SEO Tools and Resources

The last year has had many of us trying to understand how to report on AI visibility and understand what it takes to be seen and cited by AI. But Rand Fishkin’s latest study on AI response variability has emphasized that LLM outputs aren’t as stable and predictable as search rankings, making this KPI an inconsistent piece of the puzzle. The study found there’s less than a 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT or Google AI will return the same list of brands across two responses. They analyzed thousands of prompts across multiple LLMs to highlight just how varied they are. This has left some of the SEO community questioning the value of rank tracking at scale. But, rank…

The February 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 how it affects your search strategy. Hosted by Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss, this month’s update focused on AI-driven shifts in search, emerging agentic workflows, and Google’s latest core updates. Below is a recap of the topics discussed and what they mean for your strategy. Watch the full recap on YouTube to hear Carolyn and Alex dive deeper into these topics, answer audience questions, and share real-world examples. SEO and AI news from February 202…

If you head to Tools → Planning in Google Ads, chances are you’re clicking into Keyword Planner. Most advertisers stop there. But two other planners sit in the same menu — often overlooked — that can directly influence how you forecast budgets, model performance shifts, and scale campaigns. Performance Planner and Reach Planner offer deeper insight into how spend changes affect your key metrics across channels. Here’s a practical breakdown of how each tool works and when to use them to forecast growth more accurately. Why Performance Planner matters for scaling search and display Performance Planner helps you model how metrics could change if you adjust ad…

ChatGPT’s emerging ad ecosystem is gaining momentum, according to new monitoring from AI ad intelligence firm Adthena — with more brands appearing, clearer trigger patterns, and evolving ad placements. What’s happening. After initially identifying the first advertisers inside ChatGPT last week, Adthena now reports a noticeable ramp-up in advertiser participation and ad delivery behavior. Advertisers spotted so far: Best Buy AT&T Pottery Barn Enterprise Qualcomm Expedia How ads are triggering. Based on a sample of 1,500+ prompts analyzed over the past week: Most ads appear on the first prompt. Some only trigger on the third o…

Google DeepMind is rolling out Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), its latest image generation model, combining the intelligence and production controls of Nano Banana Pro with the rapid performance of Gemini Flash. What’s new. Nano Banana 2 introduces: Advanced world knowledge: Powered by Gemini’s real-time web grounding to better render specific subjects and generate infographics or data visualizations. Precision text rendering and translation: Cleaner, legible text inside images — including localization. Stronger instruction adherence: Improved handling of complex, multi-layered prompts. Subject consistency: Maintains up to five characters and …

The Google February 2026 Discover core update has finished rolling out, starting on February 5, 2026 and now completing just over 21 days later on February 27, 2026. This was the first confirmed Google Search update this year, and the first-ever Discover-only update that Google announced. Normally, Google core updates impact both Search and Discover, but this is only impacting content within Google Discover. U.S. and English. Google said the update currently only impacts English-language users in the U.S. But Google said it will expand to all countries and languages in the coming months. More details. Google said the Discover core update will improve the “e…

Somewhere inside your CRM is a customer who does not exist. They open emails at impossible hours. They redeem promotions with machine-like precision. They browse product pages across three devices in under five minutes. They convert, unsubscribe, re-engage and transact again. On paper, they look highly active. In reality, they may be a composite of behaviors stitched together from AI assistants, shared accounts, recycled addresses, autofill tools and automated workflows. This is the Data Doppelgänger Problem. And it is about to become one of the most expensive blind spots in modern marketing. For years, identity resolution was framed as a hygiene issue. Clean …

We’re getting a lot of questions about prompt tracking. Many of our current and prospective clients are tracking their visibility using tools such as Profound, Athena, and Peec. The million-dollar question that always comes up is “Which prompts should I be tracking?’. In an incredibly personalized and complex ecosystem, it’s extremely difficult to know what our buyers are even asking LLMs about our company. There are no data sources I feel great about right now. This isn’t like traditional search, where Keyword Planner data was publicly provided. It’s unlikely that OpenAI or Google will ever fully open up this data for us to analyze. There have been some recent p…

