SEO Tools and Resources

Despite being a popular talking point, people aren’t (yet?) abandoning Google Search and using ChatGPT search or other AI chatbots. In fact, the number of Google searches increased year over year, and Google Search handles 373 times more searches than ChatGPT, according to a new analysis by SparkToro co-founder Rand Fishkin. Why we care. Many search marketers, users, and analysts have speculated that AI tools are reducing Google’s dominance in search. However, this research finds no evidence that vast numbers of searchers are abandoning Google for ChatGPT and other AI search engines and chatbot experiences. By the numbers. Even if all ChatGPT’s 1 billion messa…

Google Search Labs has a new experiment you can opt into that turns on some Agentic capabilities within AI Mode. This allows Google to help you make a reservation at a restaurant and will soon give you the ability to book local service appointments and event tickets. Agentic capabilities in AI Mode. The new labs feature works for users in the US who are signed into their Google account. You can opt in and review the features over here. AI Mode in Google Search now has agentic capabilities to help with your everyday local needs. “We’re starting with restaurant reservations, and expanding soon to local service appointments and event tickets,” Google wrote. This…

Google has launched a new Search Labs experiment named “Ask for me.” Ask for me lets you use Google AI to call businesses on your behalf to find out what they charge for a service and also to find out when it’s available. This can work for services like like an oil change from nearby mechanics or other services. How to use it. To access this labs experiement, go here and click on “join to try.” Then when you search for relevant and related queries, like “oil jobs near me,” Google will show you this “Ask for me” box. What it looks like. Here are some screenshots of this feature: More details. Rose Yao, VP of Search Product, Verticals & Internati…

Today, Google released Google Search Live globally where AI Mode is available, for these languages and regions. This brings Search Live to more than 200 countries and territories. Google credits its new audio and voice model, Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, which it says “delivers even more natural and intuitive conversations.” The “new model is also inherently multilingual, which means that people around the world can now speak with Search in their preferred language,” Google added. How it works. To use Search Live, open the Google app on Android or iOS and tap the Live icon under the Search bar. From there, you can ask your question out loud to get a helpful audio respon…

Google today rolled out Search Live in the U.S. Before today, Search Live was in Google Labs as an opt-in feature. Search Live, built into the Google app, lets people talk directly with Google Search in real time. Users can share their phone camera feed so Search can “see” what they’re looking at. How it works. Tap the Live icon in the Google app (Android, iOS). Ask questions. Optionally turn on the camera so Search can interpret what’s in front of you. Search responds with answers, context, and cites its sources at the bottom. What’s new: Unlike earlier testing in Labs, the full release includes both voice and camera input. Google demoed this …

Google announced its latest and greatest AI model, Gemini 3.5 Flash today at Google I/O. Google’s head of Search, Liz Reid, said Gemini 3.5 Flash is Google’s “newest Flash model delivering sustained frontier performance for agents and coding.” She added that is now being used to power AI Mode globally. Gemini 3.5 Flash. Not only is Gemini 3.5 Flash powering AI Mode in Google Search, but it is also powering the Gemini app, for all users, not just paid users. For developers, 3.5 Flash is now live in Google Antigravity, Gemini API for Google AI Studio and Android Studio and for enterprise users for Enterprise Agent Platform and Gemini Enterprise. Koray Kavukcuogl…

Google Search may now be faster when you use Chrome for Google Search. Google is leveraging Speculation Rules API to prefetch results, ultimately making the overall Google Search experience faster. “Google Search has been making use of the Speculation Rules API to improve navigation speed from the search results page to the result links and they’ve been using a few features of the API that may be of interest to other site owners,” Google wrote on the Chrome Developers blog. More details. Google will prefetch the first two search results to speed up the search experience. Google said it does this through using the requires configuration, to ensure prefetches use t…

Amazon unexpectedly pulled out of Google Shopping auctions in late July, shaking up paid search. Retailers quickly filled the gap, driving stronger click growth and easing ad costs across Google and Microsoft. That’s according to marketing agency Tinuiti, which today released its Digital Ads Benchmark Report Q3 2025. Here are some of the key takeaways from Tinuiti’s report. Google Search – more clicks, lower prices. Ad spend rose 10% year over year, as clicks jumped 11% – the fifth straight quarter of acceleration. CPCs fell 1%, reversing a 3% rise from Q2. Shopping ads surged: clicks up 15%, CPCs down 1%, spend up 14%. Temu and Shein returne…

