Maybe it says something profound about the human condition that a series of AI-generated talking fruits ripping off reality TV can rack up tens of millions of views. Or maybe it says nothing at all, and we just have to sit with that. What I’m talking about is Fruit Love Island — a series of TikTok videos starring AI-generated anthropomorphic fruit recreating its IRL namesake. As the intro to epis

YouTube used its NewFront presentation to unveil a significant upgrade to its Creator Partnerships platform, adding Gemini-powered creator matching, stronger measurement tools, and new ways to run creator content as paid ads. Why we care. Influencer marketing has become a core part of many brands’ strategies, but finding the right creators at scale and proving ROI is a pain point. tackles influen

Reddit ranks as the most-cited domain in AI-generated answers, followed by YouTube and LinkedIn, based on a new analysis of 30 million sources by Peec AI, an AI search analytics tool. The findings . Reddit was the most-cited source across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and Forbes also ranked in the top five. Review platforms like Yelp

Mere days after Bluesky announced its new AI product, Attie , the coding helper has already become the second most blocked account on the platform. The Attie profile was given the cold shoulder by 125,000 users already, TechCrunch reported. With just 1,500 followers, that means 83 times more users blocked Attie than followed it — that number is higher than the official White House account, the Im

A newly published, unverified report claims Google’s Gemini AI is instructed to mirror user tone and validate emotions while grounding its responses in fact and reality. Why we care. If accurate, AI-generated search responses may vary based on how a query is phrased — not just the information available. What’s new. The report centers on the inherent tension in the system-level instructions guidin

Google is giving retailers more firepower to promote loyalty program benefits directly within product listings — expanding the program internationally and into its newest AI-powered shopping experiences. What’s new . Merchants can now highlight member pricing and exclusive shipping options directly on listings. Loyalty annotations have also expanded to local inventory ads and regional Shopping ad

Gary Illyes from Google shared some more details on Googlebot, Google’s crawling ecosystem, fetching and how it processes bytes. The article is named Inside Googlebot: demystifying crawling, fetching, and the bytes we process . Googlebot. Google has many more than one singular crawler, it has many crawlers for many purposes. So referencing Googlebot as a singular crawler, might not be super accur

SEO hiring is shifting toward senior, strategy-led roles as AI reshapes search and expands the scope of the job. A new Semrush analysis of 3,900 listings shows companies now prioritize leadership, experimentation, and cross-channel visibility over pure technical execution. Why we care . SEO hiring, career paths, and required skills are changing. Entry roles focus on execution, while most demand s

Google’s Gary Illyes published a blog post explaining how Googlebot works as one client of a centralized crawling platform, with new byte-level details. The post Google Explains Googlebot Byte Limits And Crawling Architecture appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Technical SEO extends beyond indexing to how content is discovered and used, especially as AI systems generate answers instead of listing pages. For generative engine optimization (GEO), the underlying tools and frameworks remain largely the same, but how you implement them determines whether your content gets surfaced — or overlooked. That means focusing on how AI agents access your site, how co

In 1998, submitting a website to search engines was manual, methodical, and genuinely tedious. I remember 17 of them: AltaVista, Yahoo Directory, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler, HotBot, Northern Light, Ask Jeeves, DMOZ, Snap, LookSmart, GoTo.com, AllTheWeb, Inktomi, iWon, and About.com. Each had its own form, process, and wait time, and its own quiet judgment about whether your URL was worth

OpenAI now allows users of ChatGPT to share their device location so that ChatGPT can know more precisely where the user is and serve better answers and results based on that location. The feature is called location sharing, OpenAI wrote , “Sharing your device location is completely optional and off until you choose to enable it. You can update device location sharing in Settings > Data Controls

Part 3 of this analysis reveals what AI actually rewards in content, from entity types to structure, across seven verticals. The post The Science Of What AI Actually Rewards appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google Business Profile (GBP) may be getting shoved down the SERPs by ads and AI Overviews more than ever, but it’s still a top source of inbound leads for local businesses — and one of the fastest ways to improve rankings with simple fixes. Here’s a five-step audit to find and fix the gaps most businesses miss. 1. Evaluate Google review velocity and recency It’s a common misconception that the b

Organic traffic is declining, but answer engines are driving higher-intent conversions. Here’s how CMOs should rethink strategy, structure, and measurement. The post appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s John Mueller explained, one again, why it takes weeks to roll out a core update. It is often because there are different components to core updates through the rollout stages, and each needs to be pushed individually.

