SEO Tools and Resources

OpenAI is pitching premium-priced ads in ChatGPT — with far less data than advertisers are used to getting. What’s happening. According to a report, OpenAI is pricing ChatGPT ads at roughly $60 per 1,000 impressions — about three times higher than typical Meta ads. Despite the cost, advertisers will receive only high-level reporting, such as total impressions or clicks, with no insight into downstream actions like purchases. Why we care. ChatGPT is emerging as a brand-new, high-attention ad environment — but one that comes with trade-offs. The high CPMs and limited reporting mean early tests will be more about brand exposure and learning than performance efficienc…

The European Commission has formally opened new proceedings to spell out how Google must share key Android features and Google Search data with rivals under the Digital Markets Act. The Commission on Tuesday opened two formal “specification proceedings” to guide how Google must comply with key DMA obligations, effectively turning regulatory dialogue into a structured process with defined outcomes. Why we care. The European Commission is escalating its oversight of Google under the Digital Markets Act, with moves that could reshape competition in mobile AI and search — and limit how much advantage Google can extract from its own platforms. If Google is required to …

If you’ve spent any time in PPC communities, Reddit threads, Slack groups, or conference Q&As, you’ve probably noticed a recurring frustration: “Google Ads isn’t scaling. It’s not working, and we’re stuck.” On the surface, everything looks fine. The campaigns are running, impression share is high, shopping feeds are clean, and budgets are flowing. But growth isn’t materializing. This isn’t usually about “broken campaigns” – it’s about the limits of demand. In niche markets or categories shaped by seasonality, growth is naturally capped. Yes, running broad match or AI Max can expand your reach to adjacent queries, so impression share might not literal…

Have you ever tried to find inspiration for ads by scrolling your own Facebook feed? Then you know that most companies’ ads aren’t very compelling. Also, scrolling Facebook in this day and age is weirdly exhausting. Here’s the truth: most high-performing ads in 2026 aren’t winning the day because they’re wildly original or uniquely “viral” (do we still call something that?). They’re winning because they follow the same repeatable templates that smart marketers have been using for decades. (Yes, even now. Even with AI. Even with “creative strategy” and words like “scrollable” being used non-ironically in business initiatives.) This article goes back t…

AI Max is Google’s latest foray into semi-keywordless targeting. While you need keywords for the system to have a starting place, Google uses signals beyond keywords in deciding how to show ads to searchers. In accounts with a strong history of broad match success, AI Max can be highly effective at finding new conversions. If accounts are not well-optimized or have not been successful with broad match, AI Max can be a huge money pit. To clear up a rumor before we get into the data: you do not have to use AI Max to have ads appear in AI Overviews. Broad match keywords can show ads in AI Overviews regardless of your AI Max usage. We’re looking at…

Yahoo has launched its first version of its AI-based answer engine named Yahoo! Scout. Yahoo! Scout is available at scout.yahoo.com and is also embedded through Yahoo’s massive network of sites; Yahoo News, Finance, Mail and of course, Yahoo Search. Think of it as a Yahoo-branded AI companion for Yahoo users, that is there to help you along the way within those specific properties. What is Yahoo Scout. Yahoo Scout is Yahoo’s take at an AI search engine and companion, much like Google’s AI Mode or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but with a flare from Yahoo. Yahoo told me that they wanted Yahoo Scout to have personality, to make it fun and engaging for users to interact with and allo…

Google will now jump you directly into AI Mode when you do a follow-up question from AI Overviews within Google Search. This makes the “transition to a conversation even more seamless,” Robby Stein, VP of Product, Google Search wrote. Plus, Google AI Overviews are powered by Gemini 3 by default, globally. AI Overviews jumping to AI Mode. We covered when Google was officially testing this back in December and also before Google confirmed the test in October 2025. The ask a follow-up question within the Google Search AI Overviews will jump you into a conversation directly in AI Mode. Google said this is about “making the transition to a conversation even more se…

Microsoft has been promising to give data on the performance of websites mentioned in AI results within Bing and Copilot since February 2023 and then again in April 2023. But then decided to let us down and only lump the data together with web queries, not giving us a clear view of how our sites perform within Bing’s AI experiences. Now Bing is reportedly testing showing a new report within Bing Webmaster Tools named AI Performance report. AI Performance report. This report is currently in a super limited beta – Microsoft has not announced anything about this publicly. But a source told us this report shows citation data from both Microsoft Copilot and partners. …

