Google is making Gemini 3 the default model for AI Overviews and adding a direct path to ask follow-up questions in AI Mode. The post Google AI Overviews Now Powered By Gemini 3 appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

The rise of agentic commerce ends marketing-first SEO and forces brands to compete on data integrity and product truth. The post How Do You Compete In Agentic Commerce? appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google has updated its tips to get more reviews help documentation with a new section on tips to write better review replies. This section includes how to make your replies positive and relevant and a section on giving helpful responses to negative reviews.

Back in October, we saw signs of the ability to use data exclusions on Google Ads Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. Well, now it seems to be rolling out to many advertisers on Google Ads.

Brands can uncover product-level DPA performance by merging Meta API data with GA4 insights to verify algorithm decisions and guide more efficient ecommerce campaigns. The post appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google has posted a new Google Ads help document named About the Google Ads Experiment Center. This document “is a unified hub for validating strategies and continuously improving campaign performance,” Google wrote.

Microsoft Advertising has fully released the Microsoft Advertising Ad Preview Hub to all users. “I am beyond excited about Microsoft Advertising’s new Ad Preview Hub! This is GA and should be live in your accounts in all markets,” Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison, wrote on LinkedIn.

Scattered affiliate links across hundreds of posts can give you some tracking and updating troubles. This LinkCentral discovery post is going to introduce you to a WordPress plugin that can help you centralize your link management with branded short URLs, click analytics, and page builder integrations. It could replace your entire link management workflow! The post ” ” first appeared on WP Mayor

Discover how to build site authority in an AI-driven world using off-site campaigns. Learn to utilize off-site signals, enhance LLM visibility, and optimize content ROI.

Do you feel like using AI images is cheating or lacks true creativity? Are you looking for a way to produce high-quality brand assets without a six-figure photography budget? In this article, you’ll discover a seven-pillar framework for prompting and a streamlined workflow to generate professional AI images for your business. Why AI Image Generation […] The post appeared first on Social Media Ex

Vulnerability in the popular WP Go Maps WordPress plugin affects affects up to 300,000 websites The post WP Go Maps Plugin Vulnerability Affects Up To 300K WordPress Sites appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Welcome to DEV, your fortnightly glance at where WordPress is headed next. Buckle up. We’ve got the news, the community moves and the stats to help you merge into 2026 smoothly. Stick around to the end to see why that package you ordered last year still hasn’t arrived yet. In today’s edition: WP Engine snaps up Big Bite to level up enterprise WordPress publishing. WordPress 7.0 needs you (yes, yo

Scaling an HVAC company is no longer just about expert technicians and reliable service. In today’s digital-first world, even the most established firms must rethink how they attract and retain customers. How can companies in the heating and cooling industry expand their reach and boost revenue? Exploring digital outreach is now essential for sustainable growth.

! After many successful events in the region, we’re continuing our mission to help you enhance your site’s performance in Google Search.

UPDATE: Jan. 26, 2026, 1:01 p.m. EST TikTok has shared more details about the cause of the outage that affected U.S. users over the past 24 hours. TikTok has new U.S. owners (finally), but the app had a rough opening weekend, with many U.S. users unable to access the app, upload new videos, or refresh their feed. Now, TikTok has explained what went wrong. According to TikTok, a power outage was t

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says Google doesn’t have any current plans for ads in Gemini, as OpenAI moves toward ChatGPT advertising. The post Why Google Gemini Has No Ads Yet: ‘Trust In Your Assistant’ appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google is rolling out a new billing report within Google Ads. The new billing report gives you line-by-line view of your Google Ads invoices.

On March 23, 2026, Google will update its Google Ads Gambling and games policy to say that your overall account must demonstrate good policy health to be eligible for gambling and games certification. Meaning, you need to have a good account history and have a number of violations on your account.

Google is testing adding price labels on top of the product images within AI Mode results. I tried to replicate this but I was not able to, so it seems like a test.

