SEO Tools and Resources

Many PPC advertisers obsess over click-through rates, using them as a quick measure of ad performance. But CTR alone doesn’t tell the whole story – what matters most is what happens after the click. That’s where many campaigns go wrong. The problem with chasing high CTRs Most advertisers think the ad with the highest CTR is often the best. It should have a high Quality Score and attract lots of clicks. However, in most cases, lower CTR ads usually outperform higher CTR ads in terms of total conversions and revenue. If all I cared about was CTR, then I could write an ad: “Free money.” “Claim your free money today.” “No strings attached.” …

The web’s purpose is shifting. Once a link graph – a network of pages for users and crawlers to navigate – it’s rapidly becoming a queryable knowledge graph. For technical SEOs, that means the goal has evolved from optimizing for clicks to optimizing for visibility and even direct machine interaction. Enter NLWeb – Microsoft’s open-source bridge to the agentic web At the forefront of this evolution is NLWeb (Natural Language Web), an open-source project developed by Microsoft. NLWeb simplifies the creation of natural language interfaces for any website, allowing publishers to transform existing sites into AI-powered applications where users and intelligen…

Nearly 90% of businesses are worried about losing organic visibility as AI transforms how people find information, according to a new survey by Ann Smarty. Why we care. The shift from search results to AI-generated answers seems to be happening faster than many expected, threatening the foundation of how companies are found online and drive sales. AI is changing the customer journey and forcing an SEO evolution. By the numbers. Most prefer to keep the “SEO” label – with “SEO for AI” (49%) and “GEO” (41%) emerging as leading terms for this new discipline. 87.8% of businesses said they’re worried about their online findability in the AI era. 85.7% are alread…

The death of an ad, like the end of the world, doesn’t happen with a bang but with a whimper. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the warning signs: click-through rate (CTR) slips, engagement falls, and cost-per-click (CPC) creeps up. If you’re not, one day your former top performer is suddenly costing you money. Creative fatigue – the decline in ad performance caused by overexposure or audience saturation – is often the culprit. It’s been around as long as advertising itself, but in an era where platforms control targeting, bidding, and even creative testing, it’s become one of the few variables marketers can still influence. This article exp…

Q4 is here – and for ecommerce brands, that means the biggest sales opportunities of the year are just ahead. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas – the biggest sales events are just around the corner. To hit your targets, preparation is key. It’s not too late to act, and the opportunities ahead are huge. Use this checklist to get up to speed quickly and set your account up for success. Website and UX Review site speed Start with a website audit to identify any red flags. Tools like PageSpeed Insights can help diagnose technical issues. Encourage clients to review key pages and the checkout process on multiple devices to ensure there are no bottle…

Google Search Console’s performance report is stuck and has not shown an update in the main report since Sunday, October 19th. Google confirmed the issue and said it will catch up. What it looks like. As I said on the Search Engine Roundtable, before Google confirmed the issue, the performance reports for all Search Console profiles are stuck on Sunday. Here is a sample chart: More details. The weird thing is that when you dive in to 24 hour data, you do get recent data. So it does seem like the data is being collected and stored but it just isn’t being rendered in most of the reporting. In addition, when you click on the by date breakdown under the chart…

On episode 329 of PPC Live The Podcast I speak to Jack Hepp, founder of industrious Marketing LLC, discussing the fallout and what it took to bring him back to feet after he got fired from his first PPC job. The big f-up: fired from his first agency job Jack’s defining career moment came just a year and a half into his first agency role. Despite being eager to learn, he was still new to digital marketing when a major mistake occurred. “We dramatically underspent a client’s ad budget for the month — by almost 50%,” Jack recalls. That underspend had serious consequences. The client relied heavily on Google Ads for online sales, and the missed spend transla…

Following OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT Atlas, software company Search Atlas flagged a major issue: the AI-powered browser can interact with websites in a way that looks indistinguishable from real human users, including clicking on paid advertisements. Why we care. Businesses running digital ad campaigns could unknowingly pay for clicks generated by AI agents, not real prospects. The technology also threatens to corrupt analytics data, making it harder to measure genuine traffic and user behavior. The problem. ChatGPT Atlas is built on Google Chrome, so ad networks and websites perceive its activity as a legitimate user. Every AI click on sponsored posts can tr…

