SEO Tools and Resources

TikTok is giving entertainment marketers in Europe new tools to reach audiences with precision, leveraging AI to drive engagement and conversions for streaming and ticketed content. What’s happening. TikTok is introducing two new ad types for European campaigns: Streaming Ads: AI-driven ads for streaming platforms that show personalized content based on user engagement. Formats include a four-title video carousel or a multi-title media card. With 80% of TikTok users saying the app influences their streaming choices, these ads can directly shape viewing decisions. New Title Launch: Targets high-intent users using signals like genre preference and price sensitiv…

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…

There’s a growing problem in SEO and content marketing that doesn’t get talked about enough: everything is starting to sound the same. The same phrasing and structure, the same bland tone, the same safe language, the same robotic rhythm. The web is filling up with perfectly optimized content that no one actually enjoys reading. And that’s the real risk. Not that AI will replace SEOs, Google will penalize AI content, or automation will destroy search. The real danger is that brands lose their voice, their personality, and their identity in the name of efficiency. AI should make your SEO better, not blander. Faster, not flatter. Scalable, not soulless. Her…

If I hear “always be testing” one more time, I might scream. It was great advice in 2016. In 2026, it’s a great way to light your budget on fire. That mantra made sense when budgets were loose and platforms forgave a lot of chaos. Launch five audience tests simultaneously? Sure, why not! Swap out three creative variables at once? Go for it! But the rules have changed. Our new reality has tighter budgets, longer learning phases, and signal fragmentation everywhere. One poorly structured test can distort your performance for weeks, not days. That performance hit compounds fast. Modern experimentation is expensive and risky. Why pay that price when we have the p…

OpenAI has begun testing ads in ChatGPT for a limited set of U.S. users, with placements clearly labeled as sponsored. The platform’s internal economics suggest it’ll be available to everyone sooner rather than later. When it does, advertisers will have access to a rare new channel for demand capture. But advertisers should enter this space with their eyes wide open. For ChatGPT advertising to be successful, consumer behavior will need to change. And even if it does, ChatGPT won’t expand the advertising market. It’ll redistribute it. Why ChatGPT is moving into ads The fact that ads have arrived on ChatGPT should come as no surprise. By some estimates, a la…

If you’ve been in marketing long enough, you’ve probably lived through a few identity crises. First, we were channel experts. Then, we became integrated marketers, growth marketers, and performance marketers. Somewhere along the way, someone added “AI” to everyone’s job description and called it a day. Now, we’re entering the era of the full-stack marketer. From where I sit — particularly as a media leader — the role is starting to look a lot like product management. This doesn’t mean you need to start writing Jira tickets for fun (though some of you already do). It means that tomorrow’s most effective media leaders won’t just optimize campaigns. They’ll own outco…

When people speak naturally, their language flows. It’s often messy, incomplete, and not especially coherent. The Google search bar, however, required something different. Users had to compress their needs into short phrases or slightly longer queries — what’s traditionally classified as short-tail or long-tail. To make that work, users stacked queries across a journey, moving through a funnel from A to B and refining as they went. In the process, users often stripped out personalized nuance to match what they believed the search engine could understand. In response, SEO professionals built systems around that constraint, grouping queries by search volume, categorizin…

The largest annual survey of PPC professionals finds the industry under growing pressure — more opaque platforms, weaker measurement, and AI tools that help but haven’t transformed the day-to-day. Why we care. More than half of practitioners (53%) say PPC is harder than it was two years ago, up from 49%. The dominant reason isn’t competition — it’s that platforms are making more decisions advertisers can’t see or override, and that gap is only widening. With 89% of digital spend flowing to just three companies, advertisers who don’t build measurement infrastructure independent of platform reporting are increasingly flying blind. By the numbers: 1,306…

