SEO Tools and Resources

Google is giving advertisers more control when appealing disapproved ads in bulk — a small but meaningful update that could save time and reduce accidental resubmissions. Driving the news. Google has added a new option in its bulk ad review workflow that lets advertisers select ads from specific campaigns when requesting a policy re-review. Previously, advertisers appealing disapproved ads in bulk often had to resubmit all eligible ads across an account — including older campaigns that hadn’t been updated. That created extra work and could clutter the review process with ads that weren’t actually fixed. What’s new. Advertisers can now click a new “Sele…

Google launched a new channel performance timeline view inside Performance Max, giving advertisers a clearer breakdown of how individual channels — Search, YouTube, Display, and others — are contributing to campaign results over time. What’s new. A timeline graph now shows channel-level contributions over a selected period, paired with investment and performance filters. Advertisers can see at a glance which channels are pulling their weight — and which aren’t. Yellow box – Channel Performance Evolution Over Time Pink box (right) – All Ads, Ads Using Product Lists, Ads Using Video Why we care. Performance Max campaigns span multiple channels simultaneo…

Google has added a new user agent to its help documentation named Google-CWS. This is the Chrome Web Store user agent that is a user-triggered fetchers. More details. Google posted about the new user agent over here, it reads; “The Chrome Web Store fetcher requests URLs that developers provide in the metadata of their Chrome extensions and themes.” What are user-triggered fetchers. A user-triggered fetchers are initiated by users to perform a fetching function within a Google product. The example provided by Google was “Google Site Verifier acts on a user’s request, or a site hosted on Google Cloud (GCP) has a feature that allows the site’s users to retri…

Google is rolling out Campaign Mix Experiments (beta), a new testing framework that lets advertisers experiment across multiple campaign types, budgets, and settings within a single, unified experiment. How it works: Advertisers can create up to five experiment arms, each containing a different mix of campaigns. Campaigns can appear in multiple arms, with traffic split between them. Experiments support Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Demand Gen, Video, and App campaigns (excluding Hotels). Traffic splits can be customized (minimum 1%), with results normalized to the lowest split for fair comparison. What you can test: Budget allocation across…

Google’s new Lighthouse “Agentic Browsing” audits now check for the presence of an llms.txt file. The new experimental Lighthouse documentation frames llms.txt as a discoverability and efficiency signal for AI agents, not a traditional crawling directive. The audits are part of Chrome’s emerging “Agentic Browsing” category, which evaluates whether sites are structured for machine interaction. This document comes less than a week after Google published new guidance on optimizing for AI search features like AI Overviews and AI Mode, in which it said you don’t need llms.txt files in a mythbusting section of its new guide on optimizing for generative AI features. …

Google Ads is rolling out new location targeting options for Demand Gen campaigns, bringing them in line with controls already available in Search. What’s new. Advertisers can now explicitly choose between Presence or interest and Presence only when setting up Demand Gen campaigns. The option is available directly in the campaign interface, eliminating the need for manual exclusions. Why we care. Until now, advertisers running Demand Gen had limited precision over geo-targeting. By making “presence only” targeting native to the campaign setup, Google removes a common workaround and the risk of accidental geo-leakage. The result is cleaner traffic, more accurat…

Google expanded Demand Gen channel controls to include Google Maps, giving advertisers a new way to reach users with intent-driven placements and far more control over where Demand Gen ads appear. What’s new. Advertisers can now select Google Maps as a channel within Demand Gen campaigns. The option can be used alongside other channels in a mixed setup or on its own to create Maps-only campaigns. Why we care. This update unlocks a powerful, location-focused surface inside Demand Gen, allowing advertisers to tailor campaigns to high-intent moments such as local discovery and navigation. It also marks a meaningful step toward finer channel control in what has tra…

Google has updated its Merchant listing structured data guidelines to add a new beta for member pricing priceType, aka validForMemberTier property. Google also clarified the active prices, sale prices, strikethrough prices with more examples and instructions. What Google said. Google added examples and instructions for using the priceType property and new beta validForMemberTier property to encode active prices, sale prices, strikethrough prices, and member prices in JSON-LD to the Merchant listing structured data guidelines, the search company announced. They did this to “make it easier for merchants to specify complex pricing through structured data and bring pa…

