SEO Tools and Resources

We fully decrypted Google’s SearchGuard anti-bot system, the technology at the center of its recent lawsuit against SerpAPI. After fully deobfuscating the JavaScript code, we now have an unprecedented look at how Google distinguishes human visitors from automated scrapers in real time. What happened. Google filed a lawsuit on Dec. 19 against Texas-based SerpAPI LLC, alleging the company circumvented SearchGuard to scrape copyrighted content from Google Search results at a scale of “hundreds of millions” of queries daily. Rather than targeting terms-of-service violations, Google built its case on DMCA Section 1201 – the anti-circumvention provision of copyright law…

There’s a common assumption across the SEO industry that people no longer search for local services the way they once did. As tools like ChatGPT become more common starting points, that assumption often takes the form of keyword-style searches giving way to longer, more conversational prompts. To test it, we observed everyday users as they used ChatGPT to find local service providers, including healthcare and aesthetics practices. Participants were asked to begin their search on ChatGPT and behave as they normally would, whether that meant visiting websites, checking social profiles, or reading reviews. That observation was guided by a set of core question…

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…

Working as an office manager in my early 20s, I read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Many of its principles still hold true today, and they guided me through multiple career transitions. Success in most careers comes from our interactions with people – whether clients or coworkers. For years, those principles of human connection, combined with technical knowledge and expertise, helped digital marketers succeed. Agencies made sense of the machines for clients, and strong relationship-building allowed them to retain those clients over time. That model is now being challenged. As AI has become fully embedded in PPC platforms, the…

Google spoke about its year-end report on the crawling challenges Google faced in 2025 when crawling and indexing the web for Google Search. The biggest challenges include faceted navigation and action parameters, which make up about 75% of those challenges, Gary Illyes from Google said. This was on its latest Search Off the Record podcast, published this morning. What is the issue. Crawling issues can cause your site to lag and slow, it can overload your server, and make your website unusable and inaccessible. If a robot goes off on your site and gets into some infinite loop of crawling, it can take some time for the site to recover. “Once it discovers a set of …

AI search hasn’t killed SEO. Now you have to win twice: the ranking and the citation. Google searches for almost anything today, and there’s a good chance you’ll see an AI Overview before the organic results, sometimes even before the ads. That summary frames the query, shortlists sources, and shapes which brands get considered. AI Overviews now appear for about 21% of all keywords, according to Ahrefs. And 99.9% are triggered by informational intent. Search rankings still matter. But AI summaries increasingly determine who wins early consideration. Here’s what we’re seeing: brands aren’t losing visibility because they dropped from position thr…

Right now, it’s hard to find a marketing conversation that doesn’t include two letters: AI. SEOs, strategists, and marketing leaders everywhere are asking the same question in different ways: How do we use AI to cut manpower, streamline work, move faster, and boost efficiency? Much of that thinking makes sense. If you run a business, you can’t ignore a tool that turns hours of grunt work into minutes. You’d be foolish to try. But we’re spending too much time asking, “Can AI do this?” and not enough time asking, “Should AI do this?” Once the initial excitement fades, some uncomfortable questions show up. If every title tag, meta description, land…

Search engine optimization (SEO) — be found. Answer engine optimization (AEO) — be the answer. AI engine optimization (AIEO) — be the recommendation. Assistive agent optimization (AAO) — be chosen when no human is in the loop. Four stages where each clearly absorbs the last. The word that stays constant across the last two is “assistive,” and that’s important because it names the purpose: what the system does for the user. The word that changes is just one: engine becomes agent — a single pivot that tracks the real shift in our industry, from systems that recommend to systems that act. For me, everything else in the naming debate is a distraction. The SEO industry…

Google Discover caught my attention in 2021, when it was driving millions of clicks a month to publishers. I underestimated how pervasive it would become. My feed cycles through soccer, television, Baltimore news, SEO, and world events — a reminder that Discover understands users at an almost uncomfortable level. It’s not limited to one app. Discover appears in Chrome new tabs, the Google app, Android home screens, Google.com on most mobile browsers, and other Google surfaces. If Google Discover is everywhere, it’s our job as SEOs to capitalize on this opportunity. Let me show you how. Essential considerations before we begin optimizing for Discover…

