Digital Marketing Archives

Digital Marketing

웹사이트 검색누락 테스트 사이트도 되나요?

웹사이트 검색누락 테스트 웹사이트 검색누락 테스트 사이트도 되나요? 라는 질문은 SEO 점검이나 검색 노출 상태를 확인하는 과정에서 자주 등장하는 의문이다. 특히 실제 운영 중인 사이트가 아니라 테스트용으로 만든 사이트에서도 검색 누락 현상이 발생하는지 궁금해하는 경우가 많다. 웹사이트 검색누락은 기본적으로 검색엔진이 페이지를 색인하지 못하거나, 색인했더라도 노출에서 제외되는 상황을 의미하기 때문에 테스트 사이트에서도 충분히 발생할 수 있다. […]

Digital Marketing

How do B2B marketing firms measure ROI?

B2B marketing firms measure ROI In today’s competitive digital landscape, businesses are increasingly focused on understanding the real value of their marketing efforts. Measuring return on investment (ROI) has become one of the most critical components of any marketing strategy, especially for companies that work in the business-to-business sector. So, how do b2b marketing firm […]

Digital Marketing

YouTube Adds Title A/B Testing And “Ask Studio” Analytics

YouTube announces A/B title testing availability, along with AI-powered conversational analytics for YouTube Studio. Title tests are coming to YouTube Studio ‘Ask Studio’ lets you query analytics in plain language to surface actionable insights. YouTube also teased Veo 3 Fast for Shorts.

Digital Marketing

Google Search Console Adds Achievements Report To Track Milestones

Google adds an Achievements report in Search Console so you can track click-based milestones, see in-progress goals, and jump to Insights and tips. Achievements now live inside Search Console. Report is divided into In progress and Achieved sections. Goals are based on clicks from Google Search.

Digital Marketing

1 In 4 Conversations Now Seek Information

New research from OpenAI and Harvard finds that “Seeking Information” messages now account for 24% of ChatGPT conversations, up from 14% a year earlier. This is an NBER working paper (not peer-reviewed), based on consumer ChatGPT plans only, and the study used privacy-preserving methods where no human read user messages. The working paper analyzes a […]

Digital Marketing

How To Position Your Agency As An AI Search Authority

This post was sponsored by Visto. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Clients keep asking a new question: “Are we visible in AI search?” This is the reality: Google’s AI Overviews are reducing organic traffic by 30-70% for many businesses. In fact, we’re seeing that SEO agencies that incorporate GEO (Generative Engine […]

Digital Marketing

Amazon Experiences Drop In Google Search Visibility

New data from the Audience Key content marketing platform indicates that Amazon’s visibility has suffered a significant drop. The decline follows two changes Amazon made to its presence in Google Shopping, although it is uncertain whether those changes are direct or indirect causes. The first change was the discontinuation of its paid Shopping ads, and […]

Digital Marketing

Explaining Google’s AI Search Experiments To Your C-Suite

Google is testing a series of experimental AI-powered features that could change how people interact with search and digital discovery. Tools like Doppl, Food Mood, Talking Tours, and Learn About are not yet mainstream, but they give us a glimpse into where Google may be heading. Each experiment highlights a distinct way AI can influence […]

Digital Marketing

Ahrefs Acquires Detailed.com & SEO Extension; Founder Joins Company

Ahrefs has acquired Detailed.com and the Detailed SEO Extension, bringing a widely used on-page auditing tool and its audience under the Ahrefs umbrella. As part of the deal, Detailed founder Glen Allsopp is joining Ahrefs full-time to work on marketing strategy, research, and product. What’s Included The acquisition covers the Detailed website and its browser […]

Digital Marketing

The Top CMS For Core Web Vitals

The Core Web Vitals Technology Report by the open source HTTPArchive community ranks content management systems by how well they perform on Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV). The July update shows that every major platform has improved since June, but not all gains were equal. Joomla posted the largest month-over-month increase, while Duda ranked first […]

Digital Marketing

3 Different Ways To Do Bulk Updates On WordPress

One of the strengths of WordPress is its extensibility. You can run everything from e-shops and booking systems to massive WordPress multisites from one instance of WordPress. Another is that it’s a database and robust PHP-based programming language, which means that running a bunch of updates on a site is remarkably straightforward. In this post, […]

Digital Marketing

Google Expands YMYL Guidelines To Cover Election & Civic Content

Google published a new edition of its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. The update clarifies that the Your Money Your Life (YMYL) category now covers election and voting information, along with other government and civics topics that affect people’s lives. What’s New The YMYL framework now uses the label “YMYL Government, Civics & Society,” with the […]

Digital Marketing

Bias In Search: Visibility, Perception, And Control

Bias in search isn’t always negative. It’s easy to frame it as something sinister, but bias shows up for structural reasons, behavioral reasons, and sometimes as a deliberate choice. The real task for marketers and communicators is recognizing when it’s happening, and what that means for visibility, perception, and control. Two recent pieces got me […]

Digital Marketing

Google Retiring Core Web Vitals CrUX Dashboard

Google has announced that the CrUX Dashboard, the Looker Studio-based visualization tool for CrUX data, will be retired at the end of November 2025. The reason given for the deprecation is that it was not designed for “wide-scale” use and that Google has developed more scalable alternatives. Why The CrUX Dashboard Is Being Retired The […]

Digital Marketing

Google Gemini Adds Audio File Uploads After Being Top User Request

Google’s Gemini app now accepts audio file uploads, answering what the company acknowledges was its most requested feature. For marketers and content teams, it means you can push recordings straight into Gemini for analysis, summaries, and repurposed content without jumping between tools. Josh Woodward, VP at Google Labs and Gemini, announced the change on X: […]

Digital Marketing

Structured Data’s Role In AI And AI Search Visibility

The way people find and consume information has shifted. We, as marketers, must think about visibility across AI platforms and Google. The challenge is that we don’t have the same ability to control and measure success as we do with Google and Microsoft, so it feels like we’re flying blind. Earlier this year, Google, Microsoft, […]

Digital Marketing

Anthropic Agrees To $1.5B Settlement Over Pirated Books

Anthropic agreed to a proposed $1.5 billion settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic over claims it downloaded pirated books to help train Claude. If approved, plaintiffs’ counsel says it would be the largest U.S. copyright recovery to date. A preliminary approval hearing is set for today. In June, Judge William Alsup held that training on lawfully […]

Digital Marketing

What The Remedies Really Mean For Search, SEO, And AI Assistants

When Judge Amit P. Mehta issued his long-awaited remedies decision in the Google search antitrust case, the industry exhaled a collective sigh of relief. There would be no breakup of Google, no forced divestiture of Chrome or Android, and no user-facing “choice screen” like the one that reshaped Microsoft’s browser market two decades ago. But […]

Digital Marketing

Google Quietly Raised Ad Prices, Court Orders More Transparency

Google raised ad prices incrementally through internal “pricing knobs” that advertisers couldn’t detect, according to federal court documents. Google raised ad prices 5-15% at a time using “pricing knobs” that made increases look like normal auction fluctuations. Google’s surveys showed advertisers noticed higher costs but didn’t realize Google was causing the increases. A […]

Digital Marketing

AI Overviews Use FastSearch, Not Links

A sharp-eyed search marketer discovered the reason why Google’s AI Overviews showed spammy web pages. The recent Memorandum Opinion in the Google antitrust case featured a passage that offers a clue as to why that happened and speculates how it reflects Google’s move away from links as a prominent ranking factor. Ryan Jones, founder of […]

Digital Marketing

How Do I Nail A PPC Job Interview For Google & Meta Ads?

