The first Release Candidate (“RC1”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing! This version of the WordPress software is still under development . Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended to evaluate RC1 on a test server and site. WordPress 7.0 RC1 can be tested using any of the following methods:

Google updated its Discussion Forum and Q&A Page structured data docs with new properties, including a way to label AI- and machine-generated content. The post Google Adds AI & Bot Labels To Forum, Q&A Structured Data appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google started rolling out the March 2026 spam update. The update applies globally and to all languages, with rollout taking a few days. The post Google Begins Rolling Out The March 2026 Spam Update appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google released its March 2026 spam update today at 3:20 p.m. It’s the second announced Google algorithm update of 2026, following the February 2026 Discover core update . This is the first spam update of 2026. Google’s most recent spam update was in August 2025 . Timing. This update may only “take a few days to complete,” Google said . On LinkedIn, Google added : “This is a normal spam update, a

Reddit is rolling out new Dynamic Product Ad features, including a shoppable Collection Ads format and Shopify integration, the company announced today. What’s new . Collection Ads : A new Dynamic Product Ad format that pairs a lifestyle hero image with shoppable product tiles in one carousel, bridging discovery and purchase. Early adopters following best practices are seeing an 8% ROAS lift. Com

AI search citations favor a small set of formats. Listicles, articles, and product pages drive over half of all mentions across major LLMs, according to new Wix Studio AI Search Lab research analyzing 75,000 AI answers and more than 1 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity. The findings . Listicles led at 21.9% of citations, followed by articles (16.7%) and product pages

A quiet but important policy update is coming to Google Shopping ads next month, requiring some merchants to verify their accounts before running ads featuring political content. What’s changing. From April 16, merchants running Shopping ads with certain political content in nine countries will need to verify their Google Ads account as an election advertiser. Google will also outright prohibit s

AI citations in ChatGPT are far more concentrated than citation distributions in traditional search. Roughly 30 domains capture 67% of citations within a topic. That’s according to Kevin Indig’s latest study, which also found that broad topical coverage, long-form pages, and cluster-based models outperform the old “one keyword, one page” approach. The details. Citation visibility wasn’t evenly di

A new creative feature has been spotted inside Google Ads Performance Max campaigns — and it could change how advertisers without video budgets approach animated display advertising. What was found. Vice President of Search at JumpFly, Inc. Nikki Kuhlman spotted an option to generate animated video clips directly within PMax asset groups, using AI to enhance and animate a single source image. How

AI tools and visibility have dominated the SEO conversation in the past two years. But while discussions focus on these new technologies, most of the biggest SEO risks in 2026 will come from somewhere else: within your own organization. Fragmented data, unclear ownership, outdated KPIs, and weak collaboration can quietly destroy even the best strategies. As SEO expands beyond the website and into

Apple is preparing to introduce sponsored listings in Apple Maps, marking a significant expansion of its advertising business beyond the App Store. How it will work. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the system will function similarly to Google Maps — allowing retailers and brands to bid for ad slots against search queries. Sponsored businesses will appear in Maps search results, much like sp

Welcome to DEV, your fortnightly peek into what’s happening in WordPress. WordPress is always changing. Quietly, constantly, and occasionally all at once. DEV is where we try to keep up, and bring you the most interesting bits worth your attention. Stick around to the end to find out what they’re actually singing in the opening sequence of The Lion King… In today’s edition: Plugin submissions are

Microsoft added query-to-page mapping to its AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, letting you connect AI grounding queries directly to cited URLs. Why we care. The original dashboard showed queries and pages separately, limiting optimization. Now you can tie specific AI-triggering queries to the exact cited pages, so you can prioritize updates based on real AI-driven demand — not guesse

The entity home is the single page that anchors how algorithms, bots, and people understand your brand. It’s usually your About page, and it does far more than most teams realize. It’s where algorithms resolve your identity, where bots map your footprint, and where humans verify trust before they convert. In one test, improving that page alone lifted conversions by 6% for visitors who reached it.

Inledning: En Industri i snabb förändring De senaste decennierna har gruvindustrin för digitala tillgångar utvecklats till en av de mest dynamiska och teknologiskt avancerade sektorerna inom finans och IT. Med den växande efterfrågan på kryptovalutor som Bitcoin och Ethereum har behovet av tillförlitlig och effektiv gruvutrustning ökat exponentiellt. Samtidigt har utmaningarna kring energieffekti

New ChatGPT citation data shows a small group of domains owns most visibility, while broad, cluster-based pages outperform single-intent content.

