SEO Tools and Resources

Google is expanding its Analytics Data API to include cross-channel conversion reporting — giving developers programmatic access to paid and organic performance data. What’s happening. The new feature, currently in alpha, allows Google Analytics and Google Ads users to pull conversion data across channels via the API — mirroring what’s available in the Conversion performance report in the Analytics interface. This means developers can now access the same insights without relying on manual reporting. Why we care. As measurement becomes more complex, advertisers need unified views of performance across paid and organic channels. This update enables teams to auto…

Google Analytics is making it easier for businesses to compare themselves against industry peers by expanding its Benchmarking feature to include 20 new unnormalized metrics, such as New Users and Total Revenue. How it works. Google Analytics estimates benchmark ranges for absolute numbers by multiplying a peer group’s normalized metric by your property’s active user count. For example, benchmarks for Engaged Sessions are calculated as: Peer group’s engaged sessions per active user × your active users. Details: Benchmarks are offered in percentiles (25th, median, 75th) to show performance ranges. Peer groups are determined by industry categories, …

Google is trying to simplify one of its most complex products, helping advertisers and analysts get more value from Google Analytics without deep technical expertise. What’s new. Google Analytics is rolling out Task Assistant, a guided workflow tool that surfaces tailored recommendations to improve property setup, data collection and reporting. How it works. Available in the left-hand navigation, Task Assistant organizes recommendations into clear categories like connecting accounts, enhancing reporting and fixing data issues. Users can mark tasks as complete as they go or skip items that don’t align with their business goals, creating a more flexible setup experi…

Google Analytics real time reporting may be off this morning, at least based on a number of reports we are hearing about since earlier this morning. If you are noticing unusually low real-time counts in GA4, you are not alone. More details. I reported about the issue earlier today on the Search Engine Roundtable, quoting a number of complaints on social: Seeing this right now. Either the bottom just dropped out on traffic, or it's an Analytics issue. — wordmetrics (@wordmetrics) May 8, 2025 Looks like GA4 is on a coffee break today! Hope they get back to work soon. Not alone in this! — Chandan Kumar (@ImChandanKumar) May 8, 2025 Again real time numbers …

Google Analytics now allows administrators and editors to customize report collections and groupings, making navigation more tailored to business needs as announced by Carly Boddy, Product Manager at Google Analytics. How it works. Creating a Collection: Admins and editors can create up to seven collections per property. Navigate to Library in the left-side menu. Click Create new collection and choose either a blank collection or a predefined template. Add a Collection Name and create up to five topics. Drag and drop Detail and Overview reports into the topics (each topic can hold up to 10 reports). Click Save and Publish to make the collection…

Google Analytics introduced a new AI-powered feature called Generated insights that automatically detects and explains significant data fluctuations. The feature uses natural language to surface trends and anomalies — potentially saving you hours of manual work and so you can react faster to what’s really going on. How it works. The Generated insights feature identifies unusual patterns (e.g., unexpected conversion spikes), then analyzes several combinations of dimensions and metrics to determine probable causes. It then delivers explanations in plain language directly within the Analytics interface. Generated insights appear natively within detailed reports…

Google Analytics is enhancing its reporting capabilities with three new features designed to help users better understand their data and identify potential tracking issues. Percentage values are now included in all detailed reports, new notifications flag missing session_start events and system alerts also highlight high rates of “(not set)” values. Percentages now standard in reports. Google has added percentage values to each row across all detailed reports in both the “Reports” and “Ads” modules. The new percentage columns allow analysts to immediately see which traffic sources, pages, or campaigns are driving the most significant portions of their results…

Google streamlined the process for importing cost data into Analytics, reducing mandatory fields and offering more flexible reporting options. The big picture. Marketers can now import cost data with just three core requirements: source, medium, and date, eliminating previous constraints around campaign names and IDs. Key updates. Including the following fields allows for more detailed reporting. Without them, Google Analytics will report cost data in aggregate when dimensions like campaign name or ID are queried. Simplified required fields. You now only need three fields to import cost data: Source: Where the traffic originated. Medium: The type of traff…

