# Cultured Digital

> Independent technical SEO and digital consultancy


## Posts

- [Affiliate and review pages: what Google documents about product reviews and sponsored links](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/search/affiliate-and-review-pages-what-google-documents-about-product-reviews-and-sponsored-links/): Google documents what a good review page contains, how to mark paid and affiliate links, and what it calls thin affiliation. Read together, they describe the difference between a comparison page and a copy of a merchant’s page.
- [Local business websites: what Google documents about business profiles and local results](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/search/local-business-websites-what-google-documents-about-business-profiles-and-local-results/): Google's documentation separates three things local businesses often blur: the Business Profile, the structured data on the website, and the ranking factors behind local results. Each has its own rules, and none can be bought.
- [Product pages: what Google documents about product markup and shopping listings](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/product-pages-what-google-documents-about-product-markup-and-shopping-listings/): A small online shop can ask Google to read its prices, availability and variants from the page, but only if the markup, the URLs and the visible page agree. This is what Google’s Product and ecommerce documentation says, and what it leaves open.
- [Local wording for visitors: what Google documents about locale-adaptive pages](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/local-wording-for-visitors-what-google-documents-about-locale-adaptive-pages/): Some content genuinely differs by country, such as an emergency number or a currency. Google documents what its crawler sees when a page changes by visitor, and what it recommends instead.
- [Question-and-answer pages: what Google documents about QAPage markup](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/question-and-answer-pages-what-google-documents-about-qapage-markup/): A page that answers one question can look like a Q&A page without qualifying for Q&A markup. Google sets out who may use QAPage, what it must contain, and what it says about generated answers.
- [Visitor-submitted questions and stories: what Google says about user-generated spam](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/visitor-submitted-questions-and-stories-what-google-says-about-user-generated-spam/): Any form that publishes what visitors type is a place spam can arrive. Google lists what it counts as user-generated spam and a set of deterrents, from moderation to noindex for new contributors.
- [Core Web Vitals after a release: why the report moves slowly, and what Google documents](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/development/core-web-vitals-after-a-release-why-the-report-moves-slowly/): After a performance fix ships, the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console does not change overnight. Google's documentation explains why: it is built from real-user data over a 28-day window. This article sets out what that means for teams that release often.
- [Do you need an SEO? What Google's hiring guidance says to check first](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/do-you-need-an-seo-what-googles-hiring-guidance-says-to-check-first/): Google has a short page for anyone deciding whether to hire an SEO. It says when help is worth having, which questions to ask and which promises to treat as warning signs. This article walks through it and what follows for the decision between an in-house hire, an agency and a consultant.
- [Getting your business found on AI search: what to do and what to ignore](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/ai-search/getting-your-business-found-on-ai-search-what-to-do-and-what-to-ignore/): Popular advice on appearing in AI answers mixes sound practice with unsupported tactics. Google, OpenAI and Perplexity publish what they ask of a site, and several common recommendations are not on the list.
- [Image SEO for a visual catalogue: what Google documents](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/development/image-seo-for-a-visual-catalogue-what-google-documents/): On a site that shows handmade or visual work, the images carry the product. Most of what Google documents about them is plain markup: how images are found, described and chosen as the preview.
- [Multi-regional sites: country domain, subdomain or subfolder, and what Google documents](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/multi-regional-sites-country-domain-subdomain-or-subfolder-what-google-documents/): Choosing how to structure a site for several countries or languages is one of the hardest decisions to reverse. Google documents the four options, the signals it uses to decide who a page is for, and the things it does not do. This article sets them out.
- [Orphan pages and internal links: what Google documents about being found](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/orphan-pages-and-internal-links-what-google-documents-about-being-found/): A page nothing links to is easy to create and hard to notice. Google’s documentation is plain about how pages are found, what a sitemap can and cannot do, and how to write the links that lead to them.
- [Page experience: what Google says is used in ranking, and what is not](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/page-experience-what-google-says-is-used-in-ranking-and-what-is-not/): Page speed, HTTPS and mobile friendliness are often listed together as ranking factors. Google’s page experience documentation is narrower, and says how to read its Core Web Vitals reports.
