SEO Tools and Resources

Google Ads rolled out a new feature that shows advertisers which campaigns their products are eligible for, directly in the Products section. How it works. A new dashboard in the Products section includes: A table showing product details, status, issues, and priority flags A line graph summarizing campaign status trends Filters to segment eligibility views A pop-up panel that lists “Eligible” and “Not eligible” campaigns per product Why we care. dvertisers can now quickly identify products that are missing from key campaigns or unintentionally overlapping across Shopping and Performance Max. The added visibility reduces the need to jump between c…

AI search influence didn’t show up in our SEO reports or AI prompt tracking tools. It showed up in sales calls. “Found you via Grok, actually,” a new lead said. That comment stopped us cold. We hadn’t tried to rank in Grok. We weren’t tracking it. Yet it was influencing how buyers discovered and evaluated us. That disconnect kept appearing in client conversations, too. Everyone was curious about AI search, but no one trusted the data. Teams wanted visibility in ChatGPT and other AI tools, then asked the same question: “Why invest in a channel that doesn’t show up cleanly in attribution?” To answer that, we ran controlled experiments using assets we could fu…

When left to its own devices, there are a couple of things Performance Max is absolutely great at doing for lead gen campaigns: Driving volume. Finding the lowest-quality leads it possibly can. It’s not inherently surprising that Google is doing what’s best for Google – that is, lining its own pockets – by heavily optimizing toward the cheapest, path-of-least-resistance conversion events. From experience with campaigns we inherit from new clients, this performance often catches brands off guard – especially those who take Google sales reps’ “helpful advice” at face value. It can take time for those brands to look past PMax’s shiny, low CPAs and realiz…

Every seasoned PPC pro carries a few scars — the kind you earn when a campaign launches too fast, an automation quietly runs wild, or a “small” setting you were sure you checked comes back to bite you. At SMX Next, we had a candid, refreshingly honest conversation about the mistakes that still trip us up, no matter how long we’ve been in the game. I was joined by Greg Kohler, director of digital marketing at ServiceMaster Brands, and Susan Yen, PPC team lead at SearchLab Digital. Read on to see the missteps that can humble even the most experienced search marketers. Never launch campaigns on a Friday This might be the most notorious mistake in PPC — and…

Google is now advertising its own AI features inside Google Ads — a rare move that puts promotion directly into advertisers’ workflow. What’s happening. Users are seeing promotional messages for AI Max for Search campaigns when they access campaign settings panels. The notifications appear during routine account audits and updates It functions essentially as an internal advertisement for Google’s own tooling Why we care. The in-platform placement shows Google’s push to accelerate AI adoption among advertisers, moving beyond optional rollouts to active promotion. This promotional tactic also suggests Google may increasingly nudge advertisers toward AI-p…

Microsoft today launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools in beta. AI Performance lets you see where, and how often, your content is cited in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries, and select partner integrations, the company said. AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools shows which URLs are cited, which queries trigger those citations, and how citation activity changes over time. Search Engine Land first reported on Jan. 27 that Microsoft was testing the AI Performance report. What’s new. AI Performance is a new, dedicated dashboard inside Bing Webmaster Tools. It tracks citation visibility across supported AI surfaces. Inst…

B2B advertising faces a distinct challenge: most automation tools weren’t built for lead generation. Ecommerce campaigns benefit from hundreds of conversions that fuel machine learning. B2B marketers don’t have that luxury. They deal with lower conversion volume, longer sales cycles, and no clear cart value to guide optimization. The good news? Automation can still work. Melissa Mackey, Head of Paid Search at Compound Growth Marketing, says the right strategy and signals can turn automation into a powerful driver of B2B leads. Below is a summary of the key insights and recommendations she shared at SMX Next. The fundamental challenge: Why automation stru…

Let me guess: you just spent three months building a perfectly optimized product taxonomy, complete with schema markup, internal linking, and killer metadata. Then, the product team decided to launch a site redesign without telling you. Now half your URLs are broken, the new templates strip out your structured data, and your boss is asking why organic traffic dropped 40%. Sound familiar? Here’s the thing: this isn’t an SEO failure, but a governance failure. It’s costing you nights and weekends trying to fix problems that should never have happened in the first place. This article covers why weak governance keeps breaking SEO, how AI has raised the stakes…