Microsoft is at it again with its sponsored labels tests. This time, Microsoft is testing almost transparent sponsored labels within the Bing search results. The labels are super grayed out and super hard to see.

Last week, OpenAI announced a new feature for ChatGPT named location sharing. This allows you to share your precise location with ChatGPT, so ChatGPT can give you more localized and near me results.

Google Ads is rolling out asset group theming for Performance Max campaigns. This lets you copy an asset group and apply this theme to your text and images using Google AI.

When I first started working in content and weaving SEO into my strategy, I treated Page Authority like a report card: the higher the score, the better I was doing. It took a few humbling ranking losses to a competitor with a lower PA score to make me reconsider. Turns out, Page Authority is more of a compass than a finish line. In this post, I‘m breaking down what it actually is, how it’s calcul

AI search engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity are changing how consumers discover and purchase products online. If your product pages aren’t optimized for these AI assistants, you could be missing out on a growing source of traffic and revenue. The challenge? AI assistants don’t evaluate product pages in the same way traditional search engines do. They need to fully understand yo

Welcome to Issue 22 of WPBeginner Spotlight! March was full of exciting developments in the WordPress industry. In this issue, we are celebrating a massive decade-long milestone for one of our favorite WordPress form builders and exploring exciting new AI tools designed to put your WooCommerce promotions and course creation on autopilot. We’re also looking at major updates to how you can manage s

Google is sending out emails with updates on how Google Business Profiles may verify your business details. Google said it may “reach out using automated messages via call, text, or WhatsApp to the verified phone number on your Business Profile.”

Tired of not seeing real results from AI experiments in your day-to-day work? Wondering how to use AI to fundamentally change the way you work? In this article, you’ll discover the five-step ADOPT framework that turns scattered AI experimentation into a structured, sustainable approach to using AI to change how you work. The Biggest Misconceptions

Most of us would like to live with wonder, grace and optimism. Perhaps it pays to practice this in advance. When considering any given moment, is there a glimmer of good worth focusing on, even making a comment about? Our narrative of reality often becomes our reality.

I don’t remember much of my life before social media. It took over in seventh grade and my individual style started bending toward whatever the algorithm pushed to the top. My wants were no longer my own but reflections of what Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube algorithmically advertised as desirable. Sleepovers that used to be chaotic with pillow fights and hide?and-seek were replaced b

Google removed a Search Engine Land article ( Report: Clickout Media turned news sites into AI gambling hubs , published March 26) from its search results after a copyright complaint (that appears, to us, to be entirely false). Meanwhile, a similar DMCA filing led to the takedown of the original Press Gazette investigation. What happened. A DMCA notice filed March 27 claimed Search Engine Land co

Microsoft Advertising now allows e-commerce merchants to edit their Merchant Center store name and domain directly within the platform — no support ticket required. Why we care. Store details like names and URLs change as businesses rebrand or restructure. Previously, updating these required manual intervention. Self-serve control reduces friction and keeps campaigns running more smoothly during

Reddit today opened its Pro publishing tools to all publishers, removing the waitlist and offering free access in a public beta to expand distribution and engagement. Why we care . Reddit Pro gives you a centralized tool to track where your content spreads, streamline posting, and find the right communities. It transforms Reddit from a manual posting exercise into a structured distribution channe

Google’s Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt discuss page weight growth, the 15MB crawl limit, and whether structured data is adding bloat to web pages. The post Google: Pages Are Getting Larger & It Still Matters appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

A bug in Google Ads Editor is causing structured snippet extensions copied between accounts to remain unintentionally linked. When advertisers change the language in one account, it can automatically update the same extension in another. Why we care. This bug creates hidden inconsistencies for advertisers managing multi-market campaigns, especially when different languages are required across acc

Tufts index projects 9M U.S. jobs at risk from AI. Writers and Authors, Computer Programmers, and Web and Digital Interface Designers top the risk list. The post New AI Jobs Index Ranks 784 Occupations By Loss Risk appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google says a new compression algorithm, called TurboQuant, can compress and search massive AI data sets with near-zero indexing time, potentially removing one of the biggest speed limits in modern search systems. What it is. TurboQuant is a way to shrink and organize the data that powers AI and search without losing accuracy. It reduces memory use while keeping results precise and cuts the time

