SEO Tools and Resources

Google is rolling out two new AI-powered assistants — Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor — built on its latest Gemini models to help advertisers manage campaigns and uncover insights faster. The tools, which begin rolling out to all English-language Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts in early December, are designed to turn complex campaign management and data analysis into simple, conversational experiences. Ads Advisor: optimization and automation in one place. Ads Advisor serves as an in-platform AI partner that helps advertisers manage, troubleshoot, and scale their campaigns. It learns from user interactions to deliver increasingly personalized …

The Alpha Beta account structure was the gold standard of paid search. Over the past several years, PPC marketers have adapted to Google’s push into automation and AI by first tweaking Alpha Beta – built on single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) – and eventually moving away from it altogether. SKAG maintenance and buildout are no longer ideal for paid search in 2026 and beyond – but that transition isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Existing SKAGs still hold valuable data and insights you can carry into a more consolidated setup. This article covers the benefits of SKAG consolidation and best practices for building a structure that sets your campaigns up fo…

Brand visibility is replacing rankings as the most important metric in SEO. AI search engines now answer questions directly – often without a single click to a website. If your brand isn’t mentioned in those AI answers, you’re invisible where it matters most. This isn’t about being No. 1 in blue links anymore. It’s about being the brand ChatGPT recommends, the company Perplexity cites, and the solution featured in Google’s AI Overview. So how do you measure and track that presence? Here’s a simple three-step framework to help – starting with your brand visibility score. (Copy this free spreadsheet to benchmark your current visibility.) …

Google now lets merchants add their shipping and return policies to Google Search without having a Google Merchant Center account. You can do this within Google Search Console and/or by using new structured data. Google wrote: “We’re excited to announce that we’re now expanding the options for merchants to provide shipping and returns information, even if they don’t have a Merchant Center account. Merchants can now tell Google about their shipping and returns policies in two distinct ways: by configuring them directly in Search Console or by using new organization-level structured data.” Search Console. If Google determines that your site makes sense to add …

Microsoft is tightening its advertising standards. The company announced that all third-party publishers must now implement Microsoft Clarity — its free behavioral analytics tool — to remain eligible for paid impressions and clicks in Microsoft Advertising. The details: What’s required: Publishers must install Microsoft Clarity and enable Consent Mode to track and analyze user interactions while complying with privacy standards. What it does: Clarity helps publishers and advertisers visualize user behavior — including clicks, scrolls, and engagement patterns — to make data-driven CRO (conversion rate optimization) decisions. What changes: Only ad traffic fr…

Google Ads Editor just got a major upgrade. The 2025 release of version 2.11 introduces smarter automation, better visibility, and tighter controls for advertisers managing large-scale accounts. The update focuses on control and transparency — giving advertisers more say in how Performance Max, Search, and account-wide settings behave. Campaign-level negative keywords for Performance Max. Advertisers can now add negative keyword lists directly to Performance Max campaigns, giving finer control over where ads appear. It’s a long-awaited feature that prevents wasted spend on irrelevant searches — a crucial step toward performance parity with Search and Shopping campai…

Look, I get it. Every time a new search technology appears, we try to map it to what we already know. When mobile search exploded, we called it “mobile SEO.” When voice assistants arrived, we coined “voice search optimization” and told everyone this would be the new hype. I’ve been doing SEO for years. I know how Google works – or at least I thought I did. Then I started digging into how ChatGPT picks citations, how Perplexity ranks sources, and how Google’s AI Overviews select content. I’m not here to declare that SEO is dead or to state that everything has changed. I’m here to share the questions that keep me up at night – questions that sugg…

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, is worried that the ad-supported web will collapse due to AI. In a new interview with Nilay Patel on Decoder, Berners-Lee said: “I do worry about the infrastructure of the web when it comes to the stack of all the flow of data, which is produced by people who make their money from advertising. If nobody is actually following through the links, if people are not using search engines, they’re not actually using their websites, then we lose that flow of ad revenue. That whole model crumbles. I do worry about that.” Why we care. There is a split in our industry, where one side thinks “it’s just SEO” and the other …

