SEO Tools and Resources

Google reduced the minimum audience size requirement for customer match lists in Search campaigns from 1,000 to just 100 users — a significant update for small and midsize businesses. The big picture. This update makes precision targeting more accessible to SMBs, who often struggle to meet high list-size minimums. According to Google’s documentation, the new threshold applies only to customer match lists — not to remarketing lists or other audience types. It also mirrors YouTube’s recent customer list minimums, signaling a broader push for consistency across Google’s platforms. Why we care. Previously, advertisers needed at least 1,000 users to qualify a c…

The world of generative AI is evolving rapidly, with breakthroughs in image and video generation, multimodal capabilities, and – crucially for marketers – data analysis. For PPC professionals, these tools offer a new level of speed and depth in uncovering insights and optimizing performance. One standout capability is ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analysis, which allows users to upload raw data, ask natural language questions, and receive clear, actionable insights – fast. What once took hours can now happen in minutes. Advanced data analysis in ChatGPT: Access and availability Originally launched in July 2023 as a beta feature for Plus and Enterprise user…

Search intent is easy to define but harder to truly understand. It’s more than just categories like informational or transactional. It’s about: What someone is trying to do in a moment. How that action fits into a larger journey. How your content and brand meet them there. If you’re still thinking in linear funnels or rigid personas, it’s time to go deeper. Rethinking the journey: Why search intent demands more nuance Before we dive in, let’s step back and ask a few questions: Do you have audience personas? A customer journey map? Funnels? And more importantly, are those tools still accurate? Are they as linear or predictable as the…

Modern SEO is all about data. Rankings can change overnight, user behavior as well, and search engines increasingly use AI to power the search results. To be able to respond, your decisions should be dictated by real, measurable insights. This article offers a practical way to turn SEO data into actionable insights. Table of contents The role of data in modern SEO Turning data into insights An example: Addressing brand performance in LLMs Tools and techniques to get data insights Iterative optimization and reporting Towards a data-driven SEO strategy The role of data in modern SEO The search landscape is more complex than ever, so you need all the help yo…

Google’s AI Overviews and large language models (LLMs) have severely eroded clicks, click-through rates, and organic traffic to websites. But a new Siege Media report may have found a silver lining: even if your sitewide traffic is down, your homepage may be increasing. By the numbers. For the websites examined in this study, homepage clicks increased: Overall: 10.7% B2C: 8% B2B: 15% Why we care. As the report put it: “The sky isn’t falling. It’s shifting.” Because homepage traffic tends to convert better, brands with strong visibility in AI Overviews and LLM-generated results can reap the rewards. Yes, but. Not all brands win. If your website isn’t…

For the first time, ads are appearing directly within Google’s AI Overviews on desktop search, marking a major expansion of monetization within generative search experiences. Driving the news. The Shopping ads, which appear within AI Overviews, Google’s AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of certain search results, were spotted and shared by independent SEO consultant Brodie Clark on LinkedIn. Hours earlier, Google announced ads would begin rolling out in both AI Overview and AI Mode. Why we care. This shift, confirmed at Google Marketing Live 2025, signals Google’s intent to fully integrate paid placements into its evolving AI search experienc…

PPC best practices come from a variety of places. Some of those sources are: Google Ads reps. The Help Center. Official certifications. Auto-apply and manual recommendations. Ad strength recommendations. And even automated assets to an extent. However, depending on those sources, you could end up with highly different answers. So, how do you know when to apply or be critical of a “best practice”? Many PPC professionals can relate: You see “Google” on your caller ID, and you momentarily feel a boost in ego. But reality sets in when you realize it’s often a junior Google representative or even a third-party service who needs to tick som…

Just like most other website owners, you want your website to attract customers. But how can you see who visits your website? And how can you use this knowledge to increase website traffic over time? Luckily, there are loads of tools that can help you. Let’s get you started with the right one for your website without the need to become a data expert! What is website traffic? The term website traffic refers to the number of internet users visiting your website. Traffic can arrive from wide-ranging sources, such as directly typing in your website address, through other websites that link to your site, organic traffic (meaning they come to your site from the search re…

Google’s newly launched AI Mode in Search isn’t passing referral data. That means it’s impossible to know how many clicks you got from AI Mode in Google Search Console (GSC) or other analytics tools. Why we care. You have no way of knowing how much traffic you’re getting from AI Mode. Google continues to tell us its AI answers drive higher-quality clicks, without proof. We have no data to verify this. Frustratingly, Google continues to take away helpful data, making it impossible for us to make data-driven decisions. Driving the news: Tom Critchlow, EVP audience growth at Raptive, first raised the issue on LinkedIn. Testing from Patrick Stox, product advisor, tech…