It is no secret that publishing SEO-friendly blog posts is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive organic traffic and improve SERP rankings. However, in the era of artificial intelligence, blog posts matter more than ever. They help establish brand authority by consistently delivering fresh, valuable content that can be cited in AI-generated answers. In this guide, we will share a practical, detailed approach to writing SEO-friendly blog content that not only ranks on Google SERPs but is also surfaced by AI models. Table of contents What does an SEO-friendly blog post mean in the AI era? 9 tips to write SEO-friendly blogs for LLM and SERP visibility…

If you’ve been managing PPC accounts for any length of time, you don’t need a research report to tell you something has changed. You see it in the day-to-day work: GCLIDs missing from URLs. Conversions arriving later than expected. Reports that take longer to explain while still feeling less definitive than they used to. When that happens, the reflex is to assume something broke – a tracking update, a platform change, or a misconfiguration buried somewhere in the stack. But the reality is usually simpler. Many measurement setups still assume identifiers will reliably persist from click to conversion, and that assumption no longer holds consistentl…

Agentic AI is increasingly appearing in leadership conversations, often accompanied by big claims and unclear expectations. For SEO leaders working with ecommerce brands, this creates a familiar challenge. Executives hear about autonomous agents, automated purchasing, and AI-led decisions, and they want to know what this really means for growth, risk, and competitiveness. What they don’t need is more hype. They need clear explanations, grounded thinking, and practical guidance. This is where SEO leaders can add real value, not by predicting the future, but by helping leadership understand what is changing, what isn’t, and how to respond without overreacting. …

We know AI responses are probabilistic – if you ask an AI the same question 10 times, you’ll get 10 different responses. But how different are the responses? That’s the question Rand Fishkin explored in some interesting research. And it has big implications for how we should think about tracking AI visibility for brands. In his research, he tested prompts asking for recommendations in all sorts of products and services, including everything from chef’s knives to cancer care hospitals and Volvo dealerships in Los Angeles. Basically, he found that: AIs rarely recommend the same list of brands in the same order twice. For a given topic (e.g., runn…

Eighty million people use Reddit search every week, Reddit said on its Q4 2025 earnings call last week. The increase followed a major change: Reddit merged its core search with its AI-powered Reddit Answers and began positioning the platform as a place where users can start — and finish — their searches. Executives framed the move as a response to changing behavior. People are increasingly researching products and making decisions by asking questions within communities rather than relying solely on traditional search engines. Reddit is betting it can keep more of that intent on-platform, rather than acting mainly as a source of links for elsewhere. Why we care…

OpenAI is rolling out its first live test of ads in ChatGPT, placing sponsored messages directly inside the app for some users. The details. According to CNBC, the ads will appear in a clearly labeled section beneath the chat interface rather than inside responses. The format is designed to keep ads visually separate from ChatGPT’s answers. OpenAI will show ads to logged-in users on the free tier and its lower-cost Go subscription. The company says advertisers won’t see users’ conversations and won’t influence ChatGPT’s responses, though ads will be optimized based on what OpenAI considers helpful to the user. What else is coming. In an internal memo cited by …

Google’s AI Mode isn’t more likely to cite content that appears “above the fold,” according to a study from SALT.agency, a technical SEO and content agency. After analyzing more than 2,000 URLs cited in AI Mode responses, researchers found no correlation between how high text appears on a page and whether Google’s AI selects it for citation. Pixel depth doesn’t matter. AI Mode cited text from across entire pages, including content buried thousands of pixels down. Citation depth showed no meaningful relationship to visibility. Average depth varied by vertical, from about 2,400 pixels in travel to 4,600 pixels in SaaS, with many citations far below the tr…

A newly discovered settings panel offers an first detailed look at how ads may work inside ChatGPT — including how personalization and privacy controls are designed. Driving the news. Entrepreneur Juozas Kaziukėnas discovered a way to trigger ChatGPT’s upcoming ad settings interface. The panel repeatedly emphasizes that advertisers won’t see users’ chats, history, memories, personal details, or IP addresses. What the settings reveal: The interface outlines a structured ad system with dedicated controls: A History tab logs ads users have viewed inside ChatGPT. An Interests tab stores inferred preferences based on ad interactions and feedback. Each…

