Food bloggers say this Thanksgiving is a breaking point. Google Search and AI Overviews, powered by Gemini 3, are rewriting recipes, stealing clicks, and in some cases serving dangerously wrong cooking instructions, Bloomberg reported. Why we care. For more than a decade, food bloggers could predict and rely on holiday traffic. Not this year. AI […]
Google Search Advocate John Mueller has pushed back on the idea of building separate Markdown or JSON pages just for large language models (LLMs), saying he doesn’t see why LLMs would need pages that no one else sees. The discussion started when Lily Ray asked on Bluesky about “creating separate markdown / JSON pages for […]
Every Q4, the same message shows up in our accounts: “Use seasonality adjustments to get ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.” On paper, it sounds reasonable. You expect conversion rates to rise, so you give Smart Bidding a heads up and tell it to bid more aggressively during the peak. Optmyzr’s latest study puts […]
Publishers and search engines have long depended on ad placements and affiliate marketing to make money. Search engines rely on pay-per-click (PPC) models, while publishers blend display ads, affiliate links, and sponsored content. But with chat-based AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity on the rise, that foundation is starting to crack. If users get […]
OpenAI launched shopping research in ChatGPT, a feature that creates personalized buyer’s guides by researching products across the web. The tool is rolling out today on mobile and web for logged-in users on Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. The company is offering nearly unlimited usage through the holidays. What’s New Shopping research works differently […]
There’s a divided line in the industry between those who think optimizing for AI is separate from SEO and those who think LLM discovery is just SEO. But, this is an unproductive argument, because whatever you think, LLM inclusion is now part of SEO discovery. So, let’s just focus on how the search journey works […]
Ranking No. 1 is still an accomplishment, but by now, most SEO professionals understand that it doesn’t mean what it once did. Search in 2026 is messy, multi-surface, and sometimes more passive than active: Jim Yu, Founder and CEO of BrightEdge, shared with me: “In the early days of search, success was simple: earn rankings, […]
Doc Brown’s DeLorean didn’t just travel through time; it created different timelines. Same car, different realities. In “Back to the Future,” when Marty’s actions in the past threatened his existence, his photograph began to flicker between realities depending on choices made across timelines. This exact phenomenon is happening to your brand right now in AI […]
See Where Your Brand Stands in the New Search Frontier AI search has become the new gateway to visibility. As Google’s AI Overviews and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) reshape discovery, the question is no longer if your brand should adapt, but how fast. Join Pat Reinhart, VP of Services and Thought Leadership at Conductor, and […]
You might think you’ve mastered the Google Ads search terms report, but this essential optimization tool is still widely misunderstood – and often misused. Here are five tips to help you get more from your campaigns by using the search terms report the right way. Keywords vs. Search Terms: A quick refresh When discussing keywords and […]