Organic search traffic is down just 2.5% year over year — nowhere near the 25% to 60% drops often cited in industry commentary. That’s one big takeaway from a new large-scale analysis by Graphite using Similarweb data from more than 40,000 of the largest U.S. websites. This finding challenges the idea that generative AI tools like ChatGPT are rapidly replacing traditional search and gutting SEO.

Marketing budgets aren’t collapsing in 2026, but they are making a shift. That’s the part many teams miss. That distinction matters. Rising media costs, weaker attribution, privacy changes, and AI-driven search shifts have created real pressure, but the data shows budgets are still moving into marketing. They’re just moving with more intent. Our latest NP Digital research on how marketers are spe

The debate around llms.txt has become one of the most polarized topics in web optimization. Some treat llms.txt as foundational infrastructure, while many SEO veterans dismiss it as speculative theater. Platform tools flag missing llms.txt files as site issues, yet server logs show that AI crawlers rarely request them. Google even adopted it. Sort of. In December, the company added llms.txt files

AI has quickly risen to the top of the corporate agenda. Despite this, 95% of businesses struggle with adoption, MIT research found. Those failures are no longer hypothetical. They are already playing out in real time, across industries, and often in public. For companies exploring AI adoption, these examples highlight what not to do and why AI initiatives fail when systems are deployed without s

AI search broke the link between traffic and revenue. This piece explains how SEO creates demand without page views. The post The Great Decoupling appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

With new updates in the search world stacking up in 2026, content teams are trying a new strategy to rank: LLM pages. They’re building pages that no human will ever see: markdown files, stripped-down JSON feeds, and entire /ai/ versions of their articles. The logic seems sound: if you make content easier for AI to parse, you’ll get more citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.

Here is a weird one – one person named Kunjal Chawhan spotted a Google AI Overview that had an HTML font strikethrough in the text. So it looks like Google is offering an answer, but it’s struck through as a false answer…

Back in May, Google announced updates to shopping in AI Mode. One of those announcements is to help you narrow down your AI Mode results for shopping queries using query fan-out. Well, here is an example of that where Google AI Mode is prompting you to narrow down the options.

Yep, back on comments from Google on the LLMs.txt file. Another question came up on Bluesky asking if the fact that some Google properties still have the LLMs.txt files up, if that is some sort of endorsement from Google. John Mueller from Google said, simply, “no,” it is not an endorsement.

Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Advertiser Ads Liaison, asked on LinkedIn if you will be adding Microsoft Advertising part of your marketing mix in 2026? The poll had over 200 responses, with most saying it is already included in that mix but 36% saying they will be adding it to the mix.

Google AI Mode is showing really light colored fonts for product pricing and inventory when you click on a product. This differs from the normal font type in the main Google Search results interface.

Around the turn of the year, search industry media fills up with reviews and predictions. Bold, disruptive ideas steal the spotlight and trigger a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out). However, sustainable online sales growth doesn’t come from chasing the next big trend. In SEO, what truly matters stays the same. FOMO is bad for you We regularly get excited about the next big thing. Each new idea

Understand why entity linking is becoming a strategic requirement for local SEO in AI search environments. The post Case Study: How Entity Linking Can Support Local Search Success appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Search visibility isn’t what it used to be. Rankings still matter, but they’re no longer the whole story. Today, discovery happens across traditional search results, local listings, brand knowledge panels, and increasingly, AI-driven experiences that surface answers without a click. For marketers, that makes visibility harder to measure — and easier to lose. SEO teams now operate in a landscape w

New data from BrightEdge shows which kinds of finance-related queries trigger AI answers and which kinds do not The post Data Shows AI Overviews Disappears On Certain Kinds Of Finance Queries appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Wondering if AI voice agents could improve and scale your customer service? Want to know what it takes to implement AI voice assistants in your business? In this article, you’ll discover how to deploy AI voice agents that handle real customer interactions while avoiding common pitfalls. How AI Voice Agents Help Businesses AI voice agents […] The post appeared first on Social Media Examiner .

