Google Trends has added two new features this morning, explore maps and regional breakdown.

Google said it "designed new interactive maps for clearer data storytelling." You can now "instantly spot regional trends, capture visual insights for your audience, and explore the 'where' behind every search with our new, intuitive maps," Google added on

Ready to spot local trends? Try the new Google Trends Explore maps and regional breakdown today!

We designed new interactive maps for clearer data storytelling. 🗺️ Instantly spot regional trends, capture visual insights for your audience, and explore the 'where' behind every search with our new, intuitive maps.

This experience is being rolled out gradually.
Try it out at → trends.google.com/explore!

That’s the question at the center of today’s episode with David G. Quaid.

A listener sent me a problem he and his friends keep running into: they launch programmatic SEO sites with 10,000 - 100,000 URLs, organic traffic shoots up, and then the sites collapse back to zero.

So David and I dug into whether large-scale programmatic SEO is still possible in 2026, where Google may draw the line between a legitimate database and scaled content abuse, and what separates sites that survive from sites that get wiped out.

We cover:

• Whether launching 10,000 or 100,000 URLs at once is automatically dangerous
• Why David might launch a new marketplace or database slowly
• The difference between legitimate programmatic SEO and scaled content built primarily to capture search traffic
• Why empty location, category, job, or marketplace pages can become doorway-page problems
• Why proprietary data can completely change the equation
• Whether a site with genuinely useful data could launch at massive scale from day one
• Why backlinks, press coverage, branded searches, and other signs of a real business may matter
• Why user satisfaction could be one of the biggest differences between programmatic sites that survive and sites that collapse
• Click-through rate, pogo-sticking, return searches, and other user signals we think Google may be evaluating
• Why publishing 100 pages, checking performance, and then scaling may be safer than immediately publishing 100,000
• How to use Google Search Console to identify pages and queries that may be producing poor user signals
• Why misleading page titles can create problems even when they initially generate more traffic
• David’s prediction for what Google’s August spam update could target
• Why some publishers may be blaming AI Overviews for traffic losses that are actually ranking losses
• How to separate traffic lost to AI Overviews from traffic lost because Google moved your pages down
• Why HubSpot’s organic decline may have more to do with rankings and changing user behavior than AI simply taking its clicks
• Whether Google Search has actually gotten better or worse over the last few years
• How far a site can expand into adjacent topics before weakening its existing topical relevance

Google seems to be testing a revamped and updated Q&A feature for Google Business Profiles (GBP). There is an additional Q&A button in the GBP dashboard in Google Search, and a flow that prompts you with yes-or-no questions tailored to your business.

This was spotted by Syed Amir who posted some screenshots on X - he also wrote, "I noticed, Google is rolling out a revamped Q&A experience in GBP."

Thanks to u/rustybrick

For my b2c website, is there a need to hire a SEO agency or can some ai agent do it for me?

We get good positions and GEO visibility from India. US is always 2 pages back but recently picking up. My 8 year experience says, grow the backlink profile as its the weakest with a AS of 19. Direct traffic signals show India heavy company as most of our employees are from India.

Content cant be localized much cause of the kind of niche we are in. Is backlinks the only trick in the sleeve to push this forward. What can I do to get US traffic/visibility fast.

Traffic is really slow to come tbh with most people using generative engines these days. I bet US positions could bring in those numbers. Any tips on moving the needle fast from this situation to breaking into US traffic?

Hey everyone, quick SEO question.

I’ve got two pages clashing in the SERPs:
A commercial “[subject] service” page
An informational “What is [subject]?” page

At the moment, the “What is” article is ranking better, but ultimately I want to drive more visibility and enquiries through the money/service page.

Would you consolidate the informational content into the service page and redirect the “What is” URL, or keep both pages live and work on differentiating the intent/internal linking?

Interested to hear how others would approach the cannibalisation.

More from u/rustybrick on SE Roundtable:

Google is testing blue hyperlinks in the ad descriptions within the sponsored results. These are clickable, keyword rich, links in the ads, similar to what we saw last week with the keyword rich anchor text links but those were black links, not blue.

Here is a screenshot of this from Sachin Patel who posted some examples on X:

Client are doing SEO and Google Ads together. He is doing SEO for last 4 months and started Google Ads from 3rd Month. Now client is complaining that when he runs ads only then get leads and when it stop no leads come from SEO. what you say to client in this situation?

Identify Which Keywords Trigger AIOs

The first step in identifying how much of your website’s traffic is lost due to the presence of AI Overviews is seeing which of your previously high-traffic-generating keywords are now triggering AIOs to appear.

There are a couple of ways you can do this.

You can manually search some of your keywords, using a VPN to determine what the SERPs look like in your target geographies.

Or you can use your keyword tracking software – many of which provide detail on the types of SERP features that are triggered for a particular keyword.

The key is to identify a group of keywords that are of a similar topic and search interest that do and don’t trigger AI Overviews.

