Technology News and Industry Knowledge

Since Search Engine Land launched, we have given SEO experts a platform to share their in-depth knowledge and timely insights – with the goal of helping you solve problems, manage challenges and understand the constantly shifting SEO landscape. What follows are links to the 10 most-read, must-read Search Engine Land SEO columns of 2024 that were contributed by our fantastic group of Subject Matter Experts. 10. The SEO’s guide to Google Search Console Dive into Google Search Console’s features and reports, plus how to navigate the tool like a pro, from basic setup to advanced SEO analysis. (By Anna Crowe. Published July 8.) 9. 15 AI tools you should use for SEO Get more done in less time with these must-have AI tools to automate tasks, optimize content and improve your search engine rankings. (By Ludwig Makhyan. Published Sept. 27.) 8. How to use Google Search Console to unlock easy SEO wins Steps for using GSC to review your traffic, analyze the search landscape and make impact...

Search Engine Land gives PPC experts a platform to share their in-depth knowledge and timely insights – with the goal of helping you solve problems, manage challenges and understand the constantly shifting landscape of paid search, paid social, and display. What follows are links to the 10 most-read, must-read Search Engine Land PPC columns of 2024 that were contributed by our fantastic group of subject matter experts. 10. Value-based bidding: Why it’s key to boosting your Google Ads Discover how this bid strategy can optimize your Google Ads campaigns for the most valuable actions and overall profitability. (By Sarah Stemen . Published Feb. 7.) 9. Mastering Performance Max using scripts Learn to negate poor performers, track disapproved products and exclude spammy placements with Google Ads scripts. (By Nils Rooijmans . Published Sept. 20.) 8. Google is hiding search data from advertisers and profiting Here’s how it affects your ad campaigns and what you can do to optimize per...

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, and its executive team held a strategy meeting with employees last week on its 2025 outlook and what Google needs to focus on to get there. As you can imagine, much of it was around AI and shipping AI products that are better, faster and more consumer focused. This was covered in CNBC’s write up named Google CEO Pichai tells employees to gear up for big 2025: ‘The stakes are high’. Consumer focused Gemini. “Scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year,” Pichai was quoted as saying. The issue is, ChatGPT from OpenAI is quickly becoming the brand for AI, like Google is for Search. The CNBC article reads: One comment read aloud by Pichai suggested that ChatGPT “is becoming synonymous to AI the same way Google is to search,” with the questioner asking, “What’s our plan to combat this in the upcoming year? Or are we not focusing as much on consumer facing LLM?” Pichai wants Google to be that, not OpenAI. Will that be baked into...

The world of digital marketing in 2024 has been nothing short of transformative, with Google once again taking center stage in many of the year’s biggest developments. From the ongoing debates about third-party cookies to advancements in Google Analytics and the rising distrust among advertisers, the year was marked by shifts that tested the adaptability and resilience of marketers everywhere. As we enter the last few weeks of the year, let’s take a look at the top newsworthy headlines according to pageviews. 10. Google Ads phasing out card payments In June Google notified some high-spending advertisers that they would need to stop using credit or debit cards for Google Ads payments by July 31, 2024. Affected accounts needed to transition to bank-based payