Ahrefs’ Digest #211: Affiliate publication drops, how to be a thought leader, and more

Welcome to a new edition of the Ahrefs’ Digest.

Here’s our meme of the week:

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Quick search marketing news

• Google has updated its site reputation abuse policy. 

• Google Search Console drops the Page Experience report.

• Google fully rolls out Search Console Recommendations.

• Google updates search documentation to clarify how both page-level and site-wide signals influence ranking in search results.

• The US DOJ has filed for Google to sell Chrome.

• Perplexity launches AI-powered Shopping Search.

• OpenAI is considering taking on Google with a browser.

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Best of the week

Who’s Winning Off The Back Of The Affiliate Publication Drops?: Google slammed major affiliate publishers like WSJ and CNN, tanking their visibility. They lost $4M/month in traffic value on average. Who won in the end? No prizes for guessing: Reddit. (Bankrate and Amazon too). By the way, Aleyda Solis also ran a similar study here.

Under Google’s Blind Eye, A Growing Parasite Ecosystem is Flourishing: Another crazy story that builds on Lars Lofgren’s previous discovery about Forbes Marketplace. 

How to Become a Thought Leader in Just 6 Incredibly Difficult Steps: Our Director of Content Marketing, Ryan Law, is a thought leader. (He admitted it.) But it’s cringe (even for him) to type those words. The benefits don’t lie though, at least for his career and for the companies he works for. Learn how you can become a thought leader like him too in this article.

Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated: Being in digital marketing is learning, on a daily basis, how our lives are a lie.

SEO for (Busy) Founders: This is a one-page primer on SEO for busy founders who want to learn more.

[LinkedIn] Google Assigns Almost All Queries Into 1 of 8 "rq_semantic_query_class" (rq = Refined Query): Interesting discovery by Mark Williams-Cook.

Is Your PPC Strategy Sabotaging Your SEO? 2.3M Keyword Study: 37.9% of websites already rank in the top 10 organically for the same keyword they’re advertising for. This indicates that a significant portion of businesses are paying for ads when they already have visibility for that term.

See you next week,
Si Quan

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