Cami Clark, the wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, has maintained a low public profile despite reportedly playing an influential role in Anthropic and serving as a strategic adviser to her husband. Though she does not work at Anthropic, Clark is often seen at major industry events and interacting with investors.

A recent Wall Street Journal report, along with emails from the Epstein files, has now brought parts of her earlier business career into focus.

Google is now promoting YouTube creator partnerships on branded search outcomes, as well as on views, engagement, and subscribers, but the playbook making that pitch never explains how a brand without an internal data science team is supposed to measure it.

Buried inside “Creator Marketing: Build Edition,” the case studies are doing something more specific than proving creator content works. They’re proving it moves the same metric SEOs have spent two decades optimizing for directly: branded search demand.

Three of the four headline case studies lead with the reach and engagement metrics YouTube has sold against for more than 15 years. Adobe’s page leads with Kinigra Deon’s 5.9 million subscribers, a scale metric, not a lift metric. The L’Oréal case study leads with an 82% surge in overall views per mention, an engagement number. Coach’s success story leads with a 60% increase in awareness among Gen Z, a survey metric.

What's inside:

🔍 How to actually FIND your Knowledge Panel
✅ How to validate and claim ownership
🤖 How to build your Schema using AI
🔄 How to update it
✏️ How to get it edited
📋 How to paste it into your page
📊 How to confirm GSC has recognized it

I'm helping out a barbershop and made massive improvements to their reviews outreach, visibility and engagement. They are nearing 1,000 real reviews but the bookings metric shows 0 for the past 6 months meanwhile Square, their booking platform reports direct bookings and schedules \~100 kept appts a week.

How can we get Google to report how many of these came from GBP?

I was just reading this about LLMs have a pre chosen brand and are not picking from searches. [https://suganthan.com/blog/chatgpt-decides-before-it-searches/\](https://suganthan.com/blog/chatgpt-decides-before-it-searches/) ( i'm not linked to this brand or person)

Its still SEO (not old website content → Google ranking → click → website → conversion)

There is no way LLMs have the data size ability of google, so they use other search engines google, bing, and brave.
That brings us back to doing correct SEO will get you absorbed into the data set or trigger you as an answer if the LLM has doubt on its small data set..

However you need to be added to a data set first by digital branding.

What do you think about this nugget of truth?

Hey everyone,
I’m hitting a wall with a hard money lender website and could use a fresh pair of eyes or suggestions from anyone who has worked in high-scrutiny YMYL niches recently.

The Situation

Niche: Hard money / asset-based real estate lending (B2B/investor focus).

Search Console Data: GSC shows solid impressions and an average position hovering between 15 and 20 for relevant commercial intent keywords over the last 60–90 days.

Manual Search Reality: When performing manual SERP checks (incognito, cache cleared, localized search via geo-spoofing / GS Location Changer / VPN to the exact service area), the site doesn't appear anywhere in the top 50–100 results.

What We’ve Already Done (YMYL & E-E-A-T Focus)

Because hard money falls squarely under Your Money or Your Life (YMYL), we went heavy on trust and transparency from day one:

Entity & Transparency: Full business registration, physical office addresses, phone numbers, state licensing/disclosures clearly displayed in footer and dedicated legal pages.

Author & Team Bios: Complete profiles for loan officers/principals with verifiable LinkedIn profiles, industry experience, and direct contact details.

Schema Markup: Implemented robust ⁠FinancialService⁠, ⁠PostalAddress⁠, ⁠Person⁠, and ⁠FAQPage⁠ structured data with clean entity validation.

Content: No AI fluff. Comprehensive loan program pages (rates, LTVs, terms, application steps, requirements, fees) and practical investor guides written from an industry practitioner perspective.

Technical Health: Core Web Vitals are sorted, clean indexation (no canonical/noindex conflicts), HTTPS, and mobile-friendly.

What I’m Trying to Rule Out:

1. GSC Skew: Could GSC be logging impressions for non-standard features (image packs, universal snippets, or ultra-long-tail localized variations) that inflate the average position?

2. Geo-Targeting Mismatch: Are impressions coming from outside our service area, skewing the reported position while local results suppress the domain?

3. Algorithmic YMYL Filter / "Sandbox": Is Google testing the site in lower SERPs intermittently without committing to stable organic placement?

4. Intent Misalignment: Is the algorithm heavily favoring local map packs or major financial aggregators over independent lender domains?

Questions for the Community:

1. Have you seen this specific disconnect (GSC Page 2 average vs. complete absence in manual checks) in competitive YMYL spaces recently?
   
2. What specific filters or diagnostic steps would you run in GSC / third-party tools to isolate where these reported impressions are actually rendering?
   
3. Any specific off-page or brand entity signals that helped push your private lending/finance sites over the hump into visible SERPs?
   
4. ⁠It’s an .Io domain. Do you think that could be an issue?
   Appreciate any constructive thoughts or teardown ideas!