
Set specific, measurable business objectives (revenue growth, customer retention, growing market share, etc.)
Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for channel-specific and overall performance. For example, if the goal is to improve visibility, the primary KPIs should be around impressions, clicks and rich results visibility. Traffic or conversions can be secondary KPIs but should not be the primary success criteria.
Create baseline metrics to measure improvement against current performance.
Develop a measurement framework that accounts for cross-channel attribution challenges.
Step 3: Map the customer journey across all touchpoints
Traditional funnel is changing rapidly.
Brands should be ready to respond to customers across all touchpoints fast and with quality.
Develop a comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with your brand:
Create detailed personas representing your target audience segments.
Identify patterns in cross-channel journeys using path analysis in analytics and create common use cases.
Aggregate and centralize data across customer touchpoints (website analytics, CRM, sales data, app usage, etc.)
Segment customers based on behavioral patterns rather than just demographics.
Quantify the value/attribution as a combination of different journey paths and touchpoints.
Measure channel preference and effectiveness across different customer segments.
Step 4: Omnichannel audit
Based on your goals and journey maps, evaluate your current channel gaps and capabilities:
SEO audit: Analyze search visibility metrics, technical health scores, and overall SEO performance.
Content audit: Measure content performance data, topical and entity coverage, competitive gaps, engagement rates, conversion impact, and cross-channel content effectiveness.
Local presence assessment: Evaluate local search visibility metrics and location-specific engagement.
Experience audit: Analyze drop-off points and measure cross-channel friction.
Data and technology assessment: Evaluate data collection and measurement framework to optimize your data infrastructure.
Full-funnel audit: Learn from your visitors. Past visitor data can provide meaningful insights into audience segments, what visitors engage with, and where they drop off in the conversion funnel. This can help identify opportunities for co-optimization, A-B tests and delivering personalized experiences across channels.
Step 5: Develop your integrated channel strategy
Here, focus on aligning your channels to ensure they work together seamlessly and support your overall business goals.
Prioritize channels according to attribution data and customer value metrics.
Leverage machine learning and predictive analytics to forecast the impact of each channel.
Use predictive analytics to determine the optimal channel mix.
Set channel-specific targets that ladder up to overall business objectives.
Create frameworks for continuously testing and validating channel effectiveness.
Define how channels will complement and support each other across the customer journey.
Step 6: Content orchestration strategy
While a content strategy focuses on what content is needed, a content orchestration strategy also encompasses distribution frameworks that enhance audience interaction with your content.
Friction analysis
Analyze how your audience engages with your content to identify friction points. This process helps you identify, rectify, and optimize:
Inconsistencies.
Intent misalignments.
Delivery mechanisms (text, images, video, etc.).
Content intelligence
Assess the performance of your existing content across various channels and identify competitive gaps and opportunities based on audience personas and business goals.
Here are a few steps to evaluate content gaps and refine your strategy:
Identify underperforming content for optimization.
Spot gaps in content that need to be addressed across channels and stages of the customer journey.
Recognize cross-linking opportunities to create content hubs.
Prioritize new content to close competitive gaps and achieve business goals.
Cross-channel content strategy
After identifying friction points and content gaps, develop a tailored content strategy for each channel, prioritizing based on business goals:
Broader informational content to enhance awareness during the discovery stage of the customer journey (e.g., social media, blog content).
Comparison content for the consideration stage (e.g., product pages).
Landing pages focused on specific buying-intent terms during the conversion stage.
Content optimization
Optimizing content extends beyond targeting the right keywords. Your content optimization strategy should include:
Closing topical gaps in content that create friction.
Developing an entity optimization strategy to maximize content discoverability.
Implementing a click-through rate (CTR) strategy to enhance traffic from discovered content.
Optimizing visual content.
Establishing an engagement and conversion optimization strategy that includes personalization, calls to action optimization, A/B testing, messaging strategies, UI/UX optimization, and conversion rate optimization (CRO).
To give your content the best chance of being crawled, indexed, understood, and featured in search results for the right terms, focus on the following:
Fix technical SEO issues related to crawling, indexing, and user experience.
Ensure mobile optimization across all digital properties.
Deploy nested schema markup to enhance search visibility.
Improve page speed for all web properties and optimize Core Web Vitals.
Prioritize web accessibility by following ADA and WCAG guidelines to enhance user experience and search visibility.
Step 8: Engagement and conversion optimization
Utilize unified customer data to enhance user engagement and drive conversions:
Deliver personalized content at scale for each audience segment in real time. Personalization strategies can be based on various factors such as marketing channel or campaign, visitor location, search intent, and past behavior.
Identify and deploy AI agents that assist audiences in quickly finding information, engaging in meaningful interactions, and making real-time decisions.