The co-lead of the WordPress AI Team says some sites face a “more complex” future as brand differentiation gets flattened. The post Why Agentic AI May Flatten Brand Differentiators appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

It’s difficult to write directions. A user interface, a map or a recipe all require empathy. That’s because the person writing it knows something the reader doesn’t. In fact, that’s the only reason to do it. But because instructions exist to bridge this gap, we benefit by understanding and focusing on the gap. The instructions aren’t there to remind you of how to do something. They serve to help

Google now uses Gemini 3 Pro to generate some AI Overviews in Google Search. Google said for more complex queries Gemini 3 Pro is used for AI Overview. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up . The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with This was previously announced for AI Mode results back in November and then in

Marketing funnels aren‘t cutting it anymore, and you’ve probably felt it in the form of declining traffic, scattered buyer journeys, and tactics that worked last year falling flat today. That’s why HubSpot introduced loop marketing tactics, a four-stage framework designed to help you adapt and grow in the AI era. Unlike traditional funnels that assume buyers follow a linear path, Loop Marketing c

We fully decrypted Google’s SearchGuard anti-bot system, the technology at the center of its recent lawsuit against SerpAPI. After fully deobfuscating the JavaScript code, we now have an unprecedented look at how Google distinguishes human visitors from automated scrapers in real time. What happened. Google filed a lawsuit on Dec. 19 against Texas-based SerpAPI LLC , alleging the company circumve

Five days compressed into five minutes. Six weeks into six days. These aren’t marginal improvements. They’re what happens when marketing organizations remove the structural barriers that prevent talented people from acting at the speed of customer behavior. As Peter Drucker, the father of modern management , warned in “Managing in Turbulent Times,” “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is n

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. OpenAI will be testing ads in ChatGPT very soon. Google’s Gemini 3 Pro now powers some AI Overviews…

Why Discover success depends on outperforming expected early performance, and how entities, headlines, and images shape long-term credibility. The post appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Learn how to balance upper and lower-funnel budgets across paid search and social, backed by research, frameworks, and practical strategies to drive long-term growth. The post appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google announced late on Friday that Gemini 3 Pro is now powered Google AI Overviews for complex queries. Google actually said this last November, but then edited its story to say it was just AI Mode that was powered by Gemini 3 Pro and not AI Overviews. Now both AI Overviews and AI Mode can use Gemini 3 Pro.

Google is appealing the ruling that it is an illegal search monopoly – which surprises no one. Plus, Google asked the court to pause the remedies during the appeal phase.

Google’s John Mueller once again warned about hosting your website on free subdomain hosting service because they are magnets for a “lot of spam & low-effort content.”

I used to spend hours each week moving data from WordPress forms into other tools. I would copy an email address here, paste a phone number there, create a task, and then send a follow-up. It was slow, and I knew there had to be a better way. Then I discovered the power of workflow automation. WPForms can work with n8n, which means you can send your form entries to thousands of apps using n8n’s w

James LePage, co-lead of the WordPress AI team, explains how SEO applies to AI agent content consumption. The post Head Of WordPress AI Team Explains SEO For AI Agents appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

We are story-processing creatures, and the most effective stories are often embodied in people. Living examples of the lesson we’re trying to learn and the posture we hope to model. Heroes, mentors, martyrs, examples, icons, avatars, archetypes, and even villains. Sometimes those people are fictional, living in an anecdote and refined to form a legend. The leverage of media, though, has made hist

Google’s John Mueller explains why free subdomain hosting services attract spam and make it harder for legitimate sites to gain search visibility. The post Google’s Mueller: Free Subdomain Hosting Makes SEO Harder appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

SEO advice loves to sound technical. People argue about backlinks, topical authority, Core Web Vitals, schema, whether “helpful content” is dead or alive, etc, etc. All of that matters. But there’s a ranking lever I almost never see discussed plainly—even though I see it explain so many wins and losses: […] The post appeared first on .

Celebrity gossip, fortune-telling and superstitions are the original forms of fake news, but now it’s increasingly widespread. In every field from science to world affairs, it’s troubling to see. People who are familiar with reality can’t understand why it’s popular–in a low-trust world, why would people engage with made-up noise disguised as information? The irony is that it’s easier to trust fa

Google’s John Mueller acknowledges phantom noindex errors in Search Console reflect hidden indexing signals surfaced during Googlebot access. The post Google On Phantom Noindex Errors In Search Console appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Until you look at the system. Kevin Wilson wrote a great short story about the workers who have to sort the tiles that go into a Scrabble box. The hero is responsible for searching through the pile for the letter ‘q’. All day. On commission. At this absurd level, it’s clear that the game isn’t made this way. They’d never produce all 26 letters, mix them up and then sort them. It pays to be though

Many website owners follow a similar “security plan,” even if they don’t call it that. They launch the site, add a couple of plugins, and just hope nothing goes wrong. The issue is that modern website hacks don’t make themselves obvious. Instead, they show up as small signs, like a redirect that only affects mobile users, a hidden credit card skimmer in a template file, silent SEO spam that hurts

Ready to learn how to “vibe code” custom SEO tools using ChatGPT and Google Colab? Gus Pelogia shares 5 automation ideas, including entity tracking and hreflang matching, to save you time.