Food bloggers say this Thanksgiving is a breaking point. Google Search and AI Overviews, powered by Gemini 3, are rewriting recipes, stealing clicks, and in some cases serving dangerously wrong cooking instructions, Bloomberg reported. Why we care. For more than a decade, food bloggers could predict and rely on holiday traffic. Not this year. AI answers are replacing vetted recipes, cutting off creators’ main revenue streams, and confusing home cooks with stitched-together instructions that don’t always make sense. What’s happening. Google’s AI Overviews now surface blended cooking steps from multiple bloggers, often above the links/sources they draw from. Ma…

Performance Max (PMax) campaigns have become the cornerstone of AI-driven advertising. Both Google and Microsoft offer advertisers a way to consolidate creative assets, audience signals, and automation into a single campaign type. (Disclosure: I work as Microsoft’s product liaison.) While the concept is similar across platforms, the execution and feature sets differ significantly. This article aims to provide an objective comparison of Google PMax and Microsoft PMax as of late 2025. We’ll explore what’s universally true, what’s unique to each platform, and strategic considerations for advertisers looking to maximize performance. What’s universally tr…

Google’s Ask Maps feature does more than help users find nearby businesses. Based on hands-on testing of local service queries for plumbers, electricians, and HVAC companies, Ask Maps often narrows the field, interprets user intent, and frames businesses around qualities such as responsiveness, specialization, honesty, and repair-first thinking. In more complex prompts, it sometimes provides guidance before recommending businesses. This shows Google Maps moving beyond simple local retrieval and toward a more recommendation-driven experience. To evaluate that shift, we tested Ask Maps across five levels of local intent — starting with simple category searches a…

Understanding how to optimize for visibility in Google Ask Maps starts with recognizing what’s changing. Instead of returning a long list of businesses, Ask Maps narrows the field, interprets the user’s intent, and explains why certain businesses are a good fit. That shift has an important implication. Visibility in Ask Maps now depends on how a business is understood and positioned within the response. If Ask Maps is more recommendation-driven, what should businesses and SEOs do differently? At a high level, the answer is not to treat Ask Maps as a separate tactic. It’s to make your business easier for Google to understand, easier to match to real-world situation…

“This call is being recorded for Google algorithm optimization purposes.” On April 22, Google Ads notified Local Services Ads (LSA) advertisers of a significant update to its Terms of Service, asserting the right to use, modify, and analyze all content within an advertiser’s LSA profile, including phone calls from prospective customers. These rights extend not only across Google’s platforms, products, and services, but also to its affiliates. And yes, Google has already been digitally eavesdropping on LSA phone calls. In July 2024, they replaced the previously manual (and relatively accurate) lead dispute process with an automated, AI-driven system. …

Google AI Mode is now here and available within Google Search Labs; it is a new search mode that goes beyond AI Overviews with a more immersive Google Search AI interface that provides “more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities,” Google announced. Google also announced that AI Overviews are now powered by Gemini 2.0 and that AI Overviews are now available for teenagers, a login is not required for access to these AI answers anymore. AI Mode AI Mode is a new tab within Google Search, right now only for those accepted into the Google Search Labs experiment, that brings you into a more AI-like interface. Google said AI Mode “is particularly hel…

Advertisers can now generate short videos directly inside Google Ads using Veo, Google’s most advanced generative video model — no video production required. How it works. Upload up to three static images into Asset Studio and Veo generates videos up to 10 seconds long with natural motion, designed specifically for YouTube formats and audiences. These can then be turned into ready-to-serve ads using customisable templates. What else it can do. Combined with Nano Banana, advertisers can adapt creatives further — swapping backgrounds, adjusting messaging, and tailoring content to specific audience interests. The bigger picture. This follows Google’s earlier …

Google is expanding its measurement capabilities with new integrations between Google Analytics 360, Meridian and predictive AI reporting tools as announced today at Google Marketing Live 2026. Driving the news. Meridian, Google’s open-source marketing mix modeling platform, will be integrated directly into Google Analytics 360. The integration is designed to help advertisers: Unify first-party and cross-channel data Measure incremental performance Forecast campaign outcomes Optimize media mix investments Google is also introducing Qualified Future Conversions (QFCs), a predictive reporting metric powered by Gemini. QFCs connect current a…

Personal Intelligence, which was introduced first on the Gemini app last week, is already rolling out to some users in AI Mode within Google Search. “Starting today, Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers can opt-in to securely connect Gmail and Google Photos to AI Mode,” Robby Stein, VP of Product, Google Search announced. Personal Intelligence in AI Mode lets Google Search give you a more personal response to your queries by connecting across your Google ecosystem, including Google Search, Gmail, Photos, and your YouTube history. This is rolling out over the next few days AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in English in the U.S. How to see it. This is a Labs feature…

