SEO Tools and Resources

AI is reshaping how billions of people find information, but it isn’t killing the blue link. That’s according to Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, in a new The Economic Times podcast interview. Why we care. We’re in a massive transitional period. If you believe Google, AI isn’t shrinking the pie – it’s expanding opportunities for brands, businesses, and creators. Perhaps AI Overviews are killing shallow traffic, but the big question remains whether Google can find ways to reward rich, engaging content. The future of search. AI is a layer, not a replacement. Some quotes from Reid: “I think we’re still really at the beginning. I think there’s still [a] huge wa…

New asset and channel reporting improvements are rolling out to Google Ads Performance Max. This update should make it easier to optimize budgets, identify underperforming elements, and maximize ROI across Google’s full network – Search, Display, Discover, Gmail, YouTube, and Maps. Why we care. These updates make Performance Max feel a lot less like a black box. You should get a clearer view of what’s actually driving results. With new segmentation options and ROI metrics, it’s easier to see how different assets and channels impact conversions, costs, and returns. Asset reporting segmentation. You can now break down asset performance by device, time, conversions, …

Google is piloting a Labs section inside the Google Ads platform, giving advertisers a centralized place to access early-stage experiments and tools. Why we care. Instead of quietly testing features across scattered accounts, Google appears to be consolidating experiments into a single hub, making it easier for advertisers to discover and try new features before full rollout. Details. The Labs section shows up at the bottom of the left-hand menu in select accounts. Early tests include features like “missed growth opportunities,” which highlight potential campaign improvements through bid or budget adjustments. Not all advertisers will have access to it.…

Google is enhancing Meridian, its open-source Marketing Mix Model (MMM), to help marketers make smarter, more precise budget decisions. Why we care. Understanding ROI across channels is increasingly critical. These new Meridian updates allow for a more precise understanding of what drives sales, factoring in both media spend and non-media variables like pricing and promotions. The big picture. Here’s what’s new: Non-media variables: Marketers can now include pricing, promotions, and other business levers to measure their impact on sales more accurately. Channel-level contribution priors: New features let you guide the MMM with your own business knowledge,…

The history of search offers clues about where we’re headed in the AI era – but there’s more to learn and more to do to move forward with practical steps. AI changes the way people search. Instead of short queries that once required digging through blended results, users can now ask complex questions and get direct answers. Much of the work to optimize for AI, though, overlaps with what SEO professionals have been doing for years. Our community is already adapting and well-positioned to take on this shift. This article outlines practical steps to navigate the evolving landscape. SEO, AEO, GEO: Defining the new terms Before diving in, it’s worth addressi…

Google’s AI Max for Search campaigns is changing how we run search ads. Launched in private beta as Search Max, the feature began rolling out globally in late May, with full availability expected by early Q3 2025. But will AI Max actually drive incremental growth or simply take credit for conversions your existing setup would have captured anyway? This article: Breaks down the key metrics to track in AI Max. Shares early results from travel, fashion, and B2B accounts. Includes a Google Ads script to make analysis faster and easier. Understanding AI Max Think of AI Max as Google combining the best parts of Dynamic Search Ads and Performance…

Google AI Mode is getting more visual by providing a more graphical response to some of your queries, including your shopping search queries. Google can do this by using its new visual version of the query fan-out technique it has used with AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google AI Mode, for certain queries, particularly those related to shopping, will respond with images and graphics. These are aimed at sparking inspiration, Robby Stein, VP of Product Management at Google Search, told Search Engine Land. AI Mode will be able to not just understand your query in a text-based manner, but also understand your query visually and respond with both textual and visual resp…

Engineering teams usually have a quality assurance (QA) process. Without it, they risk releasing work that hurts the user experience and creates unforeseen technical issues – including major SEO problems. That’s where SEO QA comes in. Adding SEO-specific checks to existing QA protocols helps teams catch and fix issues before they go live. But this step is less common than you’d think. Too often, it’s overlooked. This article outlines what it takes to build an effective SEO QA discipline and provides a checklist SEOs and QA engineers can use to cover their bases. Why SEO QA gets overlooked Unless SEO is fully integrated with engineering, SEO-specific…

We know that most readers skim. We also know that search engines prefer clear and easy-to-understand content. Luckily, a good summary can help with both. A summary gives your reader the core ideas quickly, while also helping your chances of ranking your content. Learning how to write a summary helps you give your content the love it needs. Table of contents What is a summary? Why are summaries important? How to write an effective summary Dos and don’ts of writing summaries Examples of weak vs. strong summaries Summaries vs. intros, conclusions, titles, and meta descriptions Benefits and pitfalls of using AI for summaries Key takeaways A summary provides a c…

