Are Reviews Shaping What LLMs Say About My Local Business?
If you run a local business, you know the rush: a new five-star review drops, and you’re riding high on social proof. But one bad review? It can feel like…
Google’s Mueller Advises Testing Ecommerce Sites For Agentic AI
Google’s John Mueller re-posted the results of an experiment that tested if ecommerce sites were accessible by AI Agents, commenting that it may be useful to check if your ecommerce…
File Uploads, Live Video Search, More
Google is expanding AI Mode in Search with new tools that include PDF uploads, persistent planning documents, and real-time video assistance. The updates begin rolling out today, with the AI…
Microsoft Adds Copilot Mode To Edge With Multi-Tab AI Analysis
Microsoft launches Copilot Mode in Edge, introducing multi-tab AI analysis, voice navigation, and more features in development. Copilot Mode brings AI tools to Microsoft’s Edge browser Available tools…
OpenAI Study Mode Brings Guided Learning to ChatGPT
OpenAI has launched a new feature in ChatGPT called Study Mode, offering a step-by-step learning experience designed to guide users through complex topics. While aimed at students, Study Mode reflects…
AI Halftime Report H1 2025
It’s halftime. The first half of 2025 brought major shakeups in SEO, AI, and organic growth – and it’s time for a reality check. Traffic is down, revenue is ……
How Can We Recover A 30% Drop In Organic Traffic From A Site Migration?
This week’s Ask An SEO question comes from an ecommerce business that followed best practices, but still lost traffic after migrating to a new platform. “We recently migrated our ecommerce…
Google Explains The Process Of Indexing The Main Content
Google’s Gary Illyes discussed the concept of “centerpiece content,” how they go about identifying it, and why soft 404s are the most critical error that gets in the way of…
Google On Balancing Needs Of Users And The Web Ecosystem
At the recent Search Central Live Deep Dive 2025, Kenichi Suzuki asked Google’s Gary Illyes how Google measures high quality and user satisfaction of traffic from AI Overviews. Illyes’ response,…
Which Marketing Jobs Are Most Affected by AI?
New research from Microsoft reveals that marketing and sales professionals are among the most affected by generative AI, based on an analysis of 200,000 real workplace conversations with Bing Copilot.…
Performance Max: I Was A Skeptic & Now I’m Devout (Even In Bing) via @sejournal, @jonkagan
What made a Performance Max critic finally embrace it in both Google and Bing? Clear, measurable results proved automation can drive real value at scale. The post Performance Max: I…
The SEO Industry Is Teaching The Wrong Skills
Generative AI-driven search isn’t a trend; it’s the new baseline. Tools like Gemini and ChatGPT have already replaced traditional queries for millions of users. Your audience doesn’t just search anymore:…
CSS Background Images Aren’t Indexed
In a recent Search Off the Record podcast, Google’s Search Relations team cautioned developers against using CSS for all website images. While CSS background images can enhance visual design, they’re…
Do AI Assistants Prefer to Cite “Fresh” Content? (17 Million Citations Analyzed)
Do AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity prefer to cite “fresh” content? We analyzed 17 million citations across 7 AI search platforms to find out. As we clamor to optimize…
Soft 404s Use Crawl Budget Despite 200 OK Status
Google clarifies that soft 404 pages consume crawl budget, even when they return a 200 OK status. Here’s how this affects your site. Soft 404s consume crawl budget and won’t…
Why Generative AI Isn’t Killing SEO – It’s Creating New Opportunities
You’ve heard the predictions: AI will replace SEO, generative search will eliminate organic traffic, and marketers should start updating their resumes. With 73% of marketing teams using generative AI, it’s…
Google’s Top 5 SEO Tools
I’ve spent years working with Google’s SEO tools, and while there are countless paid options out there, Google’s free toolkit remains the foundation of my optimization workflow. These tools show…
Why Is SureRank WordPress SEO Plugin So Popular?
A new SEO plugin called SureRank, by Brainstorm Force, makers of the popular Astra theme, is rapidly growing in popularity. In beta for a few months, it was announced in…
Why A Site Deindexed By Google For Programmatic SEO Bounced Back
A company founder shared their experience with programmatic SEO, which they credited for initial success until it was deindexed by Google, calling it a big mistake they won’t repeat. The…
Should We Optimize for AI Mode?
Now I am going to come over here and talk about best practices that we should be doing. And I use the word “best practices” because AI Mode should be…
ChatGPT Appears To Use Google Search As A Fallback
Aleyda Solís conducted an experiment to test how fast ChatGPT indexes a web page and unexpectedly discovered that ChatGPT appears to use Google’s search results as a fallback for web…
Content That Enables & Adds Value In The Modern Search World
Too often in our content and messaging, we default to listing features in a succession of brief, disconnected claims rather than showing readers how those features will make a genuine…
5 Ways To Prove The Real Value Of SEO In The AI Era
As SEO evolves with AI optimization, generative engine optimization, and answer engine optimization, brands and marketers must rethink their SEO strategies to stay competitive. Instead of focusing solely on traditional…
Google Confirms CSS Class Names Don’t Influence SEO
In a recent episode of Google’s Search Off the Record podcast, Martin Splitt and John Mueller clarified how CSS affects SEO. While some aspects of CSS have no bearing on…
Google Search Central APAC 2025: Everything From Day 3
Google Search Central Asia Pacific 2025 focused on three pillars over the three days. The theme for day one was crawling, and day two of the event focused on indexing,…
Google Says You Don’t Need AEO Or GEO To Rank In AI Overviews
Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that AI Search does not require specialized optimization, saying that “AI SEO” is not necessary and that standard SEO is all that is needed for both…
21 Marketers Share Their Best Tips for Networking as an Introvert at SEO Events
Purna Virji — Principal Consultant & Global Program Manager at LinkedIn I’ve spoken at conferences worldwide but still need to disappear into a bathroom stall to recharge between sessions. People…
Google Search Central APAC 2025: Everything From Day 2
The second day of the Google Search Central Live APAC 2025 kicked off with a brief tie‑in to the previous day’s deep dive into crawling, before moving squarely into indexing.…
Validity Of Pew Research On Google AI Search Results Challenged
Questions about the methodology used by the Pew Research Center suggest that its conclusions about Google’s AI summaries may be flawed. Facts about how AI summaries are created, the sample…
Google’s New AI Search Experiment
Google has launched Web Guide, an experimental feature in Search Labs that uses AI to reorganize search results pages. The goal is to help you find information by grouping related…