A Similarweb report links AI recommendations to more site visits and deeper engagement, with most downstream traffic arriving via branded search. The post AI-Recommended Brands Saw 2.5x More Site Visits: Similarweb appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Do you sell digital marketing services and assets? Wondering how AI can help you close a client in the first meeting? In this article, you’ll discover an AI workflow to research a prospect, match their brand, and build a working prototype before the first meeting—proving your value upfront. A Different Way to Pitch Your Services […] The post appeared first on Social Media Examiner .

Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt cautioned against parallelizing content with markdown for AI SEO. The post Google Cautions Against Markdown Versions Of Websites For AI SEO appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Promotion, activation, and conversation come together when the early adopters have a tool to share a new idea. My new book is out a few months, and it’s a chance to create a share package with swag. There are only 1,000 sets. Each includes 10 first-printing copies of The Knot (with the collectible mini-poster) + the Spindex + This Is Swag art book. The best swag box I’ve done in a while. Remarkab

Over 1,300 companies already show all four signals of AI-driven headcount cuts. Here is how to protect your marketing budget before Q4 planning ends. The post 4 Warning Signs Your Marketing Team Is Next For AI Cuts appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Two senior Google AI researchers, Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer and AlphaFold’s John Jumper, are leaving for OpenAI and Anthropic within the same week. The post Google Loses Two Top AI Researchers To OpenAI & Anthropic appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google, Shopify, and browser makers are backing new PACT protocol “on Cloudflare’s network” for gatekeeping AI agents.

About half of U.S. adults use AI chatbots, and 60% read AI Overviews, but more predict AI will hurt society than help it. The post AI Chatbot Use Hits 49%, But Skepticism Stays High appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Since it began in 1930, the World Cup’s most memorable moments are rarely the ones that end with a team lifting a trophy. And the 2026 FIFA World Cup is no exception. So far, this tournament has been defined by its underdog celebrations: Curaçao fans erupting after their team walked away with a draw, Cape Verde exploding into a global fan favorite team in just two games, and lesser soccer powers

Days before his 39th birthday, legendary striker Lionel Messi gave Argentina fans an unbeatable gift — by becoming the top goalscorer in World Cup history. Just one goal in Argentina’s game against Austria would have put Messi on top of the all-time goalscorer list, at 17 goals. Messi managed two, scoring his second in the last minute of added-on stoppage time.

Google’s new messaging to CMOs reiterates that GEO is still SEO and states that third-party tools have no access to its internal metrics. The post Google Says SEO Tools Lack Access To Its Internal Metrics appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

I asked Google Gemini about the last decade of Google’s relentless push to make blogs less popular. It wrote: Your timeline is spot on. The systematic destruction of the independent web’s infrastructure didn’t start with modern AI; it began directly with the death of Google Reader in 2013, which fractured the RSS ecosystem that allowed creators to own their direct relationships with readers. The

Key Takeaways An AI citation audit tells you, on a per-topic and per-platform basis, where your visibility gaps come from and what type of action closes each one. The majority of citations driving AI responses typically come from third-party sources, not brand-owned pages. Competitors appear because independent sites reference them, not because their own content is being surfaced. High-volume, lo

WordPress powers about 41.5% of all websites, but the landscape is shifting. As the platform matures, core users are aging while newer generations move toward simpler, AI-driven solutions. Hosted platforms like Shopify and Wix are reshaping website creation, leaving WordPress to face a perception problem and a plugin economy that favors some over others. The post ” ” first appeared on WP Mayor .

Google is changing how target-based bid strategies behave when campaigns are constrained by budget, aiming to make performance more consistent with advertiser targets even as budgets fluctuate. The update will take effect on August 17th, with a new Bid Target Adjustment Tool becoming available on July 6. What’s happening . Google says campaigns using target-based bidding strategies, such as Targe

Rankings, traffic, and conversions still matter. But they don’t tell you whether buyers can find you, understand you, and feel confident enough to choose you. That’s a bigger challenge now that people move between search engines, AI assistants, social platforms, marketplaces, review sites, and private communities before making a decision. Viewed through that lens, search performance comes down to

Reddit is rolling out a suite of new advertising products powered by its Community Intelligence engine, betting that authentic user conversations have become one of the most influential forces in consumer decision-making. What’s happening . Reddit is introducing new ad products designed to help brands tap into the platform’s vast repository of consumer conversations, which now includes more than