The fundamentals of SEO haven’t changed. You still need technical access, content clarity, and external credibility. But the requirements inside those pillars are evolving fast. AI-driven discovery systems are now shaping how your brand is surfaced, trusted, and recommended. And for many enterprise teams, the response has been: A content brainstorm. A wait-and-see approach. Or nothing at all. That’s not a strategy gap. It’s an execution problem in the making. Is your company preparing for what’s coming after ‘SEO’ fades away? Your SEO team may be running efficiently – protecting rankings, publishing content, and salvaging what they can from G…

Now that AI Mode is fully live in the U.S. and Google is even testing ads within AI Mode, I noticed that the AI Mode tab under the Google Search bar is consistently on the left side. It even comes before the “All” tab that serves the primary search results. Generally, Google will dynamically show search modes and tabs under the search bar based on the query. So if Google thinks you will want to see the video tab, Google may show that closer to the “All” tab. But with AI Mode, that tab is shown before the “All” tab and always on the left, consistently, for all queries. What it looks like. Here are a few screenshots showing how the AI Mode tab is always on the lef…

If you see “Discovered – currently not indexed” in Google Search Console, it means Google is aware of the URL, but hasn’t crawled and indexed it yet. It doesn’t necessarily mean the page will never be processed. As their documentation says, they may come back to it later without any extra effort on your part. But other factors could be preventing Google from crawling and indexing the page, including: Server issues and onsite technical issues are restricting or preventing Google’s crawl capability. Issues relating to the page itself, such as quality. You can also use Google Search Console Inspection API to queue URLs for their coverageState status (as …

Google Marketing Live 2025 was – no surprise – all about AI. Again. Google Marketing Live 2025 made one thing clear: AI isn’t just an assistant anymore. It’s becoming a co-strategist. This year’s event was packed with updates where AI played a central role, powering everything from bidding and creative to product listings and campaign insights. Google announced the expansion of ad placements, cinematic creative AI tools, real-time campaign copilots, AI agents that do the work for you, and more. This year’s updates are designed to make Google’s tools more autonomous, immersive, and interconnected. Here’s a recap of everything that matters from Google Marketi…

Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews are now rolling out to desktop users in the U.S., as announced today at Google Marketing Live 2025. Driving the news. Starting today, desktop users in the U.S. will begin seeing Search and Shopping ads embedded within AI Overviews. Later this year, these ad formats will expand globally to select countries on both mobile and desktop, focusing on English-language queries. Google is also testing ads in AI Mode, the company’s advanced AI search experience, designed for complex, follow-up-heavy queries. How it works. In AI Mode, users can ask open-ended questions and receive in-depth, conversational responses, com…

Four new AI-powered updates aimed at supercharging how brands create content, capture attention, and convert clicks to customers, all through smarter automation and immersive visuals, were unveiled at Google Marketing Live 2025. 1. Next-gen creatives: Lights, camera, Veo Google is upgrading its creative suite with cinematic AI tools: Image-to-video transformation, now powered by the company’s Veo model (recently demoed at I/O), lets advertisers convert still product shots into motion-driven visuals. It’s live in Merchant Center and coming soon to Google Ads. AI outpainting, the same tech used to expand “The Wizard of Oz” visuals at Las Vegas’ Sphere, now al…

Google is rolling out Smart Bidding Exploration, as announced today at Google Marketing Live 2025. This major update is designed to give advertisers more flexibility – and more conversions – by tapping into previously overlooked search queries. What’s new: Flexible ROAS targets. Advertisers (e.g., mortgage lenders) can now broaden their reach beyond narrow, high-intent searches (e.g., “mortgage rates”) to more exploratory ones (e.g., “how to buy a home”). Smarter AI. Built on existing AI-powered tools like AI Max, Smart Bidding Exploration helps campaigns capture high-performing searches from new, unique categories. Why we care. Digital marketers have l…