Pinterest is rolling out Top of Search ads, a new ad format that places brands directly in the first 10 slots of search results and Related Pins, where nearly half of user clicks occur. Shopping on Pinterest is inherently visual, and most searches on the platform (96%) are unbranded according to Pinterest. That makes the top of search results a prime spot for discovery – and for brands to reach consumers who are open to new products. Why we care. Pinterest’s Top of Search ads put your products in front of shoppers at the most valuable moment: when they’re actively browsing but not yet brand-committed. With nearly all searches unbranded, the format offers a powerfu…

OpenAI is launching Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT to Plus, Pro, and Free users in the U.S. Users will be able to buy products from Etsy sellers. Purchases are powered by the new Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), co-developed with Stripe. How it works. Users search in plain language (e.g., “gifts for a ceramics lover”). Then: ChatGPT returns product recommendations ranked by relevance, not payment. If an item supports Instant Checkout, users tap “Buy,” confirm shipping and payment details, and complete the order without leaving chat. Orders, payments, and fulfillment run through the merchant’s existing systems; ChatGPT just passes information secure…

TikTok is introducing a new ad solution, Travel Ads powered by Smart+, designed to help brands connect with travelers during the discovery and booking phases. Why now. Travel is one of TikTok’s fastest-growing verticals. According to internal TikTok data: 66% of users say the app is their most helpful source of travel inspiration. Users are 2.6x more likely to book after searching on TikTok. How it works. Travel Ads leverage TikTok’s travel intent model and catalog integration to automatically serve personalized creatives at scale. Smart+ AI powers campaign setup, creative generation, and delivery optimization, aiming to convert discovery into bookings…

In episode 325 of PPC Live The Podcast, I sat down with Inderpaul “Indi” Rai, Group Account Director at WeDiscover, to explore the lessons learned from mistakes, team dynamics, and the evolving role of automation and AI in paid search. Indi, a veteran with over a decade of experience in AdTech, MarTech, SEO, analytics, and multilingual paid search, shared candid insights on how errors can shape careers and client relationships. Embracing Mistakes to Grow Indi opened up about one of the most significant mistakes in his career: an automated budget feature in Search Ads 360 went unchecked during his holiday, resulting in the US account overspending by a substantial am…

You can now pull Pinterest cost, click, and impression data directly into Google Analytics via Pinterest Ads Data Import. Why we care. Bringing Pinterest Ads data into Analytics gives advertisers a unified view of performance across channels. But mismanaging imports can lead to duplicate or inaccurate reporting. How it works. When you set up a Pinterest Ads Data Import, Google Analytics attempts to pull up to 24 months of historical campaign data. If the Pinterest API doesn’t support that full range, Analytics will extract as much as possible. If you have previously uploaded Pinterest cost data manually, you’ll need to delete those datasets first — otherwise…

Google Search Labs has a new experiment you can opt into that turns on some Agentic capabilities within AI Mode. This allows Google to help you make a reservation at a restaurant and will soon give you the ability to book local service appointments and event tickets. Agentic capabilities in AI Mode. The new labs feature works for users in the US who are signed into their Google account. You can opt in and review the features over here. AI Mode in Google Search now has agentic capabilities to help with your everyday local needs. “We’re starting with restaurant reservations, and expanding soon to local service appointments and event tickets,” Google wrote. This…

Crawl waste – basically, cluttering your crawlable content with tons of non-indexed pages – is one of the most insidious SEO pitfalls. We know (because we do it all the time for my agency’s clients) that reducing the number of non-indexed pages and highlighting richer, authoritative content is a factor in improving rankings and visibility in traditional SERP listings. But how does it impact AI search visibility? And were the results different by platform? Thanks to some recent cleanup and data-crunching (we used Profound to measure changes in AI search visibility) for a client in the childcare vertical, we’ve got some directional answers and takeaways that I’…

Every few months, Google launches a new feature – and reactions usually split into two extremes: either it’s a welcome but overdue correction or a sign of PPC end times. AI Max is no exception. Some advertisers love what it represents and how it’s delivered, while others are ready to dismiss it altogether. As with most things, the reality falls somewhere in between. Instead of speculating on what-ifs, I’ll share what I’ve seen after testing AI Max for 30+ days across multiple accounts. Google’s new AI Max feature explained AI Max is an optional toggle for your Search campaigns that opens you up to what Google calls “the full potential of Google Search.” …

