SEO Tools and Resources

People are adopting AI as a complement to classic search, not a full replacement, according to a new survey by digital marketing agency Higher Visibility: 71.5% reported using AI tools for search; 14% use them daily. 79.8% prefer Google or Microsoft Bing for general information searches. 20.2% have changed their primary search platform within the last year. Why we care. Classic search engines still dominate – but we also know it is becoming more challenging as Google click-through rates are declining. However, AI answer engines and tools, social media platforms (like Instagram and TikTok), and shopping platforms all play a role in today’s messy search land…

Generative AI is everywhere right now. It dominates conference agendas, fills LinkedIn feeds, and is reshaping how many businesses think about organic search. Brands are racing to optimize for AI Overviews, build vector embeddings, map semantic clusters, and rework content models around LLMs. What gets far less attention is a basic reality: for most websites, AI platforms still drive a small share of overall traffic. AI search is growing, no question. But in most cases, total referral sessions from all LLM platforms combined amount to only about 2% to 3% of the organic traffic Google alone delivers. Despite that gap, many teams are spending more …

Everyone’s talking about “AI search” (AI SEO, GEO, AEO, or whatever you call it) – and everyone’s convinced they’re right. Some say SEO is dead. Others say nothing’s really changed (“it’s just SEO”). The truth? Search is evolving fast, but SEO fundamentals still matter. What’s shifting is where people discover information – and how machines decide what to trust. Here are a few myths worth retiring. Myth 1: “GEO is just SEO with a new name.” Reality: The fundamentals overlap, but the target has changed. SEO is about ranking webpages. AI search is about being cited, trusted, or chosen inside an answer. You’re not trying to win Position 1…

We need to have a talk about KPIs and AI search. I’ve observed numerous SEO professionals on LinkedIn and at conferences talking about “ranking No. 1 on ChatGPT” as if it’s the equivalent of a No. 1 ranking on Google: On Google, being the first result is often a golden ticket. Going from No. 2 to No. 1 in Google search will often result in 100%-300% increases in traffic and conversions. This is almost certainly not the case with AI responses – even if they weren’t constantly changing. Our team’s research shows AI users consider an average of 3.7 businesses before deciding who to contact. Being the first result in that list on ChatGPT isn’t the g…

Large language models (LLMs) excel at synthesizing enormous amounts of information into personalized responses to plain-language prompts. These responses draw on massive training datasets and are often enhanced with internet searches. The fastest way to influence what LLMs say about your brand is to influence the content they retrieve through those searches. At Evertune Research, we use the Evertune AI marketing platform to track hundreds of brands across 250 categories across every major LLM. This gives us clear insight into which content AI models cite most often, especially when users ask for brand or product recommendations across industries. For this analysis…

A dominant share – 86% to be specific – of AI citations come from sources brands already control, according to a new analysis of 6.8 million citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity conducted by brand visibility platform Yext. Why we care. The findings challenge the perception that forums like Reddit dominate AI answers. Yext’s analysis also suggests that brands can directly influence visibility in generative results by keeping website content accurate, structured, and crawlable. (Yes, SEO.) By the numbers. Across all industries, 86% of AI citations came from sources brands owned or managed. Websites lead: 44% of citations came from first-party sites.…

AI may not see your brand the way you think it does, according to Scott Stouffer, co-founder and CTO at Market Brew. Brands still publish content, optimize pages, build authority, and follow SEO best practices. But that may not be enough anymore. Search has moved away from a simple battle over keywords, links, and page-level signals. It’s now shaped by meaning, intent, embeddings, and retrieval, Stouffer said during his SEO Week presentation. In legacy SEO, a page could rank lower and still exist in the search results. In AI-driven systems, the first question isn’t whether you rank. It’s whether you’re ever retrieved. “If you’re not retrieved, you do not …

AI referral traffic accounts for just over 1% of all website visits across 10 major industries, according to a new Conductor AI search benchmark report. AI referral traffic. 1.08% of all web traffic came from AI referrals. Digging deeper: ChatGPT drove 87.4% of all AI referrals across the dataset. IT (2.8%) and Consumer Staples (1.9%) led all industries. Communication Services (0.25%) and Utilities (0.35%) saw the lowest shares. AI referrals increased by ~1% month over month across all industries. AI answer engine market share. ChatGPT overwhelmingly dominated, followed by Perplexity. There were some interesting differences by industry (e.g., G…

