SEO Tools and Resources

Many of us use various generative AI tools to generate marketing ideas and improve ad campaign outcomes. Prompting can be a powerful alternative to working solo or brainstorming with colleagues. It improves productivity and expands your options. In this article, I’ll cover some of my favorite marketing prompts for ad campaigns. Use these suggestions to spark ideas for your own prompts. Why use prompts for online ads? Prompts quickly give you a range of ad elements — triggers, emotions, actions, and audiences. You can often repurpose prompt outputs across channels and initiatives — ads, email, landing pages, social media, and offers. When you get clo…

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…

Privacy laws are tightening, browser extensions are blocking data, and ad platforms are demanding cleaner data. As a result, how you track user behavior online is changing fast. Server-side tagging can help you reduce data loss while collecting cleaner, privacy-compliant data. Here’s what server-side tagging is, when it makes sense to implement it, and our experience with providers like Elevar and Littledata. What is server-side tagging? Traditionally, tracking scripts like Meta Pixel or Google Analytics run in the browser. This is client-side (browser-side) tagging. With server-side tagging, those scripts run on a server you control instead of the visitor’…

If you shelved your inbound strategy this past year, you can shelve your Inbound conference mugs and swag with it. HubSpot renamed its annual Inbound conference in Boston this September to Unbound. A note on the event site explains the thinking: “This evolution is our response to that reality. INBOUND is becoming UNBOUND because growth no longer fits within a single framework or function. Today, it covers marketing, sales, service, and operations across the full customer journey in an AI-driven environment. UNBOUND reflects that expanded reality and the mindset required to lead through it.” Inbound is outbound. HubSpot pioneered inbound marketing, which uses…

AI bot activity surged 300% in 2025, with media and publishing among the most targeted sectors, according to a new Akamai report. Why we care. AI bots are reshaping how content is discovered and consumed, shifting users from search clicks to instant answers in chat interfaces. Publishers are seeing fewer visits from organic search and often don’t get attribution in AI-generated answers. It’s also eroding ad and subscription models. The threat is real. Publishers now face two threats: Training bots that ingest content for models. Fetcher bots that extract real-time content for immediate answers. These pose the bigger risk because they capture value as it’s…

Google may be making local search ads more interactive, potentially changing how advertisers showcase multiple locations and capture nearby demand. What’s happening. Google Ads appears to be testing a new format that displays multiple business locations in a swipeable carousel within search ads, allowing users to browse options directly in the ad unit. How it works. Instead of listing locations separately, the new format groups them into a horizontal carousel with business details like ratings and proximity, enabling users to swipe through locations without leaving the search results page. Zoom in. Early comparisons show a shift from static, stacked locati…

Google is consolidating its advertising and measurement resources into a single destination, aiming to make it easier for developers and technical marketers to build, automate and scale campaigns. What’s happening. Google has introduced a new Advertising and Measurement Developers Hub, a centralized site designed to help users access tools, documentation and support across its ad ecosystem. The hub brings together resources for products like the Google Ads API, Google Analytics and publisher tools such as AdMob and Google Ad Manager, all organized into categories including advertising, tagging and measurement. How it works. The site offers a streamlined homep…

Most agencies present prospective clients with an account audit as part of their sales process. The purpose is twofold: To provide immediate value (usually without strings attached). To demonstrate that they know their stuff. But how often do brand marketers turn the tables and audit their agencies in their RFP? I’m the head of performance marketing at a marketing agency, so I’m clearly writing from a biased perspective. However, over my decade-plus in the industry, I’ve seen too many brands settle for “good enough” because they didn’t know which questions would reveal the cracks in a potential partner’s strategy and approach. If I were a brand lookin…

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…

Meta Platforms is making it easier for advertisers to implement tracking, reducing technical friction for teams running campaigns across platforms. What’s happening. Meta released an official Pixel template inside Google Tag Manager, replacing the need for third-party or community-built workarounds. How it works. The new template allows advertisers to reuse their existing GA4 dataLayer, meaning events already configured for Google Analytics 4 can be leveraged without rebuilding tracking from scratch. It also automatically maps enhanced e-commerce events such as purchases, add-to-cart actions, content views and checkout initiations, eliminating the need for dup…