It is a wild job market right now, and if you’re applying for a PPC role, you’re probably feeling the pressure to stand out in interviews that are increasingly demanding and often unclear in their expectations. Whether you’re interviewing for a specialist, manager, or hybrid media role, one thing is certain: You need to be […]

Digital Marketing

Let’s Look Inside An Answer Engine And See How GenAI Picks Winners

Ask a question in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Copilot, and the answer appears in seconds. It feels effortless. But under the hood, there’s no magic. There’s a fight happening. This is the part of the pipeline where your content is in a knife fight with every other candidate. Every passage in the index wants to […]

Digital Marketing

Why You Need Sprints, Not Checklists

There’s a lot that goes into SEO. And, now, more broadly into being found online and online visibility overall, whether we’re talking about an organic result in a search engine, an AI Overview, or through a large language model (LLM). With SEO being a discipline that often takes a long time (compared to ads and […]

Digital Marketing

Your Login Pages May Be Hurting Your SEO Performance

Google’s Search Relations team says generic login pages can confuse indexing and hurt rankings. When many private URLs all show the same bare login form, Google may treat them as duplicates and show the login page in search. In a recent “Search Off the Record” episode, John Mueller and Martin Splitt explained how this happens […]

Digital Marketing

AI Search Sends Users to 404 Pages Nearly 3X More Than Google

New research examining 16 million URLs aligns with Google’s predictions that hallucinated links will become an issue across AI platforms. An Ahrefs study shows that AI assistants send users to broken web pages nearly three times more often than Google Search. The data arrives six months after Google’s John Mueller raised awareness about this issue. […]

Digital Marketing

8 GEO Strategies For Boosting AI Visibility in 2025

This post was sponsored by Writesonic. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. AI search now makes the first decision. When? Before a buyer hits your website. If you’re not part of the AI answer, you’re not part of the deal. In fact, 89% of B2B buyers use AI platforms like ChatGPT […]

Digital Marketing

What To Expect AT NESS 2025: Surviving The AI-First Era

This post was sponsored by NESS. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. For anyone who isn’t paying attention to news SEO because they feel it isn’t their relevant niche – think again. The foundations of SEO are underpinned by publishing content. Therefore, news SEO is relevant to all SEO. We are […]

Digital Marketing

Google Avoids Breakup As Judge Bars Exclusive Default Search Deals

A federal judge outlined remedies in the U.S. search antitrust case that bar Google from using exclusive default search deals but stop short of forcing a breakup. Reuters reports that Google won’t have to divest Chrome or Android, but it may have to share some search data with competitors under court-approved terms. Google says it […]

Digital Marketing

Evolving From Link Juice To Entity Maps

Let’s reminisce for a moment. Do you remember how, back in 2020, we all obsessed over “link juice” and PageRank flow as far as internal links are concerned? In 2025, what matters more is how your internal links define the entities and relationships on your site. Internal linking is no longer just about distributing authority. It’s about: […]

Digital Marketing

AI Mode Sees “Big Improvements” On STEM Queries

Google says AI Mode now handles complex STEM questions better and surfaces key details sooner, timed for back to school. Google rolled out an iterative update to AI Mode AI Mode now handles complex STEM questions and delivers more concise responses. The update arrives as students return to school.

Digital Marketing

Stop Trying To Make GEO Happen

“Stop trying to make GEO happen. It’s not going to happen.” With apologies to Gretchen Wieners and the writers of “Mean Girls,” the line feels like the only way to start this conversation about a buzzword making the rounds: GEO (which is now, allegedly, supposed to mean Generative Engine Optimization). This article grew out of […]

Digital Marketing

How to Use Google Ads Performance Max Channel Reporting

For years, marketers have asked for better visibility into how individual channels contribute to Performance Max results. Google has released a tutorial walking advertisers through its new Performance Max channel reporting. This reporting feature offers more transparency into how campaigns perform across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover, and Maps. With this new report, you can […]

Digital Marketing

AI Max for Search Has No Conversion Minimums

Google states that AI Max for Search can run in low-volume accounts, confirming there’s no minimum conversion recommendation. However, you must use a conversion-based Smart Bidding strategy for search-term matching to work. The clarification was provided during Google’s Ads Decoded podcast, where product managers discussed recent launches. What Google Said In the “Ads Decoded” podcast […]

Digital Marketing

WordPress Ocean Extra Vulnerability Affects Up To 600,000 Sites

An advisory was issued for the Ocean Extra WordPress plugin that is susceptible to stored cross-site scripting, which enables attackers to upload malicious scripts that execute on the site when a user visits the affected website. Ocean Extra WordPress Plugin The vulnerability affects only the Ocean Extra plugin by oceanwp, a plugin that extends the […]

Digital Marketing

Google Adds Guidance On JavaScript Paywalls And SEO

Google is apparently having trouble identifying paywalled content due to a standard way paywalled content is handled by publishers like news sites. It’s asking that publishers with paywalled content change the way they block content so as to help Google out. Search Related JavaScript Problems Google updated their guidelines with a call for publishers to […]

Digital Marketing

TablePress WordPress Plugin Vulnerability Affects 700,000+ Sites

A vulnerability in the TablePress WordPress plugin enables attackers to inject malicious scripts that run when someone visits a compromised page. It affects all versions up to and including version 3.2. TablePress WordPress plugin The TablePress plugin is used on more than 700,000 websites. It enables users to create and manage tables with interactive features […]

Digital Marketing

6 AI Myths That Are Costing You Marketing Money

Think AI can fully run your marketing strategy on autopilot? Wondering why your AI-generated content isn’t delivering results? Feel like your AI tools should be doing more, without another string of prompts? Bust the myths. Fix your funnel. Get AI working with your budget, against it. If you’re under pressure to make more profit with […]

Digital Marketing

Why WooCommerce Slows Down (& How to Fix It With the Right Server Stack)

This post was sponsored by Cloudways. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Wondering why your rankings may be declining? Just discovered your WooCommerce site has slow load times? A slow WooCommerce site doesn’t just cost you conversions. It affects search visibility, backend performance, and customer trust. Whether you’re a developer running […]

Digital Marketing

SEO Has Been Tactical For 20 Years. GenAI Forces The Strategy Question

For as long as I’ve been in this industry, there’s been debate about whether SEO is strategic or tactical. Most SEOs would like to believe their work is strategic. Many executives see it as tactical. The truth is somewhere in between, and the arrival of generative AI is forcing a new level of clarity. This […]

Digital Marketing

New Strategies To Gain Local Search Visibility

This post was sponsored by DAC. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. The new reality of Search and brand discovery requires an Enterprise-to-Local strategy. Traditional keyword-driven search engine results pages (SERPs) are being disrupted by AI-driven experiences that anticipate, summarize, and even act on users’ needs. As generative AI tools like […]

Digital Marketing

What To Do When the Click Disappears: Surviving SEO In The AI-Driven SERP

Rankings don’t guarantee traffic anymore. Here’s how to optimize for AI visibility and brand mentions in a zero-click world. The post What To Do When the Click Disappears: Surviving SEO In The AI-Driven SERP appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Digital Marketing

Google Wants To Show More Links In AI Mode

Google says it’s actively working to surface more source links inside AI Mode. Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, outlined changes designed to make links more visible. Stein wrote on X that Google has been testing where links appear inside AI answers and that the long-term “north star” is to show more inline […]

Digital Marketing

Google Rolls Out August Spam Update Targeting Search Quality

Google released the August spam update, impacting search results worldwide. The rollout may take a few weeks to complete. The August spam update started August 26 and applies worldwide. Expect possible ranking and traffic swings during the multi-week rollout. Monitor trends in Search Console and stay aligned with Google’s spam policies.

Digital Marketing

How To Leverage AI To Modernize B2B Go-To-Market

In a post “growth-at-all-costs” era, B2B go-to-market (GTM) teams face a dual mandate: operate with greater efficiency while driving measurable business outcomes. Many organizations see AI as the definitive means of achieving this efficiency. The reality is that AI is no longer a speculative investment. It has emerged as a strategic enabler to unify data, […]

Digital Marketing

The 5-Step Process To Setting Crystal Clear PPC Goals

Many agencies and marketers believe that success in paid media is primarily down to the quality of your ads or the specificity of your landing pages. While those elements are important, they’re meaningless unless they sit on a foundation of alignment with client needs. The cleanest account structure and flawless creatives may hit every platform […]

Digital Marketing

Inspiro WordPress Theme Vulnerability Affects Over 70,000 Sites

A vulnerability advisory was published for the Inspiro WordPress theme by WPZoom. The vulnerability arises due to a missing or incorrect security validation that enables an unauthenticated attacker to launch a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attack. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) A CSRF vulnerability in the context of a WordPress site is an attack that relies […]

Digital Marketing

Common Hosting Defenses Ineffective Against WordPress Threats

Patchstack published a case study that examined how well Cloudflare and other general firewall and malware solutions protected WordPress websites from common vulnerability threats and attack vectors. The research showed that while general solutions stopped threats like SQL injection or cross-site scripting, a dedicated WordPress security solution consistently stopped WordPress-specific exploits at a significantly higher […]

Digital Marketing

Should Small Brands Go All In On TikTok For Audience Growth?

