SEO Tools and Resources

Custom GPTs can help SEO teams move faster by turning repeatable tasks into structured workflows. If you don’t have access to paid ChatGPT, you can still use these prompts as standalone references by copying them into your notes for future reuse. You will need to tweak them for your team’s specific use cases, because they are intended as a starting point. Working with AI is largely trial and error. To get better at writing prompts, practice with small tasks first, iterate on prompts, and take notes on what gets you good outputs. AI also tends to ramble, so it helps to give strict guidelines for formatting and to specify what not to do. You can upload resource…

Ads are now being tested in ChatGPT in the U.S., appearing for some users across different account types. For the first time, advertising is entering an AI answer environment – and that changes the rules for marketers. We’ve used AI as part of ad creation or planning for years across Google, LinkedIn, and paid social. But placing ads inside an AI system that people trust to help them think, decide, and act is fundamentally different. This is not just another channel to plug into an existing media plan. The biggest question is not targeting. It’s psychology. If advertisers simply replicate what works in search or social, performance will disappoint, and trust may s…

As part of the v23 Ads API launch, Performance Max campaigns can now be reported by channel, including Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, Maps, and Search Partners. Previously, performance data was largely grouped into a single mixed category. The change under the hood. Earlier API versions typically returned a MIXED value for the ad_network_type segment in Performance Max campaigns. With v23, those responses now break out into specific channel enums — a meaningful shift for reporting and optimization. Why we care. Google Ads API v23 doesn’t just add features — it changes how advertisers understand Performance Max. The update introduces channel-level repor…

If your CPCs keep climbing, the cause may not be your bid strategy, your budget, or even your competitors. You might be suffering from low ad quality. Let’s break down the most foundational — and most misunderstood — metric in your Google Ads account. If you want to stop overpaying Google and start winning auctions on merit, you need to understand how the 1-to-10 Quality Score actually works. The difference between Quality Score, Ad Strength, and Optimization Score Before we dive in, let’s clear up the confusion. Google shows a lot of “scores” and “diagnostics,” and you can safely ignore most of them. Quality Score is the exception. Ad strength is an …

In 2015, PPC was a game of direct control. You told Google exactly which keywords to target, set manual bids at the keyword level, and capped spend with a daily budget. If you were good with spreadsheets and understood match types, you could build and manage 30,000-keyword accounts all day long. Those days are gone. In 2026, platform automation is no longer a helpful assistant. It’s the primary driver of performance. Fighting that reality is a losing battle. Automation has leveled the playing field and, in many cases, given PPC marketers back their time. But staying effective now requires a different skill set: understanding how automated systems learn and h…

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…

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…

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…

In a conversation on the OpenAI podcast, host Andrew Maine spoke with OpenAI executive Assad Awan, who detailed how ads will roll out in ChatGPT, who will see them and how the company plans to protect user trust. Who will see ads: Ads will appear for Free and Go tier users Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscribers won’t see ads Enterprise workspaces will remain fully ad-free The guardrails: Awan emphasized that OpenAI is structuring ads around strict trust principles: Separation: Ads are visually and technically separate from model answers Privacy: Conversations aren’t shared with advertisers Sensitive topics: Health, politics and other sensitive …

The Wild West of web scraping is changing, due in large part to OpenAI’s deal with Disney. The deal allows OpenAI to train on high-fidelity, human-verified cinematic content – intended to combat AI slop fatigue. https://beimpolite.com/media/Retterspitz/6_VIDEO_800X448.mp4 This is how most of us feel when dealing with AI slop. Video production by Impolite. This deal opens up new opportunities to reinforce your brand’s visibility and recall. AI models are hungry for high-quality data, and this shift turns video into an essential asset for your brand. Here’s a breakdown of why video is the new source of truth for AI and how you can use it to protect your bran…

AI search visibility in beauty is increasingly shaped before a prompt is ever entered. Brands that appear in generative answers are often those already discussed, validated, and reinforced across social platforms. By the time a user turns to AI search, much of the groundwork has been laid. Using the beauty category as a lens, this article examines how social discovery influences brand visibility – and why AI search ultimately reflects those signals. Discovery didn’t move to AI – it fragmented Brand discovery has fragmented across platforms. AI tools influence mid-funnel consideration, but much discovery happens before a user enters a prompt. The signals…

