Author Archives: SocialSignalCounter

Is AI Changing How Local Customers Find You? If your clients rely on local search to drive business, the landscape is shifting faster than ever.  AI-driven updates are changing how users see results, how trust is built online, and how businesses get chosen in 2025. The real question is, will your local SEO strategy keep […]

This post was sponsored by InMotion Hosting. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Is your website struggling to maintain visibility in search results despite your SEO efforts? Are your Core Web Vitals scores inconsistent, no matter how many optimizations you implement? Have you noticed competitors outranking you even when your content […]

A patent recently filed by Google outlines how an AI assistant may use at least five real-world contextual signals, including identifying related intents, to influence answers and generate natural dialog. It’s an example of how AI-assisted search modifies responses to engage users with contextually relevant questions and dialog, expanding beyond keyword-based systems. The patent describes […]

Agentic AI is reshaping search and generative engines – and soon could transform your SEO strategy. This was just one hot topic discussed in my interview with SMX Advanced keynote speaker Dave Davies, Head of SEO at Weights & Biases. Other topics covered in our conversation included: Why shortcuts with LLMs are hurting your content […]

Google quietly dropped a new help document titled About Video ads across Google surfaces, offering a detailed look at its next evolution of shoppable video ad formats, following teasers at Google Marketing Live and months of experimental rollouts. Details: These new video ads are part of Performance Max campaigns, allowing brands to include high-quality video […]

B2B buyers are turning to creator content at every stage of the purchasing process, from discovering new products to justifying pricing. New research shows that this type of content plays a key role in building trust and accelerating decision-making. Brands looking to stay relevant are investing in creator strategies that combine authenticity with scalable distribution, […]

AI has quietly redefined what “useful content” means. Where brands once built trust and traffic through long-form explainers and glossary-driven SEO, that kind of content now feels increasingly redundant – to users and Google.  If your site still leans on basic informational articles to demonstrate expertise, it’s time to reconsider what actually builds authority, trust, […]

SEO teams have built dashboards around a shared set of familiar metrics for over two decades: clicks, rankings, impressions, bounce rate, link volume, etc. These KPIs powered strategies, reports, and… promotions. But what happens when the interface between your audience and your brand no longer involves a search result page? As search fragments into AI […]

AI Max, Google’s latest AI-powered search campaign feature promises big performance improvements.  Still, the decision between AI Max and traditional Search campaigns isn’t as straightforward as the marketing materials suggest. Advertisers using AI Max see 14% more conversions at similar costs, with some seeing up to 27% improvements, according to Google.  But these gains come […]

AI Overviews don’t just steal clicks. They dominate screens. Google’s AI-generated summaries now stretch across the top of search results like they own the place. And let’s be real, they do.  With links, carousels, citations (sometimes), and full how-to answers, they often push organic listings entirely below the fold. You can’t miss them – which […]