Google Ads has a new help document named Campaign Mix Experiments (Beta). This describes how advertisers can test multiple campaign types, budgets, and settings across campaigns in a single experiment.

Google Ads lets you see how your product ads are performing across all your campaigns in a single view. Some advertisers are saying this is a new report, so I figured I’d share what they’re noticing.

Five Google Analytics reports PPC marketers should use to improve targeting, justify spend, and understand how paid traffic supports conversions across the customer journey. The post 5 Google Analytics Reports PPC Marketers Should Actually Use appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Running a nonprofit is hard enough without having to spend hours managing donor data. When I first started helping nonprofits build their websites, I quickly realized that many organizations were drowning in disorganized data. They’d have donor information scattered across Excel files, email inboxes, and even handwritten notes. That chaos could be costing you time, money, and momentum. That’s whe

Stop measuring AI by hours saved and start measuring the expansion, quality gains, and capabilities that move the business. The post Why CFOs Are Cutting AI Budgets (And The 3 Metrics That Save Them) appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s user intent extraction research shows how AI on mobile devices could be used to proactively assist users and automate tasks. The post Google’s New User Intent Extraction Method appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Most of us are terrible at some things. Lack of skill, focus, practice, care or just temperament means that we don’t do the task as well as we might. This might be anything from promptness to conflict to high-stakes negotiation. It could include filling in forms, taking notes or brainstorming innovative ideas. Perhaps it’s living with uncertainty… Once you realize your areas of terrible, choices

One of the most jaw-dropping athletic feats in recent memory happened this past Saturday, when legendary rock climber Alex Honnold free soloed the Taipei 101 skyscraper live on Netflix. Formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, the building stands 1,667 feet tall, making it the 11th-tallest structure in the world. From 2004 to 2009, it actually held the title of tallest building on Ear

One friend recently opened a bookstore instead of a bookmobile. Another is investing two years of his life to open a restaurant instead of a series of pop up dinners. And a third is buying a boat instead of chartering one. It’s easy to see why. A real bookstore has a lease. They post their hours. It’s solid. And a real restaurant, the kind we’ve all been to, looks, feels and smells like a …

A monster winter storm is currently barreling through roughly two-thirds of the United States, stretching across a massive swath of the country from Amarillo, Texas, to familiar winter hotspots like Boston, Massachusetts, and Buffalo, New York. Reports from outlets like CNN indicate that cities like Boston could see more than 36 inches of snow over the course of the weekend, while areas south of

If your website feels slow, the easiest scapegoat is your web host. And sometimes you’re right—cheap, overloaded hosting can absolutely drag performance down. But most of the time? Your host is just the messenger. The real problem is your stack: the theme, plugins, page builder, scripts, fonts, images, tracking tags, […] The post appeared first on .

That’s easy advice and a fine goal. Except… if you look at the last hundred years, we haven’t seen many useful advances in mousetraps, despite the number of people who have tried. It feels like an infinite market, so it attracts a lot of entrants. You probably won’t come up with a better mousetrap. But you might find the empathy and focus to find a small group of people with a more specific probl

Marie Haynes analyzes DOJ trial documents that reveal how Google’s proprietary freshness signals, spam annotations, and user data power its ranking systems. The post User Data Is Important In Google Search, Per Liz Reid’s DOJ Filing appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

This week’s SEO Pulse breaks down how Gmail-powered AI answers, crawler access decisions, and free subdomains are shaping who gets surfaced in search. The post SEO Pulse: Google’s AI Mode Gets Personal, AI Bots Blocked, Domains Matter in Search appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

This week’s PPC Pulse recaps OpenAI’s first ad test inside ChatGPT, Google’s new advertiser podcast, and expanded Demand Gen capabilities. The post PPC Pulse: Google’s Podcast Launch, Demand Gen, ChatGPT Ads appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

This week, we covered the doubly heated Google Search ranking volatility, but nothing was confirmed by Google. OpenAI will soon test ads in ChatGPT responses and they will charge on an impression basis…

As expected, but sooner than I thought, Google has brought Personal Intelligence to Google Search within AI Mode. This first launched last week in the Gemini app and is now rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in English in the U.S.

HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report uncovered some good news: 65% of marketers are meeting or exceeding their performance benchmarks. But that success doesn’t happen by accident. Behind those results are clear priorities, rigorous testing, and a sharp focus on the right metrics. This post explores how the most successful teams are optimizing performance in 2026, and which KPIs they trust mos

Google will sometimes fall back to showing featured snippets when it is unable to generate AI Overviews for a query. And when that happens, it sometimes looks like an AI Overview, but it is not an AI Overview, it is a featured snippet.

Google Ads currently has a bug where if you try to edit your asset groups within your Performance Max campaigns in the web user interface, it simply won’t work. Google is reportedly aware of the issue and is telling advertisers to use Google Ads Editor or the API as a workaround for now.

Google’s Gemini may be rolling out new local results, it may be new, I am not sure. But the details it shows may give you insight into how Google understands and interprets your business. Gemini gives new headlines and sections about your business based on what it thinks it knows about it.

For the past year or so, I’ve seen a growing number of complaints about Google Ads accounts being hijacked. It seems to be getting worse, even after we covered the Google Ads account hijacks last November. So how do you reduce the chances of your Google Ads account being hijacked?

Key Reddit communities that professionals use to stay informed, ask smarter questions, and learn from peers across industries. The post 45 Best Subreddits For Marketing & SEO Professionals appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

I once tried to buy a pair of headphones I really wanted. But when I got to the checkout page, the store asked me to sign in. Since it was just a one-time purchase, I didn’t want to create an account and start getting promotional emails. So, I left and found the same model somewhere else. That’s when it hit me—many online shoppers probably do the same thing. Curious, I started digging and found t

BuddyPress WordPress vulnerability enables unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shortcodes The post BuddyPress WordPress Vulnerability May Impact Up To 100,000 Sites appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

What is ChatGPT’s Atlas? Charlie Marchant explains OpenAI’s new AI-powered browser, its “Agent Mode” capabilities, and the pros and cons of using it.

Overwhelmed by AI search disrupting SEO? Lily Ray shares smart strategies to boost visibility, measure success, and thrive in 2026’s evolving search landscape.

Long before social media feeds or targeted ads, my mother used to say that life tends to show you the thing you’re looking for. Or the thing you’re afraid of. Or the thing you keep insisting you don’t want. If you were trying to get pregnant, suddenly everyone around you was pregnant. If you wanted out of your relationship, magazines on the grocery store rack were filled with tips on “spicing up

Who is Nicole Bennet and why does she keep calling me? A few times a day, a voice pretending to be someone named Nicole rings my cell, and in a petulant, entitled voice, insists she’s calling me about a loan that I never applied for. I’ve never interacted, I block each number, but the calls keep coming. AT&T certainly has the technology to block calls like this, but they don’t have an incentive t

TikTok’s US spinoff to Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX has closed after a White House official said the US and China finalized the deal. The post TikTok US Deal Closes After Years Of Regulatory Uncertainty appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Thursday that several organizers of a recent anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church had been arrested. Soon after, The White House X account shared an image of one of the protesters, attorney and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, being led away by law enforcement officers with tears streaming down her face. The post quickly received a Community Notes fact-check

10Web Photo Gallery plugin vulnerability enables unauthenticated attackers to delete image comments. The post 10Web WordPress Photo Gallery Plugin Vulnerability appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s Personal Intelligence connects Gmail and Google Photos to AI Mode, delivering personalized responses for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. The post Google Launches Personal Intelligence In AI Mode appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Microsoft explains what matters for AEO and GEO and details three strategies that influence AI recommendations. The post A Breakdown Of Microsoft’s Guide To AEO & GEO appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Ever wondered why your WordPress site takes up so much disk space? Often, it’s because your WordPress site is quietly hoarding thousands of image files you’ve NEVER actually used. Every time you upload a single image, WordPress automatically creates 5-10 different size variations, like thumbnails, medium, large, and custom theme sizes. Most of these variations never appear anywhere on your site.