Google is quietly giving advertisers more granular control over how data flows when consent is limited. Driving the news. A new feature called Data Transmission Control is appearing in Google Ads, adding an extra layer on top of Advanced Consent Mode that determines how advertising, analytics and diagnostic data are actually transmitted. What’s new. Advertisers can now independently restrict advertising data, behavioral analytics and diagnostic data. When ad_storage consent is denied, there are two options: allow limited advertising data with identifiers redacted (while still enabling conversion modeling), or block advertising data entirely until consent is grante…

Google rolled out a small but practical update to Performance Max that makes reviewing creatives faster and less clunky. What’s new. Advertisers can now click directly on images or videos inside the Asset Groups table to instantly preview how ads will appear across different Performance Max placements — without leaving the page. Why we care. Previously, checking creative previews meant digging into separate views or settings. This change keeps advertisers in the workflow, cutting down friction during creative QA and iteration. Between the lines. Performance Max is often criticized for limited transparency, so even incremental UI improvements that surface c…

Back in December, Google began showing read more links on some of the search result snippets within Google Search. Today, Google published new documentation around best practices on how to show Read more links in the Google search results. The best practices. The new documentation was posted over here in the snippets section and it lists three best practices: Make sure content is immediately visible on the page to a human (and not hidden behind an expandable section or tabbed interface, for example). Avoid using JavaScript to control the user’s scroll position on page load (for example, don’t force the user’s scroll position to the top of the page). If you …

Google is enhancing Meridian, its open-source Marketing Mix Model (MMM), to help marketers make smarter, more precise budget decisions. Why we care. Understanding ROI across channels is increasingly critical. These new Meridian updates allow for a more precise understanding of what drives sales, factoring in both media spend and non-media variables like pricing and promotions. The big picture. Here’s what’s new: Non-media variables: Marketers can now include pricing, promotions, and other business levers to measure their impact on sales more accurately. Channel-level contribution priors: New features let you guide the MMM with your own business knowledge,…

Google launched a long-awaited update to Performance Max reporting, giving advertisers their first real look at how Search Partners contribute to PMAX performance. Driving the news. The update is now live in Google Ads, surfacing Search Partners directly inside the PMAX Channel Performance tables. Advertisers can now view: How Search Partners contribute to PMAX results Whether they add incremental value Performance compared with other PMAX channels Total spend directed to Search Partners What’s changing. This added transparency gives advertisers a clearer understanding of where PMAX allocates budget across channels — especially in search — and he…

Google is rolling out a significant update to its Performance Max campaigns, giving advertisers more transparency and control over their ad placements. The big picture: Performance Max search terms are now visible in the standard Search Terms report Advertisers can add negative keywords directly from the report The update integrates with Google’s recent addition of negative keyword capabilities for Performance Max Why we care. This change addresses one of the biggest criticisms of Performance Max campaigns: lack of visibility into which search queries trigger ads. Advertisers now have the same level of insight and control they’re accustomed to with stan…

Refreshing creatives for every seasonal moment just got significantly faster — Google has quietly launched Asset Group Theming inside Performance Max, letting advertisers apply seasonal themes to existing asset groups without rebuilding from scratch. How it works. Advertisers can clone a high-performing asset group and apply a theme — Google then generates themed image variations and suggests aligned headlines and descriptions, while leaving the original asset group completely untouched for safe testing. Available themes cover. Promotional: Sale, Studio/Editorial Seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall Cultural moments: Christmas, Black Friday/Cyber M…

Google updated its Ads Transparency policy to show more detailed information about the entities funding ads – a move aimed at increasing accountability in digital advertising. Driving the news. Starting today, Google is displaying the payer name – drawn from an advertiser’s payment profile – if it differs from their verified advertiser name. For agency accounts, the client’s payment profile will be used as the payer name when applicable. This information will appear in the My Ad Center panel and the Ads Transparency Center. Why we care. This update increases public visibility into who is actually funding ads, which can impact brand perception, trust, and comp…

Google is incrementally improving metric visibility in Performance Max, giving advertisers more insight into how creative choices — particularly video — impact performance. What’s happening. Google Ads has introduced a new “Ads using video” segment within Performance Max channel performance reporting, allowing advertisers to break down results based on whether video assets were included. Why we care. Marketers can now compare performance across placements that used video versus those that didn’t, offering a clearer view into the role video plays across Google’s automated inventory. It helps answer a key question in an automated environment: whether investi…

