SEO Tools and Resources

AI search influence didn’t show up in our SEO reports or AI prompt tracking tools. It showed up in sales calls. “Found you via Grok, actually,” a new lead said. That comment stopped us cold. We hadn’t tried to rank in Grok. We weren’t tracking it. Yet it was influencing how buyers discovered and evaluated us. That disconnect kept appearing in client conversations, too. Everyone was curious about AI search, but no one trusted the data. Teams wanted visibility in ChatGPT and other AI tools, then asked the same question: “Why invest in a channel that doesn’t show up cleanly in attribution?” To answer that, we ran controlled experiments using assets we could fu…

A core targeting lever in Google Demand Gen campaigns is changing. Starting March 2026, Lookalike audiences will act as optimization signals — not hard constraints — potentially widening reach and leaning more heavily on automation to drive conversions. What is happening. Per an update to Google’s Help documentation, Lookalike segments in Demand Gen are moving from strict similarity-based targeting to an AI-driven suggestion model. Before: Advertisers selected a similarity tier (narrow, balanced, broad), and campaigns targeted users strictly within that Lookalike pool. After: The same tiers act as signals. Google’s system can expand beyond the Lookalike list t…

Google Ads has launched a new Results tab inside its Recommendations section that shows advertisers the measured performance impact after they apply bid and budget suggestions. How it works. After an advertiser applies a bid or budget recommendation, Google analyzes campaign performance one week later and compares it to an estimated baseline of what would have happened without the change. The system then highlights the incremental lift, such as additional conversions generated by raising a budget or adjusting targets. Where to find it. Impact reporting appears in the Recommendations area of an account. A summary callout shows recent results on the main page, w…

I stopped using press releases several years ago. I thought they had lost most of their impact. Then a conversation with a good friend and mentor changed my perspective. She explained that the days of expecting organic features from simply publishing a press release were long gone. But she was still getting strong results by directly pitching relevant journalists once the release went live, using its key points and a link as added leverage. I reluctantly tried her approach, and the results were phenomenal, earning my client multiple organic features. My first thought was, “If it worked this well with a small tweak, I can make it even more effective with a…

The web has strong opinions about what “AI-written” content looks like, and even stronger ones about what’s supposedly wrong with it. Scroll any content marketer’s LinkedIn feed, and you’ll find confident claims that em dashes and other AI “tells” signal bad, automated writing. The problem with these debates is that they often confuse taste with performance. What counts as “bad writing” will always be subjective. But if the goal for content marketers is to communicate clearly and compete in the information marketplace, the practical question should be: which LLM habits actually turn readers off? To find out, we analyzed a large dataset of content marketing pages t…

Google DeepMind is rolling out Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), its latest image generation model, combining the intelligence and production controls of Nano Banana Pro with the rapid performance of Gemini Flash. What’s new. Nano Banana 2 introduces: Advanced world knowledge: Powered by Gemini’s real-time web grounding to better render specific subjects and generate infographics or data visualizations. Precision text rendering and translation: Cleaner, legible text inside images — including localization. Stronger instruction adherence: Improved handling of complex, multi-layered prompts. Subject consistency: Maintains up to five characters and …

Google updated both its image SEO best practices and Google Discover help documents to clarify that Google uses both schema.org markup and the og:image meta tag as sources when determining image thumbnails in Google Search and Discover. Image SEO best practices. Google added a new section to the image SEO best practices help document named Specify a preferred image with metadata. In that section, Google wrote: “Google’s selection of an image preview is completely automated and takes into account a number of different sources to select which image on a given page is shown on Google (for example, a text result image or the preview image in Discover).” Here is ho…

Google is rolling out an update to AI Mode for recipe results that it hopes will make recipe bloggers happy. Google’s Robby Stein said on X, “We’ve heard feedback on recipe results in AI Mode, and we’re making updates to better connect people with recipe creators on the web.” The changes aim to make it easier to click over to recipe sites, though I am not 100% certain yet whether the recipe summaries turn recipes into AI slop. “Starting today, when you search for meal ideas like “easy dinners for two,” you can tap on the dish to see links to relevant recipe sites, plus a short overview of the dish to help with inspiration,” Stein added. What it looks like. Her…