Ask most ecommerce brands who owns their product feed, and the answer is almost always the same: the paid media team. Maybe a feed management tool sits under PPC. Maybe the shopping team built the feed years ago, and nobody’s touched the titles since. Either way, SEO rarely has a seat at the table, and it’s often forgotten as part of the broader feed management strategy. Whether you’re worried about AI search or traditional clicks, you’re missing out on opportunities by excluding SEO from your feed management strategy. AI shopping results are grounded in Google Shopping data Up to 83% of ChatGPT carousel products match Google Shopping’s organic results, ac…

The March 2026 core update finished rolling out today after 12 days and 4 hours, completing Google’s first broad ranking update of the year. What happened. Google confirmed the rollout ended at 06:12 PDT, per its Search Status Dashboard. The update began March 27 and impacted search rankings globally. Google previously said this was “a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.” The timeline. Google originally estimated the March 2026 core update would take up to two weeks to complete. Started: March 27. Completed: April 8. Total rollout: 12 days, 4 hours The context. This was t…

Hreflang has long been a core mechanism in international SEO, directing users to the right regional version of a page. That approach worked when search engines primarily returned static results. AI-driven synthesis changes that. Instead of returning lists of links, AI systems construct answers. They don’t need, nor want, your perfectly implemented hreflang tags. They aren’t looking for instructions on which page to serve. They’re trying to determine which answer is best supported across sources. Your content has to hold up when the model compares it against everything it’s seen, regardless of language or origin. If it doesn’t, it won’t be used. What hreflang …

You’re facing a major shift as familiar manual targeting levers disappear in favor of AI-driven discovery. Platforms’ automated tools are collapsing campaign types, obscuring data, and replacing manual targeting with intent-based algorithms. This is a shift from selection to prediction. You won’t adapt by holding onto old controls — you’ll adapt by learning to engineer the inputs that replace them. Here’s how to make sure you have the tools to stay on top. The end of manual targeting as you knew it You previously relied on granular keyword lists, demographic filters, and custom exclusions to target ideal customers. You told platforms exactly who to target and p…

Google is giving advertisers new visibility into whether its automated recommendations actually drive performance — a long-standing blind spot in the platform. What’s happening. A new “Results” tab within Recommendations shows the incremental impact of bidding and budget changes after they’ve been applied, allowing marketers to evaluate outcomes instead of relying on assumptions. How it works. The feature attributes performance changes to specific recommendations, helping advertisers understand what effect adjustments like budget increases or bid strategy shifts had on results. Why we care. Marketers can now validate whether recommendations improved perfor…

Google is giving advertisers more control over how AI generates ad copy, making it easier to scale campaigns without losing brand consistency. What’s happening. Google Ads is rolling out a beta feature that allows marketers to copy text guidelines from existing campaigns and apply them to new ones, eliminating the need to rewrite brand rules from scratch. How it works. Advertisers can replicate approved tone, style and messaging rules across campaigns in one click, ensuring AI-generated ads stay aligned with brand standards while reducing setup time. Why we care. The feature helps teams launch campaigns faster by reusing what already works, while maintaini…

Google says its AI-powered advertising tools are starting to deliver meaningful results, including major revenue gains for some retailers, as it experiments with how ads work in AI-driven search. The big picture. Fears that AI chatbots like ChatGPT would disrupt Google’s core search business haven’t materialized, and instead the company’s ads business continues to grow, suggesting AI may be expanding how people search rather than replacing it. By the numbers: Alphabet Inc. surpassed $400 billion in revenue in 2025. Q4 ad revenue: $82.28 billion (+13.5% YoY). YouTube ads: $11.38 billion (+~9% YoY). What’s happened. Google is embedding ads into its A…

