SEO Tools and Resources

Recently, there’s been discussion – and some frustration – on social media about what’s being said (and who’s saying it) about SEO, GEO, and whatever comes next. Some of that criticism has been directed at Search Engine Land, and that’s fair game. We’ve always encouraged open debate and multiple viewpoints about where search marketing is headed. But I want to take a moment to clarify what we believe, what we don’t, and why our editorial approach may not always align with everyone’s worldview – especially in this unprecedented, transitional moment for our industry. 1. SEO is not dead. Period. Search Engine Land believes SEO is very much still a thing. As Lil…

Google quietly rolled out a new Sources column in its AI Max Search Term Reports – giving advertisers their first real look at where AI Max traffic is coming from and how Google’s automation is matching queries. What’s new. The new Sources data reveals how AI Max is driving traffic through: Landing pages and URL inclusions — showing which of your pages Google used to match search intent. AI Max expanded matches — indicating when traffic came from Google’s algorithmic expansions beyond your set keywords. Why we care. Until now, advertisers had limited visibility into how AI Max decides which searches trigger ads. This new data helps clarify whether traff…

On episode 328 of PPC Live The Podcast I speak to Susan Yen, PPC team lead at Search Lab, discussing everything from Performance Max pitfalls to the growing (and sometimes risky) role of AI in marketing. Susan’s biggest PPC f-up: Performance Max gone wrong Susan’s most memorable mistake came when she dove headfirst into Performance Max (PMax) campaigns too soon. At first, results looked incredible — traffic spiked, conversions multiplied, and reports looked great. But soon, the client noticed the leads were poor quality or fake. After investigating, Susan discovered that traffic was coming from low-quality placements, conversion tracking was misconfigured, and …

Advertisers are spotting a fresh Google Maps ad format featuring scrollable light blue sitelinks beneath promoted pins. The new layout gives brands more clickable real estate directly inside Maps. Update confirmed. Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed the rollout, saying the feature is now fully launched. The update allows sitelinks — already common in Search ads — to appear in Maps ads, linking users to specific pages on an advertiser’s website. How it works. These sitelinks can show from Search or Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. To enable them you’ll need at least two sitelinks for both desktop and mobile. Sitelinks can be added at the acco…

Everyone’s talking about “AI search” (AI SEO, GEO, AEO, or whatever you call it) – and everyone’s convinced they’re right. Some say SEO is dead. Others say nothing’s really changed (“it’s just SEO”). The truth? Search is evolving fast, but SEO fundamentals still matter. What’s shifting is where people discover information – and how machines decide what to trust. Here are a few myths worth retiring. Myth 1: “GEO is just SEO with a new name.” Reality: The fundamentals overlap, but the target has changed. SEO is about ranking webpages. AI search is about being cited, trusted, or chosen inside an answer. You’re not trying to win Position 1…

Google is rolling out a new video creation tool for its Demand Gen campaigns that automatically turns advertisers’ existing image and text assets into videos across all aspect ratios. Driving the news. According to a notice sent to advertisers, the feature will apply to all image-only ad groups created before August 27th, with auto-generated videos beginning to serve after October 31st — unless advertisers opt out. How it works: The tool pulls from current image and text assets to produce branded video variations. These videos are designed to extend reach across more channels and formats, optimizing for both vertical and horizontal placements. Adver…

What they didn’t teach you in the marketing org chart: how to win when the window is closing. Picture a marketer who sees VIPs starting to lapse on a Thursday morning. By noon, they’ve pulled the data, developed three creative variants, launched a triggered journey and measured incremental improvement. No tickets, no queues, no committees. By Monday, the save rate is up 18%. That’s not luck; that’s Positionless Marketing. It’s do-it-now competence, powered by technology. The mindset comes straight from a classic business book: Mark McCormack’s “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive.” His playbook celebrates prac…

Google’s crawl stats report is missing a single day of crawl data, which seems to be impacting all sites within Google Search Console. Google has not yet confirmed the issue but it seems to be impacting everyone. What it looks like. Here is a screenshot from one of my profiles within Search Console, showing the date that is missing for this site is October 14, 2025: Crawl stats report. The Crawl Stats report in Google Search Console shows you statistics about Google’s crawling history on your website. For instance, how many requests were made and when, what your server response was, and any availability issues encountered. You can use this report to detect whe…

