SEO Tools and Resources

Google is investigating a disruption affecting Google Ad Manager, according to an update posted on the Google Ads Status Dashboard. The incident began at 13:49 UTC on March 4. By 13:54 UTC, Google said it was reviewing reports that some users could access Ad Manager but weren’t seeing the most up-to-date data. What’s happening. The issue appears to impact reporting consistency. Specifically, Ad Exchange match rate and Ad Exchange request values are not aligning between Ad Manager’s interactive reports and the legacy reporting query tool (now deprecated). Why we care. Reporting discrepancies in Google Ad Manager can directly impact how you evaluate performance …

Google introduced a new availability value in Google Merchant Center — built specifically for vehicle sellers who don’t carry every model on the lot. The new attribute, “build to order,” lets dealers flag vehicles that aren’t physically in inventory but can be customized and ordered by customers. What needs to change. Sellers must update two areas: their structured data (set availability to BuildToOrder) and their Merchant Center feed (set availability to build to order). Consistency between structured data and feed submissions is critical to avoid disapprovals. [availability] Why we care. Until now, sellers had limited ways to signal that a vehicle wasn’t avai…

PPC platforms are asset-hungry. What began as simple text ads and keyword bidding has evolved into an AI-driven ecosystem. Tools inside Google Ads can now remove backgrounds, generate lifestyle scenes, and even create synthetic humans in minutes. But just because the technology allows it doesn’t mean every brand should use it. That shift forces PPC advertisers to confront difficult questions: Are you willing to trade efficiency for authenticity? How far up the stack should your brand let AI operate? If clients knew exactly where and how you were using AI, would they trust you, or would they question you? A brand integrity hierarchy offers a way t…

Google has removed the “design for accessibility” section from within the Understand the JavaScript SEO basics documentation. Google said this was removed because the information was “out of date and not as helpful as it used to be.” The old text said that using JavaScript for page content “may be hard for Google to see.” But Google now says that has not been true for many years, thus why Google removed the section. The old section. The old section read: “Design for accessibility: Create pages for users, not just search engines. When you’re designing your site, think about the needs of your users, including those who may not be using a JavaScript-capable br…

Google is communicating that starting April 1st, Customer Match uploads through the Google Ads API will stop working for certain users, in a message sent to API developers. Specifically, developers who haven’t uploaded Customer Match data in the past 180 days using their developer token will no longer be able to do so via the Ads API. What’s changing. If you fall into that inactive bucket, any attempt to upload Customer Match lists through the Google Ads API after April 1 will fail. Instead, Google wants you to move those workflows to the Data Manager API. The change applies only to Customer Match uploads — all other campaign management and reporting tasks should …

Google has long been considered the gold standard for ad spend compared to social platforms. But scale doesn’t equal immunity. Click fraud remains a persistent risk, and the safety of your budget depends entirely on where your ads are running. While Google Ads offers immense reach, its campaigns aren’t created equal. Some are significantly more exposed to malicious activity than others. To protect your margins, you must understand what constitutes click fraud, where it originates, and how to shield your campaigns. What are invalid clicks? Invalid clicks are interactions that lack legitimate consumer intent. Because they aren’t driven by real human interest, the…

One of the most profitable Google Ads targeting tactics is retargeting: showing ads to people who are already familiar with your business. But if you still think that “retargeting” means a Display campaign chasing users around the web with banner ads, you’re missing out on how “Your data segments” actually function today. Let’s explore how you can leverage your proprietary audience data in new ways, and what mistakes to avoid in 2026 and beyond. What are “Your data segments” in Google Ads? Retargeting means showing ads to people who are already familiar with your business. Google uses the euphemistic name “Your data segments” to refer to all the retargeting lis…

Lately, I’ve been spending most of my day inside Cursor running Claude Code. I’m not a developer. I run a digital marketing agency. But Claude Code within Cursor has become the fastest way for me to handle many tasks I want to do, including pulling and analyzing data from Google Search Console, GA4, and Google Ads. The setup takes about an hour. After that, you can ask things like “which keywords am I paying for that I already rank for organically?” and get an answer in seconds instead of spending an afternoon with spreadsheets. (I wouldn’t have been the one spending an afternoon with spreadsheets anyway, but now nobody has to.) Here’s the step-by-step process I d…

