SEO Tools and Resources

A recent test run by the Adalysis team reveals that Google’s new AI Max setting is reshaping how search terms are matched and reported — creating blind spots for advertisers who rely on precise keyword control. When AI Max isn’t the right fit. AI Max isn’t inherently bad, but advertisers should think twice if: Broad match historically underperforms in your account. Your top exact/phrase match keywords are already constrained by budget. You prefer not to use text customization or Final URL expansion — both built-in components of AI Max. If you only need broad match, you can add those keywords manually and keep full control. How AI Max interacts with…

Google has released a detailed Q&A for advertisers to clarify how its new AI Max tool works, addressing key questions around performance, control, and automation in search advertising. With the rollout of AI Max, a suite of ad tools powered by generative AI and search intelligence, the company is pitching it as the future of automated, performance-driven search advertising. What it does AI Max uses Google AI to: Match your ads with more relevant searches – even ones you aren’t bidding on. Customize ad copy dynamically based on user intent. Send users to your most relevant landing pages automatically. Questions asked by advertisers, answered b…

Want AI search engines and agents to find and use your content? Traditional SEO isn’t enough. AI systems process information differently. This guide breaks down key optimizations to help your content stay visible and rank in the AI era. TL;DR: Quick AI optimization checklist To optimize for AI search and agents: Make content accessible with clean HTML/markdown and good structure. Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt and firewall rules. Return content fast, with key info high up. Use semantic markup, metadata, and schemas. Create an llms.txt file. Check your content’s AI visibility. Traditional SEO vs. AI search: The key difference…

Visibility in Google’s AI Overviews doesn’t equal traffic. In my research from the first half of this year, AI Overview citations consistently underperformed – even compared to traditional blue links near the bottom of the SERP. An AI Overview citation can still help with authority, brand recall, positioning, and maybe even long-term LLM training. But for short-term clicks? The data paints a sobering picture. How AI Overviews vs. blue links compare: What the data shows Are AI Overview citations actually gathering clicks? Or are they just pushing the real click-producers further down the page? That question led me to look at the performance of cla…

Pages that rank for Google’s AI Overview “fan-out” queries are much more likely to be cited than those that rank only for the main search query, according to data from Surfer SEO. An analysis of 10,000 keywords found a strong correlation (Spearman 0.77) between how many fan-out queries a page ranks for and its likelihood of being cited in Google’s AI Overviews. By the numbers. Pages ranking for fan-out queries are 161% more likely to be cited than pages ranking only for the main query. Also: 76% of the sampled keywords triggered AI Overviews. 33,000 fan-out queries were extracted using Gemini. Pages ranking for both the main query and at least one fan-…

Users are visiting Google more often but staying less. That’s one of several insights from a new analysis by Kevin Indig, in partnership with Similarweb, based on 5 billion search queries and 20 million websites across the U.S., UK, and Germany. The big picture. In the U.S., visits to Google are up +9% since AI Overviews launched in May 2024. Also: Time on site and pages per visit are flat or falling across markets. Query length has barely changed. The numbers point to a new user pattern: more frequent visits, shorter sessions – a shift toward “resolve and leave” behavior, according to Indig. By the numbers. Google visits are up in the U.S.: U.S. …

Historically, Google Search has driven innovation by rewarding high-quality content with visibility and traffic. In the last article in this series, we talked about the risks of Google AI over-personalizing results and reinforcing filter bubbles. In this article, we’ll look at the opposite risk. If Google’s new AI results skew away from diversity and towards standardized results that favor big brands and consensus views, it could limit creativity and innovation and accelerate the commodification of the web. Some may find this concern naive because the internet is already very commodified, but historically, even small websites and businesses believed that they had…

AI search engines and chatbots often provide wrong answers and make up article citations, according to a new study from Columbia Journalism Review. Why we care. AI search tools have ramped up the scraping of your content so they can serve answers to their users, often resulting in no clicks to your website. Also, click-through rates from AI search and chatbots are much lower than Google Search, according to a separate, unrelated study. But hallucinating citations makes an already bad situation even worse. By the numbers. More than half of the responses from Gemini and Grok 3 cited fabricated or broken URLs that led to error pages. Also, according to the study: …