A 2023 Google patent describes how AI systems could build an understanding of businesses, brands, products, and other entities from websites and public data. The filing outlines a process for extracting information, identifying relationships, and synthesizing what Google calls a “deep, holistic characterization” of an entity. If systems like this become more influential in search, SEO may increas

SEO attribution has always been messy. Unlike paid search, organic search lacks the same tracking granularity, has a lag between the work and the results, and often depends on signals you can’t control, such as rankings. To make matters worse, attribution is even more of a black box today, with AI-generated answers dominating SERPs and LLMs that don’t always link back to your site or pass referre

Mercantile , the official swag store of the WordPress project, has a newly redesigned storefront with a catalog that now sits front and center, and a design tuned to hold up across a wide range of screen sizes. There are also small touches, like automatically selecting a variant when only one is in stock and order emails styled to match the look and feel of the store. Throughout the design, the s

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. We saw some significant Google search ranking volatility heat this weekend…

A Munich court found AI Overviews are Google’s own speech, not search results – that changes who pays when the answer about you is wrong. The post A German Court Made Google Liable For What Its AI Says About You appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s John Mueller warned a site owner from moving his domain name from a .ca to .com just for branding purposes.

Platform changes, AI-driven SERPs, and shifting measurement models are forcing search and performance marketers to rethink their skills more frequently. What worked six months ago may not work today, and the gap between current best practices and outdated knowledge keeps widening. That’s why continuous learning now directly affects SEO performance. The organizations that adapt fastest don’t treat

In May 2025, Google brought 25 of us into a closed-door room at I/O to talk about the post-click SERP. The instruction we left with was short: create non-commoditized content . Here’s the uncomfortable part: For 15+ years, we never commoditized content. We commoditized the sale . We built billions of pages that took a messy human problem, targeted whatever keyword the person compressed it into, a

Google Ads updated its responsive search ads help document to expand on the tips section around pinning headlines and descriptions. It now warns against pinning identical or very similar text and suggests a hybrid strategy.

Last month, Google announced that it is rolling out text disclaimers within Google Ads globally, in all languages. Well, it seems to have rolled out for many last week, as many are seeing it in their Google Ads accounts.

Google Ads is updating how bidding strategies are labeled. Specifically, Target CPA and Target ROAS will show as standalone bidding strategy options, separating them from the “Maximize conversions” and ‘Maximize conversion value’ strategies.

Google is adding a new feature to the Google Business Profiles actions named Collected Info. This is to confirm your business details and keep your Business Profile updated, Google wrote.

Google’s John Mueller singled out X-Frame-Options as the only security header tied to SEO. The post Google Says X-Frame-Options Matters For SEO appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google’s Preferred Sources and loyalty tools help established publishers stay visible, but create a harder discovery path for sites not yet on anyone’s list. The post Preferred Sources & AI Mode Are Creating Filter Bubbles – A New Discovery Problem appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Every WordPress user eventually reaches a point where they need to add custom code to their site. Whether you’re trying to install Google Analytics tracking code, add a small PHP function to tweak your theme, or just want some custom CSS to fix a stubborn layout issue, you need a reliable (and safe!) way to get that code onto your site. Unfortunately, editing your theme’s functions.php file direc

Birthdays are a little overrated. I’ve never met anyone who was more than a passive participant in their birth, but anniversaries represent a choice. Every year, we can commemorate a commitment we made and then decide to recommit. aren’t just romantic. The day you took the job, the day you started the practice, the day you went out on your own, the founding date on the masthead. Anything you cho

Stop copy-pasting reports into ChatGPT. Build an AI stack with live data access, behavioral consistency, and team collaboration instead.

Google may have quietly rolled out an update on Friday, June 19th, that seems to may have impacted more of the black hat SEO side of things. It is not 100% clear because most of the tools seem pretty stable and yes there is chatter also in the more “white hat” forums, but I see a much larger spike in chatter in the more “black hat” forums.

Is your website invisible to AI agents? Six companies just signaled the channel is real. Here’s the window that’s still open. The post Make Something Agents Want appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Thirty years ago, Cory Doctorow did an interview showing primitive inklings of the internet future (music, videos, etc.). At the time, it was easy to dismiss it as an irrelevant toy, and most people in power did just that. Around the same time, I wrote an article for Direct Marketing magazine outlining the future of email marketing.