Many SEO professionals enter freelancing for the same reason: freedom. They dream of fewer meetings, flexible hours, and the ability to choose their own projects. What they don’t expect? Freelancing isn’t just “SEO without a boss.” It’s SEO plus sales, scoping, contracts, billing, and client management. Without those essential pieces, even the strongest SEOs struggle to make freelancing sustainable. We’ll break down each step in this process to bridge the gap between dream and reality. By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to build a sustainable freelance practice so you can become a digital nomad answering client emails and enjoying mojitos from a…

SEO is transitioning from rank, click, and convert to get scraped, summarized, and recommended. We’ve entered the era of invisible attribution known as the dark SEO funnel — where traditional top-of-funnel (TOFU) traffic is collapsing, the messy middle is getting messier, and SEO success can no longer be measured by clicks. Up to 84% of B2B buyers now use AI for vendor discovery, and 68% start their search in AI tools before they ever touch Google, new data from Wynter reveals. Buyers are using ChatGPT to narrow down their options and Google to verify. If you’re still judging SEO success by traffic, you’re optimizing for a model that no longer exists. Here’s…

AI-based discovery offers a new level of sophistication in surfacing content, without relying solely on keywords. Beyond keyword-string-first approaches, contextual and semantic elements are now more important than ever. Optimization is no longer about just reinforcing the keyword. It’s also about constructing a retrievable semantic environment around it. This impacts how we write, create, and think about content. It applies whether you write every word yourself or employ automated workflows. Reframing your publishing strategy around context Much has already been written about the concepts covered here. This discussion focuses on tying them together into a…

You can now generate custom PPC tools in plain English. With GPT-5 enabling complete program generation, the competitive edge belongs to those who master AI-assisted automation. Frederick Vallaeys is building tools in minutes, not days or months, with AI. Vallaeys spent 10 years at Google building tools like Google Ads Editor, then another 10 building tools at Optmyzr, where he’s CEO. He’s watched automation evolve firsthand, and vibe coding is the next leap. At SMX Next 2025, he shared his journey with vibe coding. The traditional script problem If you work in PPC, automation has always been top of mind. In the early days, you relied on Google Ads s…

ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users, OpenAI announced. This is the first time OpenAI has publicly cited the 900 million weekly active user mark. Why we care. User behavior continues to fragment beyond traditional search. If 900 million people use ChatGPT weekly, discovery, research, and product comparisons are increasingly happening within AI interfaces. That said, many of those actions tend to lead users to traditional search for confirmation. The details. OpenAI shared the figure of 900 million weekly active users while announcing a new $110 billion funding round. The company also reported more than 50 million consumer subscribers and over …

A patent document published by Google hints that Google Search may take searchers from the search results page, to an AI-generated page which is super personalized to answer the query, as opposed to taking that searcher to a web page. Patent. The patent is named AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user and was filed by Google about a year ago and then granted last month. This patent describes a system that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automatically create a custom landing page for a business or organization when a user performs a search. Instead of just sending a user to a generic homepage, the system generates a page dynamically that is spe…

Google published a new help document outlining how passkeys work in Google Ads — a timely move as advertisers face a rise in account hacks and phishing attempts. What’s happening. The new help page explains how passkeys function as a passwordless, phishing-resistant login method in Google Ads, and clarifies when they’re required — including for sensitive actions like user access changes and account linking updates. The documentation walks advertisers through device requirements, setup steps and security considerations. Why we care. Ad accounts are increasingly being targeted by attackers, with compromised logins leading to budget theft, campaign disruptio…

Self-serve negative keyword lists are now live in Microsoft Advertising, according to Ads Liaison Navah Hopkins — giving advertisers long-requested control without submitting support tickets. What’s happening. Advertisers can now create and manage shared negative keyword lists directly in the UI. Lists support up to 5,000 negative keywords (one per line) and can be applied at either the campaign or account level. Match types function the same way in Performance Max as they do in traditional Search campaigns. Lists can also be edited, exported as CSV files, or removed from campaigns as needed. Microsoft notes that match type formatting requires brackets for ex…

Here’s a question every marketing leader should be asking right now: How healthy are your customer relationships? Not your campaigns, not your channels but the actual relationships. It’s a harder question than it sounds. Most organizations have spent the last two decades building around channels. Email had a team. Social had a team. In-store, ecommerce, service, each with their own stack, their own metrics, their own version of success. And from the inside, it looked like progress. Every team was hitting their numbers. But from the customer’s perspective it felt like dealing with multiple companies wearing the same logo. Marketing sends a “We miss you!” em…

