Your competitors are adjusting pricing, launching new ad creative, publishing content that outranks yours, and showing up in AI answers you didn’t know existed — often all in the same week. Competitor monitoring tools exist to catch those moves early, but most teams end up with fragmented data scattered across platforms, and by the time they’ve pieced it together, the window to respond has closed

LinkedIn is rolling out Off-Platform Event Ads, giving marketers a new way to promote events without needing a native LinkedIn Event Page. What’s happening . The new format allows advertisers to run Event Ads that link directly to external destinations — such as webinar platforms, landing pages or livestream sites — instead of keeping traffic on LinkedIn. This marks a shift from platform-containe

Expanding your business into another state forces a decision most founders don’t think about until it’s too late: Should you register your existing LLC as a foreign entity—or create a brand-new subsidiary? On the surface, both options let you operate in another state. But structurally, legally, and financially—they’re very different. […] The post appeared first on .

Every brand holds its claims, and somewhere in the archive of its digital life, there’s proof to back them up. The AI assistive engine (the systems behind ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews) holds that proof too, scattered across its training data and retrieval index, alongside competitors’ claims. The audience has a need but no vocabulary to bridge the gap between what they want and wh

Wil Reynolds, founder and CEO of Seer Interactive, is challenging SEOs to rethink what success looks like in a world increasingly shaped by AI. In his SEO Week session, “SEO is a performance channel, GEO isn’t. How do you pivot?”, Reynolds said many marketers are focused on the wrong outcomes — and producing work that people don’t believe. Marketing isn’t just about being seen Reynolds opened by

AI agents need exactly what aggregation sites have been producing for humans for the last decade. If you run one, you have a second revenue line you probably have not noticed yet.

One of the most dependable ways to grow organic visibility was to publish more content. Expanding into the long tail and creating pages around different variations of a topic often led to steady traffic growth. Many SEO teams still operate with this mindset. Content calendars are built around search volume targets, and growth is often equated with how much new content is produced. The problem is

This is part three of a three-part series on how HubSpot transformed with AI. Part one covers how we build with AI. Part two covers how we grow with Agent-first GTM. Building the right engineering platform and rebuilding your go-to-market motion are meaningless if the organization running them isn’t ready. That’s the part most transformation playbooks skip. It’s also the part that determines whet

This is part two of a three-part series on how HubSpot transformed with AI. Part one covers how we build with AI. Part three is how we operate as an AI-first company. Over the past three years, we have systematically rebuilt how we attract, engage, and delight customers by creating a new go-to-market model. With AI, we have added hundreds of thousands of companies to our total addressable market,

This is part one of a three-part series on how HubSpot transformed with AI. Part two covers how we grow with Agent-first GTM. Part three is how we operate as an AI-first company. Everything we build at HubSpot exists to help our customers grow. So when generative AI emerged, our engineering team didn’t just see a productivity tool; we saw an opportunity to build better products and get more value

AI skills are now embedded in most SEO roles. Learn how they influence salary and hiring expectations. The post The AI Skills Salary Premium appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

If your paid social campaigns aren’t converting, you may be undervaluing their impact. Your brand’s exposure on social media can influence other parts of your marketing that platform metrics don’t capture. Here’s how to design and measure a test to understand how paid social influences your other marketing channels, including PPC . Step 1: Determine your hypothesis Start with what you want to lea

Google announced they are testing a new “conversational search experience to complement how you already search on YouTube.” It is called “Ask YouTube” and it lets you “dive deeper into the topics you’re curious about in a more interactive way,” Dave from YouTube wrote . What it looks like. Here is a GIF of it in action: How can I try it. If you want to try it out, you can go to youtube.com/new an

Fragmentation, local engines, and bundled AI tools are redefining competition in APAC, making multi-system visibility the new benchmark for search success. The post APAC Search Strategy Goes Beyond Google & Baidu appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Starting an LLC is the easy part. Staying compliant year after year? That’s where most business owners mess up. Miss a filing, forget a document, or ignore a deadline—and your LLC can fall out of good standing, rack up penalties, or even get suspended. The tricky part is that there’s […] The post appeared first on .

Krishna Madhavan from Microsoft Bing demo’ed some new AI reporting features that should launch within Bing Webmaster Tools soon. They include citation share, grounding query intent, semantic topic label, and GEO-focused recommendations.

As you know, Google announced a new search spam penalty for back button hijacking. Site owners have until June 15, 2026 to remove any such functionality from its site or it will be subject to a manual action and/or automated algorithmic adjustment. Now, Google is sending email notifications through Search Console as reminders.