Google Search is evolving beyond links and answers into a system that completes tasks, potentially fundamentally changing how users interact with the web. That’s according to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, speaking on the Cheeky Pint podcast. Why we care. Google is signaling a move from information retrieval to task execution. Search becoming agentic. Traditional search behavior is already changing and will continue to, Pichai said. “If I fast-forward, a lot of what are just information-seeking queries will be agentic in Search. You’ll be completing tasks. You’ll have many threads running.” Pichai also described a future where Google Search acts less like a…

Google’s AI Overviews answered a standard factual benchmark correctly 91% of the time in February, up from 85% in October, according to a New York Times analysis with AI startup Oumi. However, Google handles more than 5 trillion searches per year, so that means tens of millions of answers every hour may be wrong. Why we care. We’ve watched Google shift from linking to sources to summarizing them for more than two years. This report suggests AI Overviews are improving, but still mix correct answers, weak sourcing, and clear errors in ways that can mislead searchers and reshape which publishers get visibility and clicks. The details. Oumi tested 4,326 Google se…

Google has begun placing sponsored ad units directly inside the Images tab of mobile search results — a new placement that eligible campaigns can access without any changes to existing keyword targeting. What’s happening. When a user navigates to the Images tab within Google Search on mobile, they may now see sponsored units appearing within the image grid. Each unit shows a full image creative as the primary visual alongside text, and is clearly labelled “Sponsored” — consistent with how Google labels ads elsewhere in search results. How it works. Eligible campaigns can serve into the Images tab without any changes to keyword targeting or campaign structure. The …

Over 30% of outbound clicks go to just 10 domains, with Google alone taking more than 20%, according to a new Semrush study published today. ChatGPT also relies less on the live web, triggering search on 34.5% of queries, down from 46% in late 2024. The big picture. ChatGPT’s growth has plateaued, and its role in how users navigate the web is evolving unevenly. Referral traffic from ChatGPT grew 206%, comparing January 2025 to January 2026. The details. Most ChatGPT referral traffic still goes to a small set of sites, even as more sites receive some traffic. Google accounts for 21.6% of all ChatGPT referral traffic. The next nine domains bring the…

Google is rolling out new Google Maps features that make it easier to contribute photos, reviews, and local insights, while adding Gemini-powered caption suggestions. Local Guides redesign. Contributor profiles are getting more visibility. Total points now appear more prominently, Local Guide levels are easier to spot, and badge designs have been refreshed. Top contributors will also stand out more in reviews with new gold profile indicators. AI caption drafts. Google is also introducing AI-generated caption drafts. Gemini analyzes selected images and suggests text you can edit or discard. Caption suggestions are available in English on iOS in the U.…

Google once attributed two of Barry Schwartz’s Search Engine Land articles to me — a misclassification at the annotation layer that briefly rewrote authorship in Google’s systems. For a few days, when you searched for certain Search Engine Land articles Schwartz had written, Google listed me as the author. The articles appeared in my entity’s publication list and were connected to my Knowledge Panel. What happened illustrates something the SEO industry has almost entirely overlooked: that annotation — not the content itself — is the key to what users see and thus your success. How Google annotated the page and got the author wrong Googlebot crawled those pa…

Many of today’s PPC tools were designed to be easily accessible to ecommerce. That doesn’t mean lead gen can’t take advantage of them, but it does mean more intentional application is required. Lead gen with AI still requires a creative approach, and many conventional ecommerce tools still apply — but not always in the same way. Here are the priorities that matter most for succeeding with lead gen using AI. Disclosure: I’m a Microsoft employee. While this guidance is platform-agnostic, I’ll reference examples that lean into Microsoft Advertising tooling. The principles apply broadly across platforms. 1. Fix your conversion data first This is the single …

For most people, “Mad Men” means the TV show. But the phrase points to something more specific: Madison Avenue in the 1950s and ‘60s, when agencies grew brands through persuasion, positioning, and earned trust in a world of scarce media channels and powerful gatekeepers. If you wanted attention, you bought your way in, then made your product the obvious choice. When the internet arrived and Google made the chaos navigable, an entire industry was built on getting brands found. Search and SEO became one of the most commercially valuable disciplines in marketing. That model isn’t disappearing. But something new is taking shape on top of it — and most of the industry …