Video advertising has never been easier to distribute. Platforms can deliver impressions and views at an enormous scale across YouTube, paid social, short-form video, and connected TV. But distribution isn’t the same as effectiveness. Many campaigns generate impressive platform metrics while producing little measurable business impact. The problem usually isn’t targeting, budget, or platform choice. It’s a deeper strategic issue: campaigns are optimized for outputs like views and impressions rather than outcomes like attention, persuasion, and action. Most video ads fail because they misunderstand attention Poor targeting, limited budgets, and platform choi…

AI tools now generate 45 billion monthly sessions worldwide — about 56% of search engine volume, according to a study by Graphite.io CEO Ethan Smith. The analysis combines web traffic and mobile app usage across major AI tools and estimates AI activity equals 56% of global search usage and 34% in the U.S. Much of this growth is occurring in mobile apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Claude. Why we care. AI is expanding discovery, not shrinking search demand. Total usage across search engines and AI assistants has grown 26% globally since 2023. In other words, it’s not SEO vs. GEO — you need both LLM visibility and traditional rankings. The …

Buying AI capabilities to drive marketing is easy. Enabling marketing teams to actually use it independently, decisively, and at scale is far harder. The main culprit? Humans. Marketing teams have always had the same elusive goal: to move at the pace of the consumer. Responding to each customer’s needs in real time, delivering the relevant message at the right moment, and optimizing customer lifetime value to drive loyalty and ROI. The goal is not new. What is perpetually new are the AI technologies available to analyze consumer data and generate instant, personalized messaging at scale. But while technology evolves rapidly, the ability of marketing teams to harn…

Imagine your ideal customer going to ChatGPT and asking, “Is [BRAND] worth it?” They’re not getting a vetted list of links in response. They’re getting a synthesized answer, most likely summarizing who you are, what you’re known for, and whether you’re credible. They’ll get a confident answer to the nebulous question of assigning worth. You don’t control that summary. But it will shape their decision before they convert, possibly before they ever visit your site. This is the new reality of search. SEO has traditionally been a discovery channel: higher rankings led to more traffic, which led to more conversions. But AI-powered search experiences, from AI Overvi…

As Google rolls out AI Overviews, AI Mode in Search, and the Gemini ecosystem, we face a growing challenge: what happens when users get answers — and soon complete purchases — without leaving Google’s interfaces? Enter Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), now in beta. UCP is designed to help brands to sell to consumers without leaving the Gemini or LLM experience. Consumers can check out within the LLM, add rewards points, and fully execute the transaction. Here’s an example flow: How Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol works At its core, UCP standardizes how consumer AI interfaces communicate with merchant checkout systems. When a user tells G…

Local SEO has a visibility problem, but it’s not where most teams think. It’s not about rankings for “near me” or service keywords. It’s everything that happens before that moment, when customers are trying to figure out what’s wrong, what it means, and whether they need help at all. That gap is why so much high-intent demand slips through the cracks. Service-first site structures miss real search behavior Most local service websites are built the same way: a homepage at the top, then service pages, and often location pages underneath. It’s a good, clean structure, and it makes sense because it mirrors how the business thinks. You offer drain cleaning, fu…

The local SEO community remains locked in a permanent debate over the “hide address” toggle for service area businesses (SABs). Most owners view this switch as a simple privacy setting. In reality, it’s a high-stakes decision that dictates how Google’s algorithm interprets your physical relevance. Does your defined service area influence where you rank? Does hiding your street address suppress your visibility in the local pack? Most importantly, does Google purge that data from its system, or does your map pin simply become an invisible anchor? These are fundamental and relevant questions of how proximity functions when you choose to go off the grid. …

SEO in 2026 is expanding, not changing. Traditional search still matters, but now SEO also includes AI-driven discovery, social platforms, and chatbots. The principles are the same, like clarity, structure, authority, and relevance, but the platforms are multiplying. We surveyed 59 SEOs to see how they’re handling these changes. Table of contents Download the PDF report now 1. SEO isn’t dying, but evolving 2. Keep the name Search Engine Optimization 3. Good SEO is LLM optimization 4. Rankings still matter, but not like they used to 5. Organic traffic is still king, but for how long? 6. Content saturation is a big threat 7. Most SEOs are ignoring a fast-growing s…

We are excited to announce an update to our Offer schema within Yoast SEO for Shopify. This update introduces a more robust way to communicate pricing to search engines, specifically introducing sale price strikethroughs. What’s new? Previously, communicating a “sale” was often limited to showing a single price. With this update, we’ve refined how our schema handles the Offer object. You can now clearly define: The original price: The “base” price before any discounts. The sale price: The current active price the customer pays. Why this matters When search engines understand the relationship between your original and sale prices, they can bette…

