The New Role of Local Search in Customer Experience
Ask yourself the following: Do you reply to reviews? Do you engage? Do you make the interaction feel personal? Do you follow through on your promises? Do you keep information…
Google Search Console Adds Custom Annotations To Reports
Google launched custom annotations in Search Console performance reports, giving you a way to add contextual notes directly to traffic data charts. The feature lets you mark specific dates with…
The Technical SEO Debt That Will Destroy Your AI Visibility
If you’re a CMO, I feel your pain. For years, decades even, brand visibility has largely been an SEO arms race against your competitors. And then along comes ChatGPT, Perplexity,…
Google Extends AI Travel Planning And Agentic Booking In Search
Google announced three AI-powered updates to Search that extend how users plan and book travel within AI Mode. The company is launching Canvas for travel planning on desktop, expanding Flight…
What SEOs Must Understand About AI’s Blind Spots
In the last two years, incidents have shown how large language model (LLM)-powered systems can cause measurable harm. Some businesses have lost a majority of their traffic overnight, and publishers…
Server Security Scanner Vulnerability Affects Up To 56M Sites
A critical vulnerability was recently discovered in Imunify360 AV, a security scanner used by web hosting companies to protect over 56 million websites. An advisory by cybersecurity company Patchstack warns…
Why WordPress 6.9 Abilities API Is Consequential And Far-Reaching
WordPress 6.9, scheduled for release on December 2, 2025, is shipping with a new Abilities API that introduces a new system designed to make advanced AI-driven functionality possible for themes…
Overcoming Skepticism In Brand Mention And Link Building Campaigns
Successful link and brand mention building is strongly about overcoming skepticism and building relationships with the people behind the websites that you want to acquire a link or brand mention…
Secrets Of A Wildly Successful Website
Back in 2005 I intuited that there are wildly successful Internet enterprises that owed nothing to SEO. These successes intrigued me because they happened according to undocumented rules outside of…
Data Shows How AI Overviews Is Ranking Shopping Keywords
BrightEdge’s latest research shows that Google’s AI Overviews are now appearing in ways that reflect what BrightEdge describes as “deliberate, aggressive choices” about where AI shows up and where it…
Lazy Link Building Strategies That Work
I like coming up with novel approaches to link building. One way to brainstorm an approach is to reverse a common method. I created a couple of approaches to link…
Google Adds AI Shopping Tools Across Search, Gemini
Google is rolling out AI shopping updates across Search and the Gemini app, introducing conversational shopping and agentic features that automate price tracking and local inventory checks. The updates begin…
Is Google About To Go Full AI Mode?
AI search is rapidly changing the way people discover content and engage with brands. Logan Kilpatrick, Google’s lead product manager for AI products, suggested in an X (formerly Twitter) post…
How To Make Search Console Work Harder For You
TL;DR Search Console has some pretty severe limitations when it comes to storage, anonymized and incomplete data, and API limits. You can bypass a lot of these limitations and make…
PMax Expands, Clarity Now Mandatory & AI Max Data Debate
This week, the paid media world focused less on new tools and more on what’s changing beneath the surface. Google expanded Performance Max into a new channel and offered long-awaited…
Data: Translated Sites See 327% More Visibility in AI Overviews
Learn how translated sites can boost SEO effectiveness. Discover the benefits of multilingual visibility in AI Overviews. The post Data: Translated Sites See 327% More Visibility in AI Overviews appeared…
ChatGPT Outage Affects APIs And File Uploads
OpenAI is experiencing a widespread outage affecting two systems, APIs and ChatGPT. The outage has been ongoing for at least a half an hour as of publication date. ChatGPT API…
AI Shopping, GPT-5.1, And EU Pressure On Google
This week’s news in SEO brings changes and questions about control. Google’s shopping AI moved from showing where to buy to completing purchases directly. Google added structured data for merchant…
Google Defends Parasite SEO Crackdown As EU Opens Investigation
Google has defended its enforcement of site reputation abuse policies after the European Commission announced an investigation into whether the company unfairly demotes news publishers in search results. The company…
The Web’s Next Great Idea, Or Its Next Spam Magnet
At a recent conference, I was asked if llms.txt mattered. I’m personally not a fan, and we’ll get into why below. I listened to a friend who told me I…
The Quid Pro No Method Of Link Building
Expressly paying for links has been out for awhile. Quid Pro No is in. These are some things you can do when a website asks for money in exchange for…
Google Sharpens Suspension Accuracy and Speeds Up Appeals for Advertisers via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson
Google improves suspension accuracy and appeal turnaround times, reducing false positives and helping legitimate advertisers resolve issues faster with clearer policy enforcement. The post Google Sharpens Suspension Accuracy and Speeds…
Google Reminds Websites To Use One Review Target
Google updated its review snippet documentation to clarify that each review or rating in structured data should point to one clear target, reducing ambiguity. Google updated its review snippet docs…
How To Protect A Budget From Competitor-Branded Terms
This week’s question comes from Evan, who asked: “How do I prevent my PPC budget from getting eaten by branded competitor terms?” It’s a good question, as few things frustrate…
Is AI Search SEO Leaving Bigger Opportunities Behind?
A recent podcast by Ahrefs raised two issues about optimizing for AI search that can cause organizations to underperform and miss out on opportunities to improve sales. The conversation illustrates…
OpenAI’s Sam Altman Says Personalized AI Raises Privacy Concerns
In a recent interview with Stanford University, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman predicted that AI security will become the defining problem of the next phase of AI development, saying that AI…
How To Evaluate Creative Performance in Meta Ads (and What To Test)
When running a Meta Ads campaign, creative should be at the center of your strategy. As targeting options have become more limited in the platform from the super-granular segments available…
OpenAI Releases GPT-5.1 With Improved Instruction Following
OpenAI released GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking with updates to conversational style and reasoning capabilities. The updates begin rolling out today to paid users before expanding to free accounts. OpenAI…
YouTube Debunks 24-48 Hour Upload Delay Recommendation
YouTube’s Rene Ritchie says the recommendation system relies on audience behavior that only begins once a video is public.. Waiting 24–48 hours offers no benefit. YouTube’s recommendation system relies on…
Google Launches Ads Advisor & Analytics Advisor Globally
Google is introducing two AI-powered tools built on Gemini: Ads Advisor in Google Ads and Analytics Advisor in Google Analytics. Availability starts in early December for English-language accounts globally. What’s…