Google is expanding how inventory appears in Google Ads Search campaigns, giving automotive advertisers a more visual, product-rich format directly in text ads. What’s happening. Google Ads now supports vehicle feed integration on Search ads, allowing advertisers to pull inventory from Google Merchant Center and enhance existing text ads with details like make, model, price, and images. How it works. Vehicle listings appear as clickable assets alongside standard Search ads, either below or beside the main text. Users can click through to a specific vehicle detail page or a broader landing page, depending on the interaction. Why we care. This update lets automo…

If you noticed that your local business listing on Google is showing fewer reviews, you are not alone. Since Friday, tons of reviews have been disappearing from the local listings within Google Search and Google Maps. More details. On Friday, I reported on the issue on the Search Engine Roundtable, not knowing if it was a bug or a feature. I noticed dozens and dozens of complaint threads popping up in the Google Business Profiles forums from concerned small businesses and local SEOs. Some businesses say they lost only a few reviews, while others say they lost dozens of positive reviews. Some say the count of reviews is not adding up and the reviews themselves …

If you try to add a new business to Google Business Profiles today, you may run into difficulties. When you get to the screen where you add your phone number and website address, Google won’t let you proceed to the next step. It is unclear if there is an issue with phone numbers in general, which may be causing this bug, or not. But there are also businesses reporting their phone numbers are being removed and also rejected from their Google Business Profiles. More details. As noted, on this screen, the “Next” button, simply won’t take you to the next screen: Google product expert, Vinay Toshniwal, wrote in the Google Business Profile forums: I’ve com…

Google is testing AI-generated review replies in Google Business Profile. Why we care. Responding to reviews can impact conversions and trust. But generic AI replies could be risky and erode trust, especially on negative reviews where authenticity matters most. Response quality matters more than whether a business replies to reviews. What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot: The details. Google appears to be rolling out a limited test of Reply to reviews with AI inside Google Business Profile. The feature generates suggested responses to customer reviews. Users can review, edit, and manually submit replies. Availability is inconsistent across acc…

Google Posts now supports scheduling and multi-location publishing within Google Business Profiles. This should make it easier for you to manage your Google Posts for your business(es) and client(s). Scheduling. When you add a new Google Post within Google Business Profiles, there is a new option to “schedule this post.” You can then select a date and time for when you want the post to be scheduled. Lisa Landsman from Google said on LinkedIn, “plan your entire week or month in advance! You can now schedule your Google Posts to go live automatically at the perfect time.” Multi-location publishing. Also, if you manage multiple locations for a business and you wa…

Google is rolling out a new feature in Google Business Profiles named “What’s Happening.” This feature offers restaurants and bars a new way to highlight events, deals, and specials prominently at the top of your Google Business Profile. Google said, “What’s Happening” puts your timely updates, like “Today’s Special” or “Live Music on Saturday,” front and center!” What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of this feature in action: Eglibility. To be eligible to appear in this new space, share What’s Happening at your business via Google Posts or connect your Facebook, Instagram and/ or X profiles to your Google Business Profiles for automatic syncing. …

Google has expanded the What’s happening feature within Google Business Profiles to restaurants and bars in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is now available for multi-location restaurants, not just single-location restaurants. The What’s happening feature launched back in May as a way for some businesses to highlight events, deals, and specials prominently at the top of your Google Business Profile. Now, Google is bringing it to more countries. What Google said. Google’s Lisa Landsman wrote on LinkedIn: How do you promote your “Taco Tuesday” in Toledo and your “Happy Hour” in Houston… right when locals are searching for a place to …

Google is releasing some new ways to book your flights and hotels through AI Mode, plus new tools to plan your travel and find travel deals. These updates include Canvas in AI Mode for travel, flight deals rolling out globally, agentic booking for dinner reservations, flights and hotels. Some of these features are similar to the AI Shopping updates that Google announced last week. Agentic booking. Google in AI Mode can now not just recommend restaurants, hotels and flights but now also help you book them. We saw some of these features for reservations and events but that was while in Labs, opting into Labs is no longer required. Dinner reservations agentic …