SEO Tools and Resources

Microsoft added query-to-page mapping to its AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, letting you connect AI grounding queries directly to cited URLs. Why we care. The original dashboard showed queries and pages separately, limiting optimization. Now you can tie specific AI-triggering queries to the exact cited pages, so you can prioritize updates based on real AI-driven demand — not guesses. The details. The new Grounding Query–Page Mapping feature links two existing views in the AI Performance dashboard: Click a grounding query to see which pages are cited Click a page to see which grounding queries drive its citations Mapping is many-to-many: o…

A quiet but important policy update is coming to Google Shopping ads next month, requiring some merchants to verify their accounts before running ads featuring political content. What’s changing. From April 16, merchants running Shopping ads with certain political content in nine countries will need to verify their Google Ads account as an election advertiser. Google will also outright prohibit some political Shopping ads in India. The countries affected. Argentina, Australia, Chile, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Why we care. Shopping ads aren’t typically associated with political advertising — this updat…

Influencer content isn’t just a brand awareness play. It’s showing up in Google SERPs, Google AI Overviews, and AI answers, making keyword strategy an essential part of every influencer brief. When we brief an influencer, we assign them a keyword. Not as a nice-to-have, but as a required part of the strategy, usually woven into the script, the caption, the on-screen text, and the hashtags. That might sound like an SEO team overreaching into an influencer team’s lane. But in 2026, the lane lines don’t exist. Social content is search inventory. If your influencer marketing program isn’t built around that reality, you’re leaving a significant and measurable shar…

Google Business Profile (GBP) may be getting shoved down the SERPs by ads and AI Overviews more than ever, but it’s still a top source of inbound leads for local businesses — and one of the fastest ways to improve rankings with simple fixes. Here’s a five-step audit to find and fix the gaps most businesses miss. 1. Evaluate Google review velocity and recency It’s a common misconception that the business with the most Google reviews wins in Google Maps ranking. While a high review count provides social proof, Google’s algorithm has more of a “what have you done for me lately?” attitude. The number of reviews you get a month, and how recent your last review w…

Google is laying the groundwork for “agentic commerce,” where users can complete purchases directly inside AI-driven search experiences. What’s happening. Google has published a new onboarding guide for its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in Merchant Center, outlining how merchants can integrate with the system and enable checkout directly from product listings in AI Mode and Gemini. The big picture. As AI search evolves from discovery to transaction, Google is pushing to keep users within its ecosystem by embedding shopping and checkout into conversational experiences. How it works. Merchants must first complete a technical integration, then submit an inter…

PPC performance conversations often focus on best practices. Account structures should be clean. Match types controlled. Budgets scaled gradually. Campaigns should avoid overlap. Everything should be logical, efficient, and easy to explain. That foundation matters. It creates consistency and avoids obvious inefficiencies. But it’s not where the biggest gains come from. Looking back over the past 10 years, many of the most meaningful performance improvements didn’t come from refining those frameworks. They came from testing ideas that didn’t quite fit them — things that felt slightly uncomfortable but aligned with how platforms actually beh…

Google is pushing advertisers toward a more modern, scalable infrastructure for Shopping integrations—bringing new capabilities (including AI tools) directly into scripting workflows. What’s happening. Google Ads scripts will begin supporting the Merchant API starting April 22nd, as Google prepares to retire the Content API for Shopping on August 18th. The new API will be available as an Advanced API in the scripts editor, while the existing Content API remains usable until its official sunset. What’s new: The Merchant API introduces a modular architecture, breaking functionality into sub-APIs that allow for faster updates, easier maintenance, and fewer disruption…

Maddie Lightening, head of paid media at Hallam, joined me to talk through the mistakes, lessons and mindset shifts that have shaped her career in PPC. With more than a decade of experience across search, social, programmatic, digital out of home and ABM, she shared a candid look at the realities of leading paid media in a fast-moving industry. The reporting mistake that doubled performance One of Maddie’s early mistakes involved misreporting performance due to account currency differences. Working with an Australian billing setup while reporting in GBP, she unknowingly halved the reported results because conversion values were being translated. The issue only surf…

As an SEO professional, you’re often asked to solve what appears to be a technical problem: organic traffic is declining. Standard procedure is a deep dive into technical performance, algorithm updates, technical debt, or content gaps. You review logs, crawl the site, and check Google Search Console. But what happens when the data reveals that the root cause isn’t found in the sitemap, the content, or the backlink profile — but is instead located in the boardroom, the warehouse, and the customer service department? Not long ago, I audited a portfolio of ecommerce properties in a highly regulated niche. These brands were pandemic-era superstars. They had performed …