Google confirmed an ongoing issue with serving search results in Google Search. This is impacting some locales, Google added. Google said this is an “ongoing issue” and will update us again “witin 24 hours” with more details. What Google said. Google wrote: There’s an ongoing data center issue that may impact serving of some pages in some locales. We’re working on identifying the root cause. The next update will be within 24 hours. When? This was posted at 5:21 pm ET. What is a serving issue. A serving issue is when Google Search has issues showing some or all search results to the searcher. This is when Google is unable to show some or all search res…

Google is reportedly testing a new search feature named “AI Mode.” AI Mode in Google seems like a new way to search by asking more open-ended and exploratory questions, with the option to follow up. What is AI Mode. AI Mode is described as “Search intelligently research[ing] for you – organizing information into easy-to-digest breakdowns with links to explore content across the web,” according to a leaked email obtained by 9to5Google. AI Mode is more for open-ended and exploratory questions that may not be served well by what we see today from the Google Search results. This includes queries that ask Google Search for advice and comparisons, as well as exchanges…

Google has issued a new warning to sites using back button hijacking techniques, saying those sites have two months to remove or disable those techniques. If they do not, they will be subject to both subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions within Google Search. Back button hijacking. Google explained that “when a user clicks the “back” button in the browser, they have a clear expectation: they want to return to the previous page. Back button hijacking breaks this fundamental expectation.” Google added: “It occurs when a site interferes with a user’s browser navigation and prevents them from using their back button to immediately get back to the pag…

Google will begin redirecting its country code top-level domain names (ccTLD) versions of its Google domain to Google.com. That means if you frequent google.fr (in France), google.ng (in Nigeria) and so on, you will be redirected to Google.com. Why the change. Google said, “Over the years, our ability to provide a local experience has improved. In 2017, we began providing the same experience with local results for everyone using Search, whether they were using google.com or their country’s ccTLD.” “Because of this improvement, country-level domains are no longer necessary,” Google added. Google said, “we’ll begin redirecting traffic from these ccTLDs to google.com…

Jonathon Heard, Industry Head, Insurance at Google, spoke at Simply Business headquarters in London yesterday and told the audience that Google Search will soon route complex queries entered into the Google Search box directly into AI Mode, bypassing Google Search completely. Plus, he also said that Google is indeed working on breaking out better reporting in Google Search Console for AI Mode and AI Overviews. Bypassing Google Search. Jonathon Heard said, “with Gemini 3, we’re gonna auto route complex queries through to AI mode automatically. So they’re live in the US at the minute they’re being tested.” An audience member then asked Jonathon Heard, “When you …

Calling it “inevitable,” Google executives expect Search to lose traffic to Gemini or rival AI answer engine ChatGPT, according to an internal document from October. Why we care. Google generated nearly $200 billion in revenue from Search in 2024. However, Google launched many new AI features and products (e.g., AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini) in the past two years that have radically changed search as we’ve known it for more than two decades. Now it’s confirmed that Google executives think it’s “inevitable” that Google will lose search traffic due to AI. ChatGPT’s impact. An internal summary of takeaways from a meeting with top execs – including Liz Reid, Vidhya S…

Google recently gathered influential voices in the food industry to unveil the latest trends shaping restaurant search and digital marketing. From skyrocketing search terms to drone deliveries and the power of YouTube Shorts, here’s everything you need to know from the Restaurant Industry Influencer Summit. Sizzling search trends: What’s cooking in 2025? Google’s latest search data offers a glimpse into what today’s diners are craving – both in terms of food and digital experiences. Here are some of the hottest trends shaping restaurant searches right now: “Hot honey pizza” is up 232% year-over-year (YoY). And if that doesn’t give you insight into the…

Google also announced some new agentic commerce features today in Google Search including Universal Cart, expanding Universal Commerce Protocol and Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). Plus, Google’s Shopping Graph now contains 60 billion product listings, which is up from 50 billion from earlier this year, announced Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM Ads & Commerce. Universal Cart. Google announced what it is calling the Universal Cart, where you can put products and items from multiple retailers into one single Google Universal Cart and check out on all those items with your Google Wallet with the click of a button. As you are on Google Search, you can add items directl…

Searches on Apple’s Safari browser declined for the first time last month, and Apple’s senior vice president of services Eddy Cue blamed AI. “That has never happened in 22 years,” according to Cue. “People are using AI,” Cue testified Wednesday during the DOJ’s antitrust trial against Google, calling it a fundamental shift that’s eating into traditional search’s dominance. AI search rising. Apple is exploring a revamp of Safari to prioritize AI-powered search engines, Cue testified. AI search tools like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic are being seriously evaluated, though they aren’t yet ready to be defaults, Cue said. “There is much greater potential. T…

