SEO Tools and Resources

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…

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…

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…

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…

A year and a half ago, I wrote “The rise of forums: Why Google prefers them and how to adapt,” arguing that brands should build their own online forums and communities. Let’s look at what’s happened since. As of this writing, Reddit’s stock price has risen 177.6%. If you’d bought 100 shares of RDDT then, you’d be $13,113 richer today. In a June 2025 analysis of 150,000 AI citations, Semrush found that Reddit was the top source, appearing in more than 40% of LLM responses. So what happened? It comes down to the law of supply and demand. The supply-and-demand crisis of online answers The demand for answers has skyrocketed as people increasing…

Keywords in reviews are generally believed to help local rankings, although their impact is still actively debated within the local SEO community. Regardless of where the truth on ranking impact ultimately lands, keyword-rich reviews can still provide meaningful value for local SEO beyond pure rankings. Below are seven reasons why you should still encourage keyword-rich reviews. 1. Review justifications If your reviews consistently mention a keyword related to your business, the likelihood that your Profile will get a Review justification in search increases. This visibility can boost click-through rates. Higher engagement may lead to a secondary impro…

In episode 325 of PPC Live The Podcast, I sat down with Inderpaul “Indi” Rai, Group Account Director at WeDiscover, to explore the lessons learned from mistakes, team dynamics, and the evolving role of automation and AI in paid search. Indi, a veteran with over a decade of experience in AdTech, MarTech, SEO, analytics, and multilingual paid search, shared candid insights on how errors can shape careers and client relationships. Embracing Mistakes to Grow Indi opened up about one of the most significant mistakes in his career: an automated budget feature in Search Ads 360 went unchecked during his holiday, resulting in the US account overspending by a substantial am…

The history of search offers clues about where we’re headed in the AI era – but there’s more to learn and more to do to move forward with practical steps. AI changes the way people search. Instead of short queries that once required digging through blended results, users can now ask complex questions and get direct answers. Much of the work to optimize for AI, though, overlaps with what SEO professionals have been doing for years. Our community is already adapting and well-positioned to take on this shift. This article outlines practical steps to navigate the evolving landscape. SEO, AEO, GEO: Defining the new terms Before diving in, it’s worth addressi…

The death of an ad, like the end of the world, doesn’t happen with a bang but with a whimper. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the warning signs: click-through rate (CTR) slips, engagement falls, and cost-per-click (CPC) creeps up. If you’re not, one day your former top performer is suddenly costing you money. Creative fatigue – the decline in ad performance caused by overexposure or audience saturation – is often the culprit. It’s been around as long as advertising itself, but in an era where platforms control targeting, bidding, and even creative testing, it’s become one of the few variables marketers can still influence. This article exp…

Microsoft Advertising today launched the Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM), a system that lets publishers license premium content to AI products and get paid based on how that content is used. How it works. PCM creates a direct value exchange. Publishers set licensing and usage terms, while AI builders discover and license content for specific grounding scenarios. The marketplace also includes usage-based reporting, giving publishers visibility into how their content performs and where it creates the most value. Designed to scale. PCM is designed to avoid one-off licensing deals between individual publishers and AI providers. Participation is voluntary, ownershi…

Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaigns now support vertical 9:16 image ads, bringing the popular mobile-friendly format to the platform’s most automated campaign type. What’s new. Google Ads specialist Thomas Eccel spotted the update, noting that vertical “Story Image Ads” – first seen in Demand Gen campaigns earlier this year – are now available in PMax. Specs at a glance: Minimum size: 600×1067 (recommended: 1080×1920) Maximum file size: 5MB Google hasn’t officially confirmed where these will serve, though in Demand Gen, they appear in YouTube Shorts Image placements. Why we care. Vertical 9:16 images let PMax campaigns fit naturally into mo…

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…

Google Ads will launch a new Message asset requirements help center and begin enforcing stricter policies for message assets. Why we care. Advertisers relying on message assets risk having them blocked if they don’t meet the updated requirements. Ensuring compliance will be critical to maintaining campaign reach and performance. The details. Enforcement begins Oct. 30 and will ramp up over four weeks. Message assets that fail to comply or can’t be verified will no longer serve. Disapproved assets can be fixed by following Google’s policy guidance. Bottom line. Advertisers should review and update their message assets ahead of the deadline to avoid disr…

Remember when link building was all the rage in SEO? While it never disappeared, its role evolved as Google introduced clearer guidelines and placed greater emphasis on quality, relevance, and intent. Today, as AI search reshapes the organic landscape, link building has shifted into a closely related – and increasingly prioritized – initiative: brand mentions. You might think of brand mentions as “citations,” but in the context of AI search, citations describe how brands are referenced by LLMs. Brand mentions are the input that leads to those citations. To avoid confusion, this article uses brand mentions to describe the tactic itself. Beyond their r…

The idea of starting an article series about AI in a time when so many articles are being at least partially generated by AI and potentially primarily consumed by AI might cause one to pause and consider the value of the effort. All of us digital marketers hope to find a future where we can still add value and find fulfillment in a world where our efforts and careers are increasingly at risk of being replaced by AI every day. Sometimes, it all feels a bit empty and potentially useless, but here we are. In case it is not already obvious, I am a bit of a doomer when it comes to AI. So inevitably, I have labored over this article like a true human, almost exactly li…