Google is rolling out a suite of updates aimed at giving marketers sharper insight into what works, and why, across campaigns and platforms, as announced today at Google Marketing Live 2025. What’s new: Easier incrementality testing: You can now test what’s truly driving value across all campaign types, with lower spend thresholds and better testing methods. Smarter cross-channel insights: Google Analytics now offers improved measurement of the full customer journey and ROI, with deeper impression-level data coming soon across Google and beyond. New Data Manager tools: A centralized hub helps marketers gather, store, and activate first-party data from …

AI-powered agentic tools is being rolled across Google Ads and Google Analytics to give marketers hands-on help with campaign creation, optimization, and analysis, as announced today at Google Marketing Live 2025. These tools act more like expert collaborators than passive software. They can suggest, implement, and troubleshoot campaign elements in real time, Google said. Driving the news. Two years after launching its conversational experience in Google Ads, which has been used by more than 500,000 advertisers, Google said it’s ready to go further. New AI agents in Google Ads will provide personalized campaign recommendations, like keyword and creative ideas…

Google is launching Marketing Advisor, as announced today at Google Marketing Live 2025. Marketing Advisor is a new AI-powered assistant that lives directly in the Chrome browser and is designed to help advertisers manage marketing tasks across Google platforms and beyond. Driving the news. Marketing Advisor is an AI agent that marketers can install as a Chrome side panel. Once connected to a user’s Google account and Ads campaigns, it tailors insights and support based on their goals. It offers step-by-step guidance on the websites and tools marketers use daily, from campaign dashboards to CMS systems. Unlike traditional chat assistants, it can proactively as…

Google today published new guidance on how to “succeed” in its evolving AI-powered search experiences. What’s new. The only real (sort of) news here is that Google has put into writing what Google’s Elizabeth Reid and others have said in recent months – that AI-driven searches are increasing engagement and creating higher-quality clicks. Also: Google said tools like nosnippet and max-snippet apply to AI content as well. This is more of a reminder that you can limit how your website appears – or doesn’t – in AI Overviews. Google suggested going beyond text and thinking multimodal. In other words, use high-quality images and videos, plus make sure your Merchant…

Google Ads is introducing new user interface (UI)-only image optimization features, spotted last week, aimed at enhancing Performance Max campaigns, marking a shift in how advertisers can manage visual assets for better ad performance. What’s new? Landing page images: Google’s AI will now automatically pull relevant images from your ad’s landing page to dynamically insert into your ads. This aims to increase ad relevance and expand reach by tapping into more ad placements. Image enhancements: Google AI can smartly improve your uploaded images by cropping them into different versions to unlock additional ad inventory and boost campaign results. Future updates …

Search has changed – and so has the role of the SEO professional. What began as a technical discipline focused on keywords and rankings is now a multi-faceted role that blends strategy, research, content, and visibility. This article explores: How SEO has evolved. What that means for practitioners. Where we go from here. The early days of SEO: Simpler times, big opportunities I stumbled into SEO by accident sometime around 1999, when the internet was a much simpler place. Dial-up modems were the norm, search engines were still finding their footing, and there were no smartphones, no social media, and certainly no AI in your pocket. To g…

Ad headlines are one of the foundational building blocks of your campaign. These tiny bits of text create a first impression for your target customer, and play a real role in convincing them to click (or scroll right past). And yet, if you’re honest with yourself, does writing headlines usually come as an afterthought? In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about crafting Google Ads headlines across campaign types, including: How many headlines do you need in Google Ads? What is a long headline in Google Ads? Will my search ad headlines always show up? How to get Excellent Ad Strength with your headlines How to craft ad hea…

Big brands have a blind spot. They talk about “brand health” while ignoring what users are actually asking about their products – on Google, in AI answers, and across search data. Meanwhile, all the signals are right there in the SEO stack. Questions like “Is Gatorade actually good for you?” aren’t just keyword opportunities. They’re warning signs. And if you know how to read them, they expose major gaps in brand trust and positioning. The brand audit hiding in your SEO tools I sent a client a 100+ page audit evaluating their brand (to be fair, there were a lot of screenshots), and their first question was, “Where did you get this data?” It w…

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how marketing teams operate—but not through vague promises or futuristic scenarios. In 5 Ways Marketers Are Using AI to Increase Efficiency from Acoustic, marketers will find five tangible, proven ways AI is being applied to improve segmentation, enhance personalization, monitor performance, support content creation, and retarget audiences more effectively. This resource is designed for marketing professionals seeking to reduce manual workload, streamline campaign execution, and deliver more relevant, timely experiences—without compromising quality or oversight. Download the guide to explore how AI is being used to make everyda…