Develop remarketing strategies informed by visitor behavior.
Implement A/B testing across channels, ensuring consistent test and control groups.
Measure performance across channels and optimize based on business goals and success KPIs.
Step 9: Continuously test, measure, learn, and optimize
Refine your strategy through ongoing testing and data-driven adjustments to improve performance across all channels.
Monitor performance metrics across all channels. Establish BI dashboards that connect and integrate data across channels.
Implement attribution models that effectively account for complex customer journeys.
Regularly test new channel integrations and enhancements to the customer journey.
Gather feedback from customers regarding their cross-channel experiences.
Refine your strategy based on evolving search engine algorithms and changing customer behavior.
SEO’s role in delivering a unified, cross-channel experience
Integrating SEO into the omnichannel customer journey isn’t simply for improving search presence.
Ultimately, it’s about creating discoverable, unified, and personalized experiences that guide customers naturally toward conversion.
By implementing this nine-step framework, you can:
Break down departmental silos.
Align cross-functional teams around customer needs.
Build truly seamless engagement models that drive sustainable growth.
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But many sites would benefit from looking one level up – to indexing.
Why?
Because your content can’t compete until it’s indexed.
Whether the selection system is ranking or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), your content won’t matter unless it’s indexed.
The same goes for where it appears – traditional SERPs, AI-generated SERPs, Discover, Shopping, News, Gemini, ChatGPT, or whatever AI agents come next.
Without indexing, there’s no visibility, no clicks, and no impact.
And indexing issues are, unfortunately, very common.
Based on my experience working with hundreds of enterprise-level sites, an average of 9% of valuable deep content pages (products, articles, listings, etc.) fail to get indexed by Google and Bing.
So, how do you ensure your deep content gets indexed?
Follow these nine proven steps to accelerate the process and maximize your site’s visibility.
Step 1: Audit your content for indexing issues
In Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, submit a separate sitemap for each page type:
One for products.
One for articles.
One for videos.
And so on.
After submitting a sitemap, it may take a few days to appear in the Pages interface.
Use this interface to filter and analyze how much of your content has been excluded from indexing and, more importantly, the specific reasons why.
All indexing issues fall into three main categories:
Poor SEO directives
These issues stem from technical missteps, such as:
Step 6: Strengthen internal linking to boost indexing signals
The primary way most indexers discover content is through links.
URLs with stronger link signals are prioritized higher in the crawl queue and carry more indexing power.
While external links are valuable, internal linking is the real game-changer for indexing large sites with thousands of deep content pages.
Your related content blocks, pagination, breadcrumbs, and especially the links displayed on your homepage are prime optimization points for Googlebot and Bingbot.
When it comes to the homepage, you can’t link every deep content page – but you don’t need to.
Focus on those that are not yet indexed. Here’s how:
When a new URL is published, check it against the log files.
If the response is “URL is unknown to Google,” “Crawled, not indexed,” or “Discovered, not indexed,” add the URL to a dedicated feed that populates a section on your homepage.
Re-check the URL periodically. Once indexed, remove it from the homepage feed to maintain relevance and focus on other non-indexed content.
This effectively creates a real-time RSS feed of non-indexed content linked from the homepage, leveraging its authority to accelerate indexing.
Step 7: Block non-SEO relevant URLs from crawlers
Audit your log files regularly and block high-crawl, no-value URL paths using a robots.txt disallow.
Pages such as faceted navigation, search result pages, tracking parameters, and other irrelevant content can:
Distract crawlers.
Create duplicate content.
Split ranking signals.
Ultimately downgrade the indexer’s view of your site quality.
However, a robots.txt disallow alone is not enough.
If these pages have internal links, traffic, or other ranking signals, indexers may still index them.
To prevent this:
In addition to disallowing the route in robots.txt, apply rel=”nofollow” to all possible links pointing to these pages.
Ensure this is done not only on-site but also in transactional emails and other communication channels to prevent indexers from ever discovering the URL.
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Are you tired of your social media efforts not achieving the results you hoped for? It might be time to scale up your social media optimization efforts. Your content might be good, but you could do various enhancements to make it stand out. For instance, your content needs proper metadata for X, Facebook, and the like to appear properly on each platform. Yoast SEO can help you do this quickly.
Sharing your freshly written (or optimized) content on social media is important. It helps you stay in touch with your audience and update them on news about your business and related topics. But to get their attention, you need to optimize your social media posts before you share them.
In this article, we’ll explain how you can optimize your posts for Facebook and X, and how our plugin can help you with that! Lastly, we’ll briefly discuss Pinterest and the use of Rich Pins.
What is social media optimization?
Social media optimization is about improving how you use social media platforms to build your online presence. You do this not only by creating and sharing content for every platform you’d like to be active on but also by optimizing that content in such a way that you get traffic to your site. The goal is to build strong connections with your audience and to keep them engaged.