ChatGPT performs a search in nearly one-third of prompts and averages more than two searches per query, each about 5.5 words long (roughly 60% longer than the typical Google search), according to a new study from marketing agency Nectiv. Why it matters: ChatGPT isn’t just answering questions – it’s searching like a power user. The model relies on longer, more specific, and more commercial-style queries than Google’s average searcher. That means SEOs could have more influence over ChatGPT’s answers, especially for local, product, and buying-intent searches where the model leans most heavily on external data. By the numbers. Some key findings from the report: S…

Microsoft is alerting users that the Microsoft Advertising mobile app will be shut down in January 2026, ending mobile-based campaign management for advertisers. Why we care. Advertisers who rely on the mobile app for quick monitoring or urgent adjustments will need to shift workflows to the Microsoft Advertising web interface, the only remaining place to manage campaigns after the app is removed. What’s changing: The app has been removed form both the Apple App store and Google Play. It will be retired entirely in January 2026, users will lose access to campaign management through the app, and Microsoft is directing advertisers to the web UI, which supports…

Advertisers digging through Google Ads change history often lose time hopping between reports, campaigns, and ad groups. A new “Go to…” button cuts out those extra clicks — a small UI tweak that can save meaningful time during audits and troubleshooting. What’s new. Google has added a “Go to…” dropdown in the Change history report. Advertisers can now jump directly from a logged change to the relevant campaign or ad group. The feature is especially useful when reviewing bulk edits, script-driven changes, or updates made in Google Ads Editor. How it works: Select one or more changes in the Change history report. Use the “Go to…” dropdown to navigate str…

A BrightEdge study found that 68% of brands across industries are changing their search strategies to catch the GEO wave. That’s a big number, but hardly surprising – you’d have to have lived under a rock for about three years (since ChatGPT launched in late 2022) to miss the current. Still, many B2B marketing leaders I speak with haven’t fully grasped the shape of the opportunity – what GEO can do for their brands and where it falls short. There’s no question that AI search/GEO/LLMO – whatever you call it (there’s no consensus yet) – is critical to a holistic organic strategy. But leaning on them too heavily exposes gaps competitors can exploit. Thi…

Google is rolling out a new Data Manager API designed to help advertisers more easily connect their first-party data to Google’s AI-powered ad tools — aiming to boost measurement, targeting and performance without the complexity of juggling multiple systems. Why we care. The Data Manager API makes it easier to feed high-quality first-party data into Google’s AI, which directly improves targeting, measurement, and bidding performance. By replacing multiple APIs with one streamlined connection, it reduces engineering work and speeds up how quickly insights flow back into campaigns. As cookies fade, this becomes a key tool for getting better results from the data adverti…

Structured data helps search engines, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI assistants, and other tools understand your website. Using Schema.org and JSON-LD, you make your content clearer and easier to use across platforms. This guide explains what structured data is, why it matters today, and how you can set it up the right way. Table of contents What is structured data? A simple example of structured data Why do you need structured data? Is structured data important for SEO? Structured data can lead to rich results Different kinds of structured data Which structured data types matter most? Structured data for voice assistants The technical details Structured data shou…

Pages on your website can be well written, well laid out, supported by backlinks, and even meet E-E-A-T expectations – yet still fail to rank. While there are many possible explanations, one common issue is a misalignment with search intent, and it’s often harder to spot than it sounds. When the focus is on content, optimization, and usability, intent can easily be missed or misjudged. This is where AI can become a useful review tool, helping guide things back in the right direction. Get back to basics Whether you’re starting work on a new page or updating something older, beginning with the basics of search intent can help set you up for success. …

Microsoft Copilot is transforming search advertising by turning everyday conversations into intent-rich signals advertisers can act on. ROAS increases 13-fold when users engage with Copilot before performing a search, according to Microsoft. Drawing from billions of first-party audience insights across Microsoft’s consumer ecosystem – including Bing, Edge, Xbox, LinkedIn, and Activision – Copilot identifies high-value audiences using deterministic data built from search intent, web activity, and profile information. This allows advertisers to reduce wasted impressions and stretch budgets further. The mechanics of intent-rich search The core propositi…

Court filings in Google’s antitrust case revealed FastSearch, a proprietary system few search marketers have heard of. It sits at the core of how Google grounds its AI Overviews, prioritizing speed over the deeper analysis behind traditional search results. That distinction raises an important question: what exactly does FastSearch prioritize? What is Google FastSearch? FastSearch is Google’s internal technology for grounding Gemini models and generating AI Overviews. While traditional Google Search analyzes massive amounts of web data using hundreds of ranking signals, FastSearch takes a more targeted approach. The antitrust case filing explains: …

Every year, Search Engine Land is delighted to celebrate the best of search marketing by rewarding the agencies, in-house teams, and individuals worldwide for delivering exceptional results. Today, I’m excited to announce all 18 winners of the 11th annual Search Engine Land Awards. The 2025 Search Engine Land Awards winners Best Use Of AI Technology In Search Marketing 15x ROAS with AI: How CAMP Digital Redefined Paid Search for Home Services Best Overall PPC Initiative – Small Business Anchor Rides – Post-Hurricane PPC Comeback (AIMCLEAR) Best Overall PPC Initiative – Enterprise ATRA & Jason Stone Injury Lawyers – Leveraging CRM Data to…