{"id":9713,"date":"2026-06-10T13:26:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=9713"},"modified":"2026-06-10T13:26:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:26:50","slug":"google-adds-guidance-on-third-party-seo-tools-services-advice-and-updates-hiring-an-seo-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=9713","title":{"rendered":"Google adds guidance on third-party SEO tools,\u00a0services,\u00a0advice and updates hiring an SEO doc"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p> <div id=\"articleContent\" itemprop=\"articlebody\"> <div class=\"bialty-container\"> <p>Google added a new help document to its search developer documentation named Google Search\u2019s guidance on using third-party SEO tools, services, and advice and updated the older Do you need an SEO? document on Friday. Google primarily added in topics around generative AI optimization and more guidance on trusting third-party tools and other SEO advice.<\/p> <p><strong>Why. <\/strong>Google said it posted these document updates and changes because it wanted to \u201chighlight important considerations when evaluating third-party SEO tools and advice, and to simplify some sections and remove outdated examples in existing documentation.\u201d<\/p> <p><strong>Third-party SEO tools, services and advice. <\/strong>Google\u2019s new help document named Google Search\u2019s guidance on using third-party SEO tools, services, and advice digs into advice from Google on how you should consider advice from third parties and using third-party SEO services and tools. <\/p> <p>This includes how to:<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>Evaluate and verify external SEO advice against official Google guidelines<\/li> <li>Think critically about using third-party SEO tools and services <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>Assisting in sitemap generation<\/li> <li>Establishing indexing directives<\/li> <li>Offering to generate \u201cSEO-optimized\u201d content for you<\/li> <li>Providing advice they claim will improve the ranking of your existing content<\/li> <li>Promising improvements for AI experiences and search formats (also known as \u201cAEO\u201d or \u201cGEO\u201d tools)<\/li> <\/ul> <\/li> <\/ul> <p>Google added that it does not endorse any third-party tool and warns about tools claiming so. It also warns about tools or services that claim \u201cusing a service or tool doesn\u2019t guarantee ranking success.\u201d Google added, \u201cThird-party tools don\u2019t have access to our internal ranking data. They can\u2019t guarantee performance.\u201d<\/p> <p>Google does recommend you use Google Search Console, which provides you with \u201ckey information and data directly from Google Search itself,\u201d Google wrote.<\/p> <p><strong>Hiring an SEO document update. <\/strong>Google also made updates to the Do you need an SEO? help document. Google added in topics around Optimizing for generative AI, where Google references a newish help document on that topic.<\/p> <p>Google also posted in this document new content about SEO tools including:<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cIf your SEO uses a third-party tool, keep in mind that Google doesn\u2019t evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, and these tools don\u2019t have access to Google\u2019s internal ranking data. Be wary of tools that claim to be \u201cacceptable\u201d or \u201capproved\u201d by Google Search.\u201d<\/li> <li>\u201cIf your SEO offers to do an SEO audit for you, be sure to carefully consider what\u2019s involved and only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don\u2019t grant them write access). An SEO audit should be about giving you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved. If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else.\u201d<\/li> <li>\u201c<strong>Evaluate your SEO\u2019s recommendations and tools they use.<\/strong>\u00a0Before making significant changes to your site based on a third-party tool\u2019s audit, be sure to check their recommendations against\u00a0official guidance from Google Search, think critically about any claims or recommendations you hear, and make your own informed decisions.\u201d <\/li> <\/ul> <p>The document was also cleaned up and made shorter and more concise. <\/p> <p><strong>Why we care. <\/strong>Reviewing Google\u2019s official documentation is always something SEOs should be doing. New documents that Google posts are useful to read and understand. Understanding the changes made to older help documents is also important. <\/p> <\/div> <hr\/> <p class=\"article-disclosure\"> <em>Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page\u2019s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.<\/em> <\/p> <hr\/> <div class=\"author-about py-4\"> <div class=\"card bg-light\"> <div class=\"card-body p-2 clearfix\"> <div class=\"authorImage float-start me-3 mb-2\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid rounded avatar-border flex-shrink-0\" alt=\"Barry Schwartz\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\" src=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2025\/05\/1630496745425.jpeg.webp\" title=\"Google adds guidance on third-party SEO tools,\u00a0services,\u00a0advice and updates hiring an SEO doc\u63d2\u56fe\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid rounded avatar-border flex-shrink-0\" src=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2025\/05\/1630496745425.jpeg.webp\" alt=\"Barry Schwartz\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\" title=\"Google adds guidance on third-party SEO tools,\u00a0services,\u00a0advice and updates hiring an SEO doc\u63d2\u56fe1\" \/> <\/div> <div class=\"author-body\"> <div id=\"authorBio-251\" class=\"author-desc\"> Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.<\/p> <p>In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the &#8220;US Search Personality Of The Year,&#8221; you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O&#8217;Clock.<\/p> <p>Barry can be followed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rustybrick\/\">on X here<\/a>\u00a0and you can learn more about\u00a0Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site. <\/p> <\/div><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/div> <p> <!-- START SIDEBAR LOWER SPACE --><\/p> <p><!-- END SIDEBAR LOWER SPACE --><\/p><\/div> <p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>News#Google #adds #guidance #thirdparty #SEO #toolsservicesadvice #updates #hiring #SEO #doc1781069210<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google added a new help document to its search developer documentation named Google Search\u2019s guidance on using third-party SEO tools, services, and advice and updated the older Do you need an SEO? document on Friday. Google primarily added in topics around generative AI optimization and more guidance on trusting third-party tools and other SEO advice. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[740,6323,75,1771,248,83,97,7325,38329,172],"class_list":["post-9713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","tag-adds","tag-doc","tag-google","tag-guidance","tag-hiring","tag-news","tag-seo","tag-thirdparty","tag-toolsservicesadvice","tag-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}