Thanks to AI-generated answers, CTRs are failing fast, and even page-one rankings no longer guarantee clicks. Google’s top organic results saw a 32% CTR drop after AI Overviews launched, plummeting from 28% to 19%. Position #2 fared even worse, with a 39% decline. Meanwhile, 60% of searches in 2024 ended without clicks; also, the projections show zero-click searches could surpass 70% by 2025. What does this mean for measuring success? Table of contents How does this disrupt traditional SEO? Evidence of a drastic CTA decline AI Overviews are the zero-click accelerator What CTRs miss in the AI search era? Six AI LLM optimization metrics 1. AI brand mention rate 2…

Meta is rolling out a paid option for Facebook and Instagram users in the UK to opt out of ads, marking a major shift in how its platforms operate under local regulation. Starting in the coming weeks, UK users over 18 will be offered the choice to keep using Facebook and Instagram for free with personalized ads, or subscribe to avoid them. Pricing is set at £2.99/month on the web or £3.99/month on iOS and Android for the first account, with additional accounts costing £2 or £3, respectively. Why we care. The move responds to guidance from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), giving users more control over how their data is used while keeping adve…

Google Ads will change how automatically created customer conversion goals are set as account-default starting Nov. 17, aiming to reduce wasted spend from campaigns optimizing toward irrelevant goals. How it works now. New conversion actions created via the API automatically generate customer conversion goals. Those goals are set as account-default by default, making them biddable across campaigns. The result: campaigns may target unnecessary goals, diluting performance. What’s changing. Under the new rules, a newly created goal will only default to account-level bidding if every other goal in that category is already account-default. Example: If an acc…

President Donald The President signed an executive order approving a proposed $14 billion deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S., with a new joint-venture company overseeing its U.S. business. ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent, would retain under 20% ownership if China signs off. Why we care. This deal ends a years-long national security fight that nearly got TikTok banned in the U.S., where it has more than 150 million users. For advertisers, that means continued access to one of the fastest-growing platforms for reaching younger audiences. But political and regulatory uncertainty still hangs over TikTok, leaving questions about ad budgets and brand safety. …

ChatGPT now processes 66 million “search-like” prompts per day, while Google still processes about 14 billion searches daily – roughly 210 times more. That’s the latest AI search reality check, via Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro. By the numbers. Google processes ~210x more searches than ChatGPT. Even DuckDuckGo outpaces ChatGPT in referrals, per estimates. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said ChatGPT handled 1 billion prompts per day in December. By July, that number was 2.5 billion prompts. Much of that growth comes from API calls (businesses plugging GPT into products). A Harvard/OpenAI study found 21.3% of prompts are “search-like.” That’s roughly …

Content has long been the fuel for SEO, and its importance continues as AI-driven search relies on rich, trustworthy information. I’ve always believed in doing the “good” and “right” things when it comes to creating content at scale – but even good things can become problems when overdone. Too often, SEO and AI visibility efforts get reduced to publishing more blogs, landing pages, or articles in the pursuit of quick wins that executives want to see. While content is critical, treating SEO as a production machine creates the illusion of progress. Activity without performance bloats sites with duplicative, commoditized, or low-value pages that both search…

Many still treat E-E-A-T as a box to tick in an SEO audit. But it’s more than that – it’s how search engines and AI systems decide which content to trust. The paradox? Global brands that dominate in one country often underperform in others. Without clear local trust and authority signals, even the strongest global reputation may not carry across borders. Why E-E-A-T breaks down across borders When Google or an LLM compares multiple content options, it must choose which is the most complete, accurate, and trustworthy. That decision once leaned heavily on backlinks. Now, advanced algorithms consider a richer mix – authorship, structured d…

For a decade, marketing strategy was engineered to master Google’s “messy middle.” Today, the customer’s exploration and evaluation journey has migrated from the open web (PPC, Reddit, YouTube, websites) into closed AI environments (ChatGPT, AI Mode, Perplexity), making direct observation impossible. Your marketing analytics stack faces funnel blindness. You must reconstruct customer journeys from fragmented data offered by LLM visibility tools. Funnel reconstruction relies on two primary data streams The rush to measure LLM performance has vendors promising dashboards to help you “Analyze your AI visibility right now.” This work requires reconciling two f…