The pressure is mounting on social media companies to enforce their rules and protect children on the platforms. Australia recently instituted a ban on children under the age of 16 from social media platforms. Gaming platforms like Roblox are now using facial recognition technology to prevent kids from interacting with adults in chats. And now TikTok, the social media platform well known for its

If you‘re familiar with the world of SEO, I probably don’t have to tell you there’s been a serious shift in its landscape. Marketers are no longer just optimizing content for Google‘s traditional blue links; we’re now optimizing for AI. The shift is called Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO. Some practitioners also refer to it as AI engine optimization, and both terms are used interchangeably. Bu

At its core, an SEO audit is a step-by-step review of your website’s technical health, content quality, and search visibility. An SEO audit identifies technical, on-page, content, and link issues on a website. It helps SEO teams identify, prioritize, and fix the issues that block traffic, rankings, and, importantly, conversions. Businesses and SEO teams should create audits to identify opportunit

I used to ask people to email me their photos for my website. Profile pictures for membership sites, headshots for team pages, even simple ID verification images – and every single time, it turned into a back-and-forth mess. People would forget to attach the file. Or they’d send a photo that was way too large. Sometimes they’d take a screenshot of a photo instead of sending the actual image, and

Once a company hits a plateau in its market share, the pressure begins to mount. Investors want more of a return, shareholders want the stock price to go up. Managers pay attention to the metrics they’re held to, and the squeeze begins. At first, the squeeze focuses on efficiency. Cut obvious costs without diminishing customer delight or the conditions that the employees work under. That doesn’t

In today’s competitive digital environment, a website is no longer just a marketing asset. It is a business engine. Yet even well-funded teams with experienced developers continue to release products that frustrate users, fail to convert, or quietly break after updates. The reason is rarely a lack of effort. More often, it is a pattern of avoidable testing mistakes that undermine otherwise strong

After finally making moves to stop its Grok AI from creating nonconsensual sexualized images and CSAM , Elon Musk’s X has announced another major platform overhaul today. X’s head of product Nikita Bier announced on Thursday that the social media platform was going to ban apps that reward users for posting on the site. Bier specifically mentioned it was going to block “InfoFi” apps and developers

WordPress Playground had a busy year in 2025, with updates that make it more capable for day-to-day development, plugin previews, and learning environments. The project’s latest year-in-review highlights progress across performance, compatibility, database support, and tooling, expanding what can be done in a WordPress environment that runs in the browser and through the command line. From faster

Okay, so check this out—CitiDirect can feel like a fortress. Wow! The interface looks clean, but really, access workflows trip people up all the time. My instinct said it would be simpler than it is. Initially I thought the login process was straightforward, but then realized that permissions, token management, and browser quirks make it complicated in practice. Whoa! Small things matter a lot. C

Wondering how other companies get customers to actively promote their business? Want to explore a proven framework that turns one-time buyers into lifelong advocates? In this article, you’ll discover how to create superfans using a proven five-step framework that transforms customer experience into customer loyalty and referrals. Why Customer Experience Matters for Marketers Marketing generates [

Pop culture is spiralling. I had no idea what “mad magazine autostereogram, cutecore” meant, but it was enough for Midjourney to create this: Older generations have always been left out of the codewords and trends of the makers of pop culture, but the gatekeepers and lack of shelf space kept pop, popular. There are only 40 songs in the Top 40, only a few hit network TV shows. Three things have ch

Before Reddit became the de facto “front page of the internet,” there was Digg. Digg, the crowdsourced content platform, is where “upvoting” links was popularized. However, a failed redesign wrecked the site’s popularity with its user base, who fled to Reddit – and the rest was history. Digg flailed under different curated, editorial visions and Reddit became one of the internet’s biggest website

Google Gemini — the tech giant’s generative AI video model — is launching the ability to generate social media-ready vertical video. That’s all well and good, but it raises the question: Does that mean even more AI slop ? Google Veo is widely regarded as the leading AI video model (different versions of Veo claim the top four spots on LMArena’s text-to-video leaderboard ), so the answer is almost