This week’s Ask An SEO question is about whether small brands should prioritize TikTok over Google to grow their audience: “I keep hearing that TikTok is a better platform for small brands with an easier route to an audience. Do you think that Google is still relevant, or should I go all in on TikTok?” […]

Digital Marketing

Google AI Mode Adds Agentic Booking, Expands To More Countries

Google is adding agentic booking features to AI Mode in Search, beginning with restaurant reservations for U.S. Google AI Ultra subscribers enrolled in Labs. What’s New Booking Reservations AI Mode can interpret a detailed request, check real-time availability across reservation sites, and link you to the booking page to complete the task. For businesses, that […]

Digital Marketing

Finding The Balance That Wins Retrieval

Marketers today spend their time on keyword research to uncover opportunities, closing content gaps, making sure pages are crawlable, and aligning content with E-E-A-T principles. Those things still matter. But in a world where generative AI increasingly mediates information, they are not enough. The difference now is retrieval. It doesn’t matter how polished or authoritative […]

Digital Marketing

Tips For Running Competitor Campaigns In Paid Search

Paid search professionals constantly debate the merits of running paid search campaigns bidding on competitor brand names. Questions such as the following may arise: Is bidding on your competitors ethical? Are the high costs-per-click (CPCs) worth spending the budget on? Are you actually reaching people with buying intent? In this article, I’ll talk through answers […]

Digital Marketing

Why Lazy Loading Can Delay Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

In a recent episode of Google’s Search Off the Record podcast, Martin Splitt and John Mueller discussed when lazy loading helps and when it can slow pages. Splitt used a real-world example on developers.google.com to illustrate a common pattern: making every image lazy by default can delay Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) if it includes above-the-fold […]

Digital Marketing

Google Confirms New Google Verified Badge for Local Services Ads

Google just announced a new unifying identity for its Local Services Ads (LSAs) verification badges. Called Google Verified, the badge will replace several different trust signals that advertisers and consumers have been seeing over the years. This includes the Google Guaranteed, Google Screened, License Verified by Google, and the Money Back Guarantee program. Starting in […]

Digital Marketing

Google Quietly Announces Search Partner Network Placement Visibility

Google quietly rolled out a change advertisers have wanted for years: site-level reporting for the Search Partner Network. Until now, advertisers could only opt in or out, with little understanding of where their ads actually showed. This update finally gives visibility into where budgets are spent outside of Google. Google lists this as an August […]

Digital Marketing

Why High-Intent Visibility Can Still Underperform

In B2B SEO, typically, the ultimate goal is to attract high-intent searchers who convert into qualified leads. But, not all high-intent visibility translates to sales-ready traffic, especially in long sales cycles or complex buying journeys. As we get deeper into an era of diminishing importance of keywords that translate directly into attributable clicks, a focus […]

Digital Marketing

Ahrefs Launches Tracker Comparing ChatGPT & Google Referral Traffic

Ahrefs released a public dashboard that tracks how much referral traffic websites receive from Google Search versus ChatGPT, with monthly updates. The first dataset covers three complete months across 44,421 sites connected to Ahrefs’ free Web Analytics tool. The Early Numbers For July, the dashboard reports Google at 41.9% of total web traffic across the […]

Digital Marketing

Breaking Down Optmyzr’s Study on Amazon’s Exit from Google Ads

Just under one month ago, on July 23, 2025, Amazon vanished from Google Shopping ads overnight. No trial, no warning, no phased retreat. One of the biggest advertisers on the platform simply stepped back, leaving a noticeable gap in auctions. For many retailers, this shift opened the door to new opportunities. It’s tempting to think […]

Digital Marketing

OpenAI Announces Low-Cost Subscription Plan: ChatGPT Go

OpenAI is rolling out a new subscription tier called ChatGPT Go, a competitively priced version that will initially be available only to users in India. It features ten times higher message limits, ten times more image generations, and file uploads than the free tier. ChatGPT Go OpenAI is introducing a new low-cost subscription plan that […]

Digital Marketing

AI Systems Often Prefer AI-Written Content, Study Finds

A peer-reviewed PNAS study finds that large language models tend to prefer content written by other LLMs when asked to choose between comparable options. The authors say this pattern could give AI-assisted content an advantage as more product discovery and recommendations flow through AI systems. About The Study What the researchers tested A team led […]

Digital Marketing

How To Create Your Instagram Content Plan (With Free Template)

Are your Instagram posts struggling to gain traction? With over 2 billion monthly active users, standing out on the platform requires strategy and content planning. A content plan is an essential blueprint to help you keep your posts aligned with your strategy and your overall marketing goals. Posting without a plan can just be a […]

Digital Marketing

Google Answers Question About Core Web Vitals “Poisoning”

Someone posted details of a novel negative SEO attack that they said appeared to be a Core Web Vitals performance poisoning attack. Google’s John Mueller and Chrome’s Barry Pollard assisted in figuring out what was going on. The person posted on Bluesky, tagging Google’s John Mueller and Rick Viscomi, the latter a DevRel Engineer at […]

Digital Marketing

Google Brings AI Trip-Finding To Google Flights

Google adds an AI “Flight Deals” tool to Google Flights, part of a broader push into vertical, conversational search experiences. Google launched Flight Deals in Google Flights. It’s rolling out in the U.S., Canada, and India next week. Google Flights adds a basic-economy exclusion in the U.S. and Canada.

Digital Marketing

AI-Powered Search: Adapting Your SEO Strategy

Using outdated and traditional SEO tactics centered around keywords and backlinks is not moving the needle anymore, as Google shifts toward AI-driven answers. Organic clicks are going down as a result of Google AI Overviews and the rise of zero-click searches, where users get answers directly on Google’s search results page without clicking through to […]

Digital Marketing

Local SEO ‘Best Practices’ Aren’t Universal: Yext Study

A new Yext analysis of 8.7 million Google search results suggests many common local SEO tactics don’t perform the same across industries and regions. The dataset, drawn from the company’s Scout Index, focuses on what correlates with visibility in Google’s Local Pack, not just overall map presence. What Yext Found Review Management Emerges As The […]

Digital Marketing

Googlebot Crawl Slump? Mueller Points To Server Errors

A Reddit thread about a sharp crawl drop prompted guidance from Google’s John Mueller. Here’s how to diagnose the cause. Sudden crawl drops are more consistent with 429/500/503 responses or timeouts than with 404s. Once issues are fixed, crawl rates should recover, though it can take time. There’s no defined timeline for recovery.

Digital Marketing

ChatGPT-5 Now Connects To Gmail, Calendar, And Contacts

OpenAI announced that it has added connectors to Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts for ChatGPT Plus users, enabling ChatGPT to use data from those apps within ChatGPT chats. ChatGPT Connectors A connector is a bridge between ChatGPT and an external app like Canva, Dropbox, and Gmail, enabling users to connect those apps to ChatGPT […]

Digital Marketing

Why SEO Automation Still Needs Human Judgment

AI tools can do a lot of SEO now. Draft content. Suggest keywords. Generate metadata. Flag potential issues. We’re well past the novelty stage. But for all the speed and surface-level utility, there’s a hard truth underneath: AI still gets things wrong. And when it does, it does it convincingly. It hallucinates stats. Misreads query […]

Digital Marketing

Google Gemini Adds Personalization From Past Chats

Google is rolling out updates to the Gemini app that personalize responses using past conversations and add new privacy controls, including a Temporary Chat mode. The changes start today and will expand over the coming weeks. What’s New Personalization From Past Chats Gemini now references earlier chats to recall details and preferences, making responses feel […]

Digital Marketing

Philosophies Driving GEO Brand Presence Tools

Since the turn of the Millennium, marketers have mastered the science of search engine optimization. We learned the “rules” of ranking, the art of the backlink, and the rhythm of the algorithm. But, the ground has shifted to generative engine optimization (GEO). The era of the 10 blue links is giving way to the age […]

Digital Marketing

Invalid Ad Traffic From Deceptive Serving Down 40%

Google cites a 40% drop in invalid ad traffic from deceptive serving, helping protect budgets and keep billing clean for advertisers. Google reports a 40% reduction in invalid traffic from deceptive or disruptive serving. Google now reviews content, placements, and interactions more precisely. Advertisers are not charged for invalid traffic, with credits applied after detection.

