Google’s new Preferred Sources lets users customize Top Stories with favorite publishers. How could this shift impact search visibility? The post Google Tests ‘Preferred Sources’ To Personalize Top Stories In…
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google has not…
Though still <1% of total traffic, it’s now our highest converting channel at 10%+ CVR (going by our new custom event tracking in Web Analytics). I wanted to see if…
Cindy Krum tells Shelley Walsh why SEO professionals are missing the bigger picture in Google’s AI evolution: personalization, ads, and multi-platform search. The post Google’s AI Search Journeys Are Reshaping…
Explore SE Ranking’s new study of Google’s AI Mode. See how it picks sources, how volatile results are, and how it compares to AI Overviews and organic search.
Over the past two days it has felt like there was some sort of ranking adjustment made in the Google Search organic results. Yea, I know, organic search doesn’t send…
A couple of years ago, we covered a report by the NY Times on the ongoing issues with review scams and blackmail. Well, the issue is not gone, despite Google…
Over 6 months ago, a Google search representative said we should all expect more core updates, more often. And in the past six months, we have had only one confirmed…
Google is now showing price tracking widgets at the top of the feed. We’ve seen products with price tracking markup notifications within the feed but these widget styles may be…
Brand authority and conversions don’t need separate content strategies. Mordy Oberstein explains how to align both in this week’s Ask An SEO. The post Ask An SEO: Balancing Content That…
Google posted a new document on the topic of its AdSense for Search Restricted Access Features (RAFs). Google said, “Starting on August 25, 2025, certain AdSense for Search features have…
Microsoft is testing italicizing the URLs in the Bing Search results. It is a bit weird to look at and I am not sure why Bing is testing this but…
Join Mél Attia as she explains how consumer trust and AI updates are reshaping local SEO and how agencies can lead the way. The post Lead Local SEO: How To…
AI visibility is how often your brand is mentioned by tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Learn how to track and grow your LLM presence with our expert-backed guide.
Google’s srsltid parameter is showing on blog and homepage URLs, affecting reporting and analytics, but not affecting rankings. The post Google’s ‘srsltid’ Parameter Appears In Organic URLs, Creating Confusion appeared…
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…
Kevin Indig explores how query fan-out drives AI Mode and why classic “one query, one answer” SEO no longer cuts it. The post Query Fan-Out appeared first on Search Engine…
Google updated its service areas business guidelines help document to add “Do not add countries or states as a service area.” Google also updated numerous parts of the document.
Google seems to be expanding the feature where they turn off the ability for some local listings, Google Business Profiles, to allow posting reviews. We covered this before during the…
I am not sure if this is new, to be honest, we saw something super similar in the normal local review summaries about fives years ago with “X people mention…
Google will be ending the ability for hotels to manage their hotel rates by themselves, instead they will need to partner with a central reservation system, Internet booking engine or…
Microsoft is testing placing a floating Copilot search box within the Bing Search results page. The aim is to encourage searchers to ask follow-up questions, not in Bing Search, but…
A markup language is a system for defining the structure, presentation, or purpose of text within a document.
Google updated the directions interface within Google Search. Now the drive (car icon), trains (train icon) and buses (bus icon) are in expandable menus, as opposed to tabs at the…
I looked at the top 50 websites mentioned in Ahrefs Brand Radar for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. This is across ~76.7M AI Overviews, 957k ChatGPT prompts, and 953.5k…
AI isn’t killing creativity, but redefining it. When AI acts as a co-creator, it‘s how we can stay creative when our timelines are shrinking and our teams are overwhelmed.
With rising acquisition costs, stricter privacy laws, and AI-driven black boxes reshaping attribution, the traditional ad-only model no longer holds. Here‘s how to build a strategic balance of organic and…
In B2B SaaS, product-led growth (PLG) has become a powerful engine for early traction. But when it‘s time to scale to enterprise? You’ll need to build on it with sales-assisted…
While many CMOs and growth leaders chase traffic and rankings, these lagging indicators tell you little about the real-time impact of your strategy. Instead enterprises must shift toward leading indicators…
The Brand Control Quadrant is a framework to regain narrative control in the face of AI-driven search, multimodal discovery, and generative content summarization. Here‘s how to use it.
You’ve invested heavily in brand. But how do you know if it’s working? Brand performance can and needs to be measured, but this measurement must come with rigor, structure, and…
Organic search isn‘t disappearing, but how it works, who controls it, and what drives visibility have changed radically. And this presents a big opportunity for enterprise brands.
