SEO Tools and Resources

Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, is clarifying how keyword match types interact with AI Overviews (AIO) and AI Mode ad placements — addressing ongoing confusion among advertisers testing AI Max and mixed match-type setups. Why we care. As ads expand into AI-powered placements, advertisers need to understand which keywords are eligible to serve — and when — to avoid unintentionally blocking reach or misreading performance. Back in May. Responding to questions from Marketing Director Yoav Eitani, Marvin confirmed that an ad can serve either above or below an AI Overview or within the AI Overview — but not both in the same auction: “Your ad could trigger to s…

Google is asking a federal judge to pause enforcement of DOJ antitrust remedies, arguing that mandatory search and ad syndication would expose its proprietary technology and harm advertisers. The argument appears in a new affidavit from Jesse Adkins, Google’s director of product management for search and ads syndication, filed Jan. 16 as part of the company’s motion to stay Judge Amit Mehta’s Final Judgment while it appeals. The big picture. Adkins’ affidavit focuses on damage that cannot be undone: exposure of proprietary ad technology, advertiser harm, and loss of control over query and pricing data. Mehta’s Final Judgment requires Google to license search…

When Google launched the March 2025 core update last week, Google said there will be a series of improvements aimed to help “better surface relevant, satisfying content” from content creators “thoughtout this year.” But you should not expect all sites to fully recover by the end of the 2025 year, that simply won’t happen. What Google said. Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, in a conversation on X with Travel blogger, Nate Hank, explained that there is a caveat to the statement about surfacing those sites better in Google Search again. Sullivan wrote, “With the important caveat that this doesn’t mean all sites will go back up to wherever they were if they are …

Gary Illyes, an analyst with the Google Search team, posted his reaction to a Microsoft Bing article written by Fabrice Canel and Krishna Madhavan of Microsoft, about how AI Search is changing how conversions are measured. Coevolve. Gary Illyes wrote on LinkedIn, “I know for sure however is that SEM and SEO will need to coevolve with search, just like it has the past 30 years.” SEOs and SEMs will have to adapt as search evolves; which many SEOs have been doing since SEO became a service. And some of the best SEOs and SEMs have adapted and evolved over the years. SEO is not dead. Gary Illyes also said, “SEO is not dead.” Yes, these same best SEOs and SEMs…

Search industry experts are sounding the alarm over a growing Google experiment that’s creating a kind of “SERP Inception” — search results inside search results, with increasingly prominent Sponsored labels that don’t appear to be paid ad placements in the traditional sense. Driving the news. SEO consultant Glenn Gabe posted a screenshot on X showing a People also consider box labeled Sponsored. The twist? Clicking a link launches a new Google results page – complete with ads and another Sponsored box, perpetuating the loop. “They lead to a fresh SERP with more ads and yet ANOTHER ‘People also consider’ block that’s SPONSORED,” Gabe wrote. The backstory. …

Some advertisers are noticing oddly cropped product images in Google Shopping ads — and it turns out Google Merchant Center’s “Smart Cropping” feature is behind it. Why we care. Smart Cropping, enabled by default, uses automation to zoom in on what Google determines is the most relevant part of a product image. While the goal is to improve ad visuals, the result can sometimes be awkwardly cropped images that don’t match the uploaded product photos. The backstory. An email from Google explains that there’s no option in the Merchant Center UI to disable Smart Cropping. Advertisers must instead contact Google support to have it manually turned off for their account. …

Google is facing a potential €2.97 billion ($3.3 billion) antitrust lawsuit in Italy, accusing the tech giant of stifling competition through anticompetitive practices. The lawsuit, filed by Moltiply Group, claims Google used its dominance in the search engine market to undermine the growth of its rival price comparison platform, Trovaprezzi.it, operated by Moltiply subsidiary 7Pixel. Key allegations. Moltiply argues that between 2010 and 2017, Google prioritized its own Google Shopping service over competitors, suppressing other comparison websites’ visibility. The lawsuit leans on a significant 2017 ruling by the European Court of Justice, which fined Goo…