Adviso once again is leading the way in the 11th annual Search Engine Land Awards. The Canadian agency is a finalist in six categories in 2025. This is the second year in a row that Adviso has topped our list of finalists. In 2024, the Canadian agency was a finalist in five Search Engine Land categories and won two Search Engine Land Awards. Two other agencies earning finalist status five times are: Razorfish LocalIQ Meanwhile, four agencies earned finalist status three times in the 2025 Search Engine Land Awards: Amsive. ATRA Bloom Digital. Digital Hitmen. The competition was once again stiff in nearly all of our categories. A…

In a recent study, Search Engine Land and Fractl found that 82% of consumers find AI-powered search more helpful than traditional SERPs. While the emergence of generative engine optimization (GEO) has marketers in a frenzy to own the latest industry keyword, agency thought leaders are finding common ground. Whether it’s Google or generative AI, brand visibility still comes down to two things: The depth of your original subject matter expertise. The breadth of your brand mentions. Together, these build a digital footprint of authority that both algorithms and knowledge graphs use to surface your brand. Here’s the rub: most brands are still playing…

Anchor text, which is also known as link text, is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. It usually appears in a different color and is often underlined. Good anchor text tells readers what to expect when they click and gives search engines valuable context about the linked page. Getting your anchor text right helps users navigate your content more easily, improves your internal link structure, and provides search engines with clues about your page relationships, which can positively influence your SEO. Table of contents What does an anchor text look like? Why are link/anchor texts important? Different kinds of anchor text The competing links check in Yoast…

Google’s quiet retirement of the num=100 parameter might look trivial to the rest of the world, but for SEO professionals, it’s another step deeper into the dark. That small setting allowed us to see the full top 100 results at once, which made competitive research and rank tracking more complete. Its disappearance comes on the heels of Google requiring JavaScript execution for scraping (temporarily breaking many rank trackers) and alongside AI Overviews that steal clicks surface answers without disclosing sources. Piece by piece, the data we’ve relied on to measure SEO impact is slipping away. We are entering a black box era. Note: If your impressi…

After years of delays and scaled-back ambitions, Google officially killed its Privacy Sandbox, the once-flagship initiative aimed at replacing third-party cookies with privacy-preserving ad technologies. Driving the news. In a blog post Friday, Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox, confirmed that Google is retiring 10 remaining Sandbox APIs, including Attribution Reporting, Topics, and Protected Audience for both Chrome and Android. The move comes over a year after Google abandoned plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome altogether. Why we care. The Privacy Sandbox was Google’s answer to growing privacy regulation and industry backlash against cross-site…

Google is tightening its account retention policy — canceled Google Ads accounts will now be permanently deleted six months after cancellation, marking the end of indefinite account storage. Driving the news. Under the new policy, Google will begin a cleanup of inactive accounts, sending a 30-day email warning before deletion. Previously, advertisers could reactivate canceled accounts at any time, preserving data and structure indefinitely. Why we care. This change could impact advertisers who rely on historical performance data, conversion tracking, or campaign templates stored in inactive accounts. Once deleted, all account history and assets — including campaig…

Google is starting to roll out its new Text Guidelines feature in Google Ads, a tool first announced at the Think Retail event five weeks ago that gives advertisers more control over AI-generated ad copy. Driving the news. The feature, now appearing in some accounts, lets marketers set campaign-level text parameters — guiding Google’s AI to stay within brand tone, language preferences, and compliance requirements when generating text assets. Why we care. As Google Ads leans deeper into AI-powered creative, advertisers have been asking for stronger brand safety and message consistency controls. Text Guidelines offer a way to fine-tune AI output without sacrific…

A website redesign is essential for remaining competitive, but for multi-location businesses, the risks are much higher. Stripping away the local relevance that drives traffic to location pages can cause rankings and online visibility to plummet. Using localized content on location pages resulted in a 107% rankings lift, something businesses risk losing if a redesign hurts these pages. To mitigate the risk of fallen local rankings and to get the most from your website redesign, you need to maintain good multi-location local SEO and take key steps for a successful redesign. Prioritizing SEO during a location page redesign helps multi-location businesses stay co…

Marketing mix modeling (MMM) is having a moment in marketing measurement. As privacy regulations limit user-level tracking, marketers are turning to it for reliable, cross-channel measurement. (We love it at my agency – MMM analyses often lead to smarter budget allocation with significant downstream impact.) But as adoption grows, so do execution errors and misconceptions about what MMM can and can’t do. Despite its strategic potential, it’s often misused, misinterpreted, or oversold – leading to costly mistakes and credibility loss from unrealistic expectations. MMM isn’t a black box. To produce meaningful insights, it demands context, strategy, iteratio…