Your brand is no longer just what you say to your audiences. If you’re not actively managing your algorithmic footprint, AI systems will define your brand for you. And it…
Learn how to disavow backlinks, when it‘s necessary, and how to create and submit a disavow file to Google.
We looked at over 150k unique citations to see how AI Mode compares to other LLMs in how it cites domains.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google says URL…
However, that changed when Google and OpenAI turned most of these queries into zero-click searches. For the remaining queries, search platforms directly reward authoritative and popular brands, so branding can…
Google’s John Mueller several years after posting a video named “Will removing ‘.html’ from my URLs help my site?” still says URL extensions do not matter for SEO. He said…
Google is testing a new feature to replace all those copy-and-paste emoji websites. You know, when you want to know what an emoji is for a specific emotion and you…
Google has made its first expansion of AI Mode outside of the US by announcing AI Mode is now available in Search Labs for those based in India. As you…
Google is testing moving the social profile links above the Google Posts section in the Google Business Profiles / local listings within Google Search. This seems to be being tested…
I am not sure what this is but Google is testing (or maybe it is a bug) an answer box of sorts, in a blue highlight background (grayish on dark…
Google is testing placing a light blue bar on the left side of the search results snippets title link. I am not sure why Google is doing this but it…
If they hadn’t shown up when I was looking, I never would have known they existed. That got me thinking about how crucial search visibility really is for auto businesses….
It’s on track to drive change at a scale we haven’t seen since the industrial revolution. But in a space moving this fast, most stats you find are already out…
Unfortunately, we can’t even validate or dispute those claims, because Google doesn’t give us the ability to differentiate between AI-powered search traffic and traditional search traffic in Search Console or…
Planning a migration? Discover these expert tips to ensure a seamless site move while protecting your SEO and performance. The post The Smart SEO Team’s Guide To Timing & Executing…
Jill Whalen, who recently passed away, championed an ethical approach to SEO that continues to influence the industry. The post Jill Whalen’s SEO Legacy Still Shapes The Industry appeared first…
Continually coming up with fresh, relevant content ideas isn’t easy. But you might be overlooking something important: related content. Related content includes topics that connect to your primary content themes….
You need to build out a new arm of your website. Do you use a subdomain or a subdirectory? It’s an often painful decision that can impact your SEO performance…
Proving the value of your SEO efforts can seem like an uphill battle. What’s the cheat code to getting buy-in from stakeholders? Tracking the right SEO KPIs. Not just the…
Signal was released in 2014, initially with phone calls only functionality, later that year messaging was added. Today, Signal is a popular messenger app, widely considered as one of the…
Cash App launched in 2013, offering a platform for transferring money between individuals. Two years later, in 2015, service expanded with business transactions. Today, Cash App is a popular digital…
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…
Jason Howell on the AI Inside podcast had Nick Fox, VP of Search at Google, on a few weeks ago. In that interview, he said that the methodologies used by…
Google’s Jeff Dean, the lead of Google AI and a Google veteran since 1999, highlighted Google’s index freshness as one of its key advantages in its AI services. On X,…
Google Ads is testing a new version of the segment dropdown menu within the advertiser console. The new version is a more compact version that displays more options on your…
Google appears to be reintroducing the “product status change” report within Google Merchant Center. This displays the historical changes of your product statuses and is a feature that was greatly…
Microsoft is testing a new image carousel within the Bing Search results. This image carousel shows two rows of images, instead of one, has related searches with an arrow at…
I looked at the top 50 websites mentioned in Ahrefs Brand Radar for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. This is across ~76.7M AI Overviews, 957k ChatGPT prompts, and 953.5k…
It is with a heavy heart that I am reporting that one of the founding pillars of the SEO industry, one of the first female SEOs in our industry, and…
Google’s Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes discuss how much technical knowledge SEO professionals need, and why coding isn’t always essential. The post How Much Code Should SEO Pros Know? Google…
To help you get it right, I turned to someone who’s been deep in the trenches of localization: Erik Sarissky, Head of International Marketing and Product Localization at Ahrefs. Erik…
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google said larger…
This week we covered the ongoing Google search ranking volatility. Google is now officially counting AI Mode in Google Search Console’s performance reports, but good luck understanding it. Google is…
Google’s John Mueller said that for larger and longer issues, it can take Google longer for Google Search to reprocess it all. Meaning, the bigger the issue and the longer…
Google has quietly updated its AI features and your website help document, which it initially launched just under a month ago, with a new section on troubleshooting preview controls. In…
Google is testing placing a speaker icon next to the video snippets. The speaker icon includes a language label indicating what language the video is in.