Digital Marketing

Google Rolls Out ‘Preferred Sources’ For Top Stories In Search

Google is rolling out a new setting that lets you pick which news outlets you want to see more often in Top Stories. The feature, called Preferred Sources, is launching today in English in the United States and India, with broader availability in those markets over the next few days. What’s Changing Preferred Sources lets […]

Digital Marketing

Google Says AI-Generated Content Will Not Cause Ranking Penalty

Google’s Gary Illyes recently answered the question of whether AI-generated images used together with “legit” content can impact rankings. Gary discussed whether it had an impact on SEO and called attention to a technical issue involving server resources that is a possible outcome. Does Google Penalize for AI-Generated Content? How does Google react to AI […]

Digital Marketing

Reshaping The SERP And What It Means For Your SEO Strategy

For decades, the digital world has been defined by hyperlinks, a simple, powerful way to connect documents across a vast, unstructured library. Yet, the foundational vision for the web was always more ambitious. It was a vision of a Semantic Web, a web where the relationships between concepts are as important as the links between […]

Digital Marketing

Google Is Testing An AI-Powered Finance Page

Google announced that they’re testing a new AI-powered Google Finance tool. The new tool enables users to ask natural language questions about finance and stocks, get real-time information about financial and cryptocurrency topics, and access new charting tools that visualize the data. Three Ways To Access Data Google’s AI finance page offers three ways to […]

Digital Marketing

OpenAI Launches GPT-5 In ChatGPT To All Users

OpenAI has released GPT-5, now the default model in ChatGPT for all users, including those on the free tier. The new model is positioned as OpenAI’s most capable and reliable system to date. OpenAI emphasizes a stronger focus on accuracy, instruction following, and long-form reasoning. Available Now To All ChatGPT Users For the first time, […]

Digital Marketing

How To Stay Visible in AI Search [Webinar]

AI search is here. Are you ready for the new rules? The SEO game has changed. Traditional strategies are no longer enough, and some brands are getting lost in the shift to AI-powered search results. Join Wayne Cichanski on August 20, 2025 for an exclusive webinar sponsored by iQuanti. Learn how to adapt your SEO […]

Digital Marketing

Unique Image Landing Pages Can Help Search Visibility

Google’s John Mueller says giving each image its own landing page can help it appear in image search, while gallery setups may limit visibility. Google recommends unique landing pages for important images instead of JavaScript-only galleries or URL fragments. Responsive images and modern formats improve user experience but aren’t direct ranking factors. Auditing […]

Digital Marketing

What’s Next In Content Marketing

Content marketers’ patience and performance are being tested as AI infiltrates every tech stack, which has been both a blessing and a curse. Creating content has never been simpler, given the rise of AI, upending content creation, distribution, and discovery. At the same time, writing original content has never been more paramount, given the vast […]

Digital Marketing

How To Create Your Instagram Content Plan (With Free Template)

Digital Marketing

Google Cautions Businesses Against Generic Keyword Domains

Google’s John Mueller says small businesses may be hurting their search visibility by choosing generic keyword domains instead of building distinctive brand names. Speaking on a recent episode of Search Off the Record, Mueller and fellow Search Advocate Martin Splitt discussed common challenges for photography websites. During the conversation, Mueller noted that many small business […]

Digital Marketing

How To Discover Who You Are As A Brand

Brand identity is the foundation of your business, from the conceptualization of your services and products all the way to marketing. Before you can create an effective marketing, SEO, content strategy, or even a business strategy, you need to know who you are as a brand. It’s a step many marketers and business leaders overlook, […]

Digital Marketing

Ecosia & Qwant Launch European Search Infrastructure

Ecosia has begun delivering its own search results for the first time in its 16-year history, starting with users in France who will receive a portion of results from a new European search index developed jointly with Qwant. The rollout marks the first implementation of the European Search Perspective (EUSP) joint venture, which has created […]

Digital Marketing

Effective SEO Organizational Structure For A Global Company

Global companies today face a paradox. Search is more important than ever, yet how it’s managed across markets is often inconsistent, inefficient, and misaligned with broader digital goals. Too often, SEO is seen as a localized effort, tactically delegated to regional teams or outsourced agencies. While local knowledge is critical, international SEO success demands structure, […]

Digital Marketing

Claude Opus 4.1 Improves Coding & Agent Capabilities

Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.1, an upgrade to its flagship model that’s said to deliver better performance in coding, reasoning, and autonomous task handling. The new model is available now to Claude Pro users, Claude Code subscribers, and developers using the API, Amazon Bedrock, or Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. Performance Gains Claude Opus 4.1 […]

Digital Marketing

5 Key Findings On What Buyers Really Want

Search is changing, and not just because of Google updates. Buyers are changing how they find, evaluate, and decide. They are researching in AI summaries, asking questions out loud to their phones, and converting through conversations that happen outside of what most analytics can track. Our latest ebook, “The Future Of Search: 16 Actionable Pivots […]

Digital Marketing

Cloudflare Delists And Blocks Perplexity From Crawling Websites

Cloudflare announced that they delisted Perplexity’s crawler as a verified bot and are now actively blocking Perplexity and all of its stealth bots from crawling websites. Cloudflare acted in response to multiple user complaints against Perplexity related to violations of robots.txt protocols, and a subsequent investigation revealed that Perplexity was using aggressive rogue bot tactics […]

Digital Marketing

How AI Search Should Be Shaping Your CEO’s & CMO’s Strategy

AI is rapidly changing the rules of SEO. From generative ranking to vector search, the new rules are not only technical but also reshaping how business leaders make decisions. Join Dan Taylor on August 14, 2025, for an exclusive SEJ Webinar tailored for C-suite executives and senior leaders. In this session, you’ll gain essential insights […]

Digital Marketing

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 SEO strategies and tactics, you need to be visible in AI-powered search and answer engines. Showing the value of SEO in this new world means […]

Digital Marketing

2025 Core Web Vitals Challenge: WordPress Versus Everyone

The Core Web Vitals Technology Report shows the top-ranked content management systems by Core Web Vitals (CWV) for the month of June (July’s statistics aren’t out yet). The breakout star this year is an e-commerce platform, which is notable because shopping sites generally have poor performance due to the heavy JavaScript and image loads necessary […]

Digital Marketing

Chrome Trial Aims To Fix Core Web Vitals For JavaScript-Heavy Sites

Google Chrome is testing a new way to measure Core Web Vitals in Single Page Applications (SPAs), which is a long-standing blind spot in performance tracking that affects SEO audits and ranking signals. Starting with Chrome 139, developers can opt into an origin trial for the Soft Navigations API. This enables measurement of metrics like […]

Digital Marketing

Google Backtracks On Plans For URL Shortener Service

Google announced that they will continue to support some links created by the deprecated goo.gl URL shortening service, saying that 99% of the shortened URLs receive no traffic. They were previously going to end support entirely, but after receiving feedback, they decided to continue support for a limited group of shortened URLs. Google URL Shortener […]

Digital Marketing

Google Confirms It Uses Something Similar To MUVERA

Google’s Gary Illyes answered questions during the recent Search Central Live Deep Dive in Asia about whether or not they use the new Multi‑Vector Retrieval via Fixed‑Dimensional Encodings (MUVERA) retrieval method and also if they’re using Graph Foundation Models. MUVERA Google recently announced MUVERA in a blog post and a research paper: a method that […]

Digital Marketing

Merging SEO And Content Using Your Knowledge Graph To AI-Proof Content

New AI platforms, powered by generative technologies like Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Grok, and countless specialized chatbots, are rapidly becoming the front door for digital discovery. We’ve entered an era of machine-led discovery, where AI systems aggregate, summarize, and contextualize content across multiple platforms. Users today no longer follow a linear journey from keyword to […]

Digital Marketing

OpenAI Is Pulling Shared ChatGPT Chats From Google Search

OpenAI has rolled back a feature that allowed ChatGPT conversations shared via link to appear in Google Search results. The company confirms it has disabled the toggle that enabled shared chats to be “discoverable” by search engines and is working to remove existing indexed links. Shared Chats Were “Short-Lived Experiment” When users shared a ChatGPT […]

Digital Marketing

Industry Pioneer Reveals Why SEO Isn’t Working & What To Refocus On

Bill Hunt is a true pioneer in the industry, with more than 25 years of experience working on the websites of some of the largest multinationals. Having built two large digital/search agencies, one of which was acquired by Ogilvy, Bill has now moved into consulting focused on repositioning search to leverage marketing for shareholder growth. […]

Digital Marketing

PPC Audience Strategy: Targeting Vs. Observation

If you’ve layered audiences into your Google Ads campaign and weren’t sure if you should select “targeting” or “observation,” you’re not alone. While the Google and Microsoft platforms give decent explanations of the two modes, picking the wrong option can quietly sabotage performance. This setting controls how your audience selections influence who sees your ads […]

Digital Marketing

Why Your SEO Isn’t Working, And It’s Not The Team’s Fault

Over the years, I have been asked to audit numerous enterprise search programs, transforming them into world-class solutions. Time and again, I found that the SEO teams were smart, capable, and executing the playbook, but the results weren’t materializing. Rankings were volatile. Organic traffic plateaued. The executive team grew frustrated. Eventually, someone asked the inevitable: […]

Digital Marketing

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 include multi-tab content analysis, voice navigation, and a unified search/chat interface. Features in development include task execution, topic-based organization, and a persistent AI assistant.

