The new PPC skill set: From keyword manager to system optimizer
The old PPC skill set was built around control: define the keywords, choose the match types, set bids, write tightly aligned ad copy, and structure campaigns so the algorithm behaved the way you wanted. The best ad managers of the past were great at Excel and pivot tables. Execution was the product and the differentiator […]
What Not To Automate With AI: The SEO Deskilling Trap
When AI arrived in the marketing mainstream, it was accompanied by a persistent and scary narrative: The machines are coming for our jobs. On the surface, those fears might appear well-founded. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 43% of surveyed marketers said their organization had laid off marketing employees within the last year – a […]
What to do now that AI Overviews turned search into reading sessions
Intent still tells you what to write. But when an AI Overview (AIO) lands on the SERP, users no longer behave the same way as classic search. In this memo: AIO compresses five distinct search intents into one reading pattern, and the 20-year SEO assumption it breaks. What winning the “second impression” looks like for […]
What Is The Agentic Web?
The agentic web is the layer of the internet where AI agents, acting on behalf of humans, discover, read, and transact with websites. It exists alongside the human web and is measured separately. For most of the internet’s history, three classes of visitor showed up at a website: humans, search engine crawlers, and robots running […]
Google Search Console AI performance reports and controls to block your content in AI responses
Google is rolling out new Search Generative AI performance reports within Google Search Console and is also testing the ability to block your content from showing up in AI Mode and AI Overviews with a “toggle” within Search Console. Search Generative AI Performance report. Google Search Console, as expected, is rolling out a new report […]
Google Tests Dedicated AI Search Reports In Search Console
Google is beginning to test two new Search Console features. One is a toggle that lets you control whether your site appears in generative AI Search features. The other is dedicated performance reports showing when URLs from a site appear in generative AI features across Search and Discover. Both features are rolling out to a […]
GBP Users – Best Practices | Google Business Profile (GBP) & Google Maps
I saw a case recently in Google’s community forum where a real estate agent had created a practitioner profile using their “work” email. (i.e. an email on their brokerage’s website domain) They left the brokerage to work elsewhere, so the email account used to create the profile was shut down, and they lost access to […]
Google spotlights invalid click credits with new Ads help documentation
Google published new documentation highlighting its Invalid Activity Credit Report, bringing renewed attention to a little-known tool that helps advertisers track refunds issued for invalid clicks and interactions. The big picture. It’s unclear whether the Invalid Activity Credit Report itself is new as advertisers have seen several of those metrics, like invalid click rate before. […]
Microsoft Web IQ Gives AI Agents Bing Grounding APIs
Microsoft announced Web IQ, a set of grounding APIs that let AI agents pull information from Bing’s search index. The company calls Web IQ “a search engine for AI systems.” Where Bing helps people find web pages, Web IQ helps AI agents find information they can use while reasoning through a task. What Web IQ […]
Microsoft releases Web IQ, powered by Bing but designed for how AI-agents search
Microsoft has released its new grounding API named Web IQ. Web IQ is a “suite of AI-native grounding APIs built for the agentic era, connecting AI systems and agents to fresh, real-world intelligence from across the web — including web pages, news, images, and videos,” Microsoft announced. What is Web IQ. Web IQ is a […]