The U.S. Department of Justice has released several new trial exhibits as part of the ongoing remedies hearing. These exhibits include interviews with two key Google engineers – Pandu Nayak and HJ Kim – which offer insights into Google’s ranking signals and systems, search features, and the future of Google. Key Google search ranking system terminology Nayak defined some key Google terminology and explained Google’s search structure: Document: What Google calls a webpage, or its stored version. Signals: How Google ranks documents that ultimately generate the SERP (search engine results pages). Google talked about using predictive signals from machine lear…

The European Commission is asking industry players to weigh in on Google’s proposal to resolve sweeping antitrust charges tied to its advertising technology business — a case that has already triggered nearly €3 billion ($3.5B) in fines. What’s happening. The Commission is circulating a non-confidential version of Google’s proposal to roughly 200 industry stakeholders, including publishers, advertisers, and ad tech rivals. Officials say the feedback will inform the final assessment of whether Google’s commitments restore fair competition in the EU’s digital ad market. The backstory. Google was fined €2.95B and ordered to stop favoring its own ad tech services…

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.” …

Google’s AI Mode is increasingly citing Google itself — and often sending users back to another Google search, according to new SE Ranking research. Why we care. AI search is meant to surface the best sources on the web. If Google increasingly cites itself, you may see fewer direct links and less traffic as more users stay inside Google. The details. Google.com was the most cited source in AI Mode answers, accounting for 17.42% of all citations, SE Ranking found. That makes Google.com the most referenced domain — more than the next six domains combined: YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Amazon, Indeed, and Zillow. Accelerating trend. In June 2025, Google cited i…

Google’s AI Mode became available earlier this month as a Google Search Labs experiment. After researching dozens of keywords across transactional, navigational, commercial, and informational intents, here’s what SEOs and marketers need to know about Google’s AI Mode. It’s genuinely AI-powered The query [cheap flights] produced many different outputs, ranging from 370 to 449 words, with anywhere from 13 to 39 right-sidebar citations. Local intent is everywhere Even for queries where location makes zero sense, queries like [online courses], [subscribe newsletter], and [youtube login] included location context. Navigation patterns Searches f…

The dust still hasn’t settled. If you’re a recipe, travel, or lifestyle blogger, chances are the past few weeks have felt like a gut punch. On March 13, Google rolled out its first core update of 2025 – a sweeping algorithmic change that lasted 13 days and left many independent creators reeling. Some saw their traffic drop by half, and others fell completely out of the rankings for posts that had been steady performers for years. The volatility didn’t just shake the search results; it shook people’s confidence in the entire system. Just eight days earlier, on March 5, Google launched its much-anticipated AI Mode, officially opening the floodgates fo…

Google is being criticized for sending emails to small business owners urging them to oppose California Assembly Bill 566, legislation that would strengthen consumer privacy protections in digital advertising. The outreach campaign, which asks recipients to sign a Connected Commerce Council letter opposing the bill, has prompted marketing professionals to publicly rebuke the tech giant’s tactics on LinkedIn. Why we care. The dispute highlights growing tensions between digital advertising platforms and privacy advocates as California lawmakers consider new regulations on data collection practices. AB 566 would require browsers and mobile operating systems to of…

Google spoke about its year-end report on the crawling challenges Google faced in 2025 when crawling and indexing the web for Google Search. The biggest challenges include faceted navigation and action parameters, which make up about 75% of those challenges, Gary Illyes from Google said. This was on its latest Search Off the Record podcast, published this morning. What is the issue. Crawling issues can cause your site to lag and slow, it can overload your server, and make your website unusable and inaccessible. If a robot goes off on your site and gets into some infinite loop of crawling, it can take some time for the site to recover. “Once it discovers a set of …