Google today celebrated the 25th anniversary of its ad platform, first launched as AdWords in 2000. Now known as Google Ads, the platform remains the backbone of the company’s revenue engine. Over two and a half decades, Google Ads has evolved from a manually managed system to a sophisticated AI-driven advertising platform spanning Search, YouTube, Play, and the wider web. What Google is saying. Google is celebrating, with Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM of Ads & Commerce, sharing how AI is empowering us to rethink what’s possible’ and create a future of smarter, more helpful advertising. “Generative AI is transforming digital marketing, and I am so proud to see…

In the early days of SEO, ranking algorithms were easy to game with simple tactics that became known as “black hat” SEO – white text on a white background, hidden links, keyword stuffing, and paid link farms. Early algorithms weren’t sophisticated enough to detect these schemes, and sites that used them often ranked higher. Today, large language models power the next generation of search, and a new wave of black hat techniques are emerging to manipulate rankings and prompt results for advantage. The AI content boom – and the temptation to cut corners Up to 21% of U.S. users access AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and DeepSeek mo…

ChatGPT referral traffic converts worse than Google search, email and affiliate links, trailing on both conversion rate and revenue per session, according to a new analysis of 973 ecommerce sites. Why we care. AI search platforms are starting to refer meaningful traffic to retailers – but not yet sales. For now, Google (paid organic) search still wins on conversion and revenue per session. By the numbers. The dataset consisted of 12 months (Augusut 2024 to July 2025), 973 ecommerce sites, and $20 billion combined revenue. ChatGPT referral traffic was ~0.2% of total sessions – ~200× smaller than Google organic. >90% of LLM-originating ecommerce traffic …

Is your page not attracting the number of people you thought it would? Or are you wondering what you can improve to get your page higher up in the search results? And to get people to stay on (and come back to) your site? There are a few things you can do to give your page a better chance at performing well. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how you can determine which pages could use some extra love and what you can do to turn them into high-quality pages! It is important to realize that content quality can have a big impact on your business and online findability. Especially since Google announced its helpful content update, your rankings might suffer if you have t…

Marketers face AI news every day, and it’s almost impossible to keep up. AI agents are on the rise, but many are still in early development, beta testing, or lack real market adoption. So let’s skip ahead five years and look at what the future could hold. Picture this: You wake up in 2030 and check your phone. While you were sleeping, your AI agent optimized 50 campaigns, negotiated media buys with other agents, and earned $3,000 helping solve problems around the world. This isn’t science fiction – it’s where performance marketing is headed, and it may become reality soon. From scripts to personal AI assistants Today’s PPC automation still f…

Adviso once again is leading the way in the 11th annual Search Engine Land Awards. The Canadian agency is a finalist in six categories in 2025. This is the second year in a row that Adviso has topped our list of finalists. In 2024, the Canadian agency was a finalist in five Search Engine Land categories and won two Search Engine Land Awards. Two other agencies earning finalist status five times are: Razorfish LocalIQ Meanwhile, four agencies earned finalist status three times in the 2025 Search Engine Land Awards: Amsive. ATRA Bloom Digital. Digital Hitmen. The competition was once again stiff in nearly all of our categories. A…

Google’s crawl stats report is missing a single day of crawl data, which seems to be impacting all sites within Google Search Console. Google has not yet confirmed the issue but it seems to be impacting everyone. What it looks like. Here is a screenshot from one of my profiles within Search Console, showing the date that is missing for this site is October 14, 2025: Crawl stats report. The Crawl Stats report in Google Search Console shows you statistics about Google’s crawling history on your website. For instance, how many requests were made and when, what your server response was, and any availability issues encountered. You can use this report to detect whe…

What they didn’t teach you in the marketing org chart: how to win when the window is closing. Picture a marketer who sees VIPs starting to lapse on a Thursday morning. By noon, they’ve pulled the data, developed three creative variants, launched a triggered journey and measured incremental improvement. No tickets, no queues, no committees. By Monday, the save rate is up 18%. That’s not luck; that’s Positionless Marketing. It’s do-it-now competence, powered by technology. The mindset comes straight from a classic business book: Mark McCormack’s “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive.” His playbook celebrates prac…