Over the past year, a new feature has started appearing across food, lifestyle, and travel blogs: AI buttons. You’ve probably seen them already. Buttons labeled things like: “Summarize with AI” “Save this recipe to ChatGPT” “Remember this site” “Ask AI about this recipe” Plugins from Feast, Hubbub, Shareaholic, and others now make these buttons easy to deploy, and hundreds of bloggers have started experimenting with them. But as adoption has grown, so has the pushback. Microsoft recently published research warning about something it calls AI recommendation poisoning, and some SEOs have begun saying these buttons could be seen as a form of prompt …

We launched the Yoast SEO Task List in December to give you a clear, actionable to-do list for your site’s SEO. In this update, we’ve added two new tasks, improved how you navigate to fixes, and resolved a bug that was showing tasks in the wrong language. A quick recap: what does the Task List do? The Task List scans your site and surfaces specific content that needs attention, ranked by priority with an estimated time to fix. Instead of guessing what to work on next, you click a task and Yoast takes you directly to the right place to make the improvement. Think of it as a personal SEO assistant that knows your site. What’s new in this update New task: i…

When a client calls about a damaging search result, you might typically default to one of two responses: “we can suppress it” or “there’s nothing we can do.” Both skip the middle ground — where Google’s removal tools live. Google provides tools to remove or deindex content from search results. They’re underused, frequently misunderstood, and often conflated. This guide breaks down what each tool does, when to use it, and what it can’t do — so you can triage client situations accurately and set expectations that hold. The distinction that changes everything: removal vs. deindexing Before you use any tool, get one thing right with clients: the difference betw…

At midnight on Jan. 5, hackers took over our Google Ads Manager Account (MCC). We weren’t alone. While it’s hard to get an exact count, hundreds, if not thousands, of agencies have been affected by the hacks, in turn affecting tens of thousands of accounts. While I wouldn’t wish this experience on our worst enemy, having been through it, I have some insights that I hope can help you prevent the same experience from happening to your MCC account. How we were hacked Despite having two-factor authentication (2FA) and allowed domains enabled, the hackers were able to get into our account via an employee’s email address. It was clearly a targeted hack: the night of…

Despite all the shiny new capabilities at our disposal, many professionals seem stuck in a cycle of “AI Groundhog Day.” You open a chat window, carefully craft a prompt, paste in your context, and get a great result. An hour later, you do it all over again. If this is how you use AI to automate, you’re still doing manual work — you’re just doing it in a chat box. To move from using AI to building with it, you need to shift from a human doer to a true human orchestrator. That means stopping one-off prompts and starting to build systems. In this new phase of AI automation, what you really need are AI skills. I explore this shift in my new book, “The AI Amplifie…

A growing number of advertisers say their Google Ads campaigns were suddenly hit with mass disapprovals tied to DNS and 500 server errors — even when their sites appeared to be working normally. The issue is raising fresh concerns about platform reliability and the risk of sudden performance disruptions. Driving the news. PPC advertisers began flagging widespread problems this week across Google Ads accounts, with multiple agency leaders saying clients were affected at the same time. Managing Director at Cornerhouse Media, Ryan Berry, said more than 1,500 ads were disapproved in a single account around 1:30 p.m. UTC. Others said they received overnight emails …

Roll the clock back five, 10, or 15 years, and a PPC practitioner’s value was directly tied to tactical proficiency. Not anymore. Today, Google and Microsoft automate much of the tactical work. Machine learning and AI manage bids, test creatives, and find audiences faster and more efficiently than any human could. Unfortunately, this reality has left many veteran practitioners in a mid-career identity crisis. If algorithms pull the levers, what exactly are we getting paid to do? Where is our sustainable value to the business? Here’s what that evolution looks like in practice and how the hard skills in your playbook have changed. PPC shifted from tactical e…

There’s a phrase PPC experts reach for whenever they get a tough question. At conferences, online, and on client calls. Two words, a smug smile, and absolutely zero useful information: “It depends.” This has been bugging me for as long as I can remember. Turns out it’s not just a PPC thing, either. Aleyda Solis gave an excellent presentation calling out the exact same pattern in SEO. So we’re dealing with an industry-wide epidemic here. Two disciplines, same cop-out. Not every question is equally hard to answer. “What’s the maximum number of RSAs per ad group?” Just look it up. “Why did my CPA spike last week?” That takes data plus interpretation. “Wh…

