SEO Tools and Resources

News executives expect search referrals to drop by more than 40% over the next three years, as search engines continue evolving into AI-driven answer engines, according to a new Reuters Institute report. That shift is squeezing publisher traffic and accelerating a move away from classic SEO toward AEO and GEO. Why we care. Google’s AI Overviews and chatbot-style search are changing how people get information, often without clicking through. SEO visibility, attribution, and ROI models built on old playbooks are breaking fast. What’s happening. Publishers expect search traffic to nearly halve. Survey respondents forecast search engine traffic down 43% within three y…

Live sports advertising is getting more programmatic — and more measurable. Driving the news. Google is rolling out new biddable live sports capabilities in Display & Video 360, including programmatic access to NBCUniversal’s Olympic Winter Games inventory, ahead of a packed 2026 global sports calendar. Why we care. Live sports remain one of the few media environments that consistently deliver massive, attentive audiences. By bringing premium sports inventory into biddable CTV, Google is giving advertisers more control, better measurement, and easier activation — without sacrificing reach. What’s new. Advertisers can now combine Google audience signals wit…

Google is broadening what counts as an eligible promotion in Shopping, giving merchants more flexibility heading into next year. Driving the news. Google is update its Shopping promotion policies to support additional promotion types, including subscription discounts, common promo abbreviations, and — in Brazil — payment-method-based offers. Why we care. Promotions are a key lever for visibility and conversion in Shopping results. These changes unlock more promotion formats that reflect how consumers actually buy today, especially subscriptions and cashback offers. Greater flexibility in promotion types and language reduces disapprovals and makes Shopping ads more…

Apple is teaming up with Google to power its next generation of AI features, including a long-awaited Siri upgrade. What’s happening: Apple will use Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud infrastructure to support future Apple Foundation Models. The multi-year partnership is expected to roll out later this year. Why we care. With Gemini powering Siri, Apple’s assistant should become a true AI answer engine. That will likely change how millions of iOS users find information, ask questions, and interact with search. Driving the news. Apple said it chose Google after a “careful evaluation,” calling Gemini the “most capable foundation” for its AI ambitions. We l…

PPC advice in 2025 leaned hard on AI and shiny new tools. Much of it sounded credible. Much of it cost advertisers money. Teams followed platform narratives instead of business constraints. Budgets grew. Efficiency did not. As 2026 begins, carrying those beliefs forward guarantees more of the same. This article breaks down three PPC myths that looked smart in theory, spread quickly in 2025, and often drove poor decisions in practice. The goal is simple: reset priorities before repeating expensive mistakes. Myth 1: Forget about manual targeting, AI does it better We have seen this claim everywhere: AI outperforms humans at targeting, and…

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 …

Marketing mix modeling (MMM) has shifted from an enterprise luxury to an essential measurement tool. Tech giants like Google, Meta, and Uber have released powerful open-source MMM frameworks that anyone can use for free. The challenge is understanding which tool actually solves your problem and which require a PhD in statistics to implement. Open-source MMM tools are often grouped together but solve different problems The landscape can be confusing because these tools serve fundamentally different purposes despite being mentioned together. Google’s Meridian and Meta’s Robyn are complete, production-ready MMM frameworks that take your marketing data a…

Google today unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that lets AI agents work across the entire shopping journey, from discovery to purchase to post-sale support. Additionally, Google is introducing new AI tools for retailers, including branded shopping agents and ad formats optimized for AI-driven discovery. About UCP. UCP establishes a shared language between AI agents and commerce systems, removing the need for custom integrations across agents or platforms. UCP works with existing standards (e.g., Agent2Agent, Agent Payments Protocol, and Model Context Protocol). Google co-developed it with partners including Shopify, Etsy, W…