In an increasingly automated environment, paid search performance is constrained by a simple reality: Algorithms can only optimize toward the signals they’re given. Improving those signals remains the most reliable way to improve results. That sounds straightforward, but in practice, many people are still optimizing around signals that don’t reflect real business outcomes. Let’s dive into how alg

Research finds that persona prompts “reliably damage” factual accuracy in certain kinds of tasks but work well in others. The post Research: “You Are An Expert” Prompts Can Damage Factual Accuracy appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Choosing the right PPC channels starts with clear goals, budget alignment, and understanding where your audience actually converts. The post How To Determine What Paid Media Channels Are Right for You appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Not every plugin that claims AI is using it for anything meaningful. Here’s an honest look at seven WordPress SEO plugins where AI is doing real work, what that work is, and which ones belong on your site. The post ” ” first appeared on WP Mayor .

Google was asked if Personal Intelligence in AI Mode will come to paid accounts across the world (not just the US – where it has hit non-paid accounts). Google replied… (Now is the point where you click on the article…)

Google is testing changing out some of the links within AI Mode to show as overlay cards, instead of take you directly to the website it is mentioning. This obviously will result in fewer direct clicks to those websites.

Google is testing encouraging business owners to reply to reviews using AI. There is a new option in the Google Business Profile dashboard that is showing for some businesses that says “Reply to reviews with AI.”

In February, Bing rolled out new AI Performance reports within Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing announced a new feature for this report that connects the Grounding Queries and Pages views within the AI Performance report.

Apple is reportedly launching local ads within Apple Maps, as soon as this month. “Apple Inc. is preparing to introduce advertising in its Maps app, part of a broader push to generate more money from services,” Bloomberg wrote.

Website migrations have a well-earned reputation for going wrong, with even well-planned migrations leading to rankings slipping, traffic dropping, or tracking breaking. But most migration problems come from small oversights rather than complex technical failures. You can reduce your risk with a staged approach. The checks you complete during staging, on launch day, and in the first few weeks aft

Introduction: The Evolution of Digital Slot Gaming advent of online slot games has shifted the dynamics of traditional casino entertainment, leveraging advances in technology, user interface design, and immersive experiences. Today, players seek more engaging and thematic experiences, leading developers to innovate with captivating graphics, exciting bonus features, and jackpot opportunities. Am

Welcome to DEV, your fortnightly roundup of WordPress news, clever builds, and contributors who keep the project humming along. We’re here to share the highlights that make developers fall in love with the craft all over again. Oh and if you want to see some proper panda-monium, stick around to the end. In today’s edition: WordPress 7.0 Beta 3 is live: AI experiments and editor twists await brave

Are you still manually copying data into your AI tools every time you need an analysis? Do you keep uploading the same files to Claude or ChatGPT only to find they’re already outdated by the time you need them again? In this article, you’ll discover how to connect live data to your AI tools for […]

If you tell me your ID number, your phone number or the wiring instructions for your bank account, not only will I forget them, I’ll need you to repeat it a few times so I write it down without making a transcription error. When we first started using serial numbers (the Roman Legion did this thousands of years ago, and the British Board of Ordnance required it by law in the 1700s), it made perfe

Join our on-demand webinar to understand the intersection of AI and SEO. Learn how to leverage AI for improved search results. The post SEO 2.0: How Content Marketing Drives Visibility in AI Search appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Bing’s AI Performance dashboard now maps grounding queries to cited pages, letting you connect AI citation data to specific URLs on your site.

Google’s John Mueller responds to a question about search results that display outdated branding for a site that rebranded over ten years ago. The post Google Responds To Error That Causes Old Branding To Persist In SERPs appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

The first thing BTS ask for on Arirang , the group’s long-awaited fifth studio album, is simple: “Put your phone down.” It sounds almost cliché in an era of screen fatigue, but coming from BTS, it lands with a strange kind of dissonance. This is, after all, a group that didn’t just benefit from social media but helped define how K-pop stars are expected to exist within it. For over a decade, BTS

Reddit has a real bot problem on its hands . And, in order to deal with this problem, Reddit is considering turning to the latest go-to solution for the tech industry: ID verification. On the tech show TBPN , Reddit CEO Steve Huffman spoke about how AI has caused issues for the platform and discussed potential solutions. Hoffman explained how the solutions would look to answer the question “Is th

The EU’s top antitrust enforcer signaled a decision on whether Google is violating the Digital Markets Act is imminent, without committing to a timeline. What she said. “It will come,” Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told Dow Jones Newswires, adding the cases are complex and the commission is committed to decisions based on evidence and fair procedure. The backdrop. The European Commission

If you’ve spent any time consuming dating content lately, you’ve almost certainly encountered the vocabulary: high value , alpha , body count , Chad . Terms that, not long ago, were esoterically confined to misogynistic, racist incel (“involuntarily celibate”) forums and have now migrated wholesale into mainstream culture — repackaged as self-improvement content, dating advice, and meme language

With AI, you can generate dozens (if not hundreds) of articles in hours and publish at scale. But publishing is the easy part. What happens after they go live is what matters. Together with the research team at SE Ranking, we ran a 16-month experiment to track how well AI-generated content performed on brand-new domains with zero authority. As you will see, the results are hard to call a success.

