Link building continues to play a vital role in SEO. While search engines have made significant advancements in understanding content through machine learning, links remain a core signal for ranking websites. Google’s official stance encourages earning links naturally through valuable content. However, in practice, most businesses, whether large brands or local SMBs, require visibility in […]
Pew Research Center tracked real web browsing behavior and confirmed what many publishers and SEOs have claimed: AI Overviews does not send traffic back to websites. The results show that the damage caused by AI summaries to the web ecosystem is as bad as or worse than is commonly understood. Methodology The Pew Research study […]
Wish you could control what AI says about your brand? You’re not alone. As generative search becomes the default for tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, fewer people are clicking through to traditional search results. If your content isn’t part of their training data or grounding sources, it’s effectively invisible. And that means one thing: […]
It’s frustrating when Google hides query data, but the search terms report still offers valuable insight if you know how to filter it. With the right approach, you can reduce wasted spend, improve performance, and even uncover new revenue opportunities. This article covers through seven filters we regularly use at my agency to keep client […]
Nearly two-thirds (62%) of consumers trust AI to guide brand choices, matching traditional search during key decision-making moments. That’s one big finding from Yext’s new report, AI Search Archetypes, released today. By the numbers. Adoption of AI tools is growing – 43% use AI tools daily, and 75% use them more today than a year […]
Rankings are the comfort food of SEO reporting. Easy to track. Familiar. Quantifiable. But rankings are a vanity metric. In 2025, your position in Google is just one piece of the visibility puzzle, and honestly, not even the most important one. Between AI Overviews, carousels, Reddit threads, video packs, TikToks, and your competitors’ paid placements, […]
Over the past few months, we’ve conducted a sprawling investigation into Google’s inner workings. It has led to major discoveries – some of which we’re disclosing here. While we can’t reveal everything, the insights below offer a clearer view of how Google generates and ranks its results. What ~1,200 experiments reveal about Google’s inner workings […]
The Google June 2025 core update started on June 30, 2025 and completed on July 17, 2025, after a 16 day rollout. Early indications from the data providers show this update was one of the larger core updates we’ve seen in some time. In fact, it seems like some sites hit by the September 2023 […]
Last week, I walked through the shift from keyword-first to topic-first SEO – and why that mindset change matters more than ever for long-term visibility in both search and large language models (LLMs). This week, we’re getting tactical. Because understanding the shift is one thing, operationalizing it across your team is another. In this issue, […]
Performance Max has become one of the most talked-about campaign types in PPC for a number of reasons. Some advertisers swear by it, while others remain skeptical, and opinions are increasingly polarized. In reality, PMax is neither flawless nor fundamentally flawed. It is a campaign type with both advantages and drawbacks, and deciding whether to […]