SEO Tools and Resources

Advertisers are currently unable to access the Microsoft Advertising console right now. Microsoft confirmed there is an issue and that its engineering team is working to resolve it. This is impacting the web user interface to manage your Microsoft Advertising campaigns. What Microsoft said. Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison, posted: “Confirming Microsoft Advertising UI is down. Our engineering team is investigating this issue with priority and we apologize for the inconvenience this may be causing. We will share more as we receive more updates.” How to check the status. You can go to status.ads.microsoft.com to check the status of Microsoft Advertisin…

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…

Google is globally launching a new “Sponsored results” label across desktop and mobile, grouping text and Shopping ads under a clearer header. The update marks one of Google’s most visible ad labeling changes in years. It allows users to hide groups of ads directly on the search results page. How it works. Text ads will now appear under a larger Sponsored results header. The same label will apply to other formats, like Shopping ads. Users can choose to hide entire groups of sponsored results for a more personalized browsing experience. Why we care. Clearer ad labeling and the option for users to hide sponsored results could influence ad visibil…

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…

We know that most readers skim. We also know that search engines prefer clear and easy-to-understand content. Luckily, a good summary can help with both. A summary gives your reader the core ideas quickly, while also helping your chances of ranking your content. Learning how to write a summary helps you give your content the love it needs. Table of contents What is a summary? Why are summaries important? How to write an effective summary Dos and don’ts of writing summaries Examples of weak vs. strong summaries Summaries vs. intros, conclusions, titles, and meta descriptions Benefits and pitfalls of using AI for summaries Key takeaways A summary provides a c…

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 …

OpenAI is launching Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT to Plus, Pro, and Free users in the U.S. Users will be able to buy products from Etsy sellers. Purchases are powered by the new Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), co-developed with Stripe. How it works. Users search in plain language (e.g., “gifts for a ceramics lover”). Then: ChatGPT returns product recommendations ranked by relevance, not payment. If an item supports Instant Checkout, users tap “Buy,” confirm shipping and payment details, and complete the order without leaving chat. Orders, payments, and fulfillment run through the merchant’s existing systems; ChatGPT just passes information secure…

AI search isn’t killing SEO. It’s forcing it to evolve into a new, multi-platform discipline called search everywhere optimization, where social and user-generated content (UGC) are the new trust engines driving discoverability. When I presented this concept at brightonSEO San Diego, what stood out wasn’t just the excitement around AI. What stood out was the unexpected convergence of ideas across sessions. You might expect every talk to center on AI, yet a broader shift was quietly taking shape. Five standout voices – Wil Reynolds, Josh Blyskal, Samanyou Garg, Ross Hudgens, and Ashley Liddell – all surfaced similar insights about where search is headed. …

John Mueller from Google posted an SEO tip and reminder for those who use cloud services, such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or others, to host images, videos or other content. John explained that you should probably verify those within Google Search Console. This will give you the ability to track the performance of those files in Google Search, including any debugging information when necessary. Of course, in order to do this, you need to be able to control the DNS and most give you the option to do that through DNS CNAME. So you can set up your DNS to control those files in that cloud environment. For examples, it can be images.domain.com or videos.domain.com and …

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.” …

The MCP Server for Google Ads is now publicly available on GitHub, Google announced. This marks a major milestone in bringing AI agents closer to real-world marketing workflows. How it works. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that allows large language models to interact with external applications through natural language. The initial version of the MCP Server is read-only, designed for diagnostics and analytics. Developers can integrate it into any MCP-compatible AI system to retrieve insights from Google Ads accounts securely. Why we care. The release of the open-source Google Ads API Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server makes it easier…

The Google Ads API will no longer accept new adopters of session attributes or IP address data in conversion imports starting Feb. 2nd. Developers who already use these fields can continue for now, but Google is steering everyone toward the Data Manager API as the primary place to send complex conversion and user data. Zoom out. Google is consolidating richer data ingestion into the Data Manager API, positioning it as the long-term home for session-level attributes and IP-based signals. The Ads API is increasingly focused on core campaign and conversion workflows rather than handling complex data payloads. Why we care. This change can directly affect whether conve…

Google is releasing some new ways to book your flights and hotels through AI Mode, plus new tools to plan your travel and find travel deals. These updates include Canvas in AI Mode for travel, flight deals rolling out globally, agentic booking for dinner reservations, flights and hotels. Some of these features are similar to the AI Shopping updates that Google announced last week. Agentic booking. Google in AI Mode can now not just recommend restaurants, hotels and flights but now also help you book them. We saw some of these features for reservations and events but that was while in Labs, opting into Labs is no longer required. Dinner reservations agentic …

Google’s long-awaited total campaign budget option is now appearing in Performance Max campaigns across non-U.S. This could be the start of a global beta rollout. What’s happening: The total budget option now appears alongside the traditional average daily budget in PMax. Google previously said the feature would expand to Search, Shopping, and PMax, and this rollout suggests that expansion is underway. Marketers in the field — including those flagged by Thomas Eccel and shared by Mohamed Hamed (Turki) — are already seeing it live. Why we care. Advertisers have spent years manually calculating average daily budgets from fixed totals — especially painf…