Google rolled out AI-powered ad carousels in the Images tab on mobile, now appearing across all categories — not just shopping-related ones. Why we care. Ads are now showing directly within image search results, giving brands a new, highly visual placement to grab attention where users are actively browsing and comparing visuals. With users often browsing images to explore ideas or compare options, these AI-powered carousels give brands a chance to influence discovery earlier in the journey. The details: The new format features horizontally scrollable carousels with images, headlines, and links. These carousels are powered by AI-driven ad matching, pul…

Google Business Profiles has a form where you can report negative review extortion scams, the form launched a month ago. You can find access to the form in this help document and I believe you need to be logged into your Google account with access to the Business Profile you want to report. Review extortion scams. This negative review extortion scams are on the rise and a huge concern for local SEOs and businesses. A scammer will message you, likely over WhatsApp or email, and tell you that they left a one-star negative review and the only way to remove it is to pay them. Google wrote in its help document, “These scams may involve a sudden increase in 1-star and …

Google Ads is updating its Destination requirements policy to block phone numbers tied to fraud or prior policy violations, part of the company’s ongoing effort to curb deceptive advertising practices. The timeline: Policy update effective: December 10, 2025 Enforcement ramp-up: Over roughly 8 weeks after rollout What’s changing. Phone numbers flagged as fraudulent or with a history of violations will now be deemed unacceptable under the Destination requirements policy, leading to ad disapprovals. Why we care. The change targets bad actors who use legitimate-looking phone numbers to mislead users or bypass enforcement, a recurring issue in sectors like…

GEO, AI SEO, AEO – call it what you like. The label doesn’t matter nearly as much as understanding the shift behind it. At the center of that shift lies one idea that explains everything: AI availability – and here’s why it matters. What is AI availability? The idea of AI availability comes from Byron Sharp, research professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, who introduced it in a comment on one of my LinkedIn posts. Sharp’s work underpins modern brand science and shows that growth depends on availability. Brands grow through sales, and sales grow through two kinds of availability: mental and physical. Mental availability refers to the like…

Keywords in reviews are generally believed to help local rankings, although their impact is still actively debated within the local SEO community. Regardless of where the truth on ranking impact ultimately lands, keyword-rich reviews can still provide meaningful value for local SEO beyond pure rankings. Below are seven reasons why you should still encourage keyword-rich reviews. 1. Review justifications If your reviews consistently mention a keyword related to your business, the likelihood that your Profile will get a Review justification in search increases. This visibility can boost click-through rates. Higher engagement may lead to a secondary impro…

Google is rolling out asset-level reporting for Display campaigns, giving advertisers a clearer view of how individual creative assets perform — a move that brings Display closer to the transparency already seen in Performance Max campaigns. Why we care. Until now, Display campaign insights have been limited to overall ad performance. With this update, advertisers can analyze results at the asset level — images, headlines, descriptions — to pinpoint what’s driving engagement and what’s not. How it works. A new Assets tab in Google Ads will let users: Compare performance of each creative asset. View when assets were last updated to track iteration history. …

A recent Google blog post announced the expansion of Opal, a Google tool that uses AI to get people create mini apps, and touted that the tool can be used to create “optimized” content in a “scalable way.” Many SEOs are asking if this is against Google search guidelines, specifically the scaled content abuse policy. What Google wrote. Google wrote on the Google blog about reasons one should use Opal: “Creators and marketers have also quickly adopted Opal to help them create custom content in a consistent, scalable way.” “Marketing asset generators: Tools that take a single product concept and instantly generate optimized blog posts, social media captions and v…

A year and a half ago, I wrote “The rise of forums: Why Google prefers them and how to adapt,” arguing that brands should build their own online forums and communities. Let’s look at what’s happened since. As of this writing, Reddit’s stock price has risen 177.6%. If you’d bought 100 shares of RDDT then, you’d be $13,113 richer today. In a June 2025 analysis of 150,000 AI citations, Semrush found that Reddit was the top source, appearing in more than 40% of LLM responses. So what happened? It comes down to the law of supply and demand. The supply-and-demand crisis of online answers The demand for answers has skyrocketed as people increasing…

An SEO strategy is the foundation for improving organic visibility and driving conversions – whether that means owning Google’s front page or earning mentions in LLMs. A strong strategy aligns stakeholders, unifies teams, and sets clear expectations. Without one, SEO can feel scattered – a collection of disconnected tactics or endless optimizations thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Documenting your strategy isn’t busywork. It’s how you ensure everyone who needs to buy in understands your goals, your approach, and how their teams can help achieve them. This article looks at why documenting your SEO strategy matters – and how to do it effectively …