Automating your WordPress site doesn’t have to feel like rocket science. Tools like Make.com are powerful, but for many beginners, they can feel overwhelming. Between extra connection steps and complex setups (like webhooks), it’s easy to get stuck before anything actually works. That’s where a plugin like Uncanny Automator makes a big difference. It lets you build Make.com–style workflows in Wor

Nothing important is for everyone. When we encounter a thoughtful critic, we need to quickly understand who is speaking to us. If the work we made was intended for someone just like this, and they don’t like it, we need to do a better job next time. The criticism will help us understand how to improve. But if the work we made wasn’t for someone with the hopes, needs and expectations of the person

Some attackers are increasingly moving away from simple redirects in favor of more “selective” methods of payload delivery. This approach filters out regular human visitors, allowing attackers to serve malicious content to search engine crawlers while remaining invisible to the website owner. What did we find? During a malware investigation, we identified a selective content injection attack

Marketing is moving faster than most teams can keep up with. Users expect answers immediately. They jump across channels before they ever land on your website. Search results summarize key points before they show links. AI Overviews and other LLMs give people clean, structured answers that used to require a full research session. This change affects every part of the funnel, not because the funda

Is Reddit down? The website is operating normally as of this writing, but thousands of Reddit users were asking this question on Tuesday, Jan. 13, when the popular online discussion platform appeared to suffer a brief outage. According to Downdetector , the problems started around 11:33 a.m. ET, with tens of thousands of Downdetector users reporting problems accessing the Reddit website and app.

If you‘ve noticed your brand appearing less frequently in ChatGPT answers, you’re not alone. Savvy marketers are using generative engine optimization tools to address this issue. These tools help your content get cited by AI platforms, rather than being buried under competitors. Fortunately, I spend way too much time monitoring how content performs across different platforms (an occupational haza

Like your weird uncle, nobody knows exactly how AI engines choose the sources they cite. But experiments are starting to point to ways you can get on their radar. And as consumers increasingly turn to AI search for product and service recommendations, you really want to be on their radar. (Ironically, unlike your weird uncle, who you try to avoid.) Today, I’ve got one such experiment that contrib

Are you tired of getting generic outputs from AI tools? Wondering how to make AI actually understand your business and work the way you need it to? In this article, you’ll discover how to personalize AI tools to work specifically for your business, from setting up custom instructions to building knowledge bases that transform how […] The post appeared first on Social Media Examiner .

Welcome to DEV. This ain’t your grandma’s newsletter… unless she codes in WordPress, of course. (In which case, hi Grandma! ) Buckle up for the final fortnightly round-up of the year, bringing you the latest tools, events, updates and cool stuff built by smart people. Stick around to the end to see a very good name for a snow plow. In today’s edition: Your nudge to stop “thinking about speaking s

This is the first rule of safe driving. Don’t hurtle your car into a jam where you have no options. But the first rule of management and human interaction is to leave other people an out. When you give people a chance to take action that helps them get to where they’re going, they’ll often seek to go there.

Instagram users had a scare over the weekend after many users were sent mysterious password reset emails that seemed to come directly from Instagram. Some users thought this might be a phishing email, but as Mashable reported earlier today, many of the emails are legitimate . Instagram said in a weekend statement that it had fixed a bug that allowed an external party to trigger unnecessary passwo

I’ll say the hard thing nobody wants to admit: Creating “great content” isn’t enough; it’s time for a change. And that change starts with multi-channel content distribution . This guide covers: What multi-channel content distribution is How to efficiently syndicate content across platforms Content distribution ideas that align with the Loop Marketing era You’ll learn how to make the most of your

When visitors land on your website, they’re usually looking for answers. What if you could give them a tool that provides instant, personalized results? That’s exactly what interactive calculators do, and they’re easier to build than you might think. For example, simple loan calculators have become the highest-traffic pages on many financial websites, generating more leads than any other content

This is not the same as not working very hard. In fact, they’re very different. We’ve been indoctrinated to avoid trying hard (too risky and emotionally fraught) and to resign ourselves to working hard (held up as a virtue). People who work in productivity-focused jobs where they follow the manual work very hard. If you buy a Subway franchise, you’re buying years of hard work–the more hours you

In a world of automation, AI and outsourcing, what exactly do we do for a living? Perhaps we make decisions. And what’s in short supply? A willingness to take responsibility. If you choose to sign up to make and take, there have never been more tools or more leverage available to you.