Back in November 2021, it began sending some searchers to translated versions of webpages through the search results. Google then in May 2022 started to report on how often this…
Google is testing adding the text “background checked” to the local service ads listings in the Google local search results. This seems to be instead of the Google Screened or…
Christopher Caparoso In the top stories for the month, you’ll learn about Google’s new AI Mode for search (and whether it’s the SEO apocalypse some fear), the big announcements made…
What if AI Mode isn’t just a tool, but a sign of what search is becoming? SEOs can’t afford to tune this out.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google rolled out…
Google has begun rolling out the audio version, talk and listen version, of Search Live in the Google app to those who opt into the AI Mode experiment. This is…
Google is testing new report reviews options in the Google Business Profiles reviews section. You can access it, if you are in the test, by looking at your local reviews…
Discover how Insight Online integrated SE Ranking & Swydo to save time and create clearer, more easily manageable SEO reports for clients.
Google has updated its URL structure best practices help documentation – it was pretty much a rewrite but the overall guidance is not new. Google said they added “clearer flow…
Google is testing swapping the site name with the URL in the search result snippets. So instead of the site name being shown at the top of the search result…
Google seems to be testing a new way to preview ads within Google Search, specifically promotions. There is a new “Promotion Preview” tool that shows what your promotion will look…
Instead of just looking at which websites are mentioned the most, I wanted to understand whether those mentions actually match the popularity of the topics being discussed. I compared each…
It’s a search engine: To learn more about TikTok SEO, I hopped on a call with Charlotte Ang, the co-founder of Traffic Bees, a digital marketing agency based in Singapore…
Learn to analyze competitor website traffic and compare metrics, engagement, devices, and demographics.
Discover how EYClick helped a family-run Catalan restaurant build its online presence, rank #1 locally, and boost organic traffic by 300% in just 3 months.
Yoast fixed an AI-related bug that injected unintended HTML classes into content generated by its SEO Premium plugin. The post Yoast SEO Plugin Bug Injects Hidden AI HTML Classes appeared…
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. There are new…
AI agents now handle more than ideation; they’re transforming audits, too. Here’s how they tackle site analysis, technical issues, and internal links. The post Agentic AI In SEO: AI Agents…
The term, The Great Decoupling has really been catching on over the past couple of weeks. It is being used to describe what we are seeing with impressions and clicks…
It’s been almost ten days since I last reported on a Google search ranking update. Well, I had to stop the streak and cover what I’ve seen over the last…
Google is testing a new design for its sponsored search ads in the Google Search results. These have horizontal lines that are darkened or filled halfway through, alternating from left…
There has been a lot, I mean, a lot, of chatter around if one should add an LLMs.txt to their website. Many are starting to add it while others have…
Google has rolled out a new feature to automate the process of updating your inventory with Google Merchant Center. It is called Website-reported Autofeeds and it uses Google Tag Manager…
Microsoft is testing new hover effects and styles in the Bing Search results. Specifically, when you hover over the URL of a snippet, it will bold and underline the result….
Is AIO stealing your traffic? Learn how to measure AIO impact, assess SEO damage, and update your strategy in our free on-demand webinar. The post AIO Hurting Traffic? How To…
In this article, we’re looking specifically at the costs and budgets associated with AI content. How much does AI content cost? Are companies investing more, or less? AI-generated content is…
The problem is that AI bots are new to web crawling. They’re still making some silly crawl decisions, bumping around, and wasting a lot of resources. We’ve already seen that…
Yoast has added a one-click llms.txt feature designed to guide AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to important website content. The post Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin Adds Support For LLMs.Txt…
Learn how LLM optimization (LLMO) can help you get more visibility in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and more.
Google’s AI Mode is reshaping SERP rankings. Discover how embedding vectors, not keywords, now determine visibility. The post See What AI Sees: AI Mode Killed the Old SEO Playbook —…
This sits at odds with Google’s original search model, which worked by passing on referral traffic to third-party sites. Google is getting better at creating zero-click searches, and that means…
The roll-out of AI Overviews now creates two opportunities for top-ranking content to log impressions for a given keyword, while simultaneously reducing the number of people who click from the…