For years, marketers measured digital success through impressions, backlinks and clicks. If you ranked high in search results and won the click, you had visibility and control of the funnel. But that landscape is already shifting. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are rapidly becoming the first place decision-makers go for […]
Performance Max (like the more upper-funnel Demand Gen) is different enough from other Google Ads campaigns that it requires a different approach, even if the underlying search behavior and marketing principles are the same as they’ve always been. For what it’s worth, Performance Max is typically not the first campaign to launch in any account. […]
The European Commission has proposed a “Digital Omnibus” package that would relax parts of the GDPR, the AI Act, and Europe’s cookie rules in the name of competitiveness and simplification. If you work with EU traffic or rely on European data for analytics, advertising, or AI features, it’s worth tracking this proposal even though nothing […]
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, […]