Google is now showing the number of reviews that were deleted on a specific Google Business Profile due to defamation complaints. This seems to be live in Germany and not other countries right now.

I am seeing new signs of the Google search ranking volatility heating up. When I reported on it last week, the tools began to show volatility trend upwards. But now, while some of the tools are calm, the chatter within the forums has spiked over the past 24 hours or so.

Google is testing using a superscript font for the cents portion of the pricing in the Shopping Ads. So when you see a price for a product and it is listed for $99.99, the 99 cents is in superscript.

Understanding the ins and outs of paid media can seem like an overwhelming process when you’re first entering the field. As AI has rapidly changed ad platforms in recent years, keeping up can feel challenging. Thankfully, you’re not alone. You’re part of a supportive industry with a wealth of content and knowledge to share. Here are seven tips to help you learn and become a more confident PPC man

The AEO benefits that matter most to marketing leaders have shifted from theoretical to measurable. As AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity handle a growing share of how buyers discover brands, the rise of AI-powered search results increases brand visibility; the teams investing now are seeing real returns in conversion quality, pipeline influence, and long-

Branded search is often treated as predictable and easy to manage. In practice, it isn’t. PPC teams see rising CPC on brand terms. SEO teams see declining branded CTR, even when rankings hold. These issues are usually investigated separately, with different dashboards, hypotheses, and fixes. Both signals often stem from changes within a single SERP. What look like two separate problems are, in re

Editor’s note: This research was conducted by Exploding Topics , the trend discovery platform owned by Semrush, and is republished here with permission. Data is drawn from a proprietary survey of 1,009 US consumers. Full methodology appears at the end of this article . More than three in four consumers have used AI to help with shopping or purchasing decisions in the last six months, according to

Looking for a way to get actual work done with AI, not just chat with it? Tired of micromanaging every step of an AI conversation only to hit context limits before you finish? In this article, you’ll discover how to start using Claude Cowork to manage your files, automate tasks, connect your tools, and build […] The post appeared first on Social Media Examiner .

WordPress 7.0 is shaping up to be one of the most significant releases in recent years, or simply the most ambitious rebranding of what WordPress thinks it is.

When there is motion, it creates an impact of the environment. First, the path is barely noticeable. But then, others see the hint of a path and walk on it, making it more clear. Finally, the path becomes the route. Sometimes there’s a small rut. But a rut shifts gravity and wheels or feet land in the rut, making it deeper. This is how moguls appear on ski hills as well. When it rains, the paths

I’ve never been a Nintendo person. And yet, I’ve never been this completely captured by one of its games until the company’s latest release, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream . My rapturous attention to it is equal parts FOMO and genuine amazement at the unhinged ways people are playing this game. It’s taken over my timeline and is slowly dismantling my will to resist buying a Switch. For context,

Expanding your business into another state sounds simple—until you realize your LLC isn’t legally allowed to operate there. This is where most business owners get caught off guard. You already have an LLC. You’re generating revenue. Maybe you’re hiring employees or opening a second location. But legally, your business only […] The post appeared first on .

Uncover the impact of AEO on brand discovery in 2026. Learn how to optimize content for AI citations and metrics. The post AEO In 2026: Which Content Formats Earn AI Citations & How to Produce More [Webinar] appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Unlock higher brand visibility, more topical authority, and increased discoverability with a unified PR and SEO strategy. Learn how to break down silos, align your goals, and maximize your brand reach with practical tips.

Find out how a benchmark can guide you in optimizing your site for better visibility and user experience in search results. The post AI Search Success: How To Benchmark Website Performance In Your Industry appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

A few weeks ago, we sat down with marketers running webinar programs at agencies and in-house teams, all B2B. We asked them what was working, what wasn’t, and where they felt stuck. Three pain points came up in nearly every conversation: “Webinars are a heavy lift with little proven ROI.” “We’re not generating enough qualified leads.” “Without clear attribution, leadership isn’t seeing the value

Google is testing “Ask YouTube,” a conversational search feature that returns AI summaries with cited videos. Available to US Premium users. The post Google Tests ‘Ask YouTube’ Conversational Search Experiment appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Microsoft previewed four new AI reporting features for Bing Webmaster Tools at SEO Week, including Citation Share and grounding query intent labels. The post Bing Previews AI Citation Share For Webmaster Tools appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

GoDaddy accidentally transferred someone’s domain name to someone else then refused to fix the problem. The post GoDaddy Transferred A Domain By Mistake And Refused To Fix It appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Watch this video on YouTube Ginny Marvin didn’t get into PPC because she had a grand plan. She got into it because she was ready to start again. After years working in print publishing and ad sales marketing, Marvin found herself at a career pivot point. A startup magazine she had helped launch folded, and she decided it was time to move fully into digital. That meant going from marketing