When you think of video advertising on YouTube, you probably think of ecommerce: Videos showing products. Influencers doing an unboxing. Other visuals of consumer products that lend themselves to the video format. Even Google’s own case studies for video emphasize consumer-focused themes. Just look at the analysis of the top 2025 video ads. See any B2B brands there? Me neither. It’s true that YouTube Ads perform very well for ecommerce advertising aimed at consumers. But YouTube can also help drive B2B leads. You might be scratching your head and saying, “But I’ve tried YouTube for B2B. It doesn’t convert.” And you would be right. YouTube…

Google Ads appears to be testing an automatic assignment of New Customer Value within New Customer Acquisition (NCA) campaigns — and it’s doing so without advertisers’ explicit consent. The change, first spotted by performance marketer Bilal Yasin, has led to unexpected reporting shifts and frustration among advertisers. “Without any heads-up, and without it being in the change history, a new customer value has suddenly been applied to a customer,” Yasin wrote on LinkedIn. “It was set to 200 DKK… One thing is that Google has assigned a value, but another is that I can’t remove it again!” Why we care. Advertisers rely on New Customer Value settings to determin…

Google Merchant Center is rolling out a new Issue Details Page (IDP) to help advertisers more easily diagnose and resolve account or product-level problems. How it works: Located under the “Needs attention” tab, the page provides a consolidated overview of current issues. It surfaces recommended actions, business impact metrics, and sample affected products — giving merchants a clearer sense of what to fix first. Why we care. Until now, identifying and fixing issues in Merchant Center often required navigating multiple sections and reports. The new Issue Details Page (IDP) in Google Merchant Center gives advertisers a single place to view and fix accou…

OpenAI announced the launch of its first web browser, which they named ChatGPT Atlas. Atlas is currently available on Mac only right now and has all the features you would expect from an AI browser. But the most surprising part is that its built-in search features seem to be powered by Google and not Microsoft Bing, its early partner and one of its largest investors. How to download Atlas. If you are on a Mac, you can download ChatGPT Atlas at chatgpt.com/atlas. From there, the web browser will download to your computer, you double click on the installer and then drag the application to your application folder. What Atlas does. It is a web browser, first and forem…

Yelp just unveiled its 2025 Fall Product Release, a sweeping AI-driven update that turns the local discovery platform into a more conversational, visual, and intelligent experience. Driving the news: Yelp’s rollout includes over 35 new AI-powered features, headlined by: Yelp Assistant, an upgraded chatbot that instantly answers customer questions about restaurants, shops, or attractions—citing reviews and photos. Menu Vision, which lets users scan menus to see photos, reviews, and dish details in real time. Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist, AI-powered call solutions that handle reservations, collect leads, and answer questions with natural, customi…

Black Friday is when performance peaks — and so do risks. In 2024, global spending reached $74.4 billion, with U.S. online sales up 10.2% year-over-year. Behind that growth, affiliate competition and coupon activity surged, pushing paid channels to their limits. During these high-traffic days, even a single unchecked campaign can waste hundreds of thousands of dollars. Coupon fraud, coupon scam tactics and unauthorized brand bidding mess with your paid traffic, distort performance data and steal conversions that should’ve stayed yours. That’s why strong PPC compliance and continuous promo code monitoring aren’t optional — they’re what keep acquisition costs stable…

Capturing intent at the precise moment consumers are ready to take action has always been the goal in search. But there’s value – and real payoff – in influencing that intent before the search even begins. As customer journeys grow more complex and span multiple touchpoints, the need to reach audiences earlier continues to rise. Connected TV (CTV) advertising offers that opportunity. It helps build brand awareness and consideration that drive downstream search behavior – all while maintaining the targeting precision and measurement capabilities search professionals expect. What is connected TV? Connected TV encompasses any television that offers …

The message from this month’s SEO Update is clear: AI and data accuracy are reshaping how we plan, optimize, and measure SEO. This is not just a slate of updates, but a signal to rethink impressions, content creation, and tooling so you stay effective. Chris Scott, Yoast’s Senior Marketing Manager, hosted the session. Alex Moss and Carolyn Shelby shared deep dives on AI trends, Google updates, and Yoast product news. Data and rankings in flux A key shift centers on data. Google removed the num=100 parameter, which changed how much ranking data shows up per page in Google Search Console. The result isn’t a sudden performance drop; it’s a correction. Impressions can …