Mark Williams-Cook
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markwilliamscook.com
Mark Williams-Cook
@markwilliamscook.com
2.2K followers 450 following 1.7K posts
💌 Core Updates SEO newsletter: https://coreupdates.com
💻 Director at Candour https://withcandour.co.uk
💬 Founder at AlsoAsked https://alsoasked.com
🤝 Organiser at SearchNorwich https://searchnorwich.org

Fractional idiot. 100% gossip 0% innovation.
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markwilliamscook.com
SEO updates you ✨NEED✨ to know [10 November]: www.linkedin.com/posts/markse...
Core Updates for SEO professionals
November 10, 2025 at 12:43 PM
markwilliamscook.com
I know a lot of people rip on SEO courses, I put a lot of effort into mine and despite deciding not to update it anymore over a year ago, it brings me a lot of joy when I still see people explaining how it helped them ☺️
Screenshot of a LinkedIn comment/post by Sanduni Yureka, a Ghostwriter, thanking Lidya Ayenew and her mentor. The text reads: "Lidya Ayenew thank you so much! for the mentor that made me feel okay to not know tech seo was Mark Williams-Cook, i took his course at udemy, and this one chapter, he mentioned that there are different type of seos for different use cases and that's okay to not know one particular field, but i did take his tech seo classes, it was very useful, and i learned alot, but i absorb strategy + content more naturally and easily with least amount of effort so yah 🔥 tech is like 😥🛠️! hahaha"
November 9, 2025 at 5:28 PM
markwilliamscook.com
I'm actually quite excited about this. I think it's the first event (to my albeit poor memory) I've done with @lilyray.nyc and I definitely my first thing for Moz.