In long sales cycles, a lot of what happens after lead submission involves people. When you optimize campaigns to final sales, you’re teaching the ad platform to respond to how well the sales team performed that month rather than lead quality, and that’s a problem no amount of campaign changes will fix. The common advice is to “ optimize the full funnel ” (i.e., track media spend to revenue, opti

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. Google Search Console performance reports may be off again. A teen SEO wants to save his family business…

The OpenAI GPT Store launched in January 2024 with more than 3 million custom GPTs. Ask any team how many they still use, and the answer is usually zero or one. Most business GPTs fail because they’re built like novelties rather than tools. They’re too broad, under-tested, and launched without a strategy, so they never become part of a team’s workflow. I’ve built and audited 12+ custom GPTs acros

Google Search Console’s performance report may have some sort of bug or tracking issue. When you set some filters, you may see a huge spike in impressions start to show up in the report.

Google’s John Mueller chimed in on Reddit when a teenager of a family vacation rental business said he was trying to save his family business through SEO after being burned by previous SEOs. In short, it seems the family has a vacation rental in Spain, and business is significantly down due to the loss of Google traffic.

See how Google’s TurboQuant breakthrough could unlock real-time semantic search, faster indexing, and more powerful AI-driven rankings. The post TurboQuant Has The Potential To Fundamentally Change How Search (And AI) Works appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

There’s no such thing as “too much information” in AI search. The more detail you provide, the less likely your business is to be replaced by third-party sources — or left out entirely. With the rise of AI search, we know users want answers, and they want them fast. Google Maps has Know before you go and Ask Maps about this place (not to be confused with Ask Maps , the new conversational “AI Mode

Consistency is key to achieving any goal. Want to learn to play the piano? Practice consistently. Trying to get in shape for a sibling’s wedding? Exercise and eat healthily consistently. Want your brand to be seen and positioned as the premier choice in its industry by both your target audience and AI? Enter brand optimization. While the phrase may sound new and exciting, brand optimization has b

I’ve spent most of the last 10 years writing, managing, and improving content to reach internet audiences. But even for an ol’ marketer like me, AI content optimization was hard at first. Thankfully, I’ve done a lot of the work, so it doesn’t have to be for you. AI content optimization is the practice of structuring and improving online content so it performs well and gets seen in traditional sea

Communicate what your data can and cannot prove to avoid costly decisions driven by incomplete insights. The post Reporting Uncertainty Without Losing Credibility appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

AI search often fails to identify which Spanish-speaking market it’s serving. Instead, it blends regional terminology, legal frameworks, and commercial context into a single response, creating answers that don’t map to any real market. The result is answers that mix multiple countries into something no user can actually use. This is the “Global Spanish” problem. How AI turns ‘correct’ Spanish int

Bing is testing a new AI-based recommendations section in the Shopping Tab. Bing adds this block to the top of the results, and shows AI-citations at the top right.

Your WordPress membership content could be circulating on public forums for free right now, and you wouldn’t know it until your revenue starts to drop. Many site owners rely on simple password protection, which does nothing to stop a member from sharing direct download links with non-paying users. The good news is that you don’t need to build custom security systems or hire a developer. The right

Why Google’s new AI user agent may be tied to shift of resources from Project Mariner To Gemini Agent The post Why New Google-Agent May Be A Pivot Related To OpenClaw Trend appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

If it’s important, don’t ask the team to try harder. Instead, create the conditions for ordinary effort to produce redundant outputs that reduce crises. If quality is a problem, look at the system, not the people.

Google Gemini more than doubled its referral traffic to websites in two months while ChatGPT declined from its peak, SE Ranking data shows.