Over the past few decades, digital marketing has settled into a stable system. While it spans SEO, content marketing, social media, and digital advertising, many programs have relied on a predictable core that didn’t always use every available channel. This gave digital marketers a sense of predictability and comfort. For years, teams stuck with what worked and refined execution through the same familiar framework. AI search has disrupted that comfort and exposed our inconsistencies. To succeed with AI SEO, we need a much more comprehensive approach. AI SEO rewards strategic marketing Over the past 15 to 20 years, digital marketing settled into a predictable r…

Disclosure: I’m the co-founder of Optmyzr. I’ll use one of our open-source skills as the example below, but the frameworks here apply to anything you install or build. If you’ve used Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini for marketing work in the last six months, you’ve probably hit the same wall I have. The chat is great until you need the same thing done the same way every week. Then you’re back to copying a prompt template into a fresh window, hoping you didn’t forget a step, wondering why a tool this powerful still feels this manual. Skills are what bring that wall down. I’ve written before about skills as scalable systems for PPC and why agents are useless without a…

In 2026 and well beyond, a core part of the performance marketer’s charter is learning to leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency. Anyone who isn’t actively evaluating new AI tools to improve or streamline their PPC work is doing their brand or clients a disservice. The challenge is that keeping up with these tools has become almost a full-time job, which is why my agency has made AI a priority in our structured knowledge-sharing. As a team, we’ve honed in on favorites across creative, campaign management, and AI search measurement. This article breaks down key options in each category, with brief reviews and a callout of my current pick. One ove…

Traffic from AI sources increased 393% year-over-year in Q1 and 269% in March. But the real surprise? AI traffic is converting better than last year. AI-driven visits converted 42% better than non-AI traffic in March. A year ago, AI traffic was 38% less likely to result in a purchase. By the numbers. Traffic from AI sources increased engagement by 12%, time on site by 48%, and pages per visit by 13%. Adobe also surveyed consumers and found that: 39% have used AI for shopping. Of those, 85% said it improved the experience. 66% believe AI tools provide accurate results. What they’re saying. According to Vivek Pandya, director of Adobe Digital Insights:…

AI search evolves every month. This constant flux is reshaping which brands get visibility and which sources AI models trust most. We now have three months of data in the AI Visibility Index, tracking ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. The key takeaway: AI search is volatile. This is likely to be normal for the immediate future. The brands that win are monitoring and adapting to these changes in real-time. The research tracks 2,500 real-world prompts across five key verticals: Business & Professional Services, Digital Technology & Software, Consumer Electronics, Fashion & Apparel, and Finance. revealing seismic shifts in source diversity, brand mentio…

The fundamentals of SEO haven’t changed. You still need technical access, content clarity, and external credibility. But the requirements inside those pillars are evolving fast. AI-driven discovery systems are now shaping how your brand is surfaced, trusted, and recommended. And for many enterprise teams, the response has been: A content brainstorm. A wait-and-see approach. Or nothing at all. That’s not a strategy gap. It’s an execution problem in the making. Is your company preparing for what’s coming after ‘SEO’ fades away? Your SEO team may be running efficiently – protecting rankings, publishing content, and salvaging what they can from G…

If your entire Google Ads strategy consists of targeting brand and non-brand keywords, you’re limiting growth. If performance is declining, it’s not the platform — it’s the strategy. People don’t discover you through non-brand search. They research on Reddit, ChatGPT, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. They watch demos, read testimonials, and learn about your brand long before they ever search for it. If you have a complex sales process and a long customer journey, this shift is critical and requires a different approach. Here’s what you need to know to make this work in B2B. AI-forward campaigns: A cost-effective growth gold mine Google has been developing m…

Agencies are navigating a marketing world powered by AI, evolving platforms, and consumer expectations that change overnight. The pace is dizzying, but it’s also full of opportunity. When we asked marketing agencies what new trends they anticipate for the year ahead, their insights revealed a shared focus on leveraging AI to scale operations, diversifying content strategies to stay ahead of declining organic reach, and adopting tools that balance creativity with efficiency. These trends reflect where the industry is heading and how agencies are preparing to meet new challenges. We’ll unpack the key insights from over two dozen marketing agencies, explore the stra…