A growing share of search interactions now begins inside generative systems. Users open AI tools and ask questions the same way they’d ask a colleague: in full sentences, with context, and often across multiple follow-up prompts. Generative systems synthesize answers from sources they interpret as credible and relevant to the prompt. Visibility increasingly depends on whether a brand’s content aligns with the questions people ask AI systems, not just the keywords they type into search engines. Traditional search results haven’t disappeared. Today’s discovery environment blends ranked results, AI-generated summaries, and conversational assistants. This shift in…

Google redesigned the Asset Optimization section in Google Ads for Demand Gen campaigns, consolidating AI-powered creative controls into a single, cleaner interface. Why we care. Advertisers managing creative at scale now have a centralized panel to toggle automated features on or off — making the process less manual and time consuming. What’s new. The redesigned layout groups three key automation capabilities together: Auto-generated shorter videos — AI trims existing video assets into shorter cuts to qualify for additional placements. Automatic video resizing — Videos are adapted across multiple aspect ratios to maximize inventory coverage. Landi…

Google’s AI Overviews now appear on 14% of shopping queries, up 5.6x from 2.1% in November 2025, according to new Visibility Labs analysis. Ecommerce brands have been mostly unaffected by AI-driven click loss in Search. That seems to be changing. Why we care. As Google’s AI Overviews expand across product searches, ecommerce brands face a growing risk of losing visibility and clicks before shoppers reach standard organic or Shopping listings. The details. The analysis targeted product-intent keywords tied to results with a Shopping box, paid or organic — terms like “weighted blanket,” “mushroom coffee,” “protein powder,” and “blue T-shirts.” That produce…

Every time a new large language model (LLM) drops or Google tweaks an AI Overview, the SEO industry loses its mind. We develop this weird collective amnesia, scrambling to optimize for features that were actually mapped out in patent offices 10 years ago. We’re so obsessed with the now and the next that we’ve stopped looking at the blueprints. If you want to survive 2026, stop trying to be a futurist. Instead, be an archaeologist. To actually deliver for our clients, we need a research framework that isn’t just reactive. It has to be a balance: Look back at the foundational patents to understand the rules, and look ahead to see how AI is finally being given the mu…

Search is no longer a blue-links game. Discovery increasingly happens inside AI-generated answers – in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other LLM-driven interfaces. Visibility isn’t determined solely by rankings, and influence doesn’t always produce a click. Traditional SEO KPIs like rankings, impressions, and CTR don’t capture this shift. As search becomes recommendation-driven and attribution grows more opaque, SEO needs a new measurement layer. LLM consistency and recommendation share (LCRS) fills that gap. It measures how reliably and competitively a brand appears in AI-generated responses – serving a role similar to keyword tracking in traditiona…

Google Analytics is adding AI-powered Generated insights to the Home page and rolling out cross-channel budgeting (beta), moves designed to help marketers spot performance shifts faster and manage paid spend more strategically. What’s happening. Generated insights now appear directly on the Google Analytics Home screen, summarizing the top three changes since a user’s last visit. That includes notable configuration updates, anomalies in performance and emerging seasonality trends — all without digging into detailed reports. The feature is built for speed. Instead of manually scanning dashboards, marketers get a quick snapshot of what changed and why it may matter.…

Reddit is piloting a new AI-powered shopping experience that transforms its famously trusted community recommendations into shoppable product carousels — a move that could reshape how the platform monetizes its search traffic. What’s happening. A small group of U.S.-based users are seeing interactive product carousels appear in search results when their queries signal purchase intent — think “best noise-canceling headphones” or “top budget laptops.” The carousels sit at the bottom of search results and include pricing, images and direct retailer links. Products are surfaced from items actually mentioned in Reddit posts and comments — not just ad inventory. …

I stopped using press releases several years ago. I thought they had lost most of their impact. Then a conversation with a good friend and mentor changed my perspective. She explained that the days of expecting organic features from simply publishing a press release were long gone. But she was still getting strong results by directly pitching relevant journalists once the release went live, using its key points and a link as added leverage. I reluctantly tried her approach, and the results were phenomenal, earning my client multiple organic features. My first thought was, “If it worked this well with a small tweak, I can make it even more effective with a…