Digital Marketing

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 … complicated, and large language models (LLMs) are no longer fringe. Publishers are panicking, and SEO teams are reevaluating how they measure success. And it’s not […]

Digital Marketing

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. The research examined nine months of anonymized data from January to September 2024, offering a large-scale look at how professionals use AI in their daily […]

Digital Marketing

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 be indexed. Google Search Console can help you identify soft 404s. Fixing soft 404s can improve crawl efficiency.

Digital Marketing

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 you exactly what Google considers important, and that offers invaluable insights you can’t get anywhere else. Let me walk you through the five Google tools […]

Digital Marketing

Stop Paying the Google Ads Tax Without Realizing It [Webinar]

Most brands don’t know they’re wasting money on branded ads. Are you one of them? What if your Google Ads strategy is quietly draining your budget? In this data-backed session, you’ll learn: Why CPCs rise even without competitor bidding How to detect branded ad waste in your own account What this hidden flaw is costing […]

Digital Marketing

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 July and has amassed over twenty thousand installations. That’s a pretty good start for an SEO plugin that has only been out of beta for […]

Digital Marketing

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 post, shared on LinkedIn, received scores of supportive comments. The website didn’t receive a manual action, Google deindexed the web pages due to poor content […]

Digital Marketing

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 SEO, others can directly influence how search engines interpret and rank content. Here’s what matters and what doesn’t. Class Names Don’t Matter For Rankings One […]

Digital Marketing

5 Ways To Prove The Real Value Of SEO In The AI Era

Digital Marketing

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 size, and statistical reliability challenge the validity of the results. Google’s Official Statement A spokesperson for Google reached out with an official statement and a […]

Digital Marketing

Google Launches AI-Powered Virtual Try-On & Shopping Tools

Google unveiled three new shopping features today that use AI to enhance the way people discover and buy products. The updates include a virtual try-on tool for clothing, more flexible price tracking alerts, and an upcoming visual style inspiration feature powered by AI. Virtual Try-On Now Available Nationwide Following a limited launch in Search Labs, […]

Digital Marketing

AI Overviews Drive 10% More Queries, Per Q2 Earnings

New data from Google’s Q2 2025 earnings call suggests that AI features in Search are driving higher engagement. Google reported that AI Overviews contribute to more than 10% additional queries for the types of searches where they appear. With AI Overviews now reaching 2 billion monthly users, this is a notable shift from the early […]

Digital Marketing

Google Shares SEO Guidance For State-Specific Product Pricing

In a recent SEO Office Hours video, Google addressed whether businesses can show different product prices to users in different U.S. states, and what that means for search visibility. The key point: Google only indexes one version of a product page, even if users in different locations see different prices. Google Search Advocate John Mueller […]

Digital Marketing

Should Advertisers Rethink The ‘For Vs. Against’ Stance On Performance Max?

Performance Max has become one of the most talked-about campaign types in PPC for a number of reasons. Some advertisers swear by it, while others remain skeptical, and opinions are increasingly polarized. In reality, PMax is neither flawless nor fundamentally flawed. It is a campaign type with both advantages and drawbacks, and deciding whether to […]

Digital Marketing

Google Says It Could Make Sense To Use Noindex Header With LLMS.txt

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about llms.txt related to duplicate content, stating that it doesn’t make sense that it would be viewed as duplicate content, but he also stated it could make sense to take steps to prevent indexing. LLMs.txt Llms.txt is a proposal to create a new content format standard that large language […]

Digital Marketing

How To Get Your Content (& Brand) Recommended By AI & LLMs

The game has changed, and quite recently, too. Generative engine optimization (GEO), AI Overviews (AIOs), or just an extension of SEO (now being dubbed on LinkedIn as Search Everywhere Optimization) – which acronym is correct? I’d argue it’s GEO, as you’ll see why. And if you’ve ever built your own large language model from scratch […]

Digital Marketing

OpenAI ChatGPT Agent Marks A Turning Point For Businesses And SEO

OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent marks a change in how users interact with web pages and complete transactions. This could be the most consequential change to online interactions since the introduction of mobile browsing. ChatGPT agent will be available today to Pro subscribers. Plus, and Team subscribers will have access over the next few days while Enterprise […]

Digital Marketing

Can AEO/GEO Startups Beat Established SEO Tool Companies?

The CEO of Conductor started a LinkedIn discussion about the future of AI SEO platforms, suggesting that the established companies will dominate and that 95 percent of the startups will disappear. Others argued that smaller companies will find their niche and that startups may be better positioned to serve user needs. Besmertnik published his thoughts […]

Digital Marketing

Why It’s Okay To Not Buy Or Obsess Over Links Anymore

There are many businesses relatively new to SEO that eventually face the decision to build or buy links because they are told that links are important, which, of course, links are important. But the need to buy links presupposes that buying them is the only way to acquire them. Links are important, but less important […]

Digital Marketing

Google Discusses If It’s Okay To Make Changes For SEO Purposes

Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt discussed making changes to a web page, observing the SEO effect, and the importance of tracking those changes. There has been long-standing hesitation around making too many SEO changes because of a patent filed years ago about monitoring frequent SEO updates to catch attempts to manipulate search results, so […]

Digital Marketing

Google’s Top 5 SEO Tools

Digital Marketing

Google’s June 2025 Update Analysis: What Just Happened?

Google’s June 2025 Core Update just finished. What’s notable is that while some say it was a big update, it didn’t feel disruptive, indicating that the changes may have been more subtle than game changing. Here are some clues that may explain what happened with this update. Two Search Ranking Related Breakthroughs Although a lot […]

Digital Marketing

Google Updates Search Analytics API To Clarify Data Freshness

Google has added a new metadata field to the Search Analytics API, making it easier for developers and SEO professionals to identify when they’re working with incomplete or still-processing data. The update introduces new transparency into the freshness of query results, an improvement for marketers who rely on up-to-date metrics to inform real-time decisions. What’s […]

Digital Marketing

Meta Follows YouTube In Crackdown On Unoriginal Content

Meta announced that it will implement stronger measures against accounts sharing “unoriginal” content on Facebook. This marks the second major platform policy update in days following YouTube’s similar announcement about mass-produced and repetitive content. Meta revealed it has removed approximately 10 million profiles impersonating large content creators, and taken action against 500,000 accounts involved in […]

Digital Marketing

Everything You Need To Know

When Performance Max launched in 2021, many advertisers weren’t sure what to expect. It promised access to all of Google’s inventory in a single paid search campaign, but gave us very few levers to actually influence performance. For brands used to having more control, that was frustrating. Since then, a lot has changed. Google has […]

Digital Marketing

What Is Paid Media: Types & Examples

Paid media is often treated like a checklist item in a marketing plan: launch a few search ads, run a Meta campaign, maybe test YouTube if there’s budget left. But not all paid media is created equal, and treating every channel the same is a fast way to burn through budget with little to show […]

Digital Marketing

Google Explains How Long It Takes For SEO To Work

Google’s martin Splitt and John Mueller discussed how long it takes for SEO to have an effect. Google’s John Mueller explained that there are different levels of optimization and that some have a more immediate effect than other more complex changes. Visible Changes From SEO Some SEOs like to make blanket statements that SEO is […]