On episode 336 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Anthony Higman, CEO of AdSquire. Anthony’s career journey is a full-circle story: from starting in a law firm mailroom to running his own company with views over Philadelphia. His experiences demonstrate how hard work, learning from mistakes, and perseverance can shape a successful career. Learning from Client Missteps Anthony shares one of his first “F-ups” with clients who forwarded him countless emails promising quick wins. While some were scams, others were legitimate opportunities misaligned with the client’s strategy. At one point, Anthony let a client pursue an SEO agency despite knowing they were unlikely t…

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…

Google shows AI Overviews in Search largely based on whether users engage with them — and removes them when they don’t. That’s according to Robby Stein, Google’s VP of product for Search. In a CNN interview, Stein explained how Google tunes AI-driven results as it expands ads, personalization, and visual search across its experiences. Engagement drives AI Overviews. Google tests AI Overviews on specific query types and keeps them only if users find them useful. If users don’t click, interact, or show value, the overview disappears. The system then applies that learning to similar queries, Stein said: “The system will learn — so it’ll try it — and then see if …

Ahead of a slate of announcements coming next week, Microsoft Advertising says advertisers can now add up to 50 search themes to Performance Max campaigns — a significant increase from previous limits. Why we care. Search themes act as strategic signals that guide Performance Max toward the queries and intent patterns advertisers care most about. Increasing the cap gives marketers far more room to shape how automation interprets demand, especially for complex or multi-category businesses. Advertisers will also no longer have to collapse intent into a handful of themes or spin up multiple campaigns just to reflect different product lines or use cases. The big …

Advertisers are spotting signs that Google is increasing the number of video assets allowed per Asset Group in Performance Max campaigns — from 5 videos to as many as 15. Why we care. Video is increasingly central to Performance Max performance, but the current five-video cap forces trade-offs. Advertisers often have to choose between formats or ratios, limiting coverage across YouTube, Discover and other placements. What’s changing. With up to 15 videos per Asset Group, advertisers would be able to include multiple creatives while still covering all three major video ratios. That means less need to fragment campaigns or duplicate Asset Groups just to accommodate …

A $4 million Shopify brand recently showed me an SEO audit it received six months earlier – 127 pages, 53 action items, and a $12,000 price tag. Since then, the company has updated page titles and meta descriptions and added a few blog articles – 12 recommendations in total. The remaining 41 were not even scheduled. This is not an execution issue. It is a model issue. This article explains why the traditional audit-plus-retainer approach consistently underdelivers for ecommerce brands. It also outlines a focused alternative designed to capture measurable revenue in 30 days rather than six months. The retainer trap: Why traditional SEO contracts dilute…

As a Google Ads practitioner, you probably spend the bulk of your time optimizing Search, Shopping or Performance Max campaigns. That makes sense — the Google SERP is the foundation of Google Ads. But there is a big opportunity sitting right inside your Google Ads account that too many advertisers are ignoring. I’m going to go ahead and declare it: Demand Gen is the most underrated campaign type in Google Ads, and that has to end. If you’ve been hesitant to test Demand Gen, or if you tried it once and “it didn’t work,” let this be your sign to add it to your strategy in 2026. Demand Gen offers a fundamental shift in how we can use Google’s ecosystem to drive growt…

Google’s Danny Sullivan, the former Search Liaison, said not to create bite-sized chunks of your content because you think Google’s AI results and other LLMs like that type of content. He said, “we don’t want you to do that” and that he spoke with Google engineers about it and they said the same thing – don’t do it for LLMs. More details. Danny Sullivan said on the Search Off the Record podcast that was published yesterday: “One of the things I keep seeing over and over in some of the advice and guidance and people are trying to figure out what do we do with the LLMs or whatever, is that turn your content into bite-sized chunks, because LLMs like things that are …

Getting found in all the right places has always meant being early to the next major shift in search. Today, that shift is toward GEO, or generative engine optimization, and SEO redefined as search everywhere optimization. Both describe the growing need to optimize content for AI-driven discovery. If YouTube still sits in the “nice-to-have” category of your SEO strategy, you are quietly ceding visibility in both traditional rankings and Google AI Overviews to competitors. YouTube is now core search infrastructure YouTube can’t be relegated to “brand” or “social” anymore because the platform is now core search infrastructure. YouTube is the second…

