Google’s Mueller Calls Markdown-For-Bots Idea ‘A Stupid Idea’
Some developers have been experimenting with bot-specific Markdown delivery as a way to reduce token usage for AI crawlers. Google Search Advocate John Mueller pushed back on the idea of…
How To Get Into Model Training Data
There has never been a more important time in your career to spend time learning and understanding. Not because AI search differs drastically from traditional search. But because everyone else…
AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58%
Back in April 2025, we found that AI Overviews reduced clicks to top-ranking content by 34.5%, despite Google’s statements to the contrary. Since then, AI Overviews have rolled out to…
The Real SEO Skill No One Teaches: Problem Deduction
Most SEO failures are not optimization failures. They are reasoning failures that occur before optimization even begins. In enterprise SEO escalations, the pattern is remarkably consistent. Teams jump straight to…
The PPC Skills That Won’t Be Replaced By Automation
The best PPC specialists aren’t just campaign managers. They’re business consultants who happen to use paid advertising as their primary tool. As automation handles more tactical optimization, the value of…
Using AI For SEO Can Fail Without Real Data (& How Ahrefs Fixes It)
This post was sponsored by Ahrefs. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. If you’ve ever run into the limits of solo AI or manual SEO tools,…
Google Updates Googlebot File Size Limit Docs
Google updated its Googlebot documentation to clarify information about file size limits. The change involves moving information about default file size limits from the Googlebot page to Google’s broader crawler…
Google’s Crawl Team Filed Bugs Against WordPress Plugins
Google’s crawl team has been filing bugs directly against WordPress plugins that waste crawl budget at scale. Gary Illyes, Analyst at Google, shared the details on the latest Search Off…
WordPress Publishes AI Guidelines To Combat AI Slop
WordPress published guidelines for using AI for coding plugins, themes, documentation, and media assets. The purpose of the guidelines, guided by five principles, is to keep WordPress contributions transparent, GPL-compatible,…
GSC Data Is 75% Incomplete
Boost your skills with Growth Memo’s weekly expert insights. Subscribe for free! My findings this week show Google Search Console data is about 75% incomplete, making single-source GSC decisions dangerously…
Why SEO Roadmaps Break In January (How To Build Ones That Survive)
SEO roadmaps have a lot in common with New Year’s resolutions: They’re created with optimism, backed by sincere intent, and abandoned far sooner than anyone wants to admit. The difference…
Controversial Proposal To Label Sections Of AI Generated Content
A new proposal was published for creating an HTML attribute that can be helpful for notifying crawlers what part of a web page is generated by AI. The proposal is…
5 Proven Strategies to Rank Higher
Your Google Business Profile is sitting there. Verified. Complete. Maybe even optimized. But when potential customers search “pizza near me” or “plumber in London,” you’re nowhere to be found in…
LinkedIn Shares What Works For AI Search Visibility
LinkedIn published findings from its internal testing on what drives visibility in AI-generated search results. The company, reportedly among the most-cited sources in AI responses, shared what worked for improving…
YouTube CEO Reveals Your Video Marketing Strategy For 2026
Every January, YouTube’s CEO publishes a letter outlining where the platform is headed. In most years, these updates read like a product roadmap. Neal Mohan’s 2026 letter reads more like…
15 Fixes To Improve Low Conversion Rates In Google Ads
Many Google Ads accounts generate steady traffic but struggle to turn that traffic into outcomes the business actually values, such as purchases, qualified leads, or demo requests. That disconnect usually…
Google Shows How To Get More Traffic From Top Stories Feature
Google added new documentation to Search Central covering their Preferred Sources program that helps news websites get into the Top Stories feature. The documentation explains what publishers can do to…
WordPress Announces AI Agent Skill For Speeding Up Development
WordPress announced wp-playground, a new AI agent skill designed to be used with the Playground CLI so AI agents can run WordPress for testing and check their work as they…
What It Means For SEO
Google published a research paper about creating a challenging dataset for training AI agents for deep research. The paper offers insights into how agentic AI deep research works, which implies…
ChatGPT Ads CPMs, Ads Decoded Talks Analytics
Welcome to this week’s PPC Pulse. This week’s news is a continuation of last week’s announcements about ChatGPT ads and the Google Ads Decoded podcast. ChatGPT announced premium-priced ads with…
Google Explores AI Opt-Outs, Gemini 3 Powers AIOs
Welcome to this week’s SEO Pulse: updates affect publisher control over AI features, how AI Overviews process queries, and what AI model tradeoffs mean for content workflows. Here’s what matters…
AI Recommendations Change With Nearly Every Query: SparkToro
AI tools produce different brand recommendation lists nearly every time they answer the same question, according to a new report from SparkToro. The data showed a Rand Fishkin, SparkToro co-founder,…
Google Analytics To Become A Growth Engine For Business
On the first episode of the Google Ads Decoded podcast, host Ginny Marvin sat down with Eleanor Stribling, Group Product Manager for Google Analytics. In the episode, Stribling noted an…
4 Reasons Your Google Ads Clicks Are Down & What You Can Do
A click drop in your Google Ads account can feel like the floor just moved under your account. Not because clicks are considered more of a vanity metric. But because…
The Way Your Agency Handles Leads Will Define Success in 2026
If you’ve made it this far, driving leads is no longer a challenge for you. The real issue is what happens after your leads come in. Are you seeing more…
What The Latest Web Almanac Report Reveals About Bots, CMS Influence & llms.txt
The Web Almanac is an annual report that translates the HTTP Archive dataset into practical insight, combining large-scale measurement with expert interpretation from industry experts. To get insights into what…
How Visibility Compounds In Brand-Led SEO
If building a brand is the new SEO cliche, then how visibility compounds is the part that rarely gets explained. We can all agree, at least on principle, that repeated…
People Love It, Models Ignore It
You publish a page that solves a real problem. It reads clean. It has examples, and it has the edge cases covered. You would happily hand it to a customer.…
Chrome Updated With 3 AI Features Including Nano Banana
Gemini in Chrome has just been refreshed with three new features that integrate more Gemini capabilities within Chrome for Windows, MacOS, and Chromebook Plus. The update adds an AI side…
The SEO Cost Of Slow WordPress Site & How It Affects AI Visibility
This post was sponsored by WP Media. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. You’ve built a WordPress site you’re proud of. The design is sharp, the…