SEO Tools and Resources

Google may finally be starting to address a popular SEO and AI visibility “tactic”: self-promotional “best of” listicles. That’s according to new research by Lily Ray, vice president, SEO strategy and research at Amsive. Across several SaaS brands hit hard in January, a pattern emerged. Many relied heavily on review-style content that ranked their own product as the No. 1 “best” in its category, often updated with the current year to trigger recency signals. What’s happening. After the December 2025 core update, Google search results showed increased volatility throughout January, according to Barry Schwartz. Google hasn’t announced or confirmed any updates this y…

Performance Max has come a long way since its rocky launch. Many advertisers once dismissed it as a half-baked product, but Google has spent the past 18 months fixing real issues around transparency and control. If you wrote Performance Max off before, it’s time to take another look. Mike Ryan, head of ecommerce insights at Smarter Ecommerce, explained why at the latest SMX Next. Taking a fresh look at Performance Max Performance Max traces its roots to Smart Shopping campaigns, which Google rolled out with red carpet fanfare at Google Marketing Live in 2019. Even then, industry experts warned that transparency and control would become serious issues. The…

Google today rolled out Search Live in the U.S. Before today, Search Live was in Google Labs as an opt-in feature. Search Live, built into the Google app, lets people talk directly with Google Search in real time. Users can share their phone camera feed so Search can “see” what they’re looking at. How it works. Tap the Live icon in the Google app (Android, iOS). Ask questions. Optionally turn on the camera so Search can interpret what’s in front of you. Search responds with answers, context, and cites its sources at the bottom. What’s new: Unlike earlier testing in Labs, the full release includes both voice and camera input. Google demoed this …

ChatGPT now processes 66 million “search-like” prompts per day, while Google still processes about 14 billion searches daily – roughly 210 times more. That’s the latest AI search reality check, via Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro. By the numbers. Google processes ~210x more searches than ChatGPT. Even DuckDuckGo outpaces ChatGPT in referrals, per estimates. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said ChatGPT handled 1 billion prompts per day in December. By July, that number was 2.5 billion prompts. Much of that growth comes from API calls (businesses plugging GPT into products). A Harvard/OpenAI study found 21.3% of prompts are “search-like.” That’s roughly …

Google Search Labs has a new experiment you can opt into that turns on some Agentic capabilities within AI Mode. This allows Google to help you make a reservation at a restaurant and will soon give you the ability to book local service appointments and event tickets. Agentic capabilities in AI Mode. The new labs feature works for users in the US who are signed into their Google account. You can opt in and review the features over here. AI Mode in Google Search now has agentic capabilities to help with your everyday local needs. “We’re starting with restaurant reservations, and expanding soon to local service appointments and event tickets,” Google wrote. This…

Google AI Mode is getting more visual by providing a more graphical response to some of your queries, including your shopping search queries. Google can do this by using its new visual version of the query fan-out technique it has used with AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google AI Mode, for certain queries, particularly those related to shopping, will respond with images and graphics. These are aimed at sparking inspiration, Robby Stein, VP of Product Management at Google Search, told Search Engine Land. AI Mode will be able to not just understand your query in a text-based manner, but also understand your query visually and respond with both textual and visual resp…

Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) have been around for many years now, but for some reason, so many Google Ads practitioners still find them confusing. RSAs can be incredibly powerful if you know how to use them correctly. What is a Responsive Search Ad? A Responsive Search Ad, or RSA, is the default ad type for Google Search campaigns. When you create an RSA, you must provide three things: Final URL: The landing page where you want users to go after clicking on your ad. Headlines: The clickable part of your search text ad. Minimum 3, Maximum 15. 30-character limit each. I generally recommend having 8-10 headlines in your RSA. We previously covered ad headlines …

More than a sales tool, a product demo can be the moment your brand earns credibility and converts prospects. A strong demo proves value in real time, turning curiosity into confidence. Too often, though, demos fall flat – sounding like a scripted feature list instead of a compelling, conversational story. This article shows how to create demos that resonate with real customer needs and differentiate your brand through empathy, consistency, and competitive insight. Know your product, know the problem it solves A demo isn’t about memorizing features. It’s about mastering the problem your product solves. Without this deep understanding, you’re just…