Less than 4 months ago, Australia banned social media for kids under 16, sparking a wave of similar proposals from governments around the world. The latest effort to ban social media for children now comes from Austria. In a press release , the Austrian government announced that a bill will be introduced by the end of June to ban social media use for children under 14. According to the press rele

Businesses that treat GBP as a live engagement channel are outperforming competitors still relying on outdated “set it and forget it” tactics. The post The Death Of The Static GBP: Why Dynamic Profiles Are The New Local Ranking Factor appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

“The odds of winning the lottery are the same whether you buy a ticket or not.” This seems nonsensical at first. Obviously, there are lottery winners. Therefore, the odds aren’t the same. Except we’re not mathematicians doing a math problem (at least most of us). Odds are how we navigate the world. When they’re sufficiently low, the useful approach is to assume that they’re zero.

Among passionate TikTok communities, BookTok , may be the most influential . BookTok is where book lovers and e-reader obsessives to come together to discuss their favorite books and device hacks. For readers who use e-readers, Kindle , Kobo , and Boox lead the charge as the most popular devices, so it’s notable when a new device goes viral. “Mini Kindles” appear to be the latest device to cause

Heidi Sturrock, a paid search consultant with 24 years of industry experience, joined me on a recent episode of PPC Live The Podcast. The episode covers a broad match mistake with an unexpected silver lining, and Heidi’s experience testing AI Max across 50+ accounts. The broad match mistake — and the unexpected silver lining Early in her career, Heidi ran a competitor conquest campaign for a high

This guide explains how AI systems choose content, what research says about citation patterns, and where brands should focus first. The post Answer Engine Optimization: How To Get Your Content Into AI Responses appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Joseph Brandlin is a scofflaw . After months of fighting to get the city council to put a stop sign on the corner of the dangerous intersection near his home, he simply did it himself. A first-rate, professional job that cost more than $1,000. As he was finishing the job at 1:30 am, he was arrested and charged with a felony. A hundred years ago, the default was that pedestrians were in charge. Ca

Are you measuring AI visibility wrong? Tom Capper reveals the 4 biggest mistakes in AI prompt tracking and 4 creative ways to expand your list of prompts.

Thirty-five years ago, British author J.K. Rowling was commuting from Manchester to London when she was struck by divine creativity : She imagined the tale of a young, orphaned wizard who was key to unraveling a magically violent authoritarian uprising. In what would become Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (for American readers), the young mother found her pot of gold.

It’s that time of the year again! Let’s talk about the Search Central Live (SCL) schedule for the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. We have mapped out a series of events designed to connect you with our Search teams and fellow community members. Here is everything you need to know about our plans for the year, at least for the APAC region.

Our event series, Search Central Live, is coming to Toronto, Canada on April 21, 2026 for the first time! The event series has been a great way for communities to connect with each other and Googlers to learn more about the web ecosystem and how Google Search works and exchange ideas.

Advertisers can now generate short videos directly inside Google Ads using Veo, Google’s most advanced generative video model — no video production required. How it works. Upload up to three static images into Asset Studio and Veo generates videos up to 10 seconds long with natural motion, designed specifically for YouTube formats and audiences. These can then be turned into ready-to-serve ads us

Google is testing AI-generated summaries in YouTube feeds, replacing video titles with auto-written synopses. Some YouTube users are seeing video titles replaced by AI-generated summaries in the Android app. Reports on Reddit showed title-less video cards with collapsible summary boxes instead. The details . Video thumbnails remain, but titles are missing in some cases. AI summaries appear in exp

We’ve all seen the charts going viral on LinkedIn. They’re everywhere at this point. Multiple industry studies, even this research from Semrush , confirm that Wikipedia and Reddit are the top-cited domains across major LLM platforms — and CMOs are running with this data. The response is predictable: Just search for any bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) software query, and you’ll find Reddit threads in the

Just six weeks after launching its ad pilot, OpenAI has hit a significant milestone — and the platform is still in its early stages of rollout. The numbers. Over $100 million in annualized ad revenue, generated from less than 20% of eligible US free and Go tier users seeing ads daily Around 85% of Free and Go users are eligible to see ads — meaning the current revenue represents a fraction of the

OpenAI have been pumping out the ads ads for free-tier ChatGPT users in the US for over a month now, and early testing suggests they’re more frequent and more targeted than many users might expect. How often they appear. In a test of 500 questions across the mobile app, roughly one in five questions in a new conversation thread triggered an ad at the bottom of ChatGPT’s response — always as a web

