Early Data Shows Fewer Domains In US
NewzDash published an analysis comparing Discover visibility before and after Google’s February 2026 Discover core update, using panel data from millions of US users tracked through its DiscoverPulse tool. It…
SerpApi Challenges Google’s Right To Sue Over SERP Scraping
SerpApi filed a motion to dismiss Google’s federal lawsuit, two months after Google sued the company under the DMCA for allegedly bypassing its SearchGuard anti-scraping system. The filing goes beyond…
4 Sites That Recovered From Google’s December 2025 Core Update
The December 2025 core update had a significant impact on a large number of sites. Each of the sites below that have done well are either long term clients, past…
Google Explains Why It May Not Use A Sitemap
Google’s John Mueller answered a question about why a Search Console was providing a sitemap fetch error even though server logs show that GoogleBot successfully fetched it. The question was…
New Meridian Tool, Performance Max Learning Path – PPC Pulse
Welcome to this week’s PPC Pulse, where this week’s focus is on scenario-based planning in both Google and Microsoft platforms. Google introduced a new Scenario Planner within Meridian, giving marketers…
Google AI Mode Link Update, Click Share Data & ChatGPT Fan-Outs – SEO Pulse
Welcome to the week’s SEO Pulse: updates affect how links appear in AI search results, where organic clicks are going, and which languages ChatGPT uses to find sources. Here’s what…
‘Summarize With AI’ Buttons Used To Poison AI Recommendations
Microsoft’s Defender Security Research Team published research describing what it calls “AI Recommendation Poisoning.” The technique involves businesses hiding prompt-injection instructions within website buttons labeled “Summarize with AI.” When you…
Google Ads Surfaces PMax Search Partner Domains In Placement Report
Some advertisers are now seeing Performance Max placement data populate in Google Ads reporting, including Search Partner domains and impression counts that had previously been absent from the report. PPC…
14 GEO Conferences to Attend in 2026
Whether you call it GEO, AEO, LLMO, or SEO for AI search, it is a field that barely existed two years ago. Now, it commands its own conference circuit, operating…
Vectorization And Transformers (Not The Film)
Information retrieval systems are designed to satisfy a user. To make a user happy with the quality of their recall. It’s important we understand that. Every system and its inputs…
AI Mode: Features & Ranking
So, this line chart, I’ve just picked out three features. I think we have more than 10, maybe a dozen features being tracked right now. This picks out just for…
Why Do Budgets Overspend Even With A Target ROAS or CPA?
This month’s Ask a PPC explores a common advertiser question: Why budgets sometimes overspend even when a target ROAS or target CPA is in place. Understanding this behavior requires separating…
Google Offers AI Certificate Free For Eligible U.S. Small Businesses
Google has launched the Google AI Professional Certificate, a self-paced program covering data analysis, content creation, research, and vibe coding. Every participant receives three months of free access to Google…
Great SEO Is Good GEO — But Not Everyone’s Been Doing Great SEO
As SEOs, we are used to being adaptable to changing algorithms, so LLM optimization should be a simple extension of that process. To discuss the industry debates surrounding the differences…
Why AI Misreads The Middle Of Your Best Pages
The middle is where your content dies, and not because your writing suddenly gets bad halfway down the page, and not because your reader gets bored. But because large language…
ChatGPT Search Often Switches To English In Fan-Out Queries: Report
When ChatGPT Search builds an answer, it can generate background web queries to find sources. A new report from AI search analytics firm Peec AI found that a large share…
Why Google Runs AI Mode On Flash, Explained By Google’s Chief Scientist
Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean said Flash’s low latency and cost are why Google can run Search AI at scale. Retrieval is a design choice, not a limitation, he added.…
Only 12% of AI Mode Citations Match URLs in the Organic SERP
Only 1 in 10 AI citations match the exact URLs in Google’s top 10 organic results. Even when compared at the domain level, just 1 in 5 citations come from…
Enterprise SEO Operating Models That Scale In 2026 And Beyond
Most enterprises are still treating SEO as a marketing activity. That decision, whether intentional or accidental, is now a material business risk. In the years ahead, SEO performance will not…
Are Citations In AI Search Affected By Google Organic Visibility Changes?
I recently wrote about an unconfirmed Google algorithm update that rolled out in mid-January 2026, which negatively impacted the organic search visibility of dozens of major brands. For most of…
How To Set Up AI Prompt Tracking You Can Trust
Getting Real About AI Visibility Tracking If you’re on the search or marketing team right now, you’ve probably been asked some version of: “Are we showing up in ChatGPT?” or…
5 Ways New Businesses Can Show Up In ChatGPT & Gemini
This post was sponsored by No Fluff. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. When ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity mention a company, these large language models (LLMs)…
Google Lost Two Antitrust Cases. Its Stock Rose 65%. Here’s Why
In January, Alphabet passed Apple in market capitalization to become the second most valuable company in the world. Alphabet was worth $3.885 trillion. Apple sat at $3.846 trillion. Only Nvidia,…
Google Says Links Will Be More Visible In AI Overviews
Google is updating how links appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Groups of links will appear in a pop-up when users hover over them. Link icons will be more…
4 Pillars To Turn Your Tech Stack Into a Modern Publishing Engine
This post was sponsored by WP Engine. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. In the race for audience attention, digital marketers at media companies often have…
The Science Of How AI Pays Attention
Boost your skills with Growth Memo’s weekly expert insights. Subscribe for free! This week, I share my findings from analyzing 1.2 million ChatGPT responses to answer the question of how…
Google Text Ad Click Share Rises Sharply In Some Verticals
An analysis of 16,000 U.S. search queries found that text ads gained 7 to 13 percentage points of click share between January 2025 and January 2026. SEO consultant Aleyda Solis…
WooCommerce May Gain Sidekick-Type AI Through Extensions
WooCommerce is approaching a turning point in 2026 thanks to the Model Context Protocol and the convergence of open source technologies that enable it to function as a layer any…
CleanTalk WordPress Plugin Vulnerability Threatens Up To 200K Sites
An advisory was issued for a critical vulnerability rated 9.8/10 in the CleanTalk Antispam WordPress plugin, installed in over 200,000 websites. The vulnerability enables unauthenticated attackers to install vulnerable plugins…
Antitrust Filing Says Google Cannibalizes Publisher Traffic
Penske Media Corporation (PMC) filed a federal court memorandum opposing Google’s motion to dismiss its antitrust lawsuit. The company argues that Google has broken the longstanding premise of a web…