Google is rolling out a new video creation tool for its Demand Gen campaigns that automatically turns advertisers’ existing image and text assets into videos across all aspect ratios. Driving the news. According to a notice sent to advertisers, the feature will apply to all image-only ad groups created before August 27th, with auto-generated videos beginning to serve after October 31st — unless advertisers opt out. How it works: The tool pulls from current image and text assets to produce branded video variations. These videos are designed to extend reach across more channels and formats, optimizing for both vertical and horizontal placements. Adver…

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…

Advertisers are spotting a fresh Google Maps ad format featuring scrollable light blue sitelinks beneath promoted pins. The new layout gives brands more clickable real estate directly inside Maps. Update confirmed. Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed the rollout, saying the feature is now fully launched. The update allows sitelinks — already common in Search ads — to appear in Maps ads, linking users to specific pages on an advertiser’s website. How it works. These sitelinks can show from Search or Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. To enable them you’ll need at least two sitelinks for both desktop and mobile. Sitelinks can be added at the acco…

On episode 328 of PPC Live The Podcast I speak to Susan Yen, PPC team lead at Search Lab, discussing everything from Performance Max pitfalls to the growing (and sometimes risky) role of AI in marketing. Susan’s biggest PPC f-up: Performance Max gone wrong Susan’s most memorable mistake came when she dove headfirst into Performance Max (PMax) campaigns too soon. At first, results looked incredible — traffic spiked, conversions multiplied, and reports looked great. But soon, the client noticed the leads were poor quality or fake. After investigating, Susan discovered that traffic was coming from low-quality placements, conversion tracking was misconfigured, and …

Google quietly rolled out a new Sources column in its AI Max Search Term Reports – giving advertisers their first real look at where AI Max traffic is coming from and how Google’s automation is matching queries. What’s new. The new Sources data reveals how AI Max is driving traffic through: Landing pages and URL inclusions — showing which of your pages Google used to match search intent. AI Max expanded matches — indicating when traffic came from Google’s algorithmic expansions beyond your set keywords. Why we care. Until now, advertisers had limited visibility into how AI Max decides which searches trigger ads. This new data helps clarify whether traff…

Recently, there’s been discussion – and some frustration – on social media about what’s being said (and who’s saying it) about SEO, GEO, and whatever comes next. Some of that criticism has been directed at Search Engine Land, and that’s fair game. We’ve always encouraged open debate and multiple viewpoints about where search marketing is headed. But I want to take a moment to clarify what we believe, what we don’t, and why our editorial approach may not always align with everyone’s worldview – especially in this unprecedented, transitional moment for our industry. 1. SEO is not dead. Period. Search Engine Land believes SEO is very much still a thing. As Lil…

Google’s new AI-powered search experience isn’t eating into ad revenue – even as AI Overviews answer more questions directly on the results page. While some queries may see fewer ad clicks, overall query volume is rising, keeping ad performance “relatively stable,” Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, said in a new interview. Ads and revenue impact. Google’s AI era looks a lot like its mobile moment – feared at first, but fueling more searches and steady ad dollars. Here’s what Reid said. Ad revenue with AI Overviews is “relatively stable.” Some queries lose ad clicks, but total query volume rises when answers are faster or easier – offsetting the dip. (“Some …

Google rolled out version 22 of the Google Ads API, introducing new automation and AI-powered tools designed to help advertisers build, optimize, and scale campaigns more efficiently. What’s new. The v22 update adds several key features across campaign types: Generative AI for asset creation: A new AssetGenerationService (beta) lets advertisers automatically generate text and image assets using generative AI. Smart Bidding Exploration: Advertisers using Target ROAS strategies on Search can now retrieve time-segmented diversity metrics to better understand bid performance. Demand Gen campaigns: Expanded support for automated asset generation and additional b…

AI Overviews are changing what it means to “search.” The web remains central, but AI and shifting user habits are creating new winners and losers – with forums, videos, and creators gaining ground on traditional publishers, said Google’s Search Head Liz Reid in a new interview. Search shake-up. Every ranking update creates “winners and losers,” Reid acknowledged. But she said user behavior – not just algorithms – is driving the shift, with younger audiences favoring forums, short-form video, and creator content over traditional publishers. “One of the things that’s always true about Google Search is that you make changes and there are winners and losers. That’s t…