Jeff Dean says Google’s AI Search still works like classic Search: narrow the web to relevant pages, rank them, then let a model generate the answer. In an interview on Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast, Google’s chief AI scientist explained how Google’s AI systems work and how much they rely on traditional search infrastructure. The architecture: filter first, reason last. Visibility still depends on clearing ranking thresholds. Content must enter the broad candidate pool, then survive deeper reranking before it can be used in an AI-generated response. Put simply, AI doesn’t replace ranking. It sits on top of it. Dean said an LLM-powered system doesn’t re…

Meta Platforms is embedding newly acquired AI agent tech directly into Ads Manager, giving advertisers built-in automation tools for research and reporting as the company looks to show faster returns on its AI investments. What’s happening. Some advertisers are seeing in-stream prompts to activate Manus AI inside Ads Manager. Manus is now available to all advertisers via the Tools menu. Select users are also getting pop-up alerts encouraging in-workflow adoption. The feature rollout signals deeper integration ahead. What is Manus. Manus AI is designed to power AI agents that can perform tasks like report building and audience research, effectively actin…

Microsoft Advertising is rolling out multi-image ads for Shopping campaigns in Bing search results, giving ecommerce brands a richer way to showcase products and capture shopper attention before the click. What’s new. Advertisers can now display multiple product images within a single Shopping ad, letting shoppers preview different angles, styles or variations directly in search. The format is designed to make ads more visually engaging and informative, helping consumers compare options quickly without leaving the results page. How it works: Additional images are uploaded through the optional additional_image_link attribute in the product feed. Adverti…

Google Analytics is adding AI-powered Generated insights to the Home page and rolling out cross-channel budgeting (beta), moves designed to help marketers spot performance shifts faster and manage paid spend more strategically. What’s happening. Generated insights now appear directly on the Google Analytics Home screen, summarizing the top three changes since a user’s last visit. That includes notable configuration updates, anomalies in performance and emerging seasonality trends — all without digging into detailed reports. The feature is built for speed. Instead of manually scanning dashboards, marketers get a quick snapshot of what changed and why it may matter.…

Google Ads is now displaying examples of how “Landing Page Images” can be used inside Performance Max (PMax) campaigns — offering clearer visibility into how website visuals may automatically become ad creatives. How it works. If advertisers opt in, Google can pull images directly from a brand’s landing pages and dynamically turn them into ads. Now when creating your campaigns, before setting it live, Google Ads will show you the automated creatives it plans on setting live. Why we care. For PMax campaigns your site is part of your asset library. Any banner, hero image, or product visual could surface across Search, Display, YouTube, or Discover placements — …

PPC is evolving beyond traditional search. Those who adopt new ad formats, smarter creative strategies, and the right use of AI will gain a competitive edge. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Product Liaison, and Navah Hopkins, Microsoft’s Product Liaison, joined me for a conversation about what’s next for PPC. Here’s a recap of this special keynote from SMX Next. Emerging ad formats and channels When discussing what lies beyond search, both speakers expressed excitement about AI-driven ad formats. Hopkins highlighted Microsoft’s innovation in AI-first formats, especially showroom ads: “Showroom ads allow users to engage and interact with a showroom whe…

ChatGPT ecommerce traffic converted 31% higher than non-branded organic search across 94 ecommerce sites in 2025, but it still drove a small share of revenue. That’s based on a 12-month GA4 analysis by Visibility Labs covering January through December 2025. Why we care. This data shows that AI referral traffic converts at a higher rate than traditional non-branded search traffic, but the volume remains small. This signals emerging value, not a replacement channel. Higher conversion rate. ChatGPT traffic converted at 1.81% vs. 1.39% for non-branded organic (31% higher). It outperformed organic in 10 of 12 months. Visibility Labs attributes the higher rate to i…

A patent document published by Google hints that Google Search may take searchers from the search results page, to an AI-generated page which is super personalized to answer the query, as opposed to taking that searcher to a web page. Patent. The patent is named AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user and was filed by Google about a year ago and then granted last month. This patent describes a system that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automatically create a custom landing page for a business or organization when a user performs a search. Instead of just sending a user to a generic homepage, the system generates a page dynamically that is spe…