Digital Marketing

Essential WordPress Plugins Every Site Should Have

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, arguably because of its ability to become virtually any kind of website users want it to be. This flexibility is made possible by thousands of third-party plugins that add the features needed to turn ideas into functioning businesses and platforms. The WordPress plugin community […]

Digital Marketing

Google Clarifies Structured Data Rules For Returns & Loyalty Programs

Google has updated its structured data documentation to clarify how merchants should implement markup for return policies and loyalty programs. The updates aim to reduce confusion and ensure compatibility with Google Search features. Key Changes In Return Policy Markup The updated documentation clarifies that only a limited subset of return policy data is supported at […]

Digital Marketing

Google’s Advice On Hiring An SEO And Red Flags To Watch For

Google’s Search Off The Record podcast discussed when a business should hire an SEO consultant and what metrics of success should look like. They also talked about a red flag to watch for when considering a search marketer. Hire An SEO When It Becomes Time Consuming Martin Splitt started the conversation off by asking at […]

Digital Marketing

How To Calculate Your ROAS & Ways To Use It

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is a common metric or key performance indicator for paid search campaigns. PPC managers and digital marketing executives have been using it for a long time. In fact, it isn’t even novel to just digital marketing. While calculating and connecting the dots with attribution for full end-to-end digital marketing is […]

Digital Marketing

OpenAI Quietly Adds Shopify As A Shopping Search Partner

OpenAI has quietly added Shopify as a third-party search partner to help power their shopping search, which shows shopping-rich results. The addition of Shopify was not formally announced, but quietly tucked into OpenAI ChatGPT search documentation. Shopify Is An OpenAI Search Partner Aleyda Solís (LinkedIn profile) recently noticed that OpenAI had updated their Search documentation […]

Digital Marketing

TikTok Denies Report Claiming It’s Building A Standalone US App

TikTok has denied a Reuters report claiming it’s building a standalone U.S. app with a separate algorithm. TikTok strongly denies it is developing a separate U.S.-only version of the app. Reuters cites anonymous sources claiming such a project exists, under the codename “M2.” The report highlights the uncertainty around TikTok’s future in the U.S.

Digital Marketing

How Enterprise Search And AI Intelligence Reveal Market Pulse in 2025

The last few years have fundamentally transformed how businesses and consumers discover, evaluate, and engage with brands. What began as a digital acceleration in 2020-2021 has evolved into an AI-driven revolution that’s reshaping the entire search landscape in 2025 across every industry vertical. Where organizations once relied on monthly snapshots and historical data, today’s market […]

Digital Marketing

Targeting Spam, Not Reaction Channels

YouTube has responded to concerns surrounding its upcoming monetization policy update, clarifying that the July 15 changes are aimed at improving the detection of inauthentic content. The update isn’t a crackdown on popular formats like reaction videos or clip compilations. The clarification comes from Renee Richie, a creator liaison at YouTube, after a wave of […]

Digital Marketing

How To Succeed While Others Struggle With AI

It’s been suggested that agentic AI will change SEO from managing tools to managing intelligent systems that manage SEO tools, essentially turning an SEO into a worker who rides a lawn mower, with the machine doing all the work. However, that prediction overlooks a critical fact: user behavior remains Google’s most important ranking factor. Those […]

Digital Marketing

Relying Too Much On AI Is Backfiring For Businesses

As more companies race to adopt generative AI tools, some are learning a hard lesson: when used without oversight or expertise, these tools can cause more problems than they solve. From broken websites to ineffective marketing copy, the hidden costs of AI mistakes are adding up, forcing businesses to bring in professionals to clean up […]

Digital Marketing

How To Get The Perfect Budget Mix For SEO And PPC

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to deciding how much of your marketing budget should go toward SEO versus PPC. But that doesn’t mean the decision should be based on gut instinct or what your competitors are doing. Marketing leaders are under more pressure than ever to show a return on every dollar spent. […]

Digital Marketing

SEO Rockstar “Proves” You Don’t Need Meta Descriptions

An SEO shared on social media that his SEO tests proved that not using a meta description resulted in a lift in traffic. Coincidentally, another well-known SEO published an article that claims that SEO tests misunderstand how Google and the internet actually work and lead to the deprioritization of meaningful changes. Who is right? SEO […]

Digital Marketing

What Is Paid Media: Types & Examples

Digital Marketing

Explaining The Great Decoupling To C-Level

Something important is happening in Google Search. If you’ve looked at your website data in Google Search Console, you may have noticed something odd. Your pages are showing up more often, but fewer people are clicking through. These two signals – impressions and clicks – are used to rise and fall together. Now, they’re drifting […]

Digital Marketing

5 High-Impact Ways to Integrate Traditional & Digital Marketing

As emerging technologies, particularly AI, reshape B2B marketing strategies, many organizations are shifting resources toward digital transformation to remain competitive. However, sidelining traditional marketing tactics to prioritize innovation can be a costly misstep. Traditional channels such as print, direct mail, billboards, and events have considerable value, particularly when they are thoughtfully integrated with digital strategies […]

Digital Marketing

Is Your Conversion Data Misleading You? 7 Common Google Ads Tracking Issues

Conversion tracking tends to be one of those things advertisers set up once and then forget about, until something fails – big time. But in my 16 years of experience running Google Ads, I can confidently say it’s the single most important factor affecting PPC results. Way before campaign failure, when results first start lagging, […]

Digital Marketing

Google AI Mode Shows 91% URL Change Across Repeat Searches

A new study analyzing 10,000 keywords reveals that Google’s AI Mode delivers inconsistent results. The research also shows minimal overlap between AI Mode sources and traditional organic search rankings. Published by SE Ranking, the study examines how AI Mode performs in comparison to Google’s AI Overviews and the top 10 organic search results. “The average […]

Digital Marketing

Many Top Sites Have Invalid HTML And Still Rank

A recent discussion on Google’s Search Off the Record podcast challenges long-held assumptions about technical SEO, revealing that most top-ranking websites don’t use valid HTML. Despite these imperfections, they continue to rank well in search results. Search Advocate John Mueller and Developer Relations Engineer Martin Splitt referenced a study by former Google webmaster Jens Meiert, […]

Digital Marketing

Google Integrates Search Console Insights Into Main Platform

Google has rolled out a new version of Search Console Insights, now integrated directly into the main Search Console interface. This update ends the standalone beta experience. The new report aims to make it easier to understand your site’s search performance without requiring advanced analytics skills. What’s New? Previously accessible through a separate interface, Search […]

Digital Marketing

Balancing Content That Converts With Content That Builds Brand Authority

This week’s Ask an SEO question comes from Rachel P., who wants to find the middle ground between conversion-focused pages and authority-building content: “How do I balance content that converts with content that builds brand authority? It feels like my CRO pages don’t rank well, and my blog posts don’t convert.” It’s hard not to […]

Digital Marketing

Google’s AI Search Journeys Are Reshaping SEO With Cindy Krum

Google’s transformation into an AI-driven search platform represents more than just a technological advancement. It’s a fundamental shift in how the search giant views itself as a company and the value it provides to users. Cindy Krum has spoken at several events this year about her theory that Google might merge AI Overviews, Discover, and […]

Digital Marketing

How To Use Paid Search & Social Ads For Promoting Events

Paid media offers one of the fastest ways to promote a business event and get the right people to take action. Event campaigns are not just regular ads with a date added. They need a dedicated strategy, setup, budget, and audience targeting to succeed. From webinars and product launches to open houses and local promotions, […]

Digital Marketing

YouTube Tests AI Features To Improve Search & Discovery

YouTube is rolling out two AI-driven features designed to enhance content discovery and deepen user engagement. The experimental tools include an AI-powered search results carousel for Premium users and a conversational AI assistant now expanding to some non-Premium accounts in the U.S. AI Search Results Carousel (Premium Only) Premium subscribers in the U.S. can now […]

Digital Marketing

Google’s New MUVERA Algorithm Improves Search

Google announced a new multi-vector retrieval algorithm called MUVERA that speeds up retrieval and ranking, and improves accuracy. The algorithm can be used for search, recommender systems (like YouTube), and for natural language processing (NLP). Although the announcement did not explicitly say that it is being used in search, the research paper makes it clear […]

