SEO Tools and Resources

Google now uses Gemini 3 Pro to generate some AI Overviews in Google Search. Google said for more complex queries Gemini 3 Pro is used for AI Overview. This was previously announced for AI Mode results back in November and then in December Google began using Gemini 3 Flash for AI Mode. Now, Google is taking Gemini 3 Pro to AI Overviews for complex queries. Gemini 3 Pro is used to generate AI Overviews for complex queries in English, globally for Google AI Pro & Ultra subscribers. What Google said. Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search wrote: “Update: AI Overviews now tap into Gemini 3 Pro for complex topics.” “Behind the scenes, Search wil…

We fully decrypted Google’s SearchGuard anti-bot system, the technology at the center of its recent lawsuit against SerpAPI. After fully deobfuscating the JavaScript code, we now have an unprecedented look at how Google distinguishes human visitors from automated scrapers in real time. What happened. Google filed a lawsuit on Dec. 19 against Texas-based SerpAPI LLC, alleging the company circumvented SearchGuard to scrape copyrighted content from Google Search results at a scale of “hundreds of millions” of queries daily. Rather than targeting terms-of-service violations, Google built its case on DMCA Section 1201 – the anti-circumvention provision of copyright law…

Less than 200 years ago, scientists were ridiculed for suggesting that hand washing might save lives. In the 1840s, it was shown that hygiene reduced death rates, but the underlying explanation was missing. Without a clear mechanism, adoption stalled for decades, leading to countless preventable deaths. The joke of the past becomes the truth of today. The inverse is also true when you follow misleading guidance. Bad GEO advice (I don’t like this acronym, but will use it because it seems to be the most popular) will not literally kill you. That said, it can definitely cost money, cause unemployment, and lead to economic death. Not long ago, I wro…

Before you apply for a new role, it’s important to prepare for marketing salary negotiations and learn how to pursue fair pay with practical, realistic guidance. Whether you work in SEO, PPC, or somewhere in between, salaries remain a contentious topic. They are often hard to discuss, difficult to quantify, and challenging to change. While many resources cover salary negotiations in general, this article focuses specifically on negotiating pay for marketing roles. Difficulties with marketing salaries Several factors make marketing roles harder to benchmark than many other professions, complicating salary expectations and negotiations. No industry s…

Five days compressed into five minutes. Six weeks into six days. These aren’t marginal improvements. They’re what happens when marketing organizations remove the structural barriers that prevent talented people from acting at the speed of customer behavior. As Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, warned in “Managing in Turbulent Times,” “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Markets are volatile. Customer behavior shifts in real time. Channels are always on. Yet many marketing organizations still operate with structures designed for a slower world, and the cost is measured in missed m…

Spending on Google search ads rose 13% year over year in Q4 2025, up from 10% in Q3, based on Tinuiti’s latest benchmark report. Click growth for advertisers hit its strongest rate since early 2021, while average CPCs declined slightly for the second consecutive quarter. AI-driven results continue to expand overall query volume, including commercial searches. Why we care. Google search ad clicks are surging while CPCs remain flat, a trend fueled in part by Amazon stepping back from U.S. Google Shopping auctions. Advertisers are seeing both opportunity (CPC mostly stable) and disruption as spend patterns shift across search and shopping. Additionally, AI-driven que…

On episode 337 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Amy Hebdon, an international paid search expert and founder of Paid Search Magic. The show focuses on the real stories behind paid media work, including mistakes, surprises, and lessons learned, rather than just tactical advice. Amy’s breadth of experience spans multiple industries and digital marketing disciplines, making her insights particularly valuable for marketers navigating complex campaigns. Early career mistakes and learning experiences Amy shares a formative experience early in her career managing a fitness client’s creative assets that were incompatible with Google Ads. Despite her intention to protect …

Google Ads is running a limited test that allows some advertisers to A/B test different product titles and images within Shopping Ads. The feature appears as “product data experiments” and promises results within three to four weeks. Who gets it. The test is currently live for a small number of merchants, according to Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin. Broader availability is expected later. Why we care. Product titles and images can make or break Shopping ad performance, but advertisers have had limited ways to test changes without risking live results. This update could bring much-needed experimentation to product feeds. What it does. Advertisers can compar…

OpenAI will begin testing ads in ChatGPT in the U.S. in the coming weeks. Ads will appear at the bottom of chatbot responses, be clearly labeled, and will only show when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service tied to the conversation. Who will see ads: Logged-in adult users on the free tier Users on ChatGPT Go, OpenAI’s $8/month low-cost subscription Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans will remain ad-free Users under 18 will not see ads Why we care. Ads inside ChatGPT open a new, high-intent placement where users are actively asking questions and making decisions. Unlike traditional search or social ads, these placements appear directly with…

Google Ads simplified access to Manual CPC during campaign setup. Instead of navigating through the “Select a bid strategy directly (not recommended)” option, advertisers now see “Manually set bids” directly under the Conversions goal. The change: Manual CPC is surfaced within Google’s primary bidding flow. Advertisers no longer need to bypass Google’s recommended strategies to access it. The update is visible in campaign bidding settings across the UI. Why we care. Manual CPC remains a go-to bidding strategy for advertisers who want hands-on control, but Google’s setup flow has increasingly nudged users toward automated bidding. This update lowers …

Most of the health advice summarized in Google’s AI Overviews relies on non-medical sources, a new analysis shows. This follows fresh concerns about users receiving misleading or unsafe guidance on sensitive health topics. What’s happening. The Guardian recently reported that Google’s AI Overviews sometimes surface incorrect or dangerous health advice. The reporting drew on reviews by medical charities and experts. Examples included flawed guidance on pancreatic cancer diets and misleading explanations of liver blood test results. Google disputed the findings. The company said the examples were taken out of context and argued that most AI Overviews are accurat…

Over the last 12-18 months, the rhetoric across Search Engine Land has shifted. There’s now broad agreement that people don’t just “Google” to discover brands anymore. Audiences are finding brands on TikTok, researching on Reddit, watching YouTube, and increasingly asking AI to summarize everything for them – determining whether a brand is found or ignored. Discoverability is no longer about ranking first on a single platform. It’s about showing up consistently across the touchpoints that make up your audience’s search universe, wherever decisions are actually being made. In this new landscape, two tactics are quietly doing much of the heavy lifting…

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…

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 …

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…