Chrome 146 has introduced an early preview of WebMCP behind a flag. WebMCP (Web Model Context Protocol) is a proposed web standard that exposes structured tools on websites, showing AI agents exactly what actions they can take and how to execute them. Here’s some context around what that actually means. The internet was originally built for humans. We designed buttons, dropdowns, and forms for people to read, understand, and use. But now there’s a new type of user emerging: AI agents. Soon, they’ll be able to complete registrations, buy tickets, and take any action needed to complete a goal on a website. Right now, AI agents face a major challenge. They must c…

Google posted a new help document on “Things to know about Google’s web crawling.” While many of those “things to know” are already known, Google felt it would be a good idea to make this document in order to provide “basic educational information about crawling to better highlight various resources about crawling that are available to site owners.” The document has 9 items posted in it right now including: Frequent crawling is a good sign! Google wrote, “If we’re crawling your site a lot, it’s an indication your pages have fresh or highly relevant content that people want to find, and that our systems are recognizing that demand. Online shopping is a great …

Imagine a web ecosystem where not just humans but AI agents communicate with websites, going beyond traditional browsing. Unlike conventional web experiences, where people click, scroll, and search, AI agents can navigate, interpret, and even perform tasks autonomously on your site. This is not a futuristic concept. It is already unfolding. This is the emergence of the agentic web. Table of contents The big shift: From web for users to a web for users and agents Protocol thinking and the infrastructure of agentic web communication What does this mean for SEO professionals? Yoast’s collaboration with NLweb and what it means for WordPress users Key takeaways …

Google will begin enforcing a minimum daily budget for Demand Gen campaigns starting April 1, 2026. What’s happening: The Google Ads API will require a minimum daily budget of $5 USD (or local equivalent) for all Demand Gen campaigns. The change is designed to help campaigns move through the “cold start” phase with enough spend for Google’s models to learn and optimize effectively. The update will roll out as an unversioned API change, applying across all buying paths. Technical details: In API v21 and above, campaigns set below the threshold will trigger a BUDGET_BELOW_DAILY_MINIMUM error, with additional details available in the error metadata. In API v2…

AI recommendations are inconsistent for some brands and reliable for others because of cascading confidence: entity trust that accumulates or decays at every stage of an algorithmic pipeline. Addressing that reality requires a discipline that spans the full algorithmic trinity through assistive agent optimization (AAO). It also demands three structural shifts: the funnel moves inside the agent, the push layer returns, and the web index loses its monopoly. The mechanics behind that shift sit inside the AI engine pipeline. Here’s how it works. The AI engine pipeline: 10 gates and a feedback loop Every piece of digital content passes through 10 gates before it…

Meta is updating its ad measurement framework, aiming to simplify attribution in what it calls a “social-first” advertising world. What’s happening. Meta is narrowing its definition of click-through attribution for website and in-store conversions. Going forward, only link clicks — not likes, shares, saves or other interactions — will count toward click-through attribution. The change is designed to reduce discrepancies between Meta Ads Manager and third-party tools like Google Analytics. Between the lines. Social media has overtaken search as the world’s largest ad channel, according to WARC, but many attribution systems were built for search-era behaviors. O…

Every year, Google suspends tens of millions of Google Ads accounts for advertising policy violations. One specific policy area that confuses many legitimate advertisers is Google’s “three-strikes” system. Essentially, if Google decides your account has repeatedly violated any of 15 specific Google advertising policies, you’re at risk for temporary (and potentially permanent) suspension of your Google Ads account. To help you prevent a single policy issue from snowballing into a full account suspension, here’s how Google’s three-strike system works and what you should do at every stage to keep your ads running. Case study: Appealing a Google Ads strike Over…

For more than a decade, the dominant model was simple — identify a keyword, write an article, publish, promote, rank, capture traffic, convert a fraction of visitors, and repeat. But that model is breaking. Content marketing is collapsing and rebuilding simultaneously. AI systems now answer informational queries directly inside search results. Large language models (LLMs) synthesize known information instantly. Information production is accelerating faster than distribution capacity. Public feeds are already saturated. The cost of producing content has fallen to nearly zero, while the cost of being seen has never been higher. That changes everything. Here’s a…