People are adopting AI as a complement to classic search, not a full replacement, according to a new survey by digital marketing agency Higher Visibility: 71.5% reported using AI tools for search; 14% use them daily. 79.8% prefer Google or Microsoft Bing for general information searches. 20.2% have changed their primary search platform within the last year. Why we care. Classic search engines still dominate – but we also know it is becoming more challenging as Google click-through rates are declining. However, AI answer engines and tools, social media platforms (like Instagram and TikTok), and shopping platforms all play a role in today’s messy search land…

Generative AI is everywhere right now. It dominates conference agendas, fills LinkedIn feeds, and is reshaping how many businesses think about organic search. Brands are racing to optimize for AI Overviews, build vector embeddings, map semantic clusters, and rework content models around LLMs. What gets far less attention is a basic reality: for most websites, AI platforms still drive a small share of overall traffic. AI search is growing, no question. But in most cases, total referral sessions from all LLM platforms combined amount to only about 2% to 3% of the organic traffic Google alone delivers. Despite that gap, many teams are spending more …

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…

A dominant share – 86% to be specific – of AI citations come from sources brands already control, according to a new analysis of 6.8 million citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity conducted by brand visibility platform Yext. Why we care. The findings challenge the perception that forums like Reddit dominate AI answers. Yext’s analysis also suggests that brands can directly influence visibility in generative results by keeping website content accurate, structured, and crawlable. (Yes, SEO.) By the numbers. Across all industries, 86% of AI citations came from sources brands owned or managed. Websites lead: 44% of citations came from first-party sites.…

AI referral traffic accounts for just over 1% of all website visits across 10 major industries, according to a new Conductor AI search benchmark report. AI referral traffic. 1.08% of all web traffic came from AI referrals. Digging deeper: ChatGPT drove 87.4% of all AI referrals across the dataset. IT (2.8%) and Consumer Staples (1.9%) led all industries. Communication Services (0.25%) and Utilities (0.35%) saw the lowest shares. AI referrals increased by ~1% month over month across all industries. AI answer engine market share. ChatGPT overwhelmingly dominated, followed by Perplexity. There were some interesting differences by industry (e.g., G…

In 2026 and well beyond, a core part of the performance marketer’s charter is learning to leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency. Anyone who isn’t actively evaluating new AI tools to improve or streamline their PPC work is doing their brand or clients a disservice. The challenge is that keeping up with these tools has become almost a full-time job, which is why my agency has made AI a priority in our structured knowledge-sharing. As a team, we’ve honed in on favorites across creative, campaign management, and AI search measurement. This article breaks down key options in each category, with brief reviews and a callout of my current pick. One ove…

AI search evolves every month. This constant flux is reshaping which brands get visibility and which sources AI models trust most. We now have three months of data in the AI Visibility Index, tracking ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. The key takeaway: AI search is volatile. This is likely to be normal for the immediate future. The brands that win are monitoring and adapting to these changes in real-time. The research tracks 2,500 real-world prompts across five key verticals: Business & Professional Services, Digital Technology & Software, Consumer Electronics, Fashion & Apparel, and Finance. revealing seismic shifts in source diversity, brand mentio…

The fundamentals of SEO haven’t changed. You still need technical access, content clarity, and external credibility. But the requirements inside those pillars are evolving fast. AI-driven discovery systems are now shaping how your brand is surfaced, trusted, and recommended. And for many enterprise teams, the response has been: A content brainstorm. A wait-and-see approach. Or nothing at all. That’s not a strategy gap. It’s an execution problem in the making. Is your company preparing for what’s coming after ‘SEO’ fades away? Your SEO team may be running efficiently – protecting rankings, publishing content, and salvaging what they can from G…