Addy Osmani, a director of engineering at Google Cloud AI, published new guidance on Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO), a model for making content usable by AI agents. He positioned this AEO (not to be confused with Answer Engine Optimization) as parallel to SEO, built for systems that fetch, parse, and act on content autonomously. What he’s seeing. AI agents collapse multi-step browsing into a single request. They don’t scroll, click, or engage with UI — they extract what they need instantly. That makes most traditional engagement metrics irrelevant. The token problem. Osmani highlighted token limits as a core constraint shaping content performance. Large pag…

Google is giving advertisers more control when appealing disapproved ads in bulk — a small but meaningful update that could save time and reduce accidental resubmissions. Driving the news. Google has added a new option in its bulk ad review workflow that lets advertisers select ads from specific campaigns when requesting a policy re-review. Previously, advertisers appealing disapproved ads in bulk often had to resubmit all eligible ads across an account — including older campaigns that hadn’t been updated. That created extra work and could clutter the review process with ads that weren’t actually fixed. What’s new. Advertisers can now click a new “Sele…

Sometimes the keywords you need to rank for are the ones you’re not allowed to use. Whether it’s trademark restrictions, brand guidelines, or industry stigma, you might be asked to capture demand without using the exact terms people search. Here’s how to navigate that challenge, align with search behavior, and still build visibility. When the keyword you need is off-limits It’s a common scenario in SEO: “We want to rank for (insert super competitive search term),” and, in the next breath, “Don’t use (that exact same phrase) on the page.” My very first SEO job, over 10 years ago, set the goal of ranking in the top 3 for the term “custom koozies.” I’ve…

OpenAI is emerging as a new advertising channel, but early advertiser sentiment is mixed as brands grapple with limited data, unclear performance, and a rapidly evolving product. Driving the news. Two months after launching ads in ChatGPT, advertisers are experimenting — but still lack clear measurement tools and performance benchmarks. Early campaigns are largely impression-based, with little insight into outcomes. CPMs have reportedly been high, with initial minimum spends in the six figures. Some advertisers say the product feels early and slow to mature. The vibe check. According to Ad Age reporting, advertiser sentiment sits somewhere between cauti…

Google is adding three new “agentic” safety features to Ads Advisor, its AI assistant inside Google Ads, aimed at reducing manual work while tightening security and compliance. As campaigns grow more complex, advertisers are spending more time fixing policy issues, managing access, and handling certifications. Google’s pitch: let AI handle the heavy lifting so marketers can focus on performance. What’s new. The update introduces proactive troubleshooting, always-on security monitoring, and instant certifications — all powered by AI and Gemini capabilities. Zoom in: Ads Advisor can now flag and help resolve policy violations automatically, even before adve…

Some advertisers say ad reviews are taking more than seven days — far beyond normal timelines. What’s happening. Matthew Skelton, a senior PPC specialist, has flagged a pattern many advertisers are now recognizing: Demand Gen campaigns stuck in “in review” status for days at a time. The delays are showing up across multiple accounts and industries, with no obvious policy violations or warnings to explain the holdup. Notably, the issue doesn’t appear to be affecting other campaign types. Search and Performance Max campaigns are still moving through review as expected, pointing to a problem specific to Demand Gen. Why we care. For advertisers using Demand Gen t…

Reddit is doubling down on commerce, rolling out a suite of new shopping features designed to help retailers capitalise on the platform’s growing role in the purchase journey. Why now. Reddit’s shopping momentum is hard to ignore — the platform has seen a 40% year-over-year increase in shopping conversations, and, according to Reddit, 84% of shoppers say they feel more confident in purchases after researching products on Reddit. Despite this, Fospha’s State of Retail Commerce 2026 study identifies Reddit as the most undervalued channel in the media mix. What’s new. Collection Ads — a new Dynamic Product Ad format that pairs a lifestyle hero image with shoppab…

Google released its March 2026 spam update today at 3:20 p.m. It’s the second announced Google algorithm update of 2026, following the February 2026 Discover core update. This is the first spam update of 2026. Google’s most recent spam update was in August 2025. Timing. This update may only “take a few days to complete,” Google said. On LinkedIn, Google added: “This is a normal spam update, and it will roll out for all languages and locations. The rollout may take a few days to complete.” Why we care. This is the second announced Google algorithm update of 2026. It’s unclear what spam this update targets, but if you see ranking or traffic changes in…