SEO Tools and Resources

Google announced they are testing a new “conversational search experience to complement how you already search on YouTube.” It is called “Ask YouTube” and it lets you “dive deeper into the topics you’re curious about in a more interactive way,” Dave from YouTube wrote. What it looks like. Here is a GIF of it in action: How can I try it. If you want to try it out, you can go to youtube.com/new and try to opt into it. This experiment is currently available for YouTube Premium members 18+ in the US who opt-in. Google is working on expanding the experiment to non-Premium users in the future. What it does. Dave from YouTube posted this example: “If yo…

Wil Reynolds, founder and CEO of Seer Interactive, is challenging SEOs to rethink what success looks like in a world increasingly shaped by AI. In his SEO Week session, “SEO is a performance channel, GEO isn’t. How do you pivot?”, Reynolds said many marketers are focused on the wrong outcomes — and producing work that people don’t believe. Marketing isn’t just about being seen Reynolds opened by pushing back on the idea that visibility alone is the goal of marketing. “Marketing was never just to be seen or be visible,” he said. “You had to turn that visibility into something — believing something about your brand… And then they ultimately have to choose you…

Each month, we host an SEO update covering the latest in search and AI. During this month’s edition, our SEO experts Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss, cover everything from the latest advances in Agentic AI to Google’s spam and core updates and why simply publishing more content is no longer enough and in many cases actively works against you. Read this recap for the highlights or watch the April 2026 SEO Update by Yoast to delve into the latest news. Watch the full recap on YouTube to dive deeper into these topics, hear some examples and hear the answer to audience questions. SEO and AI news from April 2026 Google introduces new AI agent signals and infrastructu…

Internal linking is one of the most controllable levers in technical SEO. But when tracking parameters are embedded in internal URLs, they introduce inefficiencies across crawling and indexing, analytics, site speed, and even AI retrieval. At scale, this isn’t just a “best practice” issue. It becomes a systemic problem affecting crawl budget, data integrity, and performance. Here’s how to build a case study for your stakeholders to show the side effects of nuking tracking parameters in internal links — and propose a win-win fix for all digital teams. How tracking parameters waste crawl budget Crawl budget is often misunderstood. What matters isn’t the v…

Ask any paid search manager who has tried to get an AI agent to do something genuinely useful with a Google Ads account and you will hear a version of the same story. They exported performance data, pasted it into a chat window, got a solid answer, and then did the exact same thing the next day. Exporting, pasting, repeating — that isn’t automation. That’s the same manual work you were doing before, performed in a different window. The AI tools are not the problem. Any of the major ones can do solid analysis when the right data is in front of them. The problem is getting that data to them live, current, and without a human in the middle copying it across. It’…

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…

The trial is live, limited to the U.S. for now, and moving faster than you likely expected. ChatGPT ads launched Feb. 9 for logged-in users on Free and Go tiers, with 600+ advertisers already in. With 800 million weekly active users, a global rollout of ChatGPT ads is a matter of when, not if. OpenAI has confirmed the next expansion to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The latest update from Adthena trialists suggests the UK could see ads as early as mid-May. We’ve tracked ChatGPT ad placements since rollout. With an index of 50,000+ daily placements across B2B software, ecommerce, fintech, and consumer verticals, we’ve had a front-row view of how this for…

Programmatic SEO (pSEO) has been viewed with suspicion by the market. For many SEOs, the term is synonymous with low-quality pages, duplicate content, and the old tactic of “find and replace” city names in static templates. Google’s spam policies on scaled content abuse are clear: generating vast amounts of unoriginal content primarily to manipulate search rankings is a violation. Modern pSEO replaces mass page generation with an infrastructure that answers thousands of specific search intents with local nuance and semantic depth at a scale that isn’t possible manually. This blueprint shows how to evolve from syntax-based pSEO (swapping keywords) to semantics-…

Over the past few months, a growing number of users have reported being locked out of their Facebook accounts — often suddenly, and sometimes permanently. What used to feel like a rare inconvenience has become a widespread frustration, affecting everyday users, creators, and business owners alike. So what’s actually driving the increase? It’s a combination of AI moderation, security shifts, platform economics, and evolving user behavior. Here’s what’s really going on behind the scenes. The rise of AI moderation — and its tradeoffs At the center of the issue is Facebook’s parent company, Meta, which now relies heavily on artificial intelligence to monitor a…