Digital Marketing

A Strategic Imperative For Travel And Tourism Operators

The travel and tourism industry thrives on inspiration, discovery, and experience. While increasingly being challenged by social media and friend & family referrals, the first point of discovery for many travelers is still a search engine. For operators in this competitive sector, ranging from boutique hotels and niche tour providers to vacation rental property owners […]

Digital Marketing

Google Tests ‘Preferred Sources’ To Personalize Top Stories Section

Google is testing a new feature that allows you to customize the Top Stories section in search results by selecting preferred news sources. Currently available through Search Labs in the U.S. and India, the experiment gives people more influence over which publishers appear in their news-related queries. How It Works Those who opt into the […]

Digital Marketing

Google Launches Offerwall To Expand Monetization Options

Google has launched Offerwall, a new feature in Google Ad Manager designed to help publishers diversify their revenue beyond traditional ads. The tool, now generally available after testing with over 1,000 publishers, allows audiences to choose how they access content, including watching short ads, completing surveys, or making micro payments. According to Google, early adopters […]

Digital Marketing

How To Weed Out Less Qualified Audiences From Your PPC Campaigns

To my fellow marketers, I first wrote this title in the summer of 2020, back when I thought, “Wow, surely things couldn’t get worse.” Needless to say, I was wrong. Here’s the actual quote I started with last time: “If you’re reading this, then it is early July, you’ve made it this far in the […]

Digital Marketing

6 Key Findings From Marketing Leaders

AI is being rapidly implemented, but that doesn’t mean it’s being used effectively. The current lack of clear benchmarks and data about AI usage has meant that everyone has been operating in the dark. This led us to create our first State Of AI In Marketing report, so that chief marketing officers and marketing decision-makers […]

Digital Marketing

The Right Message To The Right People

This edited excerpt is from Human-Centered Marketing by Ashley Faus ©2025 and is reproduced and adapted with permission from Kogan Page Ltd. Mapping content to the traditional funnel adds no value, since the journey behaves more like a playground than a linear progression. Pitfalls of the traditional funnel include assuming that every person in the […]

Digital Marketing

Jill Whalen’s SEO Legacy Still Shapes The Industry

Jill Whalen, a true SEO pioneer, recently passed away. Although she has been retired for over ten years, her influence continues in the content-first SEO practices she advocated that are gradually gaining ground thirty years after she first championed that approach to ranking websites. Contributions To SEO As part of the first wave of SEO, […]

Digital Marketing

Google AI Mode And The Future Of Search Monetization

Google AI Mode, which officially launched in May 2025 and is now available to all U.S. users without a waitlist, represents a significant step forward in how we engage with search. Powered by Gemini 2.5, this new interface moves beyond AI Overviews by introducing a persistent, conversational assistant that blends AI-generated insights with traditional search […]

Digital Marketing

How To Plan Your Content (With Template)

Marketers and business owners are spoiled for choice when it comes to the many social media platforms available for growing an online audience. From BlueSky to TikTok, LinkedIn to Patreon, social media marketing has never been more robust, or, arguably, time-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. Fortunately, you don’t have to be everywhere at […]

Digital Marketing

How To Use Paid Search & Social Ads For Promoting Events

Digital Marketing

How To Efficiently Plan A WordPress Site

The most exciting moment of your new WordPress project is right at the beginning. You have an idea that one day, you hope will soon be shared with the world. But it can also be overwhelming. WordPress has countless plugins that do pretty much everything under the sun. In fact, the WordPress ecosystem has doubled […]

Digital Marketing

Best WordPress SEO Tools & Plugins For Enterprise Sites

When it comes to enterprise SEO, you need more than just the basics. You need tools that scale, provide deep insights, and plug seamlessly into your WordPress ecosystem. Enterprise businesses require a scalable, credible, and reliable website. While many organizations invest in expensive platforms that consume a significant portion of their budget and come with […]

Digital Marketing

How Much Code Should SEO Pros Know? Google Weighs In

Google’s Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes recently addressed a common question in search marketing: how technical do SEO professionals need to be? In a Search Off the Record podcast, they offered guidance on which technical skills are helpful in SEO and discussed the long-standing friction between developers and SEO professionals. Splitt noted: “I think in […]

Digital Marketing

How To Develop A Brand That Truly Connects

If your brand doesn’t resonate on a deep level with your target audience, then pouring time and energy into aesthetics and clever messaging is a waste of resources. Real brand power is based on your brand’s identity: knowing who you are as a company, and how your ideal customer experiences life in relation to your offering. […]

Digital Marketing

TikTok Ban Delayed Again, Will Remain Active Until September

TikTok will remain operational in the U.S. through September 17, as negotiations over a potential ownership deal continue. President Donald Trump issued a third executive order delaying enforcement of the TikTok ban, giving the Chinese-owned platform another 90 days to operate in the U.S. The move was confirmed in a White House briefing and TikTok’s […]

Digital Marketing

Aligning The CIO, CFO & CMO For Search‑Driven ROI

As AI search redefines visibility, brands must shift from ranking to relevance. This is where leadership must step up. The post Aligning The CIO, CFO & CMO For Search‑Driven ROI appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Digital Marketing

What Are Good Google Ads Benchmarks In 2025? [STUDY]

Keeping up-to-date on industry Google Ads benchmarks is crucial to help answer questions you might get from clients or exec such as: “Is this a good CTR?” “Why is our CPA so high?” “What’s a good conversion rate, anyway?” Questions like these come up all the time, especially when budgets are tight and performance dips […]

Digital Marketing

AI Agents & Workflows For Audit (Part 2)

Building on our previous exploration of Agentic SEO’s ideation capabilities, this article takes a closer look at the second pillar: Audit. As promised, we’ll look at how AI agents can transform the SEO audit process by providing corrections and thorough analysis that would otherwise take hundreds of hours of manual work. Traditional SEO audits are […]

Digital Marketing

How AI Is Changing Affiliate Strategies

This week’s Ask an SEO question about affiliate strategies comes from Mike R: “How is AI changing affiliate marketing strategy in 2025? I’m concerned my current approach will become obsolete but don’t know which new techniques are actually worth adopting.” Great question, Mike. I’m seeing a few trends and strategies that are changing, for the […]

Digital Marketing

Google Adds AI Mode Traffic To Search Console Reports

Google has updated its Search Console documentation, confirming it includes AI Mode data in Performance reports. This is a change to note when reviewing your metrics, as it may impact traffic reporting patterns. Understanding AI Mode and What’s Changed AI Mode is Google’s interactive AI-powered search experience, which builds on AI Overviews to provide more […]

Digital Marketing

How To Weed Out Less Qualified Audiences From Your PPC Campaigns

Digital Marketing

What’s The Value Of Regular PPC Audits & How To Do Them Well

Regular audits are one of the foundational workflows in any paid media strategy. Whether you’re investigating account anomalies, evaluating growth opportunities, or preparing to transition strategies or vendors, audits are an essential pillar of PPC success. Here’s the thing: Not every audit strategy fits every account. A one-size-fits-all checklist won’t account for platform quirks, business […]

Digital Marketing

Google Search Team Explains The “It Depends” Response

Google’s Search Relations team has explained why their SEO advice often sounds vague or comes with conditions, such as “it depends.” In a recent Search Off the Record podcast, team members Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes shared the challenges that prevent them from providing clear-cut answers. The discussion was part of what the team referred […]

Digital Marketing

Google Outage Disrupts Lens, Discover, & Voice Search Results

Google has confirmed an ongoing disruption that is preventing some results from appearing in Google Lens, Discover, and Voice Search. According to the company’s Search Status Dashboard, the incident began on June 12 at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time. A follow-up entry posted at 1:16 p.m. states: “There’s an ongoing issue with serving Google Lens, Discover, […]

Digital Marketing

How To Plan Your Content (With Template)

Digital Marketing

Google Launches Audio Overviews In Search Labs Test

Google has launched Audio Overviews, a new test feature in Search Labs. It creates audio summaries of search results using Google’s latest Gemini AI models. How Audio Overviews Work Audio Overviews turn Google Search results into audio content. When Google thinks an audio overview might help, you’ll see an option to create a short audio […]

Digital Marketing

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Discusses Fate Of The Human-Created Web

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, responded to concerns about the impact of recent changes in Search and was repeatedly asked to clarify his position on the web ecosystem and how it fits into what he calls the next chapter of search. Pichai’s responses were given in the context of a recent interview on the Lex Fridman […]

Digital Marketing

Google Retires 7 Structured Data Features To Streamline Search Results

Google retires seven structured data features including Book Actions, Course Info, and Claim Review to streamline search results. Rankings unaffected. Google is removing seven structured data features from search results. This change will not affecting rankings. There’s no immediate action needed.

