James Finlayson’s Post

🚨 Google's Hurting the Web Again 🚨 Yesterday Google quietly introduced a new feature in its iOS app called "Page Annotations," which automatically inserts links into your website's content without your consent. These links direct users back to Google properties, diverting traffic away from your site. Yes, Google's tools are now borrowing strategies from malware. This is bad for competition and bad for the web because: • It Creates User Confusion: Visitors may mistakenly believe these links are part of your original content, leading to a misleading user experience. The Google Search app on iOS is primarily used by less tech-savvy demographics who may not realise these links were added by the app, increasing the potential confusion and mistrust. • It Diverts Traffic: By redirecting users to Google Search, this feature decreases the time users spend on your site, hurts your ability to monetise informational content and reduces engagement metrics. This new feature, which I think is openly hostile to the publisher ecosystem, is opt-out only - and even then through a Google Form of all mechanisms. You'll find nothing about it in GSC, there's nothing you can do to prevent it in robots.txt and Google's provided no detail as to what happens when the account that completed the form is closed (i.e. the person leaves your company). Changes take up to 30 days to take effect. That means your website's currently opted in, it could take a month for you to opt-out and you'll need to keep checking every few months to make sure you're still opted-out. The Google iOS App is downloaded over 12m times a month so this does effect a significant portion of users, but the bigger concern will be if this a precursor to the feature appearing in Chrome. Hopefully the DOJ involvement will prevent that. In the meantime, this move by Google raises significant concerns about user experience and the autonomy of web content. Submit the opt-out form immediately to prevent Google's unauthorised link insertions. #SEO #DigitalMarketing #Webmasters #GoogleUpdates #UserExperience