This whole DeFi trading thing still surprises me. Whoa! It moves fast. Really? Yes — and not always in a straight line. My first impression was: wow, freedom. Then reality set in. Initially I thought permissionless markets would automatically mean simple security, but then I realized the user experience and wallet choice make or break the outcome, especially for multi-chain traders who want excha

Lexcitation à portée de clic : profitez pleinement dun nouveau casino en ligne et multipliez vos chances de victoire. Les avantages de choisir un nouveau casino en ligne Sécurité et licences : critères essentiels L’offre de jeux : variété et qualité Les méthodes de paiement disponibles Le service clientèle : réactivité et efficacité Les bonus et promotions : un atout non négligeable Conclusion Le

Wow. Okay, so check this out—I’ve been wrestling with mobile wallets for years, and somethin’ about their UX still bugs me. My instinct said: decentralization should make things simpler for people, not harder. At first I thought the gap was purely design-related, but then I dug into how wallets surface liquidity pool interactions and transaction histories, and things got messier than I expected.

Left alone, a cup of coffee will gradually cool until it reaches room temperature. Stable systems regress to the mean. Things level out on their way to average, which maintains the stability of the system. The same pressures are put on any individual in our culture. Sooner or later, unless you push back, you’ll end up at room temperature. (As I write this, the built-in grammar tool has made sugge

Here’s a useful writing breakthrough that has made a difference for me… Set up an account at ElevenLabs . Create a custom voice by uploading some recordings of yourself speaking. It’s not perfect, but it’s eerily close. Now, when writing an essay, a book or even a report for work, upload the text and have the site convert it to your voice. Download it to your phone and listen to the audiobook you

Jujutsu Kaisen has entered its Culling Game arc, and its opening sequence makes one thing clear: This is not a game anyone survives unchanged. Released online yesterday alongside the Season 3 premiere, the opening sequence abandons straightforward hype in favor of something more symbolic and, dare I say, disturbing. Set to King Gnu’s “Aizo,” the opening depicts the Culling Game as a curated galle

A few months ago, I needed to add WhatsApp chat to my WordPress site. It sounded simple at first, but once I started looking, things got messy quickly. There were dozens of plugins that looked similar, vague feature lists, and very little clarity about which ones actually worked well in real situations. That’s a problem, because the wrong setup can slow down responses, frustrate visitors, or crea

Of course it’s not going to work the first time. You’ll need to fix errors in the code. Adjust errors in measurement. Deal with changing conditions. Perhaps there are systems effects no one could have predicted. If we begin a project with the high school mindset of getting a good grade (and avoiding the red check), then not only won’t we be eager to find bugs, we’re less likely to invest in proje

The digital landscape is more crowded than it’s ever been. Honestly, it feels a bit like trying to be heard in a packed stadium. Every single day, thousands of articles, blog posts, and landing pages are published with the hope of catching the eye of a potential customer. For a business owner or a marketing manager, the pressure to stand out is immense. You know you’ve got to be visible on search

We recently handled a case where a customer reported strange SEO behavior on their website. Regular visitors saw a normal site. No popups. No redirects. No visible spam. However, when they checked their site on Google, the search results were flooded with eBay-type-looking websites and “Situs Toto” gambling spam. This is a professional-grade SEO cloaking attack. The malware turns the application

AI search visibility refers to how a brand appears in AI-generated results from tools like ChatGPT and AI-augmented search engines such as Gemini or Perplexity. Unlike traditional SEO, which tracks ranking positions and blue links, AI visibility measures how often your brand is mentioned, how your owned content is cited, and how those mentions are framed in model responses. As more users rely on

Short-form video gets a lot of views, but does it actually grow your business? Are you tired of producing vanilla content that fails to build a real community? In this article, you’ll discover strategic tips from two seasoned experts to help you grow your audience and drive business results with short-form video on YouTube and […] The post appeared first on Social Media Examiner .

Those are harsh words. They imply agency, responsibility and failure. The response might be, “I did everything I was supposed to do.” Or perhaps, “What should I have done? I followed all the instructions.” Agency and freedom go together. We have more choices than we want to admit. When Ahab decided to become a whaling captain, everything that happened after that was related to his initial choice.

We recently investigated a case involving a WordPress website where a customer reported persistent fake pop-up notifications appearing on their site. The warnings were urging them to update their browser (Chrome or Firefox), even though their software was