Google announced five changes to how the search engine will show links and citations within its AI Search features – AI Mode and AI Overviews. These changes aim to make it “easy for you to connect with authentic voices and explore useful information across the web,” Google’s Hema Budaraju, VP, Product Management, wrote. Here are the five changes that are rolling out in AI Mode and AI Overviews: (1) Suggested angles at the end of the AI responses. Google may show suggestions for where to go next at the end of many AI responses within AI Mode or AI Overviews. This “section links to unique articles or in-depth analyses on different facets of your topic, making it ea…

Advertisers are starting to push back on gaps in AI Max capabilities — particularly around landing page control — as Google continues its shift away from legacy Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). What’s happening. In a LinkedIn exchange, digital marketing expert Gabriele Benedetti raised concerns about AI Max lacking the same level of URL-based targeting controls that DSA campaigns offered. His point: DSA allowed advertisers to structure campaigns around website architecture — using categories, URL paths and page rules to guide where traffic lands. That level of control, he argued, is not yet fully replicated in AI Max. Why we care. For many advertisers — especially th…

As LLMs continue to grow, optimizing brand visibility in AI-generated responses is becoming increasingly important. Consumers are turning to these models for answers, recommendations, recipes, vacations, and nearly everything else imaginable. But what happens if your brand isn’t included in those responses? Can you influence the outcome? And what are some proven ways to improve your brand’s inclusion and visibility? That’s where structured experimentation comes in. Prompt-level SEO requires more than assumptions or one-off wins. It requires repeatable testing frameworks that help isolate what actually influences LLM responses. Build prompt-level SEO tests with…

Paid search platforms are getting better at deciding who should see your ads, often without relying on the keywords you choose. As that shift accelerates, optimization is moving away from query-level control and toward signals like audience data, landing page context, and conversion behavior. Understanding that change is key to knowing what to actually optimize for now. When keywords gave us control and what comes next A decade ago, our world was defined by the illusion of control. Every decision we made was anchored in the keyword. Hypersegmentation and single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) ruled the land. If possible, we’d build a unique landing page for eve…

If your paid social campaigns aren’t converting, you may be undervaluing their impact. Your brand’s exposure on social media can influence other parts of your marketing that platform metrics don’t capture. Here’s how to design and measure a test to understand how paid social influences your other marketing channels, including PPC. Step 1: Determine your hypothesis Start with what you want to learn, then define a hypothesis you can realistically evaluate with your data. For example, this is a common hypothesis for measuring paid search lift from social traffic: Search lift hypothesis: Increasing spend on social media will increase brand search volume an…

For more than two decades (nearly as long as I’ve been in SEO), backlinks have been core to SEO. Google’s PageRank changed search by using backlinks as a proxy for trust. A link wasn’t just a pathway; it was a vote. The more votes you had and the more authoritative the voters were, the higher you ranked. But as Google and AI systems matured, entity-based understanding emerged. AI models became better at understanding content, context, and credibility without always needing a hyperlink as a crutch. Today, visibility isn’t driven solely by links. It’s strengthened by the broader signals your brand has earned: how often it’s mentioned, cited, and trusted across …

Google is doubling down on AI-driven ads just as search behavior shifts toward conversational queries, giving advertisers more automation while trying to preserve control. What’s new. AI Max expands beyond Search: Now rolling out to Shopping campaigns and travel-specific formats, broadening reach across more advertiser types. AI Brief (powered by Gemini): A new interface that lets advertisers steer AI using natural language inputs. Text disclaimers + URL automation: Compliance-friendly updates to pair with automated landing page selection. Why we care. Google is making AI Max a core layer across Search, Shopping and Travel, meaning automa…

Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves, which launched 29 years ago on June 3, 1996, before Google launched, shut down on May 1, 2026. Ask.com now has a turn down page that reads: Every great search must come to an end. As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com. After 25 years of answering the world’s questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026. “To the millions who asked…” We are deeply grateful to the brilliant engineers, designers, and teams who built and supported Ask over the decades. And to you—the millions of users who turned to us for answers in a rapidly changing world—t…