Your brand’s AI visibility score covers the part of the search landscape that traditional SEO rank tracking can’t see. Tracking it is becoming as essential as monitoring Google rankings — and a lot harder to pin down. An AI visibility score summarizes how often and how well a brand appears in AI-generated responses across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, aggregating metrics such as

Watch this video on YouTube On PPC Live The Podcast, I spoke with Peter Bowen, a Google Ads specialist with nearly 20 years of experience and a strong focus on B2B lead generation. Pete shared two major lessons from his career: always check the basics, and never assume the systems around your ads are working just because the campaigns look fine. The currency mistake that cost 10 times the budget

A randomized field experiment found Google AI Overviews reduced organic clicks on triggered queries by 38%, while user experience ratings stayed unchanged. The post Google’s AI Overviews Cut Clicks Without Satisfaction Gain: Report appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

As ad dollars begin shifting toward ChatGPT, ad tech firms have started working to make that transition as seamless as possible. What’s happening . Adthena launched a new tool, AdBridge, designed to convert existing Google Ads campaigns into formats ready for ChatGPT advertising. The pitch is simple: don’t rebuild from scratch — repurpose what already works. The tool analyzes advertisers’ search

A lot is going on in search today. Google still reigns supreme, but the competition and evolution coming from AI alternatives have many marketers wondering how to optimize for ChatGPT. When someone opens ChatGPT and asks a question, they don’t get ten blue links. They get a synthesized, conclusive answer that’s pulled from sources the AI has decided are authoritative, structured, and trustworthy.

Microsoft teased new AI reporting features within Bing Webmaster Tools that enhance the AI performance reports and other reports around AI. The new features that were showcased include citation share, grounding query intent, GEO-focused recommendations. More details. Several shared screenshots of this presentation that was given by Krishna Madhavan from Microsoft at SEO Week today in New York Cit

If you’re reading this, you’re likely an SEO aficionado like me. I’m a seasoned SEO with 10+ years of agency experience. Being on the agency side gave me deep SEO expertise, exposure to top industry talent, and experience working with some of the world’s most well-known brands. I did a bit of everything on the agency side — from technical SEO to content marketing to new business. Working at an ag

Higher CPCs frequently align with improved lead quality and conversion rates, challenging the assumption that cheaper traffic performs better. The post appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Omegle is in the ground, and Thundr is dancing on its grave. Since Omegle’s demise in late 2023, the internet has been introduced to a number of Omegle alternatives, from the tame to the explicit. Thundr is a random video and text chat service that’s emulating Omegle the most in 2026. Think of it as Omegle with actual guardrails, offering far more ways to get your exact match through tags, countr

Paid search platforms are getting better at deciding who should see your ads, often without relying on the keywords you choose. As that shift accelerates, optimization is moving away from query-level control and toward signals like audience data, landing page context, and conversion behavior. Understanding that change is key to knowing what to actually optimize for now. When keywords gave us cont

Google may be doing something right with improving the click-through rates from the organic search results page that contain AI Overviews. An update report shows the CTR is improving, after numerous times showing the CTR has been declining.

Google’s Ginny Marvin, the Ads Liaison, has confirmed there are delays for some Demand Gen Image ads to be approved. Some of these delays are several days pending, not hours, but several days.

Your LLC was active… until it wasn’t. No warning, no dramatic moment—just a notice from the state saying your business is “suspended,” “revoked,” or “not in good standing.” This happens more often than most people realize. And the worst part? Many business owners don’t even know it’s happened until something […] The post appeared first on .

Most people rush through the business formation process and click whatever gets them to the finish line fastest. That’s exactly how they end up choosing the wrong registered agent—or worse, naming themselves without understanding what they’re signing up for. And that one decision can come back to bite you. Miss […] The post appeared first on .

AI systems are getting better at generating Spanish. They’re not getting better at understanding Spanish markets. What we’re seeing instead is a consistent pattern: more than 20 Spanish-speaking countries collapsed into a single default . Spain becomes “standard.” Mexico becomes interchangeable. The rest get flattened into statistical averages. The failure modes are structural — dialect defaultin

AI visibility now depends on crawl access, server-rendered content, semantic HTML, and machine-readable structure beyond Googlebot. The post The Technical SEO Audit Needs A New Layer appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Logging into your analytics to find a sudden drop in website traffic is incredibly frustrating. Your first thought is usually, “Did I break something, or did Google penalize my site?” At WPBeginner, we have managed high-traffic websites since 2009. We have seen just about every reason for a traffic dip, from major search engine updates to minor technical settings that accidentally block search bo

Microsoft Bing is testing making the links within the AI results, the Copilot Search results, less clickable. Typically, the whole line of text is clickable to the citation but here, Bing is testing only linking the citation mark at the end.