- [Paginated hubs: what Google documents about page two onwards](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/paginated-hubs-what-google-documents-about-page-two-onwards/): A hub of guides or products split over several pages needs every page to be findable and distinct. Google’s pagination documentation is short and specific about links, URLs and canonicals.
- [Press coverage and links: where Google draws the line between promotion and link spam](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/press-coverage-and-links-where-google-draws-the-line-between-promotion-and-link-spam/): Getting a site talked about is ordinary promotion, and Google's starter guide says so. Some of the ways coverage is arranged, though, appear by name in its link spam policy. This article separates the two using Google's own wording.
- [Server logs and Googlebot: what they show, and how to trust what they say](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/server-logs-and-googlebot-what-they-show-and-how-to-trust-them/): A server log records every request a site receives, including ones that only claim to be Googlebot. Google documents how to verify a crawler, what its own Crawl Stats report leaves out, and how status codes change crawling.
- [Titles, canonicals and status codes on a client-side rendered site](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/titles-canonicals-and-status-codes-on-a-client-side-rendered-site/): When every page of a client-side app carries the same title, Google has less to work with. Its documentation says what belongs in the head of a page, and which of those signals a script can safely change.
- [Software and app pages: what Google's SoftwareApplication markup requires, and what it does not promise](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/development/software-and-app-pages-what-googles-softwareapplication-markup-requires/): Anyone launching a tool, plugin or app wants its page to show up well in search. Google documents one structured data type for software, with specific required properties and a clear statement about guarantees. This article reads it closely.
- [What technical SEO is, and where it sits in how Google Search works](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/what-technical-seo-is-and-where-it-sits-in-how-google-search-works/): Technical SEO is called the foundation, which says little about what it is. Google’s own documents describe three stages of Search and three minimum requirements, and they show where technical problems sit.
- [After a Google update: what to check and what not to change](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/search/after-a-google-update-what-to-check-and-what-not-to-change/): When a traffic drop lands near an announced ranking update, the update becomes the obvious suspect and the site becomes the thing to change. Google's own pages are more cautious: they describe how to date the drop, how to judge its size, and what to leave alone while the picture settles.
- [AI-generated content for SEO: what Google's guidance says, and why review before publishing matters](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/ai-search/ai-generated-seo-content-what-googles-guidance-says-about-review/): Google does not ban AI-generated content, and it does not reward it either. What it asks for is accuracy, originality and a clear reason for each page, which is a description of a review step.
- [What blocking Google-Extended, GPTBot or PerplexityBot actually does](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/ai-search/blocking-ai-crawlers-what-google-extended-gptbot-perplexitybot-do/): Blocking an AI crawler is a one-line change in robots.txt, but each line controls something different. Here is what Google, OpenAI and Perplexity document for each token, and where the documentation says nothing.
- [Crawl budget: when it matters and when it does not](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/crawl-budget-when-it-matters-and-when-it-does-not/): Crawl budget is one of the most over-diagnosed problems in SEO. Google’s own guide says who it is for, and for most sites the honest answer is that it is not the constraint.
- [The five fundamentals behind AI search visibility, and what Google documents for each](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/ai-search/five-fundamentals-behind-ai-search-visibility-what-google-documents/): Entities, technical access, structured data, content and authority are the five questions we ask about visibility in AI answers. Here is what Google’s documentation says about each, and where it says nothing.
- [Hidden links, cloaking and injected links: what Google's spam policies say](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/hidden-links-cloaking-and-injected-links-what-googles-spam-policies-say/): A page can contain links that its owner never wrote and its visitors never see. Google's spam policies define hidden links, cloaking and hacked content, and its Search Console help says how to look for them.
- [Diagnosing a traffic drop before acting on it](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/search/diagnosing-a-traffic-drop-before-acting-on-it/): When organic traffic falls, the pressure to do something quickly is real, and the wrong response can make matters worse. Google's own guidance gives a way to separate measurement, seasonal, technical and algorithmic causes before anything is changed.