I get it, these are uncertain times. Organic traffic is dropping like a rock, and new referral traffic coming in from LLMs like ChatGPT barely scratches the surface of what’s been lost. The narrative of “traffic is simply coming from a new source” is not accurate. Search and engagement are happening in new ways, but CTRs are dropping significantly across nearly all industries. It’s no surprise that many in the industry are feeling anxious about the future of SEO and whether AI might eventually render their roles obsolete. Bringing this up with your C-suite team might feel like the last thing you want to do. But here’s the reality: Now is exactly the time to …

Traffic from AI chatbots converts at a higher rate than traffic from Google, according to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. He shared this tidbit on the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call: “And what we see is that traffic that comes from chatbots convert at a higher rate than traffic that comes from Google,” Chesky said on Feb. 12. Yes, but. He didn’t share specific conversion rates, and the company didn’t quantify chatbot traffic volume. But for Airbnb, early data suggests visitors arriving via AI chatbots may be further along in the booking process than those coming from traditional Google searches. Airbnb also didn’t specify which chatbots are driving traffic. Chesky…

Google’s AI Overviews and AI-driven search are reshaping content creation, SEO, and user behavior. As we watch this fascinating evolution of search – and continue to debate what we call this new marketing discipline (HubSpot is opting for AEO, or answer engine optimization) – I interviewed Aja Frost, senior director of global growth and paid media at HubSpot. Some of the topics covered in our interview: The need to redefine success metrics for AEO, prioritizing visibility and share of voice HubSpot’s experimental journey, including creating hyperspecific, data-rich content and optimizing for LLMs. Traffic directly from LLMs converts about 3x better than tr…

I’ve straddled both the brand marketing and SEO industries for the past decade now. That dynamic has made it particularly interesting to watch how the concept of brand alignment has seeped into the search marketing vernacular. To quote my favorite baseball player, Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” I’ve watched and I’ve observed how the conversation about brand alignment for LLM visibility has gone from “nice to have” to an absolute necessity. LLMs can expose a weak brand alignment while rewarding a strong brand alignment with increased visibility. With that, I want to kick things off by better explaining exactly what brand alignment look…

On episode 340 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Amanda Farley, CMO of Aimclear and a multi-award-winning marketing leader, brings a mix of honesty and expertise to the PPC Live conversation. A self-described T-shaped marketer, she combines deep PPC knowledge with broad experience across social, programmatic, PR, and integrated strategy. Her journey — from owning an gallery and tattoo studio to leading award-winning global campaigns — reflects a career built on curiosity, resilience, and continuous learning. Overcoming limiting beliefs and embracing creativity Amanda once ran an gallery and tattoo parlor while believing she wasn’t an artist herself. Surrounded b…

Advertising on Amazon is getting more complex, with an ever-growing list of targeting options. At the core of it all? Match types. Understanding how they work is essential to making your ad spend count. Unlike other ecommerce platforms, Amazon ads directly impact your organic ranking – so campaigns aren’t just about sales; they’re about momentum. Whether you’re driving incremental sales or defending your brand in search, knowing how to structure campaigns around match types can make or break performance. For brand defense, branded keywords are critical – but they should live in their own campaigns to keep management clean and projections accurate. …

American desktop users perform 126 unique Google searches per month, on average, according to a new analysis of search behavior published by SparkToro co-founder Rand Fishkin. The median average was 53 Google unique searches per month. By the numbers. Here are some additional findings about American searchers, beyond the headline statistic: 34% conducted more than 101 searches per month. 36% conducted 21-100 searches per month. 30% conducted 1-20 searches per month. Google Search by vertical. A whopping 86.94% of Americans use Google.com (Google’s homepage search experience) to search. As for Google’s other vertical options: Images: 10.62% Vid…

On episode 337 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Amy Hebdon, an international paid search expert and founder of Paid Search Magic. The show focuses on the real stories behind paid media work, including mistakes, surprises, and lessons learned, rather than just tactical advice. Amy’s breadth of experience spans multiple industries and digital marketing disciplines, making her insights particularly valuable for marketers navigating complex campaigns. Early career mistakes and learning experiences Amy shares a formative experience early in her career managing a fitness client’s creative assets that were incompatible with Google Ads. Despite her intention to protect …