moz.com/webinars/fut...
A promotional graphic for a Moz Webinar from "The Practical Marketer" series, titled "How to Prepare for The Future of Search in 2026". The event is scheduled for Monday, November 10, 2025, at 6 pm GMT / 1 pm EST / 10 am PST. The graphic includes headshots of the speakers, Mark Williams-Cook from Candour and Lily Ray from Amsive.
November 5, 2025 at 1:31 PM
markwilliamscook.com
Are you interested in literal hell?
A screenshot of the closing text of an email, where the sender offers information about being on 100 podcasts over 12 months and apologizes for potentially bad timing by not wanting to "keep pinging your inbox."
November 3, 2025 at 11:59 AM
markwilliamscook.com
An internet meme presented as a two-panel comic strip. Top panel: A hand holds up a red mushroom with white spots, which resembles an Amanita muscaria. A simple, stick-figure-like character labeled "AI" responds to a question. The speech bubbles read: "Is this mushroom edible?" "Yes" Bottom panel: The same AI character is standing next to a bed where a pale man in a light blue shirt is sleeping in what appears to be a hospital or sickbed. The AI character's speech bubble now reads: "You're right, it's a poisonous mushroom. Would you like to learn more about poisonous mushrooms?" The meme is a joke about the dangers of trusting AI with potentially life-threatening questions, as the AI initially gives a dangerously wrong answer and then "corrects" itself after the negative consequences have occurred.
October 30, 2025 at 9:57 PM
markwilliamscook.com
I am an adult that plays strategy games.
Civ5 screenshot
October 27, 2025 at 3:24 PM
markwilliamscook.com
While I understand it is highly likely that the systems that "count" links around ranking, and the systems that choose which links to show in Sitelinks are probably very separate; this isn't a good look for Google and highlights an exploitable system.
a Google search results page for the query "my disney". The top result is for "MyDisney Account" from my.disney.com. Below the main result, there are several indented links, one of which is highlighted with a red box: "Black hat SEO packages from ..." The other indented links visible are "Log out of all devices," "Looking for username login?," "Enter your email to continue," and "MyDisney Account - Disney.com." All the indented links have the description "MyDisney lets you seamlessly log in to services and experiences...". The search bar, tabs (All, Images, Videos, News, Shopping, etc.), and other typical search page elements are also visible.
October 27, 2025 at 12:38 PM
markwilliamscook.com
brightonSEO Oct '25 is a wrap, and the highlight for me was the joy I got bringing 28 wonderful people, all whom have helped me in some way and enriched my life together for the @alsoasked.com meal and watching them meet each other. 🤩
Lots of people at a meal looking v happy.
October 27, 2025 at 12:07 AM
markwilliamscook.com
A bag of cats.txt stickers
October 23, 2025 at 10:29 AM
markwilliamscook.com
Right back at you, Martin! It was your passion that brought me back into diving again; I'm so lucky to have found a dive buddy and friend that is also willing to go to silly amounts of effort for dives that most people wouldn't enjoy 🤩
Martin and Mark after a dive lookin hap af.
October 18, 2025 at 8:39 PM
markwilliamscook.com
If you see me at @brightonseo.com, make sure you ask me for a sticker. We need to get this standard official 🐈
an "i support cats.txt" sticker
October 15, 2025 at 1:16 PM
markwilliamscook.com
📊 New data from @alsoasked.com shows Google is aggressively increasing the number of AIOs in People Also Asked questions, with it over doubling in three months from 18% to 38% of English queries 🤯
A bar chart titled, "The percentage of People Also Ask answers that are AI-generated is growing." The chart shows the percentage of AI-generated People Also Ask (PAA) answers over three months in 2025: Jul 25: 17.8% Aug 25: 26.6% Sept 25: 37.9% A note states, "10.27 million English language live PAAs analysed, Jul-Sep 2025." The logo for AlsoAsked is at the bottom left. The data clearly shows a consistent and significant increase in the percentage of AI-generated answers in PAA results.
October 14, 2025 at 10:55 AM
markwilliamscook.com
Especially enjoyed the 'deep dive' sessions in Antalya this year 😉
A full-length underwater photo of a scuba diver wearing a black wetsuit, mask, and fins. The diver is suspended in the blue water near a coral-encrusted rock formation in the lower right, with a small school of fish swimming nearby. The diver is facing the camera, giving a waving hand signal with both hands, palms open. Sunlight streams down from the surface above.
October 13, 2025 at 9:20 PM
markwilliamscook.com
@ichbingisele.bsky.social also kindly replied:
a LinkedIn post by Gisele Navarro, Managing Editor at HouseFresh and COO at NeoMam Studios. The post is a comment on a separate post (edited) and reads: "There is so much stuff that has happened in the last two years that I would find it hard to say it was just one thing… We are always improving the site as much as we can (which isn’t a lot considering that it’s just Danny and I working on it), but I don’t think there’s a specific change we made that magically made it so that Google took us out of the box. Also, neither of us are technical people so most changes were design, UX and content-based. We also built a YouTube channel that has grown to become very popular and we had an incredible opportunity to collaborate with LTT, which helped us reach millions of people and pushed our brand searches further than ever before. Then I’d say that algorithm updates definitely made a difference to HouseFresh’s visibility and that of many small independent websites like ours. And the site reputation abuse spam policy levelled the playing field in the product review space, at least based on what I’ve seen. So yeah. I don’t think it was one thing but we were definitely taken out of the box. There was a time when we wouldn’t even rank for our name or queries where we were quoting text verbatim. It’s been a wild two years."
October 8, 2025 at 11:08 PM
markwilliamscook.com
Also, RANCOROUS
A rancor
October 8, 2025 at 8:22 PM
markwilliamscook.com
After the very rancorous online debate, it looks like housefresh.com more than made their recovery post-HCU decimation.