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…

Search Engine Land turns 19 today. Nineteen years. Almost two decades of analyzing, explaining, questioning, challenging, obsessing over, and occasionally shaking our heads at whatever Google and the search industry throw our way. And this past year? The pace of change has made it one of the most transformative since we launched in 2006. Through all of it, our mission is the same as Day 1: help you make sense of search with clear news, smart analysis, and practical guidance. Before we look ahead, I want to say thank you — and take a moment to reflect on the past year at Search Engine Land. Thank you for reading Seriously, thank you. Every day, w…

Adding fake publication dates to online content can dramatically boost its visibility across leading AI models, a team from Waseda University discovered. This seems to confirm that tools like ChatGPT systematically favor newer content over older, equally relevant material. Why we care. AI models seem to reward timestamps more than quality. That means your older high-quality content could vanish from AI search results unless it’s regularly updated – apparently, regardless of whether those updates are substantial or artificial. How they did it. Researchers added fake publication dates to passages from standardized test collections with no other changes. Then they as…

Every Black Friday reveals how consumers search, compare, and decide. This year added something new: a real-world test of how AI models interpret commerce under true demand. So we ran a structured test across major LLMs and analyzed 10,000 responses. The goal was simple: to see how these systems form their internal view of the retail landscape and which signals shape the answers they generate. As we reviewed the dataset, a clear pattern emerged: Black Friday acts as a natural stress test for AI-driven discovery. The sheer volume of queries, the range of categories, and the speed of shifting consumer attention expose the sources, structures, and behavioral tend…

Your website is live – now it’s time to measure what matters. To sustain traffic growth, you need to track performance, collect meaningful data, and make informed, data-driven decisions that shape your site’s success. Here are the key areas to monitor and the tools that can automate much of the work. How to monitor your website for SEO performance Website performance and uptime alerts When a page loads slowly, conversions drop, engagement falls, and the user experience suffers. Visitors expect pages to respond instantly, whether they’re comparing products or just beginning their research journey on your blog. Monitor site speed with PageSpeed Ins…

Table of contents How AI perceives your brand The new gatekeepers: LLMs & generative search What shapes your brand’s AI profile What you can do about it: building brand equity in the AI era The future of brand perception What does ChatGPT say about your brand? Or Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude? As AI agents emerge alongside traditional search engines as the starting point of discovery, the way they perceive and present your brand can directly shape customer trust and buying decisions. These models don’t know your brand the way people do. They learn it from the web, from structured data, citations, reviews, and the context you’ve built across digital touchpoint…

Google Ads coach Jyll Saskin Gales spent 24 hours testing Google’s new “agentic” Ads Advisor — an experimental AI assistant designed to help advertisers optimize campaigns. Her verdict: promising, but far from perfect. Why we care. The Ads Advisor represents Google’s push toward agentic AI tools — systems that can act autonomously on users’ behalf. This review offers an early, real-world look at how Ads Advisor actually performs — beyond Google’s marketing claims. As AI tools begin playing a bigger role in campaign management, understanding their accuracy, limitations, and decision-making is critical. This feedback helps advertisers know what tasks they can safel…

Google announced the release of its latest AI model update, Gemini 3. “And now we’re introducing Gemini 3, our most intelligent model, that combines all of Gemini’s capabilities together so you can bring any idea to life,” Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai wrote. Gemini 3 is now being used in AI Mode in Search with more complex reasoning and new dynamic experiences. “This is the first time we are shipping Gemini in Search on day one,” Sundar Pichai said. AI Mode with Gemini 3. Google shared how AI Mode in Search is now using Gemini 3 to enable new generative UI experiences like immersive visual layouts and interactive tools and simulations, all generated completely on …

Generative AI has become a practical tool in search, content, and analytical workflows. But, as adoption increases, so does a familiar and costly problem: confidently incorrect outputs. Also called “hallucinations,” the term implies that an AI model is malfunctioning. But here’s the truth: This behavior is often predictable and results from unclear instructions. Or, more accurately, unclear prompts. For example, prompt AI for a “cookie recipe,” and nothing more. Don’t offer details about allergies, preferences, or constraints. The result might be Christmas cookies in July, a peanut-packed option, or a recipe so bland and basic as to be unworthy of t…

In mid-September, many SEO professionals began noticing unusual drops in Google Search Console (GSC) data. Impressions were down, average positions shifted, and the number of reported queries changed overnight. This wasn’t the result of a ranking update but a reporting change – one that redefines how we interpret GSC visibility data going forward. What happened to GSC impressions The drop traces back to Google’s quiet decision to stop supporting the &num=100 parameter, which allowed tools and crawlers to retrieve up to 100 results per query. Once support ended, those extra data points disappeared – and with them, many of the impressions and posit…

Google will update its Pharmaceutical policy for AdMob Authorized Buyers in January 2026, allowing prescription drug and prescription drug service ads in select markets — without requiring Google certification — while tightening clarity around what remains strictly off-limits. What’s changing. The policy will be renamed “Pharmaceutical products and services” and updated to allow Authorized Buyers to promote prescription drugs and prescription drug services in certain countries where permitted by local law, without requiring Google certification as is typically mandated in Google Ads. While access is expanding, the underlying rules are not becoming more permissive…