Spotify is expanding access to its ad inventory through new partnerships with Amazon DSP and Yahoo DSP, marking a major step in broadening brands’ programmatic buying options. The big picture. Amazon DSP users can now buy Spotify’s ad inventory across nine markets: the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico. Also: Yahoo DSP buyers gain direct access to Spotify Ad Exchange, the platform’s programmatic marketplace. In Europe, Spotify is teaming with ID5 to boost addressability for programmatic campaigns. Spotify also previewed: A new Split Testing tool for creative experiments. A partnership with Smartly to expand inventory …

Just 11% of U.S. consumers trust the first tool they use when searching online. That means nearly 9 in 10 Americans double-check or expand their search elsewhere “because they don’t trust the first answer,” according to new survey results from digital presence platform Yext. By the numbers. Discovery is fragmented: Traditional search still leads – 45% of U.S. consumers start product research on a search engine. But AI tools (15%) and review sites (14%) are fast-rising alternatives. Nearly three-quarters (73%) said they’ve used AI-powered search tools more in the past year, and 45% use them daily. Consumers still rely on traditional search for sensitiv…

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) formally designated Google with strategic market status (SMS) in general search and search advertising — giving regulators new powers to shape how Google operates in these sectors. What’s included. The designation covers Google’s general search and search advertising services — including AI-powered features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode — but excludes the Gemini AI assistant and certain news and syndication products. The CMA emphasized that the designation is not a finding of wrongdoing but enables “proportionate, targeted interventions” to ensure fair treatment for consumers and competitors. Why we care. Th…

Google introduced two AI-powered features: AI summaries in Discover and a Sports feed in Search. Google Discover. Users will now see AI-generated previews of trending topics they follow. The summaries cite multiple publishers and can be expanded to view more details and linked articles. The feature is available in the U.S., South Korea, and India, after earlier testing in the U.S. this summer. A Google spokesperson seemed to confirm the Discover AI summaries “officially” launched in the U.S. in July. At that time, the Discover AI summaries appeared on iOS and Android for trending lifestyle topics (e.g., sports, entertainment). TechCrunch reported this, but the…

Some brands are watching their organic traffic – and revenue – slip away. Others? They’re optimizing for this new search channel and seeing theirs rise. That’s why Semrush Enterprise built the AI Visibility Index. It’s the definitive study into how brands perform across the world’s leading AI search engines. Leveraging Semrush Enterprise’s AI Optimization (AIO) platform, the Index analyzes 2,500 real-world prompts in both ChatGPT and AI Mode across five key verticals: Business & Professional Services Digital Technology & Software Consumer Electronics Fashion & Apparel Finance Revealing which brands are leading the AI search landsca…

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…

Google today celebrated the 25th anniversary of its ad platform, first launched as AdWords in 2000. Now known as Google Ads, the platform remains the backbone of the company’s revenue engine. Over two and a half decades, Google Ads has evolved from a manually managed system to a sophisticated AI-driven advertising platform spanning Search, YouTube, Play, and the wider web. What Google is saying. Google is celebrating, with Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM of Ads & Commerce, sharing how AI is empowering us to rethink what’s possible’ and create a future of smarter, more helpful advertising. “Generative AI is transforming digital marketing, and I am so proud to see…

Nearly 90% of businesses are worried about losing organic visibility as AI transforms how people find information, according to a new survey by Ann Smarty. Why we care. The shift from search results to AI-generated answers seems to be happening faster than many expected, threatening the foundation of how companies are found online and drive sales. AI is changing the customer journey and forcing an SEO evolution. By the numbers. Most prefer to keep the “SEO” label – with “SEO for AI” (49%) and “GEO” (41%) emerging as leading terms for this new discipline. 87.8% of businesses said they’re worried about their online findability in the AI era. 85.7% are alread…