Google is testing adding an AI label to some of the search ads, the sponsored results, within the search results. Clicking on the AI label does nothing, according to Brodie Clark who spotted this.

Google now lets you edit videos within your Google Business Profiles, directly in the Google app. There are basic editing tools, probably more than most businesses require, to update and edit the videos that they want to show in Google Maps and Google Search.

Think about the last time you binged those true crime documentaries. The next time you opened your streaming app, the homepage likely shifted. Investigative series rose to the top. Maybe a notification alerted you when a new series dropped. Promotional emails highlighted only what you hadn’t watched. You didn’t see the data parsing or the decisioning behind it. You just looked forward to enjoying

In terms of cost, serving a small ramekin of toasted pistachio nuts is a tiny portion of what an airline spends in transporting someone first class. In fact, it’s such a relatively small expense that it’s easy to simply avoid it. Send the money to the bottom line and focus on the parts that are actually worth paying for. Gratuitous bonuses send signals. They tell the customer that you have the re

Welcome to DEV, your fortnightly roundup of WordPress news, tools, and ideas worth putting to work. The web keeps evolving. So do the bugs. We’re here to help you keep up. Stick around to the end to find out: if you fall out of a plane… where should you aim? In today’s edition: All your (data)base are belong to us: why WordPress 7.0 is delayed. WCEU schedule dropped and, like a pierogi, i

The web is splitting into transactional systems run by AI and experiential spaces for humans, forcing brands to rethink visibility, trust, and measurement. The post The Fully Non-Human Web: No One Builds The Page, No One Visits It appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

The expression “bad money crowds out the good” refers to Gresham’s Law. It means that once lesser-quality and counterfeit currency begins to be traded, people hoard the good stuff and only trade the poor substitutes. Social media platforms fall into a trap like this when they seek to grow. For example, at the beginning, Substack had a very high signal to noise ratio–plenty of good ideas and so re

Seer Interactive says brand-cited AI Overview CTR fell 61% as impressions grew faster than clicks across cited pages.

Google’s Liz Reid told Bloomberg AI Overviews cut “bounce clicks,” not deeper visits, but Google still hasn’t shared data backing that claim. The post Google Pushes “Bounce Clicks” Explanation For AI Overview Traffic Loss appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s latest Search updates push further into task completion. The reporting surfaces businesses rely on haven’t kept pace. The post Google’s Updates Push Search Further Into Task Completion appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

In a post-Omegle world , there are many one-on-one cam sites to consider. Thundr, OmeTV, Uhmegle — but none of these scratch the itch that a lot of users went to Omegle for: online sex. While most of these sites do have a large community of people utilizing them to bust a nut on the internet, they aren’t marketed for that. DirtyRoulette is. After its launch in 2010, DirtyRoulette quickly became a

[Off topic, but I hope it might be useful] Mindfulness can improve your life. So can stillness and spiritual grounding. This is not a post about that. Breathing is an architectural challenge and a chemical necessity. We breathe about 20 pounds of air a day (and if you’ve ever tried to weigh air, you can imagine that this is quite a bit.) Why bother? The body is fueled by a series of chemical reac

Most phishing advice is written for the person staring at a suspicious email. This guide is for the other kind of victim: The website owner whose legitimate site has been quietly turned into the attacker’s weapon. You didn’t send the message or build the fake login page. You just woke up to a browser warning, a suspended hosting account, or a polite note from someone’s security team asking why

After bottoming out at 1.3% in December 2025, the click-through rate (CTR) on Google’s AI Overviews climbed to 2.4% in February 2026. That’s an 85% jump in two months, according to new data from Seer Interactive. What moves CTR. When an AI Overview appears, pages cited in it get more clicks than pages on that same results page that aren’t cited. But both still get fewer clicks than searches with

Some advertisers say ad reviews are taking more than seven days — far beyond normal timelines. What’s happening . Matthew Skelton, a senior PPC specialist, has flagged a pattern many advertisers are now recognizing: Demand Gen campaigns stuck in “in review” status for days at a time. The delays are showing up across multiple accounts and industries, with no obvious policy violations or warnings t

AI search engine citation tracking helps measure brand visibility and authority in AI-powered search results. As AI-powered search experiences reshape how people discover information, evaluate vendors, and build shortlists, visibility inside AI answers is no longer a vanity metric. If AI engines aren’t citing your brand, you’re missing influence at the exact moment buyers are forming opinions. Ac

