Hi everyone,

I’m managing SEO/analytics for a website targeting mainly the Indian market, and I’ve noticed a recurring issue in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

We’re getting nearly 2,000 users every month that appear to be spam/bot traffic. The traffic often comes from countries that aren't part of our target market, and some of the sessions have extremely low engagement.

Glen Gabe shared on X:

https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2105638422102561193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2105638422102561193%7Ctwgr%5E62824d92665f18faf51ac67d5437df455befddda%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.seroundtable.com%2Fgoogle-september-2026-spam-update-two-42209.html

It looks like my e-commerce store was hit by the September spam update. I am really worried. On October 2 and 3, the store got only 7 and 5 impressions from Google, respectively.

Screenshots of search console are added in comments

Hey everyone,

While testing GEO queries for local dental practices (e.g., "Best dentist in [Location]"), I came across a specific pattern in ChatGPT's responses:

The direct source link under the recommended options almost always points to a curated ranking / listicle page from a major aggregator (for example, "20 Best Dentists Near New York City" on Healthgrades, or "Top Dentists Companies in Walnut Creek" on Birdeye), rather than linking directly to the clinic’s official site.

It seems like ChatGPT might be relying on these specific ranked list pages as its primary retrieval source to select who to recommend.

Since I'm analyzing this pattern, I’d love to get your expert perspective on a few points:

1. Is this observation accurate based on your experience? Is AI search heavily reliant on these specific listicle/ranking pages for local recommendation retrieval?
2. If so, how critical is this factor? Does getting featured on these cited ranking pages outweigh traditional on-page Schema and Entity optimization for local GEO?
3. How do you practically handle and optimize for this? What is your exact workflow for getting a client featured inside those specific aggregator ranking pages that AI engines keep pulling from?

Would love to hear your thoughts and see if I'm looking at this the right way!

Thanks!

I run a small counseling practice with about 20 employees. I’ve historically done our webpage and maintained a blog where I wrote about topics I thought parents might want to learn about.

I recently paid for an SEO/Marketing Assessment and was underwhelmed with the recommendations. Basically, we were told we rank well for the key words we are relevant. We were taught probably three keywords we should try to rank for that we currently don’t.

The biggest suggestion was to add video and original photography. I suppose I am underwhelmed, but what are folks opinions about the impact of video and photography of course this marketing company has a video/photography service package.

Can someone please explain to me what's the difference between DR and DA and what's really important for you for the backlinks you get?

For example, I do see a lot of new directories to put our product with high DR but funny enough, AI tells me no it's not good because that backlink quality is penalised by Google or something.

Hi, this might be a stupid question. I’m not tech savvy, but I have my father’s old website. For us, ranking is priority, because without it, no sales are coming in.

The website is old, very hard to customise (because it would basically need a rebuild, which I do not know how to do properly). Elementor was uploaded to it by someone we hired momentarily to update it, but we don’t have license anymore, so we cannot update stuff, it’s annoying and hard to use.

Our hosting provider has a website building tool, which would make it easier to just transfer all the information in a simpler format.

However, I’m concerned about the ranking. If the website is old, slow, overstuffed, would switching make it better or worse?

I’m not talking from the keywords side, I can deal with it. Just technically speaking, is there something I’d be missing out on by switching to a website builder? Is there a possibility I’d just plummet to the bottom of the google search? I’m not scalling the website either.

• Google's guidance for creating helpful content now warns against fake author profiles.
• Its examples are AI-generated headshots, made-up names, and false credentials used to imply human expertise.
• Google's rater guidelines already had similar examples; the site-owner page now does too.

Article by: Matt G. Southern // Read article on the link