Social media optimization starts with well-optimized, highly relevant content that grabs attention. For most platforms, images and video are best suited for this. You can test various formats and ideas to see what your audience prefers. You can use any of the social media analytics tools to do this. Also, find the best times to publish your content to get the best engagement. Your posts should also have metadata for specific platforms like X Cards or OpenGraph for Facebook to help these platforms understand your content.
After posting, remember to engage with your audience. Respond to comments, participate in discussions, and listen to what people say about you and your content. Track your best-performing posts and use data to improve your content to stay relevant and engaging.
Promoting your content on various platforms makes sense in most cases. Remember to share your articles, videos, and other content on whatever social media network makes sense for you and your audience. Read this article if you don’t know where to begin with your social media strategy.
Facebook and other social media
Years ago, Facebook introduced OpenGraph to determine which elements of your page you want to show when someone shares that page. Several social networks and search engines use Facebook’s OpenGraph, but the main reason for adding it is for Facebook itself. Facebook’s OpenGraph support is continuously evolving, but the basics are simple. With a few pieces of metadata, you declare:
What’s the name of the site and the title of the page?
What’s the page about?
Which image/images should be shown when this post or page is shared on Facebook?
Social media preview in Yoast SEO
When you use Yoast SEO, most of the values above are filled out automatically based on your post’s data. It uses the locale of your site, the site’s name, SEO title, the canonical, the meta description value, etc, to fill out most of the required OpenGraph tags. You can see what your post will look like when you click on ‘Social media appearance’ in the Yoast SEO sidebar:
You’ll notice the Social media appearance button in the sidebar opening the modal for the feature
This preview tab allows you to edit how your Facebook post is shown when shared. Our plugin lets you change your social image, title, and description in your preview. This makes your social media optimization much quicker and easier, as you won’t have to leave your post to make these changes.
Make more impact on social media with Yoast SEO Premium!
Get Yoast SEO Premium today and make it quick and easy to manage how your social media snippets look.
If you use the options for social media optimization in Yoast SEO, your Facebook post could look like this when you share the URL of a post or page:
Example of a Facebook post as seen on Yoast’s profile
So what do you need to do?
First, go to Yoast SEO → Settings → Site representation, and fill in your social media accounts.
Afterward, go to Yoast SEO → Settings → Social sharing, and make sure OpenGraph is enabled.
Then, set a good default image under the site basics settings. This image is used when you have a post or page that does not contain an image. It’s important to set this image to ensure that every post or page has an image when shared. Facebook is forgiving when uploading images, but 1200px by 630px should work well.
You can complete all of these steps in a few minutes. After that, Yoast SEO takes all of the work out of your hands. However, it is important to remember that Facebook sometimes doesn’t immediately pick up changes. So, if you want to “debug” how Facebook perceives your page, enter your URL in the Facebook Sharing Debugger and click the Debug button. If the preview that you see there isn’t the latest version, you can try the Scrape again button. But remember that it can take a while for Facebook to see your changes.
OpenGraph for Video Content
If you have video content, you must do more work unless you use our Video SEO plugin. This plugin handles all the needed metadata and lets you share your videos on Facebook.
X
X’s functionality is quite similar to Facebook’s. The name of this functionality is X Cards. X “falls back” on Facebook OpenGraph for several of these values, so we don’t have to include everything. But it still is quite a bit. We’re talking about:
the type of content/type of card
an image
a description
the X account of the site/publisher
the X account of the author
the “name” for the domain to show in an X card
X preview in Yoast SEO
As you might have seen in Yoast SEO, optimizing your X listings is also an option. Simply click that tab to preview how your page appears when it gets shared to X. By default, the plugin uses the title, description and image you enter in the search appearance preview. Of course, this tab allows you to change these for your Twitter post.
Here’s an example of what your post could look like with all the required metadata our plugin helps you add:
An example of a post on Yoast’s X profile
So what do you need to do?
Ensure X card metadata is enabled by going to Yoast SEO → Settings → Site features → Social sharing and activating the X feature. This leaves a couple of values for you to fill out in the settings, which you can do using this guide on activating X Cards in Yoast SEO.
Use templates for social media snippets
Do you spend a lot of time tweaking the preview appearance of each page or post? You’ll be glad to know that Yoast SEO Premium also offers a very helpful feature: the ability to set default templates for your social snippets. With this powerful feature, you can design the ideal social appearance for all your content and feel certain that the output will always look great to whoever is sharing it.
Use variables to set up templates to optimize your social media postings
What about Pinterest?
Pinterest’s Rich Pins allow for OpenGraph markup as well. Add variables like product name, availability, price, and currency to your page to create a rich pin. As this is mainly interesting for products, we decided to add functionalities to create rich pins to our Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin.