Account suspensions are essential to “maintain a healthy and sustainable digital advertising ecosystem, with user protection at its core,” according to Google Ads. For advertisers, though, navigating the suspension process can be a minefield. Suspensions can happen suddenly, limit what you can do in your account, and, in some cases, affect related accounts as well. Here’s what triggers account suspensions, the different types you might encounter, and what to do if your account is flagged or suspended. Why do accounts get suspended? Accounts get suspended when Google Ads finds a violation of one of its policies. The platform uses a combination of automated s…

Google is filling a key measurement gap between awareness and consideration, giving advertisers a clearer view of how their brand is actually perceived — not just remembered. What’s new. Google Ads has introduced a new “Association” metric within Brand Lift Studies. Advertisers can define a concept, category or attribute, and Google will ask users a survey-style question: which brands they associate with that specific idea. How it works. Instead of measuring simple recall, the metric evaluates whether audiences connect your brand to a desired positioning. That could mean “premium,” “sustainable,” or even a product category — offering a more nuanced read on brand p…

Google is giving advertisers new visibility into whether its automated recommendations actually drive performance — a long-standing blind spot in the platform. What’s happening. A new “Results” tab within Recommendations shows the incremental impact of bidding and budget changes after they’ve been applied, allowing marketers to evaluate outcomes instead of relying on assumptions. How it works. The feature attributes performance changes to specific recommendations, helping advertisers understand what effect adjustments like budget increases or bid strategy shifts had on results. Why we care. Marketers can now validate whether recommendations improved perfor…

Google Ads rolled out a data source diagnostics feature inside Data Manager that helps advertisers monitor the health of their data connections. The tool flags issues tied to offline conversions, CRM imports, and tagging mismatches. How it works. A centralized dashboard assigns clear connection status labels — Excellent, Good, Needs attention, or Urgent — and surfaces actionable alerts. Advertisers can see problems like refused credentials, formatting errors, and failed imports alongside a run history showing recent sync attempts and error counts. Why we care. When conversion data breaks, campaign optimization breaks with it. Even small data connection failure…

Google Ads has quietly rolled out multi-party approval, a security feature that requires a second administrator to approve certain high-risk account actions. These include adding or removing users and changing user roles. Why we care. As ad accounts grow larger — and more valuable — access control has become a bigger risk. A single unauthorized, malicious or accidental account change can disrupt campaigns, access, and billing in minutes. Multi-party approval reduces that risk by requiring a second admin sign-off on high-impact actions, adding protection without changing day-to-day campaign management. For agencies and large teams especially, it helps prevent cost…

Google Ads expanded its “Political content” declaration, allowing advertisers to set a default political-ads preference at the account level — not just within individual campaigns. The feature quietly rolled out after Google introduced the campaign-level setting in August 2025. Why we care. The shift gives advertisers a simpler, more consistent way to comply with political-ad regulations, especially as new transparency requirements — including the EU’s TTPA rules that took effect in October 2025 — continue to ramp up. Instead of updating each campaign manually, advertisers can now define their political-ad intent once and apply it across the entire account. Ho…

Google Ads is set to enhance the viewer experience of Performance Max video ads with an innovative asset optimization feature. Leveraging advanced AI voice models, this update aims to infuse video ads with realistic voice-overs, ultimately enhancing user engagement and ad performance. Why we care. Advertisers who don’t actively opt out by March 20, will have their video ads automatically enhanced with Google’s AI voice models, changing how their ads sound to viewers without requiring any creative production work. How it works. The feature only activates on videos that don’t already contain a voice track Google’s AI selects text from advertiser-provided hea…

Google is rolling out App Consent Insights in Google Ads, giving advertisers a clearer view into how consent signals impact app campaign performance. What’s new. The new diagnostics view breaks down consent data across apps, platforms, regions, and traffic sources, helping marketers pinpoint gaps in their setup. Zoom in. Advertisers can see an overall consent rating — like “Excellent,” “Good,” or “Poor” — alongside a live count of apps actively sending consented data. A detailed table also shows consent rates for conversions, including splits between EEA and non-EEA users. Why we care. As privacy regulations tighten, consent isn’t just a compliance box — i…