Google is exploring ways to give site owners a way to prevent Google from using its content for Search AI generative features including AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google said this is based on the new requirements from UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and any measures must avoid breaking how Google Search works. What Google said. Google wrote: “We’re now exploring updates to our controls to let sites specifically opt out of Search generative AI features.” Google added that these options cannot break Google Search, Google said: “Any new controls need to avoid breaking Search in a way that leads to a fragmented or confusing experience for people.…

When Meta launched advertising nearly two decades ago, performance was driven by manual inputs – targeting rules, account structure, and incremental optimization. Success depended on carefully defined audiences, granular budget control, and frequent testing. That operating model eroded over time as privacy changes and signal loss made deterministic targeting less reliable. Over the last two years, Meta responded by fundamentally rebuilding its advertising platform around AI. That rebuild began with Andromeda, a personalized ads retrieval engine, and expanded into Meta’s Generative Ads Recommendation Model (GEM). Together, these systems now determine …

Video is one of the most complex, information-dense marketing assets. For human audiences, it delivers emotional nuance and context far more effectively than the written word. For AI models, it provides a high-density stream of data for more accurate indexing and synthesis. Once upon a time, video was confusing for search crawlers. Now, it’s “watchable” by AI. Models can deconstruct video into parallel visual, auditory, and textual streams. Let’s go through how to optimize video for AI. Why video is important for AI: contextual density optimization In the past, search engines had to read surrounding metadata to understand video. This text…

U.S. Google searchers are searching far less than a year ago, according to a new Datos/SparkToro report. The data suggests Google isn’t losing users — it’s losing repeat searches. Why we care. Google still dominates search, but it’s changing in significant ways. Fewer searches per user means fewer opportunities for clicks, ads, and traffic — even if total search volume looks steady. By the numbers. Google desktop searches per user fell nearly 20% year over year, based on clickstream data from tens of millions of U.S. users. That drop stands in sharp contrast to Europe, where searches per user declined by just 2% to 3%. Even with fewer searches per person,…

Google rolled out a small but practical update to Performance Max that makes reviewing creatives faster and less clunky. What’s new. Advertisers can now click directly on images or videos inside the Asset Groups table to instantly preview how ads will appear across different Performance Max placements — without leaving the page. Why we care. Previously, checking creative previews meant digging into separate views or settings. This change keeps advertisers in the workflow, cutting down friction during creative QA and iteration. Between the lines. Performance Max is often criticized for limited transparency, so even incremental UI improvements that surface c…

The search landscape, today’s buyer journey, and the roadmap to digital success aren’t just shifting. They’re being structurally reimagined. To make sense of this shift, I spoke with six of the SEO industry’s most forward-thinking voices and distilled their perspectives into seven core predictions for 2026. What follows is a series of insights into how search is being structurally reimagined. 1. The rise of agentic commerce We are moving past the era of AI as an answer engine and into the era of AI as an executive assistant. “Agentic web” means AI won’t just tell you which running shoes are best. It will actually find your size, apply a coupon, and exec…

When ChatGPT, Claude, or Google’s AI get asked for brand or product recommendations, they almost never return the same list twice — and almost never in the same order. That’s the big finding from a new study from Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro, and Patrick O’Donnell, CTO and co-founder of Gumshoe.ai. They investigated whether generative AI recommendations are sufficiently consistent to be measured. What they tested. Six hundred volunteers ran 12 identical prompts through ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI nearly 3,000 times. Each response was normalized into an ordered list of brands or products. The team then compared those lists for overlap, or…

Meta tests paid subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp to unlock premium features and AI across its apps. What is happening. Meta is testing new subscriptions that unlock exclusive features across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, while keeping the core experiences free. Rather than a single bundle, Meta plans to experiment with different subscription models and feature sets tailored to each app, spanning productivity, creativity and expanded AI capabilities. Subscriptions will introduce premium controls and tools for everyday users, creators and businesses — separate from Meta Verified. On Instagram, early tests could include unlimited audience …