I wonder how much is:

-> Algo updates
-> Manual intervention (it was very public)
-> Equity earned *because* of the loss (links/brand searches)
-> Things they changed
A line graph from Ahrefs shows the organic search performance of a website. The graph covers the period from February 2021 to October 2025. It plots two lines: one for referring domains (blue line) and one for average organic traffic (orange line). The referring domains line shows a steady increase from around 0 to just over 6,000. The average organic traffic line remains relatively flat at a low level until late 2024, at which point it begins to climb dramatically, reaching over 240,000 by October 2025. The orange line's steep, upward trend indicates a significant and rapid growth in organic traffic.
October 8, 2025 at 8:13 PM
markwilliamscook.com
A side-by-side meme featuring Lisa Simpson. On the left, she is dressed up with makeup and jewelry, with the caption, "How content looks to site owner." On the right, she looks like Mr Burns, "How content looks to site visitor."
October 8, 2025 at 10:48 AM
markwilliamscook.com
Nice timing! I published a whole list that people can use yesterday :) www.linkedin.com/posts/markse...
List of regex patterns for GSC
October 7, 2025 at 11:03 AM
markwilliamscook.com
search result for the query, "in andor, did the empire deploy military troops to inflame the situation and incite rebels into action which they could then use as a false pretext for further overreach?" The search result shows four sources: Inverse, Youtini, movie web, and Disney News. The answer, which is provided, reads: "Yes, in "Andor," the Empire is shown deliberately deploying military troops and using provocations to inflame unrest, incite rebel action, and thereby manufacture a false pretext for further crackdowns and authoritarian overreach. Through orchestrated escalations—such as the ruthless handling of the Ghorman protest—the Empire manipulates situations so that peaceful dissent is reframed as violent rebellion, creating public justification for harsher measures and expansion of military control."
October 6, 2025 at 12:59 PM
markwilliamscook.com
Time to start thinking about writing this year's Christmas quiz for the @withcandour.co.uk party 😆
Mark wearing a "F*** the Tories" sweater holds a glass of beer while standing in front of a projection screen showing a multiple-choice question about the company Candour. The person is smiling at the camera and has one hand in the pocket of their jeans. In the background, there is a laptop, chairs, and a colorful prize wheel.
October 6, 2025 at 11:25 AM
markwilliamscook.com
Freelancers: "Client rejected my content because it had an em dash and they thought it was AI." Meanwhile:
Newspaper article with the headline: "Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report." Below the headline are the authors' names, "Edmund Tadros and Paul Karp," and the date, "Oct 5, 2025 – 7.41pm." The body text begins: "Deloitte Australia will issue a partial refund to the federal government after admitting that artificial intelligence had been used in the creation of a $440,000 report littered with errors including three nonexistent academic references and a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgement."
October 6, 2025 at 9:26 AM
markwilliamscook.com
protonvpn in switzerland
October 4, 2025 at 8:59 PM
markwilliamscook.com
It's reporting time of the month.. So I know what website all you agency folks are on, so I put us there too 😉🤣

@alsoasked.com
AlsoAsked display ads all over https://percentagecalculator.net/
October 2, 2025 at 8:36 PM
markwilliamscook.com
If anyone is every trying to "prove" how something works by asking ChatGPT et al, feel free to show them this.
a Google search for "cats.txt." The search results show a prominent "AI Overview" box that explains the term. The overview states that "cats.txt" most likely refers to a recent web specification for websites to declare their "feline staff" to improve SEO. It also mentions other possibilities, such as a simple text file about cats or a Linux command. Below the overview, there are search results and a section titled "The cats.txt Standard," which provides details on its purpose, benefits, and format, explaining that websites create this file to provide metadata about their virtual feline mascots or personalities.
October 2, 2025 at 4:36 PM
markwilliamscook.com
Love hearing how people are using AlsoAsked; especially with all the new AI platforms and mapping out likely conversations 💙

This one from John Sukowaty 📊
A graphic with a dark blue background features a testimonial from **John Sukowaty**, a Senior SEO Strategist. A headshot of him is in a circular frame on the bottom left. The text of the testimonial reads: "AlsoAsked has completely changed how I plan content and approach SEO. It helps me uncover real user questions, build better topic clusters, and best of all, save hours on research. It's more than a keyword tool, it's a competitive edge."
October 1, 2025 at 4:48 PM