OpenAI Search Crawler Passes 55% Coverage In Hostinger Study
Hostinger analyzed 66 billion bot requests across more than 5 million websites and found that AI crawlers are following two different paths. LLM training bots are losing access to the…
ChatGPT Gets Googled More Than YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok
I was mucking around on Google Trends when I discovered something curious: ChatGPT’s global search interest overtook top platforms last year, and nobody noticed. That felt impossible. For instance, YouTube…
Perplexity AI Interview Explains How AI Search Works
I recently spoke with Jesse Dwyer of Perplexity about SEO and AI search about what SEOs should be focusing on in terms of optimizing for AI search. His answers offered…
What Actually Works (Based on Data, Not Speculation)
Most advice on ranking in AI Overviews is speculative, so we’ve analyzed millions of AI Overview responses and citations to find out what actually works. Our own research shows AI…
The Great Decoupling
SEO died as a traffic channel the moment pipeline stopped following page views. Traffic is either down for many sites, or its growth nowhere near reflects growth rates of 2019-2022,…
How Entity Linking Can Support Local Search Success
Search has changed dramatically, including local search. Search engines and AI systems now incorporate semantic understanding to generate citations and results. To gain semantic understanding, they need to know which…
Every Marketer Says You Need “Taste”. Here’s What That Actually Means
For the first time ever, anyone can make content in seconds. With just a couple of prompts, an LLM can generate an entire blog post that you can publish on…
Why Agentic AI May Flatten Brand Differentiators
James LePage, Dir Engineering AI, co-lead of the WordPress AI Team, described the future of the Agentic AI Web, where websites become interactive interfaces and data sources and the value…
Head Of WordPress AI Team Explains SEO For AI Agents
James LePage, Director Engineering AI at Automattic, and the co-lead of the WordPress AI Team, shared his insights into things publishers should be thinking about in terms of SEO. He’s…
How To Analyze Google Discover
TL;DR To generate the most value from Discover, view it through an entity-focused lens. People, places, organisations, teams, et al. Your best chance of success in Discover with an individual…
Our Top 5 Blog Posts of 2025 (And What Made Them Work)
We’re sharing the content that worked hardest for us in 2025, to give you an idea of what might work for you in 2026. And, naturally, we wanted to remind…
How Much Of Your Paid Media Budget Should Be Allocated To Upper Funnel?
Determining a budget split between upper and lower-funnel is a recurring topic in paid media. Upper-funnel campaigns (typically awareness and interest) create future demand, while lower-funnel campaigns capture existing demand…
ChatGPT Gets Googled More Than YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok
I was mucking around on Google Trends the other week when I discovered something curious: ChatGPT’s global search interest overtook top platforms earlier this year, and nobody noticed. That felt…
Free Subdomain Hosting Makes SEO Harder
Google’s John Mueller warns that free subdomain hosting services create unnecessary SEO challenges, even for sites doing everything else right. The advice came in response to a Reddit post from…
Google On Phantom Noindex Errors In Search Console
Google’s John Mueller recently answered a question about phantom noindex errors reported in Google Search Console. Mueller asserted that these reports may be real. Noindex In Google Search Console A…
Vibe Coding Your Own SEO Tools — Whiteboard Friday
These are things that I tried and tested myself, and I’m happy with the results. You can always make it better. You can improve things. But it does give you…
ChatGPT To Begin Testing Ads In The United States
Just today, OpenAI confirmed it will begin testing advertising in the United States for ChatGPT Free and ChatGPT Go users in the coming weeks, marking the first time ads will…
Total Budgets Expand, Direct Offers, & Shopping Promotions
Welcome to this week’s PPC Pulse. This week’s news centers around quite a few Google updates. Google rolled out campaign total budgets in open beta, introduced a new Direct Offers…
UCP Debate, Trends Gets Gemini, Health AIO Concerns
Welcome to this week’s Pulse. Google is laying more groundwork for agent-led shopping, Google Trends is getting a Gemini helper inside Explore, and Google appears to have responded to a…
Create a Brand Guide That Drives Search Visibility
AI tools make it easier than ever to create content at scale, but they’ve also made it harder than ever to stand out. When everyone uses similar tools and targets…
10 Remarketing Lists To Boost PPC Performance
Remarketing lists continue to be one of the more dependable tools inside PPC accounts, especially for search campaigns. They give advertisers clearer control over who sees ads, how bids are…
WordPress Membership Plugin Flaw Exposes Sensitive Stripe Data
An advisory was published about a vulnerability discovered in the Membership Plugin By StellarWP which exposes sensitive Stripe payment setup data on WordPress sites using the plugin. The flaw enables…
Google Health AI Overviews Cite YouTube More Than Any Hospital Site
Google’s AI Overviews may be relying on YouTube more than official medical sources when answering health questions, according to new research from SEO platform SE Ranking. The study analyzed 50,807…
All In One SEO WordPress Vulnerability Affects Over 3 Million Sites
A security vulnerability was discovered in the popular All in One SEO (AIOSEO) WordPress plugin that made it possible for low-privileged users to access a site’s global AI access token,…
Building A Brand Is Not A Strategy, It Is A Starting Point
“Build a brand” has become one of the most repeated phrases in SEO over the past year. It is offered as both diagnosis and cure. If traffic is declining, build…
SEO Is No Longer A Single Discipline
Most people have a favorite coffee mug. You reach for it without thinking. It fits your hand. It does its job. For a long time, SEO felt like that mug.…
Publishers Expect Search Traffic To Fall Over 40%
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has published its annual predictions report based on a survey of 280 senior media leaders across 51 countries and territories. The report…
Social Media Trust Is Breaking Down (And How You Can Rebuild It)
Social media is an integrated part of life in the U.S., with usage growing among adults. Pew Research Center reports that YouTube (84%) and Facebook (71%) remain the most widely…
YouTube Expands Monetization For Some Controversial Issues
YouTube is updating its Advertiser-friendly content guidelines to allow more videos about certain “controversial issues” to earn full ad revenue, as long as the content is non-graphic and presented in…
Why Paid Search Foundations Still Matter In An AI-Focused World
At this point in time, AI search products such as Google and Microsoft’s PMax (and now AI Max) have firmly woven themselves into the toolkits of search marketers around the…