The December 2025 core update is the main story this week. Google confirmed a new broad ranking update, clarified how often core changes happen, expanded Preferred Sources in Top Stories, and started testing social performance data in Search Console Insights. Here’s what matters for your work. Google Releases December 2025 Core Update Google has released […]
The PPC platforms rolled out a few meaningful updates this week that shape how we measure, plan, and buy media. Google introduced a new API that makes it easier to bring first party data into Ads. YouTube shared improvements to the Shorts advertising experience. LinkedIn launched Reserved Ads to give advertisers more control over pricing […]
One of the major things we talk about with large language models (LLMs) is content creation at scale, and it’s easy for that to become a crutch. We’re all time poor and looking for ways to make our lives easier – so what if you could use tools like Claude and ChatGPT to frame your […]
I expected the dark-themed landing page to lose. Everything I knew about conversion optimization said the light background should win. Light themes are standard for B2B lead generation pages because they offer better readability, cleaner visual hierarchy, and align with accessibility standards. Unbounce’s analysis of 41,000 landing pages establishes baseline patterns favoring light backgrounds. It […]
Search Engine Land turns 19 today. Nineteen years. Almost two decades of analyzing, explaining, questioning, challenging, obsessing over, and occasionally shaking our heads at whatever Google and the search industry throw our way. And this past year? The pace of change has made it one of the most transformative since we launched in 2006. Through […]
Microsoft is now testing a Google-like redesign of search ads in Bing, grouping multiple sponsored links under a single “Sponsored results” label and adding a “Hide” button that collapses the entire ad block. Driving the news. Sachin Patel spotted the Bing test in the wild and shared screenshots and video showing the new layout. In […]
Google today released the December 2025 core update. Google said this core update “Today we released the December 2025 core update.” This is the third core update of 2025, and the fourth overall update in all of 2025. Google previously had the August 2025 spam update, before that was the June 2025 core update and before that […]
Google has released the December 2025 core update, the company confirmed through its Search Status Dashboard. The rollout began at 9:25 a.m. Pacific Time on December 11, 2025. This marks Google’s third core update of 2025, following the March and June core updates earlier this year. What’s New Google lists the update as an “incident […]
I’m carefully watching the development of agentic SEO, as I believe over the next few years, as capabilities improve, agents will have a significant impact on the industry. I’m not suggesting this will be a seamless replacement of talent with a highly capable machine intelligence. There is going to be a lot of trial and […]
We’ve established the AI resume as the new C-suite-level asset that defines your brand at the bottom of the funnel, and we’ve mapped the strategic landscape that shows how it operates across explicit, implicit, and ambient research modes. So, how do you build this asset to thrive in a three-part environment? The answer is shifting […]