- [Why SEO audits stall, and how to write findings people act on](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/seo-audit-findings-that-get-implemented/): The usual end of an SEO audit is a long document read once and then shelved. The analysis is rarely the problem. The hand-over is.
- [Expired domains in your outbound links: an SEO risk that audits miss](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/expired-domains-in-outbound-links/): Every outbound link is a small promise that the destination is what you think it is. When the domain behind it lapses and is re-registered, the promise breaks and your page still carries the link.
- [How Google picks a canonical URL, and why your preference is only a hint](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/how-google-picks-a-canonical-url/): When the same content is reachable at several URLs, Google clusters them and chooses one to show. You can state a preference, but the choice stays with Google, so the useful work is making every signal point the same way.
- [Prioritising SEO work: impact, effort and the dependencies people forget](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/prioritising-seo-work-impact-effort-dependencies/): Every audit produces more work than any team can do. Choosing what comes first is the part clients pay for, and where weak engagements show.
- [When a working link is reported as broken: 403s, 429s and bot protection](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/false-broken-links-403-429-bot-protection/): Broken-link reports are only as good as their classification. Two well-known sites were reported as dead while working for every human visitor, and the same behaviour can hurt your own crawling.
- [hreflang: the return-tag failure that voids the rest](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/hreflang-return-tags-the-failure-that-voids-the-rest/): Hreflang annotations only count when pages point to each other. Here is what Google documents about return tags, codes, self-reference, x-default and the three ways to implement them.
- [How to judge an SEO strategy fairly](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/judging-an-seo-strategy-fairly/): Search traffic moves for many reasons at once. Judging a strategy by a single line on a chart is unfair to the strategy and to the client.
- [Why a one-off link audit goes stale](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/why-one-off-link-audits-go-stale/): The links on your pages change without anyone editing them. An audit is a snapshot; the risk lives in what happens after it.
- [Launching a product site: the search basics Google documents](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/development/launching-a-product-site-the-search-basics-google-documents/): A product launch has a long list of things to decide, and search is usually near the bottom. Google’s documentation is short on product advice but specific about what a new site must get right to be crawled, indexed and understood.
- [Link building that Google's spam policies allow, and the habits they do not](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/link-building-the-spam-policies-allow/): Google's spam policies name specific link practices, and they are more concrete than most people expect. Reading them closely shows what the policy prohibits, what it explicitly permits when links are qualified, and how narrow the disavow tool is meant to be.
- [SEO changes that need sign-off before they go live](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/seo-changes-that-need-sign-off-before-launch/): Most SEO changes are safe to make quickly. A few can remove pages from search results in a single release. Those need a named approver and a way back.
- [What a client should see in SEO work, and what they shouldn't](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/what-clients-should-see-in-seo-reporting/): Some of the costliest problems in an SEO engagement are about information, not rankings: what the client saw, when they saw it and what they thought they had agreed.
- [Is the drop real? Checking anomalies, seasonality and reporting first](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/search/is-the-drop-real-checking-anomalies-seasonality-and-reporting-first/): Before a fall in organic traffic is treated as a problem with the site, it has to be established that the data is sound, that the calendar and demand do not explain it, and where in the report it sits. Google's documentation gives a sequence for ruling these out, and we add a way to record the result.
- [There is no “AI SEO” trick: what Google’s documentation says about AI Overviews and AI Mode](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/ai-search/no-ai-seo-trick-what-google-says-about-ai-overviews/): A great deal is sold as a special method for appearing in Google’s AI answers. Google’s own guidance for site owners is short, specific and mostly about things that were already true of Search.
- [Five checks after a WordPress launch that protect your rankings](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/development/wordpress-launch-checks-that-protect-rankings/): Most post-launch SEO problems are quiet: a setting left on, a cache that still serves the old page, a layout nobody tested on a phone.
- [Redirect chains and site moves: what Google documents](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/development/redirect-chains-and-site-moves-what-google-documents/): Redirects are the mechanism of a site move, and the details matter: which type, how long to keep them, how many hops, and how much to change at once. Here is what Google's own pages say.