Most people fail on Reddit because they write comments like ads. Reddit eats ads for breakfast. It’s better to follow a Reddit comment framework that has been proven thousands of times to get engagement and increase visibility and awareness. The winning move? Be useful first, be human, then casually exist as a company. Below are 10 proven comment frameworks we see working every single day for our clients. These aren’t scripts: they’re thinking patterns. Follow the structure, swap in your context, and your comments will feel native instead of needy. 1. The ‘been there done that’ comment When to use it: Someone is struggling or asking how to do something y…

The days of building campaigns around long lists of keywords are fading. Today, AI-powered Google campaigns and features like Performance Max (PMax) and AI Max are changing the rules. These keywordless campaigns lean on automation, audience signals, and machine learning to find new opportunities, often faster and at greater scale than humans can. At SMX Next, three PPC pros — Nikki Kuhlman, VP of search at Jumpfly; Brad Geddes, founder of Adalysis; and Christine Zirnheld, director of lead gen at Cypress North — explained where PMax and AI Max fit into your broader campaign strategy, where humans still make the difference, and how to strike the right balance betwee…

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,…

Gary Illyes, an analyst with the Google Search team, posted his reaction to a Microsoft Bing article written by Fabrice Canel and Krishna Madhavan of Microsoft, about how AI Search is changing how conversions are measured. Coevolve. Gary Illyes wrote on LinkedIn, “I know for sure however is that SEM and SEO will need to coevolve with search, just like it has the past 30 years.” SEOs and SEMs will have to adapt as search evolves; which many SEOs have been doing since SEO became a service. And some of the best SEOs and SEMs have adapted and evolved over the years. SEO is not dead. Gary Illyes also said, “SEO is not dead.” Yes, these same best SEOs and SEMs…

Google has confirmed that the Search Console index coverage report, also the page indexing report, are now delayed about two weeks. Google confirmed the issue and is working to resolve the issue, but said this only impacts reporting and that crawling; indexing and ranking of websites are not impacted. Page indexing report. The page indexing report shows you which pages Google can find and index on your site, and learn about any indexing problems encountered. You can also submit “fixes” to that report to see if Google confirms your fix actually worked. But since that report is now two weeks delayed, you won’t be able to confirm your fix worked until the report update…

Shopify is experiencing a major login outage on one of the peak shopping days of the holiday season, leaving merchants unable to access their dashboards, POS systems, mobile apps, or even contact Shopify Support. What’s happening. Shopify’s status page shows a series of escalating alerts beginning at 14:54 UTC, warning that merchants “may experience issues when trying to login.” Minutes later, the platform confirmed the outage affects POS, mobile logins, and support access. By 15:26 UTC, Shopify urged merchants to stay logged in on any devices that are currently active to avoid further complications. Why we care. A login outage during a top-tier sale…

Google today released its 2025 Year in Search list, but don’t mistake it for a ranking of the “top searches” or the “most searched” terms. This year’s recap focused on trending queries – the topics that grew the fastest compared with 2024. That shift reveals a lot about where Google Search is heading, and how it’s been evolving for years. Why we care. Google chose to spotlight fast-rising, emerging queries. Freshness has long mattered in search, but the 2025 top trending queries list underscores an accelerating shift: the biggest AI search and SEO opportunities will come from new, developing topics – not evergreen informational ones. Your strongest wins may hinge on q…

AI is changing how people discover and understand brands. It’s also reshaping how they search, with users turning to tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews for answers instead of clicking through pages. They interact with synthesized summaries, not traditional results. That shift forces marketers to rethink how visibility is built. SEO still matters, but it now extends beyond on-page content or rankings. Visibility depends on how often a brand is cited, referenced, and discussed across the digital ecosystem, and how those signals are interpreted by large language models. Enter the PESO model. Long used to balance paid, e…