Why the best content frameworks become outdated and how to stay ahead by embracing new data instead of defending old models.

Websites report pages being removed from Google’s index, while Google sees nothing unusual. How to separate real deindexing from ranking loss and reporting noise. The post Deindexing Reports Keep Coming, Google Sees Nothing Unusual appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

A 100-foot long boat that’s 99% complete is going to sink before it leaves the dock. That gaping hole is more than enough to do it in. On the other hand, a baked ziti that’s 99% as good as the best baked ziti ever made is exactly good enough to serve in any setting. Mediocrity isn’t the point. Neither is perfection. The question is: what’s the best allocation of effort in order to delight our

Key Takeaways The core problem with most AI visibility prompts isn’t that they’re wrong; it’s that they’re missing the context real users bring. Generic inputs produce generic, unactionable data. The SPIV framework (Segment, Persona, Intent, Variable) structures prompts around four variables drawn from real user data, turning stateless AI visibility tracking inputs into high-fidelity user proxies

Google Ads is automatically enabling conversion-based customer lists for eligible advertisers starting, with data processing scheduled to begin on Aug. 18. The update applies to advertisers already using both Enhanced Conversions and Customer Match but who have not yet activated conversion-based customer lists. Why we care. As privacy changes continue to reshape digital advertising, Google is inc

Google Ads is changing how Smart Bidding strategies are labeled, separating target-based bidding strategies from volume-based bidding strategies. Starting this month, “Maximize conversions with a Target CPA” will once again be called Target CPA, while “Maximize conversion value with a Target ROAS” will return to Target ROAS. Why we care. The change is designed to make it clearer whether a campaig

Watch this video on YouTube One of the hardest lessons in PPC has nothing to do with bidding strategies, keywords, or campaign structure. It’s knowing when to walk away from a client. On a recent episode of PPC Live The Podcast, performance marketing strategist Laura Abreu shared how taking on the wrong client early in her career became one of her most valuable professional lessons. When your gut

OpenAI is quietly expanding its advertising infrastructure, giving UK businesses early access to a self-serve Ads Manager for ChatGPT — a signal that the company is building out the tools needed to scale advertising on its rapidly growing AI platform. What’s happening. OpenAI has begun rolling out Ads Manager Beta to businesses in the UK, according to an email sent to advertisers announcing avail

After satirical paper The Onion bought right-wing conspiracy site Infowars , it faced legal obstacles — but now the people behind it say they’re launching a new Infowars and sidestepping the courts. The founder of Infowars, Alex Jones, declared bankruptcy in 2022 following defamation lawsuits from families of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which Jones claimed was a hoax. He was ordered to pay them

Applications are now open for the 2026 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship, which supports one active WordPress contributor who identifies as a woman and has not previously attended WordCamp US. The scholarship helps make it possible for a community member with financial need to join WordCamp US 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona, and take part in one of the largest annual gatherings in the WordPress project.

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 spoke on stage about chunking, AI content, quality content, subscriptions, paywalls, site wide signals…

Reframe AI prompt tracking as a measurement of stability, representation, and context rather than another version of rank tracking. The post We Need To Change Our Approach To AI Prompt Tracking appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Bing rolls out AI Citation Share; fresh data shows LLMs.txt files go unread; Google backs two agent specs; and the UK orders fairer Search ranking. The post AI Citation Share Ships, New Data Doubts LLMS.txt – SEO Pulse appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

This week, we covered the typical and ongoing Google Search ranking volatility. UK’s CMA ordered Google to share its search ranking algorithm and enable data portability to some third-parties. Google Search rolled out its information…

Microsoft Bing is testing a new updated design for the news section within Bing Search. The updated news box, honestly, is easier to understand and makes it clearer that these are news sources – so I kind of like it.

Google held a Search Central Live event in Milan this week and spoke about several topics including chunking, site-wide signals, AI settings in Search Console, commondity versus non-commodity content, paywalled content, subscriptions for news sites, what clicks look like from AI Overviews and much more.

Microsoft Bing is testing a color selector / viewer in the shopping and product results within Bing Search. This will show you what colors the product is available in, without having to click over to the website to see it.