What do conversion rate optimization (CRO) and findability look like for an AI agent versus a human, and how different do your strategies really need to be? More and more marketers are embracing the agentic web, and discovery increasingly happens through AI-powered experiences. That raises a fair question: what does CRO and findability look like for an AI agent compared with a human? Several considerations matter, but the core takeaway is clear: serving people supports AI findability. AI systems are designed to surface useful, grounded information for people. Technical mechanics still matter, but you don’t need entirely different strategies to be findable or to im…

Google is rolling out VRC Non-Skip ads, expanding how brands reach connected TV audiences on YouTube. What’s happening. VRC (Video Reach Campaign) Non-Skips are now live globally in Google Ads and Display & Video 360. The format is built specifically for the living room experience, ensuring ads run as non-skippable placements optimized for connected TV (CTV) screens. Why we care. YouTube has become the No. 1 streaming platform in the U.S. for three consecutive years, making the TV screen a critical battleground for brand budgets. With guaranteed, non-skippable delivery, advertisers can ensure their full message reaches viewers in premium, lean-back environment…

In November 2025, Yoast announced a collaboration with NLWeb, an open web protocol developed by Microsoft designed to simplify building conversational interfaces for the web. Today, we are proud to introduce the first major result of that work: Yoast SEO Schema Aggregation. This is an opt in feature that brings your website’s structured data together in a clearer and more consistent way. By choosing to enable it, you can help search engines and intelligent agents better understand and use your content. If you want to see which schema types are available for your WordPress setup, our schema overview explains what is included across different product plans. Br…

Google is expanding its recurring billing policy to allow certified U.S. online pharmacies to promote prescription drugs with subscriptions and bundled services. What’s happening. Certified merchants can now offer: Prescription drug subscriptions — recurring billing for prescription medications. Prescription drug bundles — combining drugs with services like coaching or treatment programs, as long as the drug is the primary product. Prescription drug consultation services — recurring consults to determine prescription eligibility, either standalone or bundled with medications. Requirements for eligibility. Merchants must maintain certified status, submit…

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…

If you’re not actively managing your branded search campaigns, you’re leaving money on the table and your reputation in the hands of competitors, review aggregators, and affiliate marketers. Brand protection through PPC isn’t just about bidding on your own name. It’s a strategy that spans defensive bidding, query monitoring, ad copy testing, and reputation management across the entire customer research journey. Why brand search deserves more than basic defense Most PPC managers treat brand campaigns as an afterthought. Set up a campaign, bid on the exact brand name, maybe add some close variants, and call it done. But the reality is far more complex, espe…

If your brand’s content arm has been active for a few years, I’m guessing you have plenty of material that can be revised to help you show up more prominently in AI search answers — we’ll call this AEO throughout the article. I’m getting bombarded with brand marketers’ questions about how to get AEO traction these days. “Revise your old content” is a favorite answer that often produces an “aha” moment for the other party, possibly because the nature of AEO is so forward-looking. That answer sparks a few important follow-up questions I’ll tackle below. How do you reformat content for better AEO performance? I like to lean on three principles when I tackle co…

Google published a new help page detailing how its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) works — offering merchants clearer guidance on how checkout flows operate across Google properties. What’s happening. The documentation explains how UCP and its UCP-powered checkout enable a native “Buy” button that moves the transaction directly onto Google surfaces, while merchants remain the seller of record. To activate the feature, merchants must implement the native_commerce attribute in Merchant Center. Payments run through stored Google Wallet credentials, and processors must support Google Pay tokens. Why we care. UCP was first introduced as part of Google’s agentic …

For years, ecommerce ran on a simple model: Google drove traffic, and your site did the selling. Rankings, clicks, and conversion rate determined performance. That model just changed. With the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and AI Mode, Google can now discover, compare, and complete purchases inside its own AI experiences. Search is shifting from a traffic channel to a transaction layer. Visibility now depends on whether Google’s AI selects your product data. When AI makes the recommendation and closes the sale, optimization moves upstream. The question isn’t just whether you rank. It’s whether you’re chosen. Here’s what changed and what SEO and AI optimiza…