Most brands performing well in traditional local search fail to appear in results from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, according to SOCi’s newly released 2026 local visibility index. Also of note: business profile information was only about 68% accurate on ChatGPT and Perplexity, compared with 100% accuracy on Gemini, which is grounded in Google Maps. AI limits local visibility. Performance data from nearly 350,000 locations across 2,751 multi-location brands was analyzed to measure how often locations are surfaced or recommended by AI assistants. Turns out, AI platforms are far more selective than Google’s local results: 1.2% of locations were recommended…

Search today looks very different from what it did even a few years ago. Users are no longer browsing through SERPs to make up their own minds; instead, they are asking AI tools for conclusions, summaries, and recommendations. This shift changes how visibility is earned, how trust is formed, and how brands are evaluated during discovery. In AI-driven search, large language models interpret information, decide what matters, and present a narrative on behalf of the user. Table of contents The rise of conversational AI as a discovery layer Not all LLMs interpret brands the same way The challenge: LLM visibility is hard to measure How does Yoast AI Brand Insights help? …

The open web is the part of the internet built on open standards that anyone can use. This concept creates a democratic digital space where people can build on each other’s work without restrictions, just like how WordPress.org is built. For website owners, understanding and leveraging the open web is increasingly crucial. Especially with the rise of AI-powered systems and the general direction that online search is taking. So, let’s explore what the open web is and what it means for your website. What is the open web? The open web refers to the part of the internet built on open, shared standards that are available to everyone. It’s powered by technologies like HT…

We are excited to announce an update to our Offer schema within Yoast SEO for Shopify. This update introduces a more robust way to communicate pricing to search engines, specifically introducing sale price strikethroughs. What’s new? Previously, communicating a “sale” was often limited to showing a single price. With this update, we’ve refined how our schema handles the Offer object. You can now clearly define: The original price: The “base” price before any discounts. The sale price: The current active price the customer pays. Why this matters When search engines understand the relationship between your original and sale prices, they can bette…

Working as an office manager in my early 20s, I read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Many of its principles still hold true today, and they guided me through multiple career transitions. Success in most careers comes from our interactions with people – whether clients or coworkers. For years, those principles of human connection, combined with technical knowledge and expertise, helped digital marketers succeed. Agencies made sense of the machines for clients, and strong relationship-building allowed them to retain those clients over time. That model is now being challenged. As AI has become fully embedded in PPC platforms, the…

Marketers are spoiled for choice when it comes to great sources of content. We now have more tools (hello, ChatGPT!) and job boards than ever, making it even easier to find writers and create content. But abundance comes with a downside: a race to the bottom, where speed and cost often take priority over quality. If you’re aiming for great (not just “good”) content, some sources are better than others. This guide breaks down where to find top-tier writers and how to build a content process that doesn’t sacrifice quality for speed. Struggle 1: What qualifies as a ‘great’ content writer? Qualifying a good writer can feel a lot like qualifying a new …

The January 2026 SEO Update by Yoast is part of our monthly webinar series covering the latest developments in search and AI. In each session, we review the most important news from the past month and explore what it means for your search strategy. Hosted by Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss, this month’s update looks at key industry shifts and practical takeaways for staying competitive. Below is a recap of the topics discussed and what they mean for your strategy. Here’s the recap video on YouTube Watch the full recap on YouTube to hear Carolyn and Alex dive deeper into these topics, answer audience questions, and provide additional examples of how these changes could…

Many search teams are seeing better rankings, more visibility, increased traffic, and more leads. Yet feedback on pipeline, revenue, and sales outcomes isn’t showing the same positive results. When SEO KPIs are green and graphs are up and to the right, business outcomes don’t always reflect the same success. Why strong search performance doesn’t translate to business outcomes Search performance can look healthy on the surface while breaking down in places search teams don’t own or fully see. It’s tempting to turn immediately to attribution models, data quality, or KPI definitions. Ultimately, the issue is often how performance breaks down after th…

Google has released v23 of the Google Ads API, the first update of 2026 and the start of a faster release cadence, introducing deeper Performance Max reporting, more granular invoicing, new AI-powered audience tools, and expanded campaign controls. What’s new: Performance Max transparency: Ad network type breakdowns are now available for PMax campaigns. More detailed invoices: Campaign-level costs, regulatory fees, and adjustments can be retrieved via InvoiceService. More precise scheduling: Campaigns can now use start and end date-times instead of date-only fields. Local data access: Store location details are available through PerStoreView, matching th…