AI search is already influencing how buyers discover brands — and the results are measurable. According to the 2026 HubSpot State of Marketing report, 58% of marketers say visitors referred by AI tools convert at higher rates than traditional organic traffic. As platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini increasingly shape buying decisions, visibility inside AI-generated answers is quickly be

A quiet but important change is coming to the Google Ads API that will affect how advertisers and developers create Lookalike user lists, especially for Demand Gen campaigns. What’s changing. Google will enforce a uniqueness check on Lookalike user lists, blocking duplicate lists with the same seed lists, expansion level, and country targeting. Attempts to create a duplicate will return an API er

OpenAI is moving forward with ads in ChatGPT, but early adopters say it isn’t ready for serious performance marketing. The big picture. ChatGPT’s ad product shares almost no data, lacks automated buying tools, and offers minimal targeting—leaving advertisers with little ability to measure whether their spend is doing anything, The Information reported. What advertisers are dealing with. SEO consu

In a recent keynote at the Industrial Marketing Summit, Rand Fishkin argued that we’re marketing in a “zero-click world.” His observation captures an important surface-level trend: fewer users are clicking through to websites. The deeper shift, however, is structural. What has changed is the way information is evaluated, repeated, and trusted across the web — and that’s where many are drawing the

Stop chasing rankings and start building visibility that matters with three practical strategies for SEO in 2026. The post 3 Strategies That Can Survive AI Search In 2026: What I Shared At SEJ Live appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Most SEO discussions today center on AI — from AI Overviews to ChatGPT and other LLMs — and the concern that they’re taking traffic from business websites, forcing a shift toward GEO or AEO. For the most part, that concern is valid. AI is reducing traffic for many sites, especially those that rely on top-of-funnel, informational content. But the data suggests AI may not be the biggest shift. User

The numbers tell a story that most agency owners already know in their gut: AI anxiety is rising fast. In 2024, 44% of digital marketing agencies viewed AI as a significant threat to their business model. Just one year later, that number jumped to 53%, according to SparkToro’s annual State of Digital Agencies survey of hundreds of agency owners worldwide. But here’s what makes this particularly p

Microsoft seems to be testing a new AI-powered image search interface and result set for Bing Image Search. If you do a search on Bing Images, on the right side you may see a button for “New Version.” That new version says you can “try a new version of Image Search.”

A strange pattern has emerged in Google’s paid search results: multiple competing ads display the exact same web statistics, raising questions about a bug or an intentional design shift. What’s happening. Several paid search ads are showing the same website statistics simultaneously, even though these signals are typically unique to each site. The uniformity makes the data look unreliable, and it

Save time in Google Ads using seven practical shortcuts that simplify workflows and highlight optimization opportunities. The post 7 Google Ads Shortcuts Every PPC Manager Should Be Using appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Moving a WordPress site between hosts involves more ways to break things than most people expect. Upload limits, corrupted serialized data, broken URLs, and missing media are all waiting to trip you up. In this All-in-One WP Migration review, I’ll look at the premium extension to help you decide whether this plugin can help you move sites without a hitch. The post ” ” first appeared on WP Mayor

Google seems to have added a new section to the Google Business Profiles section named Place page attributes. Place page attributes allows you to let customers know more about your business by showing attributes on your Business Profile. These may appear publicly on Search, Maps, and other Google services.

The Information wrote “OpenAI’s First Advertisers Can’t Prove ChatGPT Ads Work.” In short, the ChatGPT ad platform from OpenAI shares almost no data with advertisers. It is low tech, there is no ad performance data, and it also has very limited ad targeting features.

Google has added a new user-agent to the user-triggered fetchers named Google-Agent. Google said the “Google-Agent user agent is rolling out over the next few weeks, and will be used by Google agents hosted on Google infrastructure to navigate the web and perform actions upon user request.”

Technical SEO expertise is table stakes. The real skills gap? Business acumen, strategic thinking, and the ability to prove ROI. Here’s what CMOs need. The post appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Building a survey in WordPress is easy. But the problem is that most surveys are too long and static. Visitors lose interest halfway through and abandon them, leaving you with incomplete data you can’t act on. I’ve found that the best way to fix this is by creating interactive surveys that show different questions based on how each visitor responds. And by using AI to build your forms, you can sk

Yoast SEO co-founder shares that most sites don’t need content management systems like WordPress anymore. The post Is WordPress Too Complex For Most Sites? appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

How does the ball know? In tennis, golf or just about all ball sports, the follow-through determines the flight of the ball. Great players always have a complete and confident follow-through. But the ball is long gone before that happens. So, what’s the point? It turns out that the ball can tell that you intend to have a serious follow-through. A weak or non-existent follow-through requires that

Stop being invisible to AI search. These 5 strategies will get your brand cited and recommended by AI engines.

Google is testing AI headline rewrites in Search using similar language to the earlier Discover test that became a feature. The post Google Tested AI Headlines In Discover.