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. Apple to have two different releases of Siri and Apple Intelligence, powered by Google Gemini…

A new paper tests how LLMs select content, and Duane Forrester translates the findings into a practical framework you can validate yourself. The post When Platforms Say ‘Don’t Optimize,’ Smart Teams Run Experiments appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Five things that any business can do to increase authoritativeness and earn more links The post Five Things To Do That Will Increase Authoritativeness And Earn Links appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

A survey of 4,000+ CEOs from 95 countries finds 56% haven’t seen revenue or cost benefits from AI. The post 56% Of CEOs Report No Revenue Gains From AI: PwC Survey appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google Ads has posted new call and messaging ads terms that advertisers need to agree to in order to use those ad products. Anthony Higman posted about it on X and said, “There are some important new updates here.”

Apple will reportedly release two new Siri versions, one this year with iOS 26.4 and one next year with iOS 27. Plus, Apple may release an AI pin wearable device in 2027.

As you know, OpenAI will soon show ads on ChatGPT, but now we are hearing that those ads will be charged on a pay-per-view, impression-based model, not a click-based, cost-per-click model.

A few weeks ago, we covered how damaging the Google Search results were for recipe publishers and bloggers. It was nicknamed Frankenstein recipes because it would take pieces of these recipes from bloggers, mash them together and ruin them, all while also mentioning the brand name – hurting the brand.

Google added a new crawler, robot, to its list of user-triggered fetchers in the Google crawlers documentation. This specific bot is named Google Messages and it is a fetcher “used to generate link previews for URLs sent in chat messages,” Google wrote.

This week’s Ask a PPC reframes the AI conversation around responsibility, showing why strategy, data integrity, and human judgment now define PPC success. The post Ask A PPC: What Is The PPC Manager’s Role In The AI Era? appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Shopify’s Harley Finkelstein said agentic shopping surfaces products because they fit the user, not because brands can buy visibility. The post Shopify Shares More Details On Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Are you worried your business will disappear online when AI search takes over? Wondering how to make sure AI tools recommend your company? In this article, you’ll discover how to optimize your online presence for AI search engines and build trust signals that get your business recommended. Why AI Visibility Is the Future of Online […] The post appeared first on Social Media Examiner .

New data shows an increase in AI assistant crawling alongside declining AI model training access. The post More Sites Blocking LLM Crawling – Could That Backfire On GEO? appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

42 years ago, Apple’s 1984 ad ran on the Super Bowl. Once. It’s generally considered the most effective ad of its kind, creating a legend and also a trap. Was this ad the reason the Mac is still around? Or was it Regis McKenna’s work in getting Steve on the cover of more than 20 magazines the month it launched? After all, they say that getting the word out is the key to marketing. That’s not what

Across Instagram and TikTok, influencers and would-be content creators are churning out low-effort prank and pickup artist videos using the discreet recording features of Meta Ray-Bans and other smart glasses. Many of these clips cross from cringe into outright troubling, with creators harassing women , service workers , and the homeless . In some videos, creators pretend to be mentally disabled

“SMASH that like button,” the host says, and your eyes roll back so far you can see your own medulla. “And don’t forget to subscribe!” If you make videos, podcasts, or social media posts, you know you should be encouraging engagement. But if doing so makes you feel like you need a shower, this story is for you. Today, the producer of My First Million shares how they turned boring engagement farmi

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan previews 2026 priorities: AI tools for Shorts creation, text-to-game features, in-app shopping checkout, and image posts in Shorts. The post YouTube CEO Announces AI Creation Tools, In-App Shopping For 2026 appeared first on Search