by Joseph Mas
Over the years people who know or have worked with me will tell you that I rarely follow new trends, and for good reason.
Most SEO veterans have watched guidance swing in many directions while people chased every shift. A few memorable ones include:•
- The rise and retirement of Google Plus. What was called social signals. People jumped on the train while misunderstanding the concept entirely.
- The back and forth on Meta Description length. One hundred sixty characters to three hundred and then back again. I watched people rewrite countless descriptions for nothing, then have to rewritethen again after retraction.
- The mixed interpretations of whether titles and descriptions directly impact rank even though they clearly shape trust and Click Through Rate. Not a direct ranking factor, yet absolutely critical.
- The full rollout and later removal of Authorship and rel=author. Another classic example.• The rise and fall of AMP after heavy promotion. I still remember the scramble. All pointless in the end.
- The appearance and disappearance of rich results and SERP features that come and go.• The introduction and deprecation of structured data types that shift without warning, even recently.
These are only a few examples of how Google giveth and Google taketh away. The surface changes come and go, but the fundamentals remain.Before we react to every new change in search or AI, we should ground ourselves in the fundamentals that never move.
Public advocates like Matt Cutts and John Mueller have helped millions understand how to stay aligned with Google at a broad level. Their guidance sets the floor. It keeps people compliant and on track, but it is not the ceiling for anyone building real authority.
Long term authority in an AI driven world comes from building a verifiable entity architecture that gives your brand a stable identity across every system that ingests or interprets your data. That foundation is the most reliable path to future proof visibility.
It is also important to remember that Google is only one entity of many now.
Are you building your entity’s ceiling or just sweeping the floor?