Google Ads is constantly changing and evolving. With these changes come fresh mistakes PPC advertisers make in optimizing and managing their campaigns. This article breaks down the most common mistakes of 2026 so you can avoid repeating them this year. Mistake 1: Inconsistent conversion tracking setup Optimization decisions rely on conversion data. If your tracking is inconsistent, your entire account data becomes skewed. When conversions use different attribution methods, count types, and conversion windows, the data applies unevenly across your account, making it hard to judge the value of any click. In rare cases, you may override conversion trac…

The Google Ads API will no longer accept new adopters of session attributes or IP address data in conversion imports starting Feb. 2nd. Developers who already use these fields can continue for now, but Google is steering everyone toward the Data Manager API as the primary place to send complex conversion and user data. Zoom out. Google is consolidating richer data ingestion into the Data Manager API, positioning it as the long-term home for session-level attributes and IP-based signals. The Ads API is increasingly focused on core campaign and conversion workflows rather than handling complex data payloads. Why we care. This change can directly affect whether conve…

Google Search Advocate John Mueller responded to a Reddit user who asked whether SEO is still “enough,” or if marketers now need to think about generative engine optimization (GEO). Mueller’s answer was simple: labels matter less than reality. “If you have an online business that makes money from referred traffic, it’s definitely a good idea to consider the full picture, and prioritize accordingly.” AI isn’t going away. Mueller didn’t get into the name debate or confirm GEO as a new discipline, but he made it clear AI is here to stay: “What you call it doesn’t matter, but ‘AI’ is not going away.” So far, Google, has pushed back on the idea that AI op…

Google’s AI Overviews frequently surface affiliate content without sending traffic or clicks back to publishers. The good news for publishers is that affiliate businesses do not need to rely on Google alone. To kick off the new year, here are other sources of traffic and ways to diversify income while sticking to what you do and love. These are strategies I help partners with regularly. This article was inspired by a podcast conversation about whether this was the end of affiliate marketing. It isn’t. Affiliate marketing is more than Google, and it will continue to thrive. Skool and educational platforms Skool and similar platforms let you launch a…

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…

Fair warning: This article may make some people who’ve been hyping AI visibility tools uncomfortable. After 18 years in the search industry, however, my professional integrity doesn’t allow me to stay quiet. I have zero agenda here. Many of the misconceptions discussed below actually benefit me, both as the co-founder of an AI visibility tool and as someone who offers GEO services. Over the past few months, many claims have been shared as facts that simply aren’t accurate. Let’s clear things up. 1. AI search didn’t kill Google search Quite the opposite. It doesn’t matter how many news sites publish clickbait headlines for traffic, how many VCs hype…

Limited search volume doesn’t mean limited opportunity. Your entire target market might only search for your solution a few hundred times per month. High-volume advertisers can test 50 headline variations in a week, while you’re still waiting for your tenth conversion of the quarter. Most niche advertisers try to use the same strategies that work for high-volume accounts. That’s a mistake. Google’s automation needs data, and niche markets don’t generate enough searches to feed it. This mismatch either kills performance or prevents results altogether. This guide shows what actually works when search volume is low and conversion timelines stretch acros…

Google now adds Call Assets to Vehicle Ads so shoppers can call dealers right from the ad. Why we care. Vehicle Ads already attract high-intent buyers. Click-to-call removes friction at the exact moment they’re ready to speak with a dealer. The big picture. Automotive advertising is shifting toward immediacy. Buyers don’t want more forms. They want answers, availability, and a real person. Call-enabled Vehicle Ads shorten the path from search to conversation. Between the lines. Advertisers now carry more responsibility. When the ad becomes the point of conversion, call handling, staffing, and response quality directly shape performance. Dealers that treat …