Agencies are navigating a marketing world powered by AI, evolving platforms, and consumer expectations that change overnight. The pace is dizzying, but it’s also full of opportunity. When we asked marketing agencies what new trends they anticipate for the year ahead, their insights revealed a shared focus on leveraging AI to scale operations, diversifying content strategies to stay ahead of declining organic reach, and adopting tools that balance creativity with efficiency. These trends reflect where the industry is heading and how agencies are preparing to meet new challenges. We’ll unpack the key insights from over two dozen marketing agencies, explore the stra…

I get it, these are uncertain times. Organic traffic is dropping like a rock, and new referral traffic coming in from LLMs like ChatGPT barely scratches the surface of what’s been lost. The narrative of “traffic is simply coming from a new source” is not accurate. Search and engagement are happening in new ways, but CTRs are dropping significantly across nearly all industries. It’s no surprise that many in the industry are feeling anxious about the future of SEO and whether AI might eventually render their roles obsolete. Bringing this up with your C-suite team might feel like the last thing you want to do. But here’s the reality: Now is exactly the time to …

Google’s AI Overviews and AI-driven search are reshaping content creation, SEO, and user behavior. As we watch this fascinating evolution of search – and continue to debate what we call this new marketing discipline (HubSpot is opting for AEO, or answer engine optimization) – I interviewed Aja Frost, senior director of global growth and paid media at HubSpot. Some of the topics covered in our interview: The need to redefine success metrics for AEO, prioritizing visibility and share of voice HubSpot’s experimental journey, including creating hyperspecific, data-rich content and optimizing for LLMs. Traffic directly from LLMs converts about 3x better than tr…

I’ve straddled both the brand marketing and SEO industries for the past decade now. That dynamic has made it particularly interesting to watch how the concept of brand alignment has seeped into the search marketing vernacular. To quote my favorite baseball player, Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” I’ve watched and I’ve observed how the conversation about brand alignment for LLM visibility has gone from “nice to have” to an absolute necessity. LLMs can expose a weak brand alignment while rewarding a strong brand alignment with increased visibility. With that, I want to kick things off by better explaining exactly what brand alignment look…

Advertising on Amazon is getting more complex, with an ever-growing list of targeting options. At the core of it all? Match types. Understanding how they work is essential to making your ad spend count. Unlike other ecommerce platforms, Amazon ads directly impact your organic ranking – so campaigns aren’t just about sales; they’re about momentum. Whether you’re driving incremental sales or defending your brand in search, knowing how to structure campaigns around match types can make or break performance. For brand defense, branded keywords are critical – but they should live in their own campaigns to keep management clean and projections accurate. …

American desktop users perform 126 unique Google searches per month, on average, according to a new analysis of search behavior published by SparkToro co-founder Rand Fishkin. The median average was 53 Google unique searches per month. By the numbers. Here are some additional findings about American searchers, beyond the headline statistic: 34% conducted more than 101 searches per month. 36% conducted 21-100 searches per month. 30% conducted 1-20 searches per month. Google Search by vertical. A whopping 86.94% of Americans use Google.com (Google’s homepage search experience) to search. As for Google’s other vertical options: Images: 10.62% Vid…

On episode 337 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Amy Hebdon, an international paid search expert and founder of Paid Search Magic. The show focuses on the real stories behind paid media work, including mistakes, surprises, and lessons learned, rather than just tactical advice. Amy’s breadth of experience spans multiple industries and digital marketing disciplines, making her insights particularly valuable for marketers navigating complex campaigns. Early career mistakes and learning experiences Amy shares a formative experience early in her career managing a fitness client’s creative assets that were incompatible with Google Ads. Despite her intention to protect …

AI-powered search is drastically changing the way people find information. For years, ranking well in Google and Microsoft Bing has been the foundation of search visibility. But as AI-driven search gains traction, is that ranking priority shifting or staying the same? We’re in an era of uncertainty we haven’t seen since the early days of SEO – when search engines rose and fell in a battle for relevance. Time will tell which AI answer engine wins the game. SEO is still relevant, but AI is rewriting the rules. This article will break down: Six AI search players to watch and how they source content. Market share and usage trends that show where sear…