U.S. Google searchers are searching far less than a year ago, according to a new Datos/SparkToro report. The data suggests Google isn’t losing users — it’s losing repeat searches. Why we care. Google still dominates search, but it’s changing in significant ways. Fewer searches per user means fewer opportunities for clicks, ads, and traffic — even if total search volume looks steady. By the numbers. Google desktop searches per user fell nearly 20% year over year, based on clickstream data from tens of millions of U.S. users. That drop stands in sharp contrast to Europe, where searches per user declined by just 2% to 3%. Even with fewer searches per person,…

Google’s Gemini AI could eventually become an advertising platform, with CEO Sundar Pichai hinting at “native ad concepts” during the company’s earnings call. The big picture: Gemini currently offers a free tier and paid subscription options Pichai signaled potential future advertising integration The company plans $75 billion in capital expenditures this year to advance AI capabilities What they are saying. “We always want to lead with the user experience and we do have very good ideas for native ad concepts,” Pichai told investors. Why we care. Gemini represents a massive potential new ad platform with sophisticated targeting capabilities. Google’…

Google appears to be rolling out manual actions, search penalties, across German-based sites over the site reputation abuse policy. This comes a week or so after Google expanded the penalties across Europe, for sites in Italy, Spain, and France. What we’re seeing. Christian Kunz, posted on his German-based SEO blog that Google has probably taken first manual actions in Germany against site reputation abuse. A search results set for coupon codes that previously showed many news websites is now no longer showing these sites in the top rankings. Laura Chiocciora, head of SEO at Bravo Savings Network, posted on X adding this morning: 'adidas rabattcode' yesterday vs…

Google sends publishers 831x more visitors than AI systems, according to TollBit’s State of the Bots Q2 2025 report. Even though AI referrals barely register next to Google’s, bots are hammering publisher sites — pushing costs higher, scraping more content, and often ignoring rules meant to limit them. Scraping up, referrals down. AI is scraping the web, but it still isn’t sending meaningful visitors back. Google referrals dropped from 90%+ of all external traffic in Q2 2024 to 84.1% in Q2 2025. AI apps sent just 0.102% of referrals. For every visitor from an AI system, Google delivered 831. Click-through rates from AI interfaces were weak – 91% lower th…

Advertisers are receiving step-by-step guidance emails from Google Ads aimed at improving campaign performance over a three-month period. The details. Google Ads is sending emails with the subject line “Personalised action plan for growth” to business advertisers, according to an X post from Govind Singh Panwar. The email contains: A three-month structured improvement plan delivered through weekly emails. A progress tracker showing completed and pending actions. Clear calls to action focused on ad strength improvements. Claims that improving ad strength from “Poor” to “Excellent” results in an average 12% increase in conversions. AI suggestion…

Google concluded a 14-year legal battle over advertising billing practices, agreeing to a substantial settlement without admitting any wrongdoing. The resolution marks a significant moment in the company’s complex history of digital advertising regulations. The big picture. The lawsuit centered on allegations that Google manipulated its AdWords platform between 2004 and 2012, specifically targeting two key issues: artificially reducing advertiser discounts through Smart Pricing and distributing ads beyond advertisers’ designated geographic location. Context. Advertisers accused Google of violating California’s unfair competition law, claiming the tech giant misled…

Google today published new guidance on how to “succeed” in its evolving AI-powered search experiences. What’s new. The only real (sort of) news here is that Google has put into writing what Google’s Elizabeth Reid and others have said in recent months – that AI-driven searches are increasing engagement and creating higher-quality clicks. Also: Google said tools like nosnippet and max-snippet apply to AI content as well. This is more of a reminder that you can limit how your website appears – or doesn’t – in AI Overviews. Google suggested going beyond text and thinking multimodal. In other words, use high-quality images and videos, plus make sure your Merchant…

Google released new information about its ad review process, explaining its hybrid approach to enforcing policy violations across its advertising ecosystem. The details. Google’s clarification emphasizes: Reviews use a combination of AI systems and human evaluators Multiple information sources factor into violation determinations Content removal decisions apply to ads, assets, destinations, and entire accounts English remains the official language for policy enforcement Between the lines. This transparency update comes as regulatory scrutiny of digital advertising platforms increases globally, with lawmakers demanding more accountability around conte…