Paul O’Banion 
Google long ago filed a patent for ranking search results by trust. The groundbreaking idea behind the patent is that user behavior can be used as a starting point for developing a ranking signal. The big idea behind the patent is that the Internet is full of websites all linking to and commenting about each …
YouTube is rolling out two AI-driven features designed to enhance content discovery and deepen user engagement. The experimental tools include an AI-powered search results carousel for Premium users and a conversational AI assistant now expanding to some non-Premium accounts in the U.S. AI Search Results Carousel (Premium Only) Premium subscribers in the U.S. can now …
Paid media offers one of the fastest ways to promote a business event and get the right people to take action. Event campaigns are not just regular ads with a date added. They need a dedicated strategy, setup, budget, and audience targeting to succeed. From webinars and product launches to open houses and local promotions, …
Google announced a new multi-vector retrieval algorithm called MUVERA that speeds up retrieval and ranking, and improves accuracy. The algorithm can be used for search, recommender systems (like YouTube), and for natural language processing (NLP). Although the announcement did not explicitly say that it is being used in search, the research paper makes it clear …
Google is testing a new feature that allows you to customize the Top Stories section in search results by selecting preferred news sources. Currently available through Search Labs in the U.S. and India, the experiment gives people more influence over which publishers appear in their news-related queries. How It Works Those who opt into the …
To my fellow marketers, I first wrote this title in the summer of 2020, back when I thought, “Wow, surely things couldn’t get worse.” Needless to say, I was wrong. Here’s the actual quote I started with last time: “If you’re reading this, then it is early July, you’ve made it this far in the …
AI is being rapidly implemented, but that doesn’t mean it’s being used effectively. The current lack of clear benchmarks and data about AI usage has meant that everyone has been operating in the dark. This led us to create our first State Of AI In Marketing report, so that chief marketing officers and marketing decision-makers …
This post was sponsored by InMotion Hosting. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. We’ve all felt it, that sinking feeling in your stomach when your site starts crawling instead of sprinting. Page speed reports start flashing red. Search Console is flooding your inbox with errors. You know it’s time for better …
Marketers and business owners are spoiled for choice when it comes to the many social media platforms available for growing an online audience. From BlueSky to TikTok, LinkedIn to Patreon, social media marketing has never been more robust, or, arguably, time-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. Fortunately, you don’t have to be everywhere at …
If your brand doesn’t resonate on a deep level with your target audience, then pouring time and energy into aesthetics and clever messaging is a waste of resources. Real brand power is based on your brand’s identity: knowing who you are as a company, and how your ideal customer experiences life in relation to your offering. …
Google’s Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes recently addressed a common question in search marketing: how technical do SEO professionals need to be? In a Search Off the Record podcast, they offered guidance on which technical skills are helpful in SEO and discussed the long-standing friction between developers and SEO professionals. Splitt noted: “I think in …
TikTok will remain operational in the U.S. through September 17, as negotiations over a potential ownership deal continue. President Donald Trump issued a third executive order delaying enforcement of the TikTok ban, giving the Chinese-owned platform another 90 days to operate in the U.S. The move was confirmed in a White House briefing and TikTok’s …
Keeping up-to-date on industry Google Ads benchmarks is crucial to help answer questions you might get from clients or exec such as: “Is this a good CTR?” “Why is our CPA so high?” “What’s a good conversion rate, anyway?” Questions like these come up all the time, especially when budgets are tight and performance dips …
Yoast announced the addition of llms.txt capability to both the premium and free versions of their SEO plugin. Users can now add llms.txt files to their sites to future-proof them for AI search engines. LLMS.Txt llms.txt is a proposal for a new standard that will enable large language models (LLMs) to access a publisher’s content …
Google has updated its Search Console documentation, confirming it includes AI Mode data in Performance reports. This is a change to note when reviewing your metrics, as it may impact traffic reporting patterns. Understanding AI Mode and What’s Changed AI Mode is Google’s interactive AI-powered search experience, which builds on AI Overviews to provide more …
Keywords that contain recipe intent are triggering Google AI Overviews; however, keyword phrases that expressly ask for recipes are triggering the normal recipe rich results. SEOs on social media are reporting that recipe-related queries are triggering AI Overviews, so it may very well be that these are now officially rolled out. Tom Critchlow (LinkedIn profile) …
Marketers and business owners are spoiled for choice when it comes to the many social media platforms available for growing an online audience. From BlueSky to TikTok, LinkedIn to Patreon, social media marketing has never been more robust, or, arguably, time-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. Fortunately, you don’t have to be everywhere at …
Google has launched Audio Overviews, a new test feature in Search Labs. It creates audio summaries of search results using Google’s latest Gemini AI models. How Audio Overviews Work Audio Overviews turn Google Search results into audio content. When Google thinks an audio overview might help, you’ll see an option to create a short audio …
Google retires seven structured data features including Book Actions, Course Info, and Claim Review to streamline search results. Rankings unaffected. Google is removing seven structured data features from search results. This change will not affecting rankings. There’s no immediate action needed. Source link
This post was sponsored by Cloudways. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Have you ever woken up to a 3 AM client website panic? Did your client’s ecommerce site crash during a flash sale? Has another client asked why their site is slow, “even though we’re paying for premium hosting.” This …
Google is offering voluntary buyouts to employees across several of its core U.S.-based teams, including Search, Ads, engineering, marketing, and research. The offer provides eligible employees with at least 14 weeks of severance and is available through July 1, according to reporting from The Verge and The Information. The buyouts are limited to employees in …
Google’s John Mueller answered a question about a site that received millions of Googlebot requests for pages that don’t exist, with one non-existent URL receiving over two million hits, essentially DDoS-level page requests. The publisher’s concerns about crawl budget and rankings seemingly were realized, as the site subsequently experienced a drop in search visibility. NoIndex …
Every tweet, direct message, and comment holds weight. Social media has long been a connectivity platform, where users engage with friends, colleagues, and family. In recent years, it’s also evolved to become a feedback mechanism for businesses. In many industries, customers are communicating with a business on social media. It’s a key customer service channel, …
BrightEdge Enterprise SEO platform released new data showing distinctive patterns across major AI search and chatbot platforms and also called attention to potential disruption from Apple if it breaks with Google as the default search engine in Safari. Desktop AI Traffic Dominance One of the key findings in the BrightEdge data is that traffic to …
Google updated the Recipe Schema.org structured data documentation to reflect more precise guidance on what the image structured data property affects and where to find additional information about ranking recipe images in the regular organic search results. Schema.org Structured Data And Rich Results The SEO and publisher community refers to the text results as the …
Google has started rolling out interactive charts in AI Mode through Labs. You can now ask complex financial questions and get both visual charts and detailed explanations. The system builds these responses specifically for each user’s question. Visual Analytics Come AI Mode Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, Director of Product Management for Search at Google, explained that you …
Microsoft Clarity announced their new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server which enables developers, AI users and SEOs to query Clarity Analytics data with natural language prompts via AI. The announcement listed the following ways users can access and interact with the data using MCP: Query analytics data with natural prompts Filter by dimensions like Browser, …
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 …
WordPress announced the formation of an AI Team that will focus on coordinating the development and integration of AI within the WordPress core. The team is to function similarly to the Performance Team, focusing on developing canonical plugins that users can install to test new functionality before a decision is made about whether or how …
Reddit Karma has evolved far beyond a simple upvote tally. It plays a central role in how content spreads, how trust is earned, and how visibility is gained, especially for brands. With Reddit’s monetization programs and algorithmic surfacing now tightly tied to karma, it has become a built-in vetting system that shapes who gets seen, …