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity: these are the new operating environments. Your content must be invokable inside them, or no one will see it. At SMX Advanced, I broke down how to build an AI visibility engine: a system for making your net-new facts reusable by humans and agents across synthesis-first platforms. It goes beyond publishing to show how teams can deploy structured content that survives LLM compression and shows up for buyers during their purchasing decisions. It’s what we’re building with clients and inside XOFU, our LLM visibility GPT. Here’s how it works. Find the FLUQs (Friction-Inducing Latent Unasked Questions) Friction-Inducing L…

Grappling with innovation and changing consumer attitudes is second nature to marketers, who have already lived through many technological shifts over the past two decades. But forecasting where things are going is especially hard when it comes to modern AI, which has such unusual, non-deterministic properties. You can’t just extrapolate from the state of AI today to understand where AI is going to be in five years (or one…); during this sort of a platform shift, you need to take a deeper first-principles look. Some things won’t change. Consumers will always want products, services and experiences that resonate and meet their needs. Marketers will always want easier, …

It’s clear to me that the current “LLM situation” is untenable. These platforms are offering a very expensive set of products with relatively unlimited access. At the same time, you have content creators and publishers in a state of panic as decreased traffic has become the norm. Add to this that platforms ranging from Google’s AI Mode to ChatGPT lack clarity on how to monetize their products, and it becomes clear we’re kicking a can down the line, and sooner or later, all bills come due. The LLMs providing such broad access at no cost are unsustainable long-term. Content publishers offering their content to LLMs for free without traffic or other compensati…

Google has updated its Circumventing Systems policy to include a new example explicitly warning advertisers that submitting false information during the Advertiser Verification process violates its rules and will lead to account suspension. The details: The update was added to the Circumventing Systems section of Google’s Ads policies in November 2025. It specifies that providing false or fraudulent information during verification is treated as an intentional attempt to bypass Google’s compliance systems. Violations will result in immediate account suspension. Why we care. This clarification reinforces Google’s zero-tolerance stance on misinformation wi…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said ChatGPT will likely try ads “at some point” but he still has “no idea” what ads will look like. Altman also doesn’t see ads as OpenAI’s “biggest revenue opportunity.” In an interview on Conversations with Tyler, Altman also took another direct shot at Google’s ad model: “Ads on a Google search are dependent on Google doing badly. If it was giving you the best answer, there’d be no reason ever to buy an ad above it. “So you’re like – that thing is not quite aligned with me. ChatGPT, maybe it gives you the best answer, maybe it doesn’t, but you’re paying it, or hopefully all are paying it, and it’s at least trying to give you the best…

For over a decade, Google rewarded rankings with visits, so SEO practitioners learned to justify success with rankings, clicks, and traffic. For a long time, that proxy worked. But in B2B, it was always fragile—and now it’s collapsing. Zero-click searches siphon visits, SERP features crowd out listings, and generative engines influence early discovery with answer-first experiences. What once looked like performance is now little more than hope-based marketing. The real challenge for practitioners has never been about proving activity—it’s been about translating our expertise into outcomes the business actually cares about. Aligning with business objectives is crit…

Microsoft has released an upgrade to Copilot, bringing what it calls “the best of AI Search” to its AI engine – Copilot. Microsoft said its Copilot responses “will now include more prominent, clickable citations and the option to see aggregated sources.” Plus, Microsoft added a new dedicated search experiment within Copilot. Prominent citations. Microsoft said “Copilot’s responses will have more prominent citations to show you the publisher content that it was sourced from” in this new experience. The Copilot responses will not just give you a summary response but now also include “exactly where the information comes from, with relevant, clear, and clickable sources.…

Google is launching a suite of updates across Ad Manager, AdSense, and AdMob to help publishers save time, strengthen advertiser relationships, and better monetize content — with major additions powered by AI and real-time technology. AI-driven automation: Smarter brand safety: A new AI tool learns a publisher’s specific brand standards and will soon automatically block unwanted ads, reducing time spent in manual ad reviews. Generative AI reporting: Publishers can now ask questions like “Which ad units had the highest CPM last week?” and instantly generate tailored performance reports in Ad Manager. AI Help guide: Rolling out in Ad Manager, AdMob, and AdSen…