Google research suggests AI spam may be easier to detect by identifying originating networks instead of analyzing content one at a time. The post Google Research Shows How AI Spam Can Be Detected appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google will be turning on conversion-based customer lists for Google Ads advertiser accounts beginning on Jun 17, 2026, with data processing to begin on August 18, 2026. This will happen to all advertisers who have already adopted both Enhanced Conversions and Customer Match but haven’t yet enabled the conversion-based customer lists functionality, Google said.

Google is testing using a hot pink font for the live time for when a place is busy or not. This is part of the old popular times feature, but Google is testing or launching a hot pink font to make it really noticeable.

Growing a WooCommerce store is one thing. Scaling it is a whole different challenge. At some point, the simple setups that got you to your first 100 sales will actually start to slow your website down as you grow. That’s where most store owners get stuck. Slow load times, abandoned carts, and checkout processes that lose money are common problems with scaling WooCommerce. Luckily, these are fixab

We have more agency and choice than we know. And sometimes, when the awareness of our freedom arrives, it’s too late to reclaim the opportunities we missed. Some of the walls around us are real—built by people who have no right to build them, who profit from our staying put. And some of the walls aren’t walls at all. A door we never tried, because no one told us it was unlocked. Perhaps, instead

Pull your top AI-referred landing pages. Can this visitor complete their task within 30 seconds? Here’s what to do when the answer is no. The post AI Mode Sends A Different Visitor. Your Website Wasn’t Built For Them appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

As we mentioned a few months ago, we are bringing the Search Central Live Deep Dive format to the EMEA region. This SCL format requires finding the absolute best home for the event—a place where all of you can truly connect, learn, and enjoy.

OpenAI says GPT-5.5 Instant, the free default ChatGPT model, now performs comparably to its frontier models on the company’s own health evaluations.

If the FIFA World Cup were a romantic comedy, Mexico and South Korea would be in the strangers-to-lovers arc. Before their teams even met on the pitch, fans from both countries had already hit it off. In the streets of Guadalajara, supporters have broken into impromptu performances of “Gangnam Style,” greeted one another with chants of “BTS,” posed for photos together, and shared not only bottles

A coalition including Google, Microsoft, and GitHub published Agentic Resource Discovery, an open draft spec for how AI agents find and verify tools online. The post Google, Microsoft Back Draft AI Agent Discovery Spec appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google is bringing generative AI directly into Google Ad Manager with the launch of Ask Ad Manager, a new Gemini-powered assistant designed to help publishers analyze performance, troubleshoot issues and navigate the platform using natural language. The beta launches this month as Google pushes deeper into AI-powered ad operations. What’s happening. Ask Ad Manager is a conversational AI agent bui

USA Today Co. is using AI-assisted shell files to publish breaking sports coverage faster. The strategy is designed to capture search traffic before Google’s AI Overviews summarize the news. The publisher tested the approach during the 2026 Winter Olympics and is now using it for coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Digiday reported. USA Today pre-writes breaking stories. The USA Today network, w

Google Ads is rolling out a beta that allows advertisers to connect additional data sources directly to website conversion actions, giving marketers a new way to supplement tag-based measurement with backend conversion data. The feature enables advertisers to combine conversion signals collected through Google tags with transaction data from systems such as CRMs, order databases and ecommerce pla

AI is changing how Americans search for information. A new Pew Research Center report found that 60% read AI-generated summaries at the top of search results, and about 40% use chatbots to find information. AI-generated answers now appear across both traditional search results and dedicated chatbot platforms, including tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, Pew found. AI summaries reach most se

Google AI Overviews cited self-promotional “best” listicles while excluding the brands behind them from recommendations in 69% of cases, according to a new analysis of B2B software queries by Lily Ray. Brands have used self-serving listicles to influence AI search results, but Ray found Google often cited those pages while recommending competitors instead. By the numbers. Ray analyzed 100 B2B “be

This post recaps how the WordPress project’s five Global Partners — Jetpack, WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Bluehost, and Hostinger — supported community events during the first half of 2026. Across more than a dozen regional the first WordPress Developers Day , and a growing network of WordPress Campus Connect events, Global Partners staffed booths, sponsored sessions, and connected with developers

Is AI search making your SEO strategy harder to scale? Meet MozCon NYC 2026’s final speakers and learn AI, content, local SEO, and agent-ready frameworks you can use now.