You know SEO improves traffic, authority, and trust. What we don’t talk about enough is how a strong SEO foundation can help other channels, including PPC . This practical case study will show you how performance marketing scales in a high-consideration B2B medical device market and how getting SEO fundamentals firmly in place enables paid media to deliver at scale. B2B medical device marketing b

This week we covered the release of the Google March 2026 core update that rolled out this morning and will take about two weeks to finish. We also covered Google March 2026 spam update that launched on March 24th and finished 19.5 hours later on March 25th…

Learn how the agentic web is transforming search into AI-driven action, and why SEOs must adapt beyond traditional optimization. The post Why Google’s New “Google-Agent” Is The Biggest Mindset Shift In SEO History appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

If your entire Google Ads strategy consists of targeting brand and non-brand keywords, you’re limiting growth. If performance is declining, it’s not the platform — it’s the strategy. People don’t discover you through non-brand search. They research on Reddit , ChatGPT , Facebook, LinkedIn , and YouTube . They watch demos, read testimonials, and learn about your brand long before they ever search

A new version of the Google Ads API is out, bringing a handful of targeted updates across video, app campaigns, and audience planning tools. Key changes in this release. A new VideoEnhancement resource that surfaces whether a video ad is Google-generated or advertiser-provided — giving developers clearer visibility into auto-enhanced creative A new AppTopCombinationView resource providing read-on

Refreshing creatives for every seasonal moment just got significantly faster — Google has quietly launched Asset Group Theming inside Performance Max, letting advertisers apply seasonal themes to existing asset groups without rebuilding from scratch. How it works. Advertisers can clone a high-performing asset group and apply a theme — Google then generates themed image variations and suggests ali

Google announced Search Live has launched globally, for all languages and locations where AI Mode is available. Google said this is possible by its “new audio and voice model, Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, which delivers even more natural and intuitive conversations.”

Google announced that it will begin to highlight data quality account issues related to Vehicle ads within Google Merchant Center. This will begin in mid-April 2026.

Google Ads and Merchant Center is expanding the Loyalty program features to highlight key perks, expand local and regional visibility, expand internationally and within AI Mode and Gemini.

Google officially announced the rollout of the March 2026 core update early Friday morning at around 5:14 ET. This core update is expected to take up to 2 weeks to roll out. Google said this “is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”

Google announced several new steering updates for Google Ads Performance Max including first-party audience exclusions, budget reporting, full audience reporting and network segmentation in placement reporting.

Microsoft Bing is testing using rounded corners on short videos and normal videos within the Bing search results interface. Bing used to show these as squared-off edges.

Google tests AI headline rewrites in Search, completes the March spam update in under 20 hours, and adds AI content labeling to structured data docs. The post Google Tests AI Headlines, Rolls Out Spam Update – SEO Pulse appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

The local SEO community remains locked in a permanent debate over the “hide address” toggle for service area businesses (SABs). Most owners view this switch as a simple privacy setting. In reality, it’s a high-stakes decision that dictates how Google’s algorithm interprets your physical relevance. Does your defined service area influence where you rank? Does hiding your street address suppress yo

The most frustrating part of running a WooCommerce store is watching a customer add a product to their cart only to disappear at the final second. You did the hard work of getting them to your site, but you miss out on the sale. When shoppers leave your products sitting in an open tab, they often get distracted and forget why they wanted them in the first place. This leads to a high cart abandonm

This week’s PPC Pulse covers Performance Max reporting updates, GA4 budget planning tools, and Veo AI video in Google Ads. The post Google Adds Scenario Planner, Performance Max Updates, And Veo – PPC Pulse appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google released the March 2026 core update today, the company announced . This is Google’s first core update of 2026. It follows the quick March 2026 spam update from a couple of days ago and the February 2026 Discover update . What Google is saying. Google updated its Search Status Dashboard to state: “Released the March 2026 core update. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete.” Google a

Google has started rolling out the March 2026 core update. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete. The post Google Begins Rolling Out March 2026 Core Update appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Wikipedia’s new AI guidelines prohibit editors from using LLMs for writing or rewriting content, with two exceptions. The post Wikipedia Bans Use Of AI-Generated Content appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

It’s often mislabeled. Sometimes the contents can make us ill, especially if we drink too much. Status is easy to sell. But despite how often people buy the promise, it rarely delivers.