Cloudflare yesterday announced its new Markdown for Agents feature, which serves machine-friendly versions of web content alongside traditional human-facing pages. Cloudflare described the update as a response to the rise of AI crawlers and agentic browsing. When a client requests text/markdown, Cloudflare fetches the HTML from the origin server, converts it at the edge, and returns a Markdown version. The response also includes a token estimate header intended to help developers manage context windows. Early reactions focused on the efficiency gains, as well as the broader implications of serving alternate representations of web content. What’s happen…

On episode 341 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Andrea Cruz, Head of B2B at Tinuiti, to unpack a mistake many senior marketers quietly struggle with: freezing when clients demand answers you don’t immediately have. The conversation explored how communication missteps can escalate client tension — and how the right mindset, preparation, and culture can turn those moments into career-defining growth. From hands-on marketer to team leader As Cruz advanced in her career, she shifted from managing campaigns directly to leading teams running large, complex accounts. That transition introduced a new challenge: representing work she didn’t personally execute day to …

Some advertisers are reporting that a Google Ads system tool designed for low-activity bulk changes is automatically enabling paused keywords — a behavior many account managers say they haven’t seen before. What advertisers are seeing. Activity logs show entries tied to Google’s “Low activity system bulk changes” tool that include actions enabling previously paused keywords. The log entries appear as automated bulk updates, with a visible “Undo” option. Historically, the tool has been associated mainly with pausing inactive elements, not reactivating them. What we don’t know. Google hasn’t publicly documented the behavior or clarified whether this is an int…

Over two months ago, Google began testing its AI-powered configuration tool. It allows you to ask AI questions about the Google Search Console performance reports and it would bring back answers for you. Well, it now seems like this tool is rolling out more broadly, maybe to everyone. AI-powered configuration. AI-powered configuration “lets you describe the analysis you want to see in natural language. Your inputs are then transformed into the appropriate filters and settings, instantly configuring the report for you,” Google said. Rolling out now. If you login to your Search Console account and click on the performance report, you may see a note at the top that s…

Data isn’t just a report card. It’s your performance marketing roadmap. Following that roadmap means moving beyond Google Analytics 4’s default tools. If you rely only on built-in GA4 reports, you’re stuck juggling interfaces and struggling to tell a clear story to stakeholders. This is where Looker Studio becomes invaluable. It allows you to transform raw GA4 and advertising data into interactive dashboards that deliver decision-grade insights and drive real campaign improvements. Here’s how GA4 and Looker Studio work together for PPC reporting. We’ll compare their roles, highlight recent updates, and walk through specific use cases, from budget pacing visua…

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…

For years, conversations about paid media have revolved around one question: should companies build in-house teams or outsource to agencies? That debate makes sense, but it misses the real issue. The problem isn’t where paid media sits in the org chart. It’s how performance leadership is structured. Many companies run Google Ads and other paid channels with capable teams, solid budgets, and documented best practices. Campaigns are live. Dashboards are full. Optimizations happen on schedule. Yet: Results stall. Pipelines flatten. Budgets get questioned. Confidence in paid advertising erodes. This is rarely a talent issue. It’s usually a structu…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 announced an early preview of WebMCP, which is a protocol for how AI agents interact with websites. “WebMCP aims to provide a standard way for exposing structured tools, ensuring AI agents can perform actions on your side with increased speed, reliability, and precision,” wrote André Cipriani Bandarra from Google. WebMCP enables developers to communicate with LLMs via your website about the actions certain buttons or links take. WebMCP allows websites to explicitly publish a “Tool Contract.” It uses a new browser API (navigator.modelContext). Instead of the AI guessing, the website provides a structured list of tools (e.g., function buyTicket(destination, date…

Local search remains one of the strongest drivers of consistent lead flow for service businesses. Outdated SEO tactics are losing impact as Google’s algorithm updates reshape local visibility. Success now depends on disciplined tracking and consistent execution. This 90-day sprint plan shows how to do both. Why local visibility is more volatile in 2026 Many service businesses aren’t current on how local search has changed or how Google Maps now determines visibility. They have a Google Business Profile (GBP) and a website, yet the phone is quiet. If a GBP isn’t visible, local prospects won’t find the business when they search for its services. That may…