SMX Advanced – the premier conference for senior-level search marketers – returns to Boston June 3 to 5, 2026 at the Westin Boston Seaport. We want to bring the most advanced strategies in SEO, PPC, and AI to our community – and we need your help to make it happen. Search is changing faster than ever. SEOs are scrambling to master AI SEO, navigate a SERP now dominated by AI Overviews, and make sense of Google volatility and algorithm updates. For PPC advertisers, making smart, data-driven decisions is getting harder. And on top of that, you’re expected to adopt new AI tools while still applying the right human touch. SMX Advanced is looking for speak…

Generative systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are quietly taking over the early parts of discovery – the “what should I know?” stage that once sent millions of people to your website. Visibility now isn’t just about who ranks. It’s about who gets referenced inside the models that guide those decisions. The metrics we’ve lived by – impressions, sessions, CTR – still matter, but they no longer tell the full story. Mentions, citations, and structured visibility signals are becoming the new levers of trust and the path to revenue. This article pulls together data from Siege Media’s two-year content performance study, Grow and Convert’s conv…

Most AI chats have no commercial intent, users usually ask short questions, and most conversations end after just two turns. Those findings come from a recent analysis by Dan Petrovic, director of AI SEO agency Dejan, who examined millions of conversational turns to show how people actually use AI assistants. Why we care. As SEOs and marketers race to “optimize for AI,” Petrovic’s analysis suggests the industry is misreading how people actually use AI assistants. Most chats function as multi-step tasks, not keyword-style queries. And users aren’t flooding AI with “buy” queries – they’re exploring problems and comparing options. By the numbers. Petrovic analyzed 4.…

Microsoft is beginning to roll out its first agentic experiences within Copilot, it’s AI answer engine. Copilot Checkout allows shoppers to make purchases directly within Copilot without redirecting to external sites. This is done directly in the Copilot chat experience. Plus, a new feature called Brand Agents is rolling out for Shopify sites, allowing merchants to have an AI chat experience trained on their own product catalog. Microsoft said the AI responses will have your brand’s voice and be “built for fast, scalable adoption.” Copilot Checkout. Copilot Checkout is beginning to roll out in the U.S. on Copilot.com. Copilot Checkout enables conversational purcha…

Advertisers can now compare two sets of assets while keeping “common assets” consistent across both versions. Tests can be set up from the Experiments page under the Assets sub-menu, allowing marketers to see which creative combinations perform best. Google previously launched a similar experiment type for retail campaigns last year, and this expands the capability to all Performance Max campaigns. Why we care. Performance Max campaigns rely heavily on automation, which has historically made testing specific creative assets tricky. This new feature gives advertisers more control over asset-level performance insights without disrupting the overall campaign. Th…

For the last few years, copywriting has been quietly written off. Not with outrage. Not with ceremony. Just sidelined. Replaced. Automated. Words – the core material of SEO, landing pages, ads, and persuasion – were demoted during the traffic rush and later the AI gold rush. Blog posts were generated. Product descriptions were bulked out. Landing pages were templated. Content teams shrank. Freelancers disappeared. And a convenient narrative emerged to justify it all: “AI can write now, so writing doesn’t matter anymore.” Then Google made it worse. The helpful content update, followed by AI Overviews and conversational search, didn’t just …

Spending on Google search ads rose 13% year over year in Q4 2025, up from 10% in Q3, based on Tinuiti’s latest benchmark report. Click growth for advertisers hit its strongest rate since early 2021, while average CPCs declined slightly for the second consecutive quarter. AI-driven results continue to expand overall query volume, including commercial searches. Why we care. Google search ad clicks are surging while CPCs remain flat, a trend fueled in part by Amazon stepping back from U.S. Google Shopping auctions. Advertisers are seeing both opportunity (CPC mostly stable) and disruption as spend patterns shift across search and shopping. Additionally, AI-driven que…

When ChatGPT, Claude, or Google’s AI get asked for brand or product recommendations, they almost never return the same list twice — and almost never in the same order. That’s the big finding from a new study from Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro, and Patrick O’Donnell, CTO and co-founder of Gumshoe.ai. They investigated whether generative AI recommendations are sufficiently consistent to be measured. What they tested. Six hundred volunteers ran 12 identical prompts through ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI nearly 3,000 times. Each response was normalized into an ordered list of brands or products. The team then compared those lists for overlap, or…