Google Ads is now displaying examples of how “Landing Page Images” can be used inside Performance Max (PMax) campaigns — offering clearer visibility into how website visuals may automatically become ad creatives. How it works. If advertisers opt in, Google can pull images directly from a brand’s landing pages and dynamically turn them into ads. Now when creating your campaigns, before setting it live, Google Ads will show you the automated creatives it plans on setting live. Why we care. For PMax campaigns your site is part of your asset library. Any banner, hero image, or product visual could surface across Search, Display, YouTube, or Discover placements — …

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…

Every week, thousands of media buyers perform the same ritual, opening Meta Ads Manager, scanning metrics, and deciding which campaigns and ads were winners and which were losers. If ROAS is positive, they’re pleased. If not, the mouse quickly heads toward the toggle button to disable the asset. This is the scoreboard trap some advertisers fall into. When you treat metrics like a scoreboard, you’re looking at the outcome without understanding the full picture or how to improve going forward. The score of the game doesn’t include the fact that your strikers aren’t getting any passes from midfield. To scale performance, it’s important to move from reporting to diag…

Remember when it was easy to rank partial-match domains and headings to commercially intended search queries? When paired with the right methodologies and conversion-optimized widgets, you could silently earn tens of thousands of dollars in affiliate revenue per month with minimal maintenance. It was possible to get by with just updating articles for relevancy and freshness signals, for example. Pressure-testing Google’s spam update Before the experiment, I had spent several months scaling an affiliate initiative in a much more above-board way for a longstanding website in a YMYL category. We had success with hiring subject matter experts (SMEs) to wri…

Google is expanding beta access to text guidelines for all advertisers globally in AI Max, giving brands more control over how AI-generated ad copy aligns with their standards. What’s happening. Text guidelines are now available worldwide across AI Max for Search and Performance Max campaigns, with full language and vertical support. The feature lets you shape AI-generated creative using natural-language instructions — such as excluding certain terms or avoiding specific phrases — to ensure messaging stays on-brand. Why we care. As AI-powered creative becomes central to your performance marketing, brand safety and tone control are top concerns. Text customiz…

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 is rolling out an update to AI Mode for recipe results that it hopes will make recipe bloggers happy. Google’s Robby Stein said on X, “We’ve heard feedback on recipe results in AI Mode, and we’re making updates to better connect people with recipe creators on the web.” The changes aim to make it easier to click over to recipe sites, though I am not 100% certain yet whether the recipe summaries turn recipes into AI slop. “Starting today, when you search for meal ideas like “easy dinners for two,” you can tap on the dish to see links to relevant recipe sites, plus a short overview of the dish to help with inspiration,” Stein added. What it looks like. Her…

You’ve probably heard developers talk about the DOM. Maybe you’ve even inspected it in DevTools or seen it referenced in Google Search Console. But what, exactly, is it? And why should SEOs care? Let’s take a look at what it is, why it’s important, and how to best optimize it. What is the DOM? The Document Object Model (DOM) is a browser’s live, in-memory representation of your webpage. It acts as the interface that allows programs like JavaScript to interact with your content. The DOM is organized as a hierarchical tree, similar to a family tree: The document: This is the root of the tree. Elements: HTML tags like <body>, <p>, and <a…

Until a few years ago, schema helped search engines extract basic facts and display visual enhancements like star ratings and sitelinks. However, in the AI-driven search world, schema plays a different and fundamental role for local SEO, helping Google and other AI systems understand who you are, what you do, where you operate, and how confidently your information can be reused. Improving rankings isn’t as relevant. Now, schema helps reduce confusion for Google and reinforces your business as a stable, trustworthy local entity across traditional search, local packs, AI Overviews, rich results, and external AI platforms. Let’s dig into how schema helps local S…