Generative engine optimization (GEO) represents a shift from optimizing for keyword-based ranking systems to optimizing for how generative search engines interpret and assemble information. While the inner workings of generative AI are famously complex, patents and research papers filed by major tech companies such as Google and Microsoft provide concrete insight into the technical mechanisms underlying generative search. By analyzing these primary sources, we can move beyond speculation and into strategic action. This article analyzes the most insightful patents to provide actionable lessons for three core pillars of GEO: query fan-out, large language model (LLM…

If you’re relying on GA4 alone to measure the impact of AI SEO, you’re navigating with a broken compass. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s a reasonable launch pad. But to understand how audiences discover, evaluate, and ultimately choose brands, measurement must move beyond the bounds of Google’s tooling. SEO is a journey, not a destination. If you optimize only for attributable visits, large parts of that journey disappear from view. Sessions are an outcome. They can’t contextualize consideration sets increasingly shaped by algorithms and AI well before a visit ever happens. Don’t lose potential customers in the Bermuda Triangle of traditional SEO measurement…

We’ve all been there. A client wants to scale their Google Ads account from €10,000 per month to €100,000. So, you do what any good PPC manager would do: Refine your bidding strategy. Test new ad copy variations. Expand your keyword portfolio. Optimize landing pages. Improve Quality Scores. Launch Performance Max campaigns. Three months later, you’ve increased ad spend by 15%. The client is… fine with it. But you know you should be doing better. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most pay-per-click (PPC) optimization work is sophisticated procrastination. What the theory of constraints teaches us about PPC The theory of constraints, develop…

On episode 340 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Amanda Farley, CMO of Aimclear and a multi-award-winning marketing leader, brings a mix of honesty and expertise to the PPC Live conversation. A self-described T-shaped marketer, she combines deep PPC knowledge with broad experience across social, programmatic, PR, and integrated strategy. Her journey — from owning an gallery and tattoo studio to leading award-winning global campaigns — reflects a career built on curiosity, resilience, and continuous learning. Overcoming limiting beliefs and embracing creativity Amanda once ran an gallery and tattoo parlor while believing she wasn’t an artist herself. Surrounded b…

Google is rolling out a beta feature that lets advertisers run structured A/B tests on creative assets within a single Performance Max asset group. Advertisers can split traffic between two asset sets and measure performance in a controlled experiment. Why we care. Creative testing inside Performance Max has mostly relied on guesswork. Google’s new native A/B asset experiments bring controlled testing directly into PMax — without spinning up separate campaigns. How it works. Advertisers choose one Performance Max campaign and asset group, then define a control asset set (existing creatives) and a treatment set (new alternatives). Shared assets can run across both …

Google Ads rolled out a data source diagnostics feature inside Data Manager that helps advertisers monitor the health of their data connections. The tool flags issues tied to offline conversions, CRM imports, and tagging mismatches. How it works. A centralized dashboard assigns clear connection status labels — Excellent, Good, Needs attention, or Urgent — and surfaces actionable alerts. Advertisers can see problems like refused credentials, formatting errors, and failed imports alongside a run history showing recent sync attempts and error counts. Why we care. When conversion data breaks, campaign optimization breaks with it. Even small data connection failure…

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…

Traditional ranking performance no longer guarantees that content can be surfaced or reused by AI systems. A page can rank well, satisfy search intent, and follow established SEO best practices, yet still fail to appear in AI-generated answers or citations. In most cases, the issue isn’t content quality. It’s that the information can’t reliably be extracted once it’s parsed, segmented, and embedded by AI retrieval systems. This is an increasingly common challenge in AI search. Search engines evaluate pages as complete documents and can compensate for structural ambiguity through link context, historical performance, and other ranking signals. AI systems don’…

PR measurement often breaks down in practice. Limited budgets, no dedicated analytics staff, siloed teams, and competing priorities make it difficult to connect media outreach to real outcomes. That’s where collaboration with SEO, PPC, and digital marketing teams becomes essential. Working together, these teams can help PR do three things that are hard to accomplish alone: Show the connection between media outreach and customer action. Incorporate SEO – and now generative engine optimization (GEO) – into measurement programs. Select tools that match the metrics that actually matter. This article lays out a practical way to do exactly that, witho…