E1154: Google's new goto redirects have a lot of SEOs worried that rank tracking is about to become less accurate, more expensive, or much harder to do.
David Quaid joins me to break down what is actually happening, what it means for tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, and why the answer may be for SEOs to start building more of their own tools.
Google's goto redirects add another step between the search result and the destination URL. That creates problems for companies that scrape Google at scale because they may now need to follow redirects instead of simply extracting destination URLs from the search results.
That matters because a huge amount of SEO software depends on collecting SERP data.
David and I discuss:
- What Google's goto redirects actually are
- Why Google may have introduced them
- How they affect rank trackers and SERP scraping
- Why exact ranking URLs may become harder to collect
- Whether tools can still reliably track ranking domains
- Why rank tracking data should not always be treated as exact
- How Google Search Console can provide a second source of ranking data
- Why SEOs may need to combine SERP data with Search Console
- Why David believes most SERP tools are still largely usable
- The problems with checking rankings only once per day
- Why Google's changes could increase data collection costs
- Whether Semrush and Ahrefs can adapt
- Why smaller SEO tools and open-source projects may benefit
- OpenSEO and the growing number of self-hosted SEO tools
- Why SEOs should consider building internal tools
- Using AI coding tools to work with Search Console data
- Why Search Console data may become more valuable
- How Bing Webmaster Tools could become more important
- Why SEO agencies should pay attention to their own data instead of depending entirely on third-party reports
- How ranking data relates to traffic, leads, and client reporting
- What happens when a rank tracker says you rank somewhere but a manual search shows something different
- Keyword cannibalization and how David uses Search Console to identify it
- Why David cares more about ranking domains than exact URLs in many rank-tracking reports
- Google's ongoing fight against scraping and automated search activity
- Whether these changes are aimed at SEO tools, SERP APIs, OpenAI, or all three
- Why Google may be making click-through manipulation harder
- Whether OpenAI is building its own search index
- The changing relationship between Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other search systems
- Why SEO is still worth doing
- Why the next generation of SEO tools may come from individual developers and small teams
David's main point is simple: SEOs should not panic.
Rank tracking is not disappearing.
Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, SERP data, internal reporting, and custom tools can increasingly be combined to create your own view of what is happening.
For SEOs who are willing to build, test, and work directly with their own data, these changes may create more opportunities than problems.
We also discuss the SEO Tool Dev community on Reddit, where developers and SEOs can share scripts, extensions, tools, experiments, and new approaches to SEO data.
⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid
⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/
⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid
⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/
⭐️ SEO Tool Dev Subreddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO_tool_dev/
⭐️ OpenSEO 𝕏 post - https://x.com/ihteshamali/status/2093319473914921327
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/
00:00 Goto Redirects Panic
01:11 What Goto Redirects Are
02:09 Scraping War With SERP APIs
07:28 Rank Trackers Break Down
08:43 Future Tools Using GSC
11:51 Open Source SEO Tools
14:30 Short Term Survival Tips
18:09 Costs Rising For SEO Data
19:14 Consulting Shift And Expertise
23:27 Fixing SEO Tool Reporting
26:47 Tracking Domains Not URLs
29:12 Cannibalization Fixes
32:13 CTR Manipulation Crackdown
33:44 Google Versus AI Search
36:27 LLMs And Junk Content
39:41 SERP Tools Future Costs
42:58 Build Your Own SEO Tools
45:27 SEO Tool Dev Subreddit
46:50 Podcast Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
#searchengineoptimization #seo #technicalseo #digitalmarketing