Google Discover caught my attention in 2021, when it was driving millions of clicks a month to publishers. I underestimated how pervasive it would become. My feed cycles through soccer, television, Baltimore news, SEO, and world events — a reminder that Discover understands users at an almost uncomfortable level. It’s not limited to one app. Discover appears in Chrome new tabs, the Google app, Android home screens, Google.com on most mobile browsers, and other Google surfaces. If Google Discover is everywhere, it’s our job as SEOs to capitalize on this opportunity. Let me show you how. Essential considerations before we begin optimizing for Discover…

For years, ecommerce ran on a simple model: Google drove traffic, and your site did the selling. Rankings, clicks, and conversion rate determined performance. That model just changed. With the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and AI Mode, Google can now discover, compare, and complete purchases inside its own AI experiences. Search is shifting from a traffic channel to a transaction layer. Visibility now depends on whether Google’s AI selects your product data. When AI makes the recommendation and closes the sale, optimization moves upstream. The question isn’t just whether you rank. It’s whether you’re chosen. Here’s what changed and what SEO and AI optimiza…

Google published a new help page detailing how its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) works — offering merchants clearer guidance on how checkout flows operate across Google properties. What’s happening. The documentation explains how UCP and its UCP-powered checkout enable a native “Buy” button that moves the transaction directly onto Google surfaces, while merchants remain the seller of record. To activate the feature, merchants must implement the native_commerce attribute in Merchant Center. Payments run through stored Google Wallet credentials, and processors must support Google Pay tokens. Why we care. UCP was first introduced as part of Google’s agentic …

If your brand’s content arm has been active for a few years, I’m guessing you have plenty of material that can be revised to help you show up more prominently in AI search answers — we’ll call this AEO throughout the article. I’m getting bombarded with brand marketers’ questions about how to get AEO traction these days. “Revise your old content” is a favorite answer that often produces an “aha” moment for the other party, possibly because the nature of AEO is so forward-looking. That answer sparks a few important follow-up questions I’ll tackle below. How do you reformat content for better AEO performance? I like to lean on three principles when I tackle co…

If you’re not actively managing your branded search campaigns, you’re leaving money on the table and your reputation in the hands of competitors, review aggregators, and affiliate marketers. Brand protection through PPC isn’t just about bidding on your own name. It’s a strategy that spans defensive bidding, query monitoring, ad copy testing, and reputation management across the entire customer research journey. Why brand search deserves more than basic defense Most PPC managers treat brand campaigns as an afterthought. Set up a campaign, bid on the exact brand name, maybe add some close variants, and call it done. But the reality is far more complex, espe…

Google updated both its image SEO best practices and Google Discover help documents to clarify that Google uses both schema.org markup and the og:image meta tag as sources when determining image thumbnails in Google Search and Discover. Image SEO best practices. Google added a new section to the image SEO best practices help document named Specify a preferred image with metadata. In that section, Google wrote: “Google’s selection of an image preview is completely automated and takes into account a number of different sources to select which image on a given page is shown on Google (for example, a text result image or the preview image in Discover).” Here is ho…

Google is expanding its recurring billing policy to allow certified U.S. online pharmacies to promote prescription drugs with subscriptions and bundled services. What’s happening. Certified merchants can now offer: Prescription drug subscriptions — recurring billing for prescription medications. Prescription drug bundles — combining drugs with services like coaching or treatment programs, as long as the drug is the primary product. Prescription drug consultation services — recurring consults to determine prescription eligibility, either standalone or bundled with medications. Requirements for eligibility. Merchants must maintain certified status, submit…

In November 2025, Yoast announced a collaboration with NLWeb, an open web protocol developed by Microsoft designed to simplify building conversational interfaces for the web. Today, we are proud to introduce the first major result of that work: Yoast SEO Schema Aggregation. This is an opt in feature that brings your website’s structured data together in a clearer and more consistent way. By choosing to enable it, you can help search engines and intelligent agents better understand and use your content. If you want to see which schema types are available for your WordPress setup, our schema overview explains what is included across different product plans. Br…