Google Search’s Danny Sullivan and John Mueller pushed back – yet again – on the idea that brands need a separate AI SEO strategy, during the latest Search Off the Record episode. Sullivan’s take is simple: the acronyms keep multiplying (GEO, AEO, etc.), but the advice stays unchanged: Write for humans, not for ranking systems, whether those systems are traditional search or LLM-powered experiences. Why we care. As AI search grows, a lot of publishers and SEOs are feeling pressured to try something new. Google’s take: chasing AI tricks can actually hurt and distract you from making content people actually like. Google says the north star hasn’t moved. Sullivan…

Google is pushing more Demand Gen features (boosting shoppable and travel ads) into general availability, expanding its role as a full-funnel performance channel that blends discovery, video, and commerce across YouTube and Google surfaces. What’s new: Shoppable CTV via Demand Gen is now live, letting viewers browse and buy products directly from YouTube ads on connected TVs. Attributed Branded Searches are available for Demand Gen, giving advertisers visibility into how campaigns drive brand search activity across Google and YouTube (activation required via a Google rep). Travel Feeds allow advertisers to connect Hotel Center feeds to create dyna…

Staying ahead in Google Ads means adapting fast. With Video Action Campaigns (VAC) being phased out and absorbed into Demand Gen, you have a new opportunity to drive growth. Fortunately, Google is rolling out powerful new tools to help maximize performance. This article breaks down what’s changing and how to optimize your Demand Gen campaigns for success. A snapshot of Google’s Demand Gen campaigns Demand Gen campaigns (formerly Discovery campaigns) allow users to buy Google’s ad inventory across YouTube Shorts, YouTube In-Stream, YouTube In-Feed, Discovery feeds, Gmail, and Google Video partners. These campaigns support three ad types for ecomme…

Google changed one of its most fundamental advertising rules on April 14, and some marketers didn’t even notice. Buried in a policy update to the Unfair Advantage section, Google announced that advertisers could now appear more than once on the same search results page, provided each ad appears in a different ad location. Simply put, a single advertiser can now occupy multiple positions on one SERP. The move was framed as a way to “increase fairness and improve user choice.” But for advertisers already battling rising CPCs, shrinking control, and an opaque auction, the change raises a much more uncomfortable question: How fair can an auction really be w…

Jeff Dean says Google’s AI Search still works like classic Search: narrow the web to relevant pages, rank them, then let a model generate the answer. In an interview on Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast, Google’s chief AI scientist explained how Google’s AI systems work and how much they rely on traditional search infrastructure. The architecture: filter first, reason last. Visibility still depends on clearing ranking thresholds. Content must enter the broad candidate pool, then survive deeper reranking before it can be used in an AI-generated response. Put simply, AI doesn’t replace ranking. It sits on top of it. Dean said an LLM-powered system doesn’t re…

Google Search Advocate John Mueller responded to a Reddit user who asked whether SEO is still “enough,” or if marketers now need to think about generative engine optimization (GEO). Mueller’s answer was simple: labels matter less than reality. “If you have an online business that makes money from referred traffic, it’s definitely a good idea to consider the full picture, and prioritize accordingly.” AI isn’t going away. Mueller didn’t get into the name debate or confirm GEO as a new discipline, but he made it clear AI is here to stay: “What you call it doesn’t matter, but ‘AI’ is not going away.” So far, Google, has pushed back on the idea that AI op…

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 …

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…

Google’s Liz Reid, VP and head of Search, drew a clearer line between Google Search and Gemini but said it’s still unclear whether the products will converge, diverge further, or be superseded. The big picture. Reid said Search is an information product focused on helping people connect with the web, while Gemini is centered more on assisting with productivity and creation. She added that the boundaries are fluid, especially as AI products evolve quickly and agentic experiences reshape how people use the internet. What she’s saying. In short, Reid said Search and Gemini share technology but have different product “north stars.” They could overlap more over time, 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…