About a year ago, I came out of a meeting with engineers about improving automations for content briefs. A few days later, someone on the analytics team — unrelated to those conversations — pinged me that they’d built a content brief generator using various data pipelines and APIs. That’s when I realized “getting people to use AI” isn’t the hard part. Implementation and integration are. Most SEO

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 now won’t use spam reports with personal identifiable information. Google’s head of search…

Take a look at your SEO to-do list. Most of it is probably the same rote, repetitive tasks. Turning everyday work into faster, easier outputs is easier than ever with AI. Besides obvious tasks like note-taking and team reminders, you can automate tasks such as content audits, page outlines, and keyword research. Start with simple strategies to save time on the repetitive work you do every day, th

There’s a common misconception that GEO is a technical problem. Just scroll through LinkedIn or X for 30 seconds, and you’ll find the next viral GEO hack. Like “create an AI info page” so LLMs can easily understand your brand. Maybe “create markdown versions of your content” to skyrocket AI visibility. Perhaps “get an automated Claude audit” that scans your robots.txt and automatically generates

This week, we covered new heated Google search ranking volatility. Google’s Danny Sullivan spoke about commodity versus non-commodity content. Google now wont use spam reports with personality identifiable…

Here is another interview from Google’s head of search, Liz Reid. This one was done on the Odd Lots Bloomberg podcast and is titled “Google’s Liz Reid on Who Will Own Search in a World of AI.”

Google is working to fix a bug in AI Mode where it is changing the title links and citations. This bug was spotted by Lily Ray who wrote on X, “Google is changing title links / citations in AI Mode – just the name of the person, with a link to the place they were mentioned.”

A couple of weeks ago, Google stunned many by saying that they updated their spam report to pass along all information to the site that you enter in the spam report. There was a lot of backlash to that and Google reverted, now saying if there is personally identifying information, it won’t process the spam report at all.

Google documents deep link best practices and signals robots.txt doc expansion. The EU proposes Google share search data with rivals and AI chatbots. The post Google’s Robots.txt Docs Expand, Deep Links Get Rules, EU Steps In – SEO Pulse appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google updated its spam report page for the second time in the past week or so, this time to say that if you include personally identifying information, the spam report will not be processed or used. This comes just a week after Google said that information would be used and passed along to the reported site. What changed. Google posted on its spam report page a new highlight box which says two p

Whether you lead a scaling brand or an established global enterprise, you already know the frustration. You’re watching massive digital budgets yield diminishing returns, while agile disruptors consistently beat you to the punch. When you audit the citations within AI Overviews, ChatGPT responses, and Claude summaries, the reality is stark. Smaller, faster competitors are claiming more of the mos

Microsoft’s AI ad strategy looks different from Google’s. Here’s what PPC managers may be missing and which updates deserve a closer look. The post Why Microsoft’s AI Ad Strategy Deserves More Attention From PPC Managers appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

About a year ago, Google announced you can opt in, within Search Labs, to see Audio Overviews within the Google Search results. But now, I saw two different people say they saw it without opting into the experiment. So Google may be testing this in the wild.

Google Business Profiles lets you upload photos of your business to your Business Profile. Those photos can be viewed on Google Search and Google Maps. And now, these photos are reportedly sorted by most recently uploaded.

If you run a WooCommerce store, then you’ve probably heard that ChatGPT now lets users shop for products directly inside the chat interface. A user asks something like “I need a blue yoga mat under $40” and ChatGPT responds with actual products from registered merchants, complete with prices and stock availability. It is a brand new sales channel but most WooCommerce store owners have no idea how

Why traditional frameworks fall short, and how the DIRHAM framework helps marketers build trust, relevance, and measurable impact in today’s content ecosystem. The post Localized Distribution In The AI Era: The DIRHAM Framework appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google updated their spam reporting tool to warn they won’t process reports that contain personal information. The post Google Won’t Act On Spam Reports If They Contain Personal Information appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

There are more available excuses now than ever before. In just two letters, “AI” is a simple, brand-new, all-purpose excuse for laying people off, averaging things down, closing things up and generally finding an easier/quicker path. Courage, on the other hand, is the commitment to take risks and work hard to make something better than most people think it needs to be. Example: Open Source softwa

WordPress powers over 40% of the web, which makes it one of the most attractive targets for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. If your site goes down for an hour, you lose revenue, search rankings, and visitor trust. If it goes down repeatedly, you lose much more. A DDoS attack floods your website with fake traffic until it slows to a crawl or crashes entirely. Unlike hacks that steal