- [In SEO reporting, "unavailable" is better than a guess](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/seo-reporting-unavailable-not-zero/): A report that fills a data gap with a zero or an estimate looks complete and is wrong. The honest version is less tidy and far more useful.
- [Planning content from evidence: what Google's helpful content guidance asks](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/planning-content-from-evidence-what-googles-helpful-content-guidance-asks/): A content plan needs a reason for every page, and Google's guidance on helpful, people-first content supplies the questions to test it. This article reads those questions, the Who, How and Why framing and the spam policy on scaled content as a planning checklist.
- [Outbound links: what you vouch for, and when to qualify a link](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/outbound-links-what-you-vouch-for-and-when-to-qualify-a-link/): Every outbound link on a page says something about its destination, and Google gives specific guidance on when to qualify one. This article sets out what that guidance says and how we read it for a routine review.
- [What Search Console's Performance report can and cannot tell you](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/search/what-search-console-performance-report-can-and-cannot-tell-you/): The Performance report is the main first-party record of how a site appears in Google Search, and it is easy to read more into it than it holds. Knowing how impressions, clicks and position are counted, and where the data is limited, keeps reporting honest.
- [Where AI-driven visits show up in analytics, and where they do not](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/ai-search/where-ai-driven-visits-show-up-in-analytics/): Google’s AI features and other AI assistants are recorded in different places under different rules. Here is what Search Console and Google Analytics document, and what no report can tell you.
- [Site structure is a strategy decision: what Google documents about URLs and links](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/site-structure-is-a-strategy-decision-what-google-documents-about-urls-and-links/): Google documents the mechanics of URLs, links and hostnames in some detail, and says openly that several structural choices are the business's to make. This article separates what the documentation covers from what it leaves to strategy.
- [Why links built by script can be invisible to crawlers](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/why-script-built-links-can-be-invisible-to-crawlers/): A menu that works perfectly in a browser can leave a crawler with nothing to follow. Google documents which link formats it can use, and how to check what it actually saw.
- [Structured data: what Google supports, and what it does not promise](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/structured-data-what-google-supports-and-what-it-does-not-promise/): Structured data gives Google explicit clues about a page and can make it eligible for rich results. Google's documentation is equally clear about what it does not do: it does not guarantee a feature, and it is not a special route into AI answers.
- [Using Search Console and Analytics together to find where the opportunity is](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/strategy/using-search-console-and-analytics-together-to-find-where-the-opportunity-is/): Search Console shows how a site appears in Google; Analytics shows what visitors do once they arrive. This article covers what Google says about combining them, why the numbers never match exactly, and what the pair can and cannot say about a market.
- [Sitemaps: what they do, what they do not, and how to keep them honest](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/sitemaps-what-they-do-what-they-do-not-and-how-to-keep-them-honest/): A sitemap tells Google which URLs you think matter. It helps discovery, but it guarantees neither crawling nor indexing, and a file full of redirected, blocked or non-canonical URLs undermines its own purpose.
- [Security and spam problems as causes of a traffic drop](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/security-and-spam-problems-as-causes-of-a-traffic-drop/): Google lists security threats and spam-policy violations as separate causes of falling search traffic, each with its own Search Console report. This article sets out what the warnings and manual actions are, how to tell them from technical or algorithmic causes, and what Google says about asking for a review.
- [Technical causes of a traffic drop: crawling, indexing and serving errors](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/technical-seo/technical-causes-of-a-traffic-drop-crawling-indexing-and-serving-errors/): Google defines a technical cause of a traffic drop as an error that stops it crawling, indexing or serving your pages. This article goes through the errors Google documents, why some bite fast and others slowly, and what the Crawl Stats report, the Page indexing report and URL Inspection can and cannot confirm.
- [Traffic drop after a site move or release: what to check](https://cultureddigital.co.uk/insights/development/traffic-drop-after-a-site-move-or-release-what-to-check/): A fall in organic traffic after a launch is not automatically a failed launch, and not automatically normal. Google's documentation says what to expect after URL changes and lists the mistakes that stop a move completing.

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