Adobe announced a new solution to help businesses ensure their brands are visible, trusted, and chosen across AI surfaces. Called Adobe Brand Visibility, the product is part of Adobe CX Enterprise, an agentic AI system designed to simplify customer lifecycle management — from acquisition and prospect engagement to conversion and long-term loyalty. AI traffic is exploding. The use of LLMs to ident

Ask ChatGPT or Gemini to “review my on-page SEO,” and you’ll get a perfectly reasonable answer. Reasonable. Generic. Boring. Uninspired. And almost identical to the answer your competitors get when they ask the same question. That’s the problem with AI out of the box. It’s a generalist. It knows a little about everything and nothing about you — your business, your customers, your market, or the w

A model breaks your prompt into several short retrieval queries before anything hits an index. Prompt length tells you almost nothing about search behavior. The post Rank And AI Citation Aren’t The Same Number appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Content operations can run on instinct at a small scale. With a strong editorial team, a handful of trusted writers, and an understanding of voice, there’s usually enough discipline to keep the calendar moving. But some businesses aren’t built that way. For media rollups, large affiliate networks , entertainment properties, sports brands, and other content-led businesses, publishing at triple-dig

For the past two years, the SEO industry has been asking Google for two things: more visibility into AI traffic and more control over how content appears in AI experiences. Last week, Google started delivering both . They announced new controls that allow site owners to opt out of AI-powered experiences (AI Overviews, AI Mode, etc.) and introduced new AI reporting within Google Search Console. (N

Google updated its site move documentation to say that you should enter in all the domain variants in the Google change of address tool when doing a site move. What Google wrote. Google posted the following new note in the document: “For domain migrations: If you’re moving your site from one domain to another, make sure to submit Change of Address requests for all subdomains and the www and non-w

Bing may soon support more countries for the countries filter within Bing Webmaster Tools. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft wrote on X, “Well, we are now actively considering expanding this to show more individual countries.”

Google can show an “Activities” button in the Google Business Profiles dashboard within Google Search. I assume this button is reserved for venues that let you book activities including booking tickets or other activities.

Google is testing attributing where the 3D models are from that Google shows within the product detail screen in Google Search. I can’t replicate this but the test shows “3D mode from [retailer name].”

Google seems to be showing content from publishers in the Google News Showcase more within the Google Discover feed. I don’t have direct data to prove this but two people who follow Google Discover closely said this is to be true.

Google has updated its site move and domain migrations help document to note that for domain migrations, you should make sure to submit Change of Address requests for all domain variations. Google said the “domain migrations work best when all variants of a site are migrated properly.”

Knowing how to rank in search engines and how to rank in AI search results are two different games now. As of early 2026, BrightEdge found AI Overviews appear in roughly 48% of tracked Google searches, and prevalence climbs as high as 100% for healthcare and treatment queries. ChatGPT handles over a billion queries per week, while Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini are routing millions of searches ev

Search is becoming a mirror of private data, not a window to the web. Dan Taylor explains what personalized AI discovery means for brands. The post Google Is Becoming A Personalizing Mirror Before You Even Type A Query appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Are your Facebook ads generating clicks but not customers? Want to stop wasting budget on the wrong audiences at the wrong times? In this article, you’ll discover a four-stage system for building Facebook ad accounts that generate consistent profit and scale predictably. Two Things That Hold Back Your Facebook Ads Sam Piliero identifies two things

Google says a core assumption driving LLMs.txt adoption conflicts with the purpose its creators originally intended. The post Google Exposes The Fundamental Flaw Of LLMs.txt appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

[A long riff on book publishing with (perhaps) wide applicability to your work as well.] Publishing is different from writing—it’s the hard work of creating the conditions to help people get in sync, move forward, and get to where they’re headed. The best reason to publish a non-fiction business or how-to book in 2026 is to change lives. Transformation is possible. Transformation can happen, but

Google’s updated documentation for domain migrations requires broader compliance demands for site owners. The post Google Tightens Requirements For Domain Migrations appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Citations and recommendations aren’t the same thing. New data shows Google often cites your listicle while recommending the competition. The post Why Calling Yourself The Best Could Be Helping Your Competitors Win In AI Search appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

B2B traffic is down but pipeline quality is up. Learn 5 steps to get cited by AI & reach buyers who arrive ready to convert. The post appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Meta is introducing new commerce features across Facebook and Instagram as it looks to turn more AI-driven product discovery into completed purchases. What’s happening . Meta is expanding Live