FAQ schema is no longer a quick SEO win. In August 2023, Google reduced the visibility of FAQ rich results in search, restricting them to authoritative government and health websites. The update effectively rendered the tactic useless for marketers who once relied on it to expand their SERP real estate. Google also clarified that FAQPage markup should never be used for advertising or promotional purposes. It belongs only on genuine FAQ pages created to answer user questions. For years, many SEOs – including myself – added structured FAQ data to marketing pages as a best practice. It’s time to rethink that habit. Google’s shifting guidance isn’t new.…

Google gives local businesses two main ways to generate PPC leads online: Local Services Ads (LSAs) and Search campaigns. LSAs are pay-per-lead campaigns – for actions such as calls, messages, or booked appointments – with a quick setup process that involves verifying your business. After that, Google automates most of the ad and keyword setup. Search campaigns are more complex but offer far greater control over ad copy, keywords, and optimization. Understanding how each format works – and when to use them – can help you get more qualified leads and make smarter use of your ad budget. Most advertisers use both and shift budgets based on which delivers bet…

Search is changing faster than ever – and 2026 may be the year it fully breaks from the past. Over the last year, AI has reshaped how people discover, decide, and convert, collapsing the traditional customer journey and cutting touchpoints in half. AI-powered assistants and large language models (LLMs) will handle roughly 25% of global search queries by 2026, per Gatner, replacing many traditional search interactions. We’re already seeing the effects. Traffic from LLMs is climbing at a hockey-stick pace, signaling a massive shift in how users find information. To stay competitive, marketers need to build strong content and experience flywheels, as ans…

If you’ve been working on your website for a couple of years, chances are that your website has become a giant collection of posts and pages. When writing a post, you might find out you’ve already written a similar article (maybe even twice), or you might get a feeling that you’ve written something related that you can’t find anymore. This can become even more complex when you’re not the only one writing for this website. Cleaning up your older content can be overwhelming; that’s why regular content maintenance is key. In this post, we’ll give you some tips to create a good content maintenance strategy! Table of contents 1. Reserve time for content maintenance 2. Wh…

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity: these are the new operating environments. Your content must be invokable inside them, or no one will see it. At SMX Advanced, I broke down how to build an AI visibility engine: a system for making your net-new facts reusable by humans and agents across synthesis-first platforms. It goes beyond publishing to show how teams can deploy structured content that survives LLM compression and shows up for buyers during their purchasing decisions. It’s what we’re building with clients and inside XOFU, our LLM visibility GPT. Here’s how it works. Find the FLUQs (Friction-Inducing Latent Unasked Questions) Friction-Inducing L…

Every few years, SEO gets a shiny new acronym. Voice search. AMP. E-A-T. Each promised to rewrite the rules, and each eventually found its way into the same corporate graveyard of experiments and half-baked roadmaps. I know, because I bought in. For a year and a half, I buried myself in schema markup—building page-level knowledge graphs, connecting entities, mapping relationships until entire sites resembled semantic webs. It was meticulous, elegant, even beautiful in its own way. And it delivered nothing. Not because technical work doesn’t matter—SEO is inherently technical. The issue in enterprise is that Google is a black box. You can pour months into structured da…

Headlines predicting another “AI winter” are beginning to emerge, and the numbers back the skepticism. MIT reports that while 80% of organizations have piloted GenAI and 40% report deployment, only 5% have reached scale, with seven of nine sectors showing no structural change. McKinsey finds the same disconnect: 36% of executives report no revenue impact, only 19% say revenues have grown more than 5%, and 87% admit growth is still years away. Adoption is everywhere, but impact is almost nowhere. But those headlines and numbers miss what’s happening inside enterprises right now. SEO leaders are being tapped to guide GEO—generative engine optimization. Not because we’re…

In recent years, the open web has felt like the Wild West. Creators have seen their work scraped, processed, and fed into large language models – mostly without their consent. It became a data free-for-all, with almost no way for site owners to opt out or protect their work. There have been efforts, like llms.txt initiative from Jeremy Howard. Like robots.txt, which lets site owners allow or block site crawlers, llms.txt offers rules that do the same for AI companies’ crawling bots. But there’s no clear evidence that AI companies follow llms.txt or honor its rules. Plus, Google explicitly said it doesn’t support llms.txt. However, a new protocol is now emergi…