So, go ahead and use Yoast SEO to optimize your social media. It isn’t very hard; it just takes a few minutes of your time, and you will reap the rewards immediately. As these social networks add new features, we’ll keep our plugin and this article up-to-date. So, be sure to update the Yoast SEO plugin regularly.
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Pagination is the coding and technical framework on webpages that allows content to be divided across multiple pages while remaining thematically connected to the original parent page.
When a single page contains too much content to load efficiently, pagination helps by breaking it into smaller sections.
This improves user experience and unburdens the client (i.e., web browser) from loading too much information – much of which may not even be reviewed by the user.
Examples of pagination in action
Product listings
One common example of pagination is navigating multiple pages of product results within a single product feed or category.
Let’s look at Virgin Experience Days, a site that sells gifted experiences similar to Red Letter Days.
In the URL, ?page=2 appears as a parameter extension, a common pagination syntax.
Variations include ?p=2 or /page/2/, but the purpose remains the same – allowing users to browse additional pages of listings.
Even major retailers like Amazon use similar pagination structures.
Pagination also helps search engines discover deeply nested products.
If a site is so large that all its products can’t be listed in a single XML sitemap, pagination links provide an additional way for crawlers to access them.
Even when XML sitemaps are in place, internal linking remains important for SEO.
While pagination links aren’t the strongest ranking signal, they serve a foundational role in ensuring content is discoverable.
Why pagination is still important in 2025: The infinite scroll debate
Alternate methods for browsing large amounts of content have emerged over the past couple of decades.
“View more” or “Load more” buttons often appear under comment streams, while infinite scroll or lazy-loaded feeds are common for posts and products.
Some argue these features are more user-friendly.
Originally pioneered by social networks such as Twitter (now X), this form of navigation helped boost social interactions.
Some websites have adopted it, but why isn’t it more widespread?
From an SEO perspective, the issue is that search engine crawlers interact with webpages in a limited way.
While headless browsers may sometimes execute JavaScript-based content during a page load, search crawlers typically don’t “scroll down” to trigger new content.
A search engine bot certainly won’t scroll indefinitely to load everything.
As a result, websites relying solely on infinite scroll or lazy loading risk orphaning articles, products, and comments over time.
For major news brands with strong SEO authority and extensive XML sitemaps, this may not be a concern.
The trade-off between SEO and user experience may be acceptable.
But for most websites, implementing these technologies is likely a bad idea.
Search crawlers may not spend time scrolling through content feeds, but they will click hyperlinks – including pagination links.
How JavaScript can interfere with pagination
Even if your site doesn’t use infinite scroll plugins, JavaScript can still interfere with pagination.
Since July 2024, Google has at least attempted to render JavaScript for all visited pages.
However, details on this remain vague.
Does Google render all pages, including JavaScript, at the time of the crawl?
Or is execution deferred to a separate processing queue?
How does this affect Google’s ranking algorithms?
Does Google make initial determinations before executing JavaScript weeks later?
There are no definitive answers to these questions.
If Google’s effort to execute JavaScript for all crawled pages is progressing well – which seems unlikely given the potential efficiency drawbacks – why are so many sites reverting to a non-dynamic state?
This doesn’t mean JavaScript use is disappearing.
Instead, more sites may be shifting to server-side or edge-side rendering.
If your site uses traditional pagination but JavaScript interferes with pagination links, it can still lead to crawling issues.
For example, your site might use traditional pagination links, but the main content of your page is lazy-loaded.
In turn, the pagination links only appear when a user (or bot) scrolls the page.
How to handle indexing and canonical tags for paginated URLs
SEO professionals often recommend using canonical tags to point paginated URLs to their parent pages, marking them as non-canonical.
This practice was especially common before Google introduced rel=prev/next.
Since Google deprecated rel=prev/next, many SEOs remain uncertain about the best way to handle pagination URLs.
Avoid blocking paginated content via robots.txt or with canonical tags.
Doing so prevents Google from crawling or indexing those pages.
In the case of news posts, certain comment exchanges might be considered valuable by Google, potentially connecting a paginated version of an article with keywords that wouldn’t otherwise be associated with it.
This can generate free traffic – something worth keeping in 2025.
Similarly, restricting the crawling and indexing of paginated product feeds could leave some products effectively soft-orphaned.
In SEO, there’s a tendency to chase perfection and aim for complete crawl control.
But being overly aggressive here can do more harm than good, so tread carefully.
There are cases where it makes sense to de-canonicalize or limit the crawling of paginated URLs.
Before taking that step, make sure you have data showing that crawl-efficiency issues outweigh the potential free traffic gains.
If you don’t have that data, don’t block the URLs. Simple!
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