Watch this video on YouTube Generating high-quality leads from Google Ads often comes down to one unexpected factor: speed. If potential customers have to jump through hoops to reach you, you’ll lose business fast. That’s why Google Ads offers a trio of what I call “Contact Us assets.” Instead of sending users to a landing page, Call Assets, Lead Forms, and Message Assets let customers call you, fill out a form, or start a conversation directly from your search ads. Let’s dive into how to set up and optimize these three essential assets to simplify your funnel, capture valuable personally identifiable information (PII), and turn an expensive click into a…

Negative keywords aren’t a checklist anymore. In 2026, they’re a series of strategic decisions — and how you make them shapes how the algorithm interprets your account. If you’re still treating negatives like maintenance, you’re missing the point. Every exclusion is a signal: who you want to reach, what you’re willing to pay for, and how your campaigns should perform. Here are six decisions that define modern negative keyword strategy — and why they matter more than ever. How negative keywords shape campaign performance Negative keywords are how you sculpt a campaign so the right ad shows up for the right person. The user’s query should match the ad. The ad…

Microsoft Advertising is giving advertisers more flexibility in reporting, with custom columns now supporting all conversion metrics — a move aimed at deeper, more tailored campaign analysis. What’s happening. According to Microsoft’s product liaison Navah Hopkins, advertisers can now build custom metrics using the full range of conversion data available in the platform. This includes both all conversions and primary conversions, allowing marketers to align reporting more closely with their specific goals. Why we care. Standard reporting often doesn’t reflect how businesses actually measure success. By expanding custom columns, Microsoft is enabling advert…

For the best part of two decades, we had a clear and accepted mandate: Get your brand to the top of the search results page. The problem was understood, the success metrics were agreed upon, and a supporting ensemble of tools, talent, and tactics was built around solving it. Rankings were the scoreboard. Position 1 meant visibility. Traffic followed, and a brand’s value seemed to follow it. It’s this core premise that is now under serious renegotiation with the search landscape changing more in the past 18 months than in the previous 10 years combined: AI Overviews are absorbing queries that previously generated clicks. AI/LLM platforms are becoming the…

SEO used to be constrained by one thing more than anything else: dependency. Dependency on developers, roadmaps, and “maybe next quarter.” If you wanted a new page template, a calculator, a comparison widget, or even a simple interactive component, you had to ask, wait, and compromise. That’s changing fast. If you’re in SEO or GEO today and you’re not learning how to vibe code, you’re limiting your impact. Vibe coding changed the power dynamics in SEO A few years ago, building tools like calculators or interactive widgets meant tickets, specs, and dev cycles. Today, with AI, I’ve personally built dozens of mini apps, tools, and UI components without…

Google updated its spam report page for the second time in the past week or so, this time to say that if you include personally identifying information, the spam report will not be processed or used. This comes just a week after Google said that information would be used and passed along to the reported site. What changed. Google posted on its spam report page a new highlight box which says two points: (1) Don’t include personally identifying information in your spam report. (2) If you do include personally identifying information, then Google won’t process your submission. The text block reads: “Don’t include any personally identifying information i…

In our Rethinking SEO in the age of AI article, we briefly explored how AI might move beyond simple prompt-and-response interactions. One emerging direction is agentic AI. Systems that can take action, not just generate answers. While this space is still evolving, we’re already seeing early signs of tools that can identify gaps, suggest improvements, and adapt to changing trends with minimal input. If these capabilities continue to develop, they could reshape how we think about maintaining continuous discoverability in SEO. Table of contents Understanding the coexistence of web and AI agents What will SEO mean in agentic web? Role of agentic AI in SEO Understanding …

From today, your AI tools, dashboards, and automated workflows can now talk directly to Yoast SEO, thanks to the new Abilities API, built to work hand in hand with WordPress 6.9 .As WordPress evolves, we evolve with it, and the release of the Yoast SEO Abilities API is an extension of these new capabilities. What does that mean in plain English? If you use AI assistants, automated workflows, or custom dashboards, they can now automatically find and read your Yoast content scores, without anyone needing to build a custom connection or dig through documentation. It just works. What can these tools see? Once connected, any compatible tool can instantly pull…