Digital Marketing

The Truth About LLM Hallucinations With Barry Adams

The launch of ChatGPT blew apart the search industry, and the last few years have seen more and more AI integration into search engine results pages. In an attempt to keep up with the LLMs, Google launched AI Overviews and just announced AI Mode tabs. The expectation is that SERPs will become blended with a […]

Digital Marketing

Google Removes Robots.txt Guidance For Blocking Auto-Translated Pages

Google removes robots.txt guidance for blocking auto-translated pages. This change aligns Google’s technical documents with its spam policies. Google removed guidance advising websites to block auto-translated pages via robots.txt. This aligns with Google’s policies that judge content by user value, not creation method. Use meta tags like “noindex” for low-quality translations instead of sitewide […]

Digital Marketing

First Thoughts & Survival Strategies

The new AI Mode tab in Google’s results, currently only active in the U.S., enables users to get an AI-generated answer to their query. You can ask a detailed question in AI Mode, and Google will provide a summarized answer. Google AI Mode answer for the question [what are the best ways to grow your […]

Digital Marketing

YouTube Begins Showing Posts In The Shorts Feed

YouTube has announced that Posts will now appear in the Shorts feed. This change allows users to see and interact with Posts while watching short videos. How the Feature Works You can now see Posts while scrolling through Shorts on YouTube. In the screenshot below, you can see that the layout keeps the same vertical […]

Digital Marketing

Why’s GA4 Reporting Higher Traffic Than GSC?

Today’s question centers on the differences in Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console measurement: “I’m reaching out for help with a puzzling issue in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). We’ve experienced a sudden and unexplained surge in traffic over a four-day period, but surprisingly, Google Search Console (GSC) doesn’t show any corresponding data. The anomaly […]

Digital Marketing

Google Responds To Site That Lost Ranks After Googlebot DDoS Crawl

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about a site that received millions of Googlebot requests for pages that don’t exist, with one non-existent URL receiving over two million hits, essentially DDoS-level page requests. The publisher’s concerns about crawl budget and rankings seemingly were realized, as the site subsequently experienced a drop in search visibility. NoIndex […]

Digital Marketing

WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg’s Reaction To FAIR Project

The Linux Foundation recently announced the FAIR Package Manager project, an open-source, distributed WordPress plugin and theme repository that decentralizes control of the repository. A distributed theme and plugin repository became a priority for many in the WordPress community after Matt Mullenweg took control of certain paid premium plugins and created free versions from them, […]

Digital Marketing

Google AI Mode Introduces Data Visualization For Finance Queries

Google has started rolling out interactive charts in AI Mode through Labs. You can now ask complex financial questions and get both visual charts and detailed explanations. The system builds these responses specifically for each user’s question. Visual Analytics Come AI Mode Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, Director of Product Management for Search at Google, explained that you […]

Digital Marketing

WordPress Plugin Platform Offers Proactive Security Scanning

WordPress security company Patchstack announced a new security tier called managed Vulnerability Disclosure Program platform (mVDP), which offers both human and advanced AI plugin reviews to help plugin developers keep their software resistant to vulnerabilities and provide greater trustworthiness. One of the biggest problems with WordPress is vulnerabilities from third-party plugins. An enormous amount of […]

Digital Marketing

Social Media As A Customer Service Tool: Trends And Best Practices

Every tweet, direct message, and comment holds weight. Social media has long been a connectivity platform, where users engage with friends, colleagues, and family. In recent years, it’s also evolved to become a feedback mechanism for businesses. In many industries, customers are communicating with a business on social media. It’s a key customer service channel, […]

Digital Marketing

Newly Released Data Shows Desktop AI Search Referrals Dominate

BrightEdge Enterprise SEO platform released new data showing distinctive patterns across major AI search and chatbot platforms and also called attention to potential disruption from Apple if it breaks with Google as the default search engine in Safari. Desktop AI Traffic Dominance One of the key findings in the BrightEdge data is that traffic to […]

Digital Marketing

Google’s Update To Recipe Structured Data Confirms A Ranking Criteria

Google updated the Recipe Schema.org structured data documentation to reflect more precise guidance on what the image structured data property affects and where to find additional information about ranking recipe images in the regular organic search results. Schema.org Structured Data And Rich Results The SEO and publisher community refers to the text results as the […]

Digital Marketing

Respected SEO Rockstar Deconstructs SEO For Google’s AI Search

One of the SEO industry’s SEO Rockstars recently shared his opinion about SEO for generative AI, calling attention to facts about Google and how the new AI search really works. Greg Boser is a search marketing pioneer with a deep level of experience that few in the industry can match or even begin to imagine. […]

Digital Marketing

WordPress Shares How AI May Play Stronger Role In Web Publishing

WordPress interviewed a member of the newly formed WordPress AI Team who shared how AI can be integrated into WordPress, outlining a future in which the platform supports AI agents and content consumption while enabling new kinds of functionality. To achieve this, the team is focusing on developer tools that allow third-party developers and services […]

Digital Marketing

WordPress Performance Team Releases New Plugin

The WordPress Performance Team has released an experimental plugin that increases the perceived loading speed of web pages without the performance issues and accessibility tradeoffs associated with Single Page Applications (SPAs). The announcement was made by Felix Arntz, a member of the WordPress Performance Team and a Google software engineer. Plugins released by the WordPress […]

Digital Marketing

Microsoft Clarity Announces Natural Language Access To Analytics

Microsoft Clarity announced their new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server which enables developers, AI users and SEOs to query Clarity Analytics data with natural language prompts via AI. The announcement listed the following ways users can access and interact with the data using MCP: Query analytics data with natural prompts Filter by dimensions like Browser, […]

Digital Marketing

An In-Depth Guide To Apple Search Ads

As paid media marketers, we often default to the “big” platforms: Google, Meta, and increasingly, TikTok. However, there’s a quiet powerhouse in the app marketing world that too many advertisers overlook: Apple Search Ads (ASA). If you work with apps or even if your business uses an app as a secondary conversion point, ASA is […]

Digital Marketing

Google Patent On Using Contextual Signals Beyond Query Semantics

A patent recently filed by Google outlines how an AI assistant may use at least five real-world contextual signals, including identifying related intents, to influence answers and generate natural dialog. It’s an example of how AI-assisted search modifies responses to engage users with contextually relevant questions and dialog, expanding beyond keyword-based systems. The patent describes […]

Digital Marketing

New AI-Assisted Managed WordPress Hosting For Ecommerce

Bluehost announced two competitively priced managed WordPress ecommerce hosting solutions that make it easy for content creators and ecommerce stores to get online with WordPress and start accepting orders. Both plans feature AI site migration tools that help users switch web hosting providers, free content delivery networks to speed up web page downloads, AI-assisted site […]

Digital Marketing

WordPress Finally Takes Steps To Integrate AI

WordPress announced the formation of an AI Team that will focus on coordinating the development and integration of AI within the WordPress core. The team is to function similarly to the Performance Team, focusing on developing canonical plugins that users can install to test new functionality before a decision is made about whether or how […]

Digital Marketing

How To Create An SEO Roadmap That Actually Drives Results

Many companies approach SEO reactively – chasing rankings, responding to algorithm updates, being distracted by AI, or focusing on quick wins – without a long-term plan. But successful SEO strategies start with a structured roadmap that aligns with business objectives, technical priorities, and content planning. Planning isn’t an exciting term, and many planning processes are […]

Digital Marketing

How Do We Shift Google From Our Old Brand Name to Our New One?

The question for this edition of Ask An SEO comes from a reader who’s trying to make their rebrand stick in search: “Our company recently went through a rebrand with a new name. We’re seeing our old brand name still dominating search results, while our new brand barely registers. What’s the best approach to transition […]

Digital Marketing

Google’s Gary Illyes Warns AI Agents Will Create Web Congestion

A Google engineer has warned that AI agents and automated bots will soon flood the internet with traffic. Gary Illyes, who works on Google’s Search Relations team, said “everyone and my grandmother is launching a crawler” during a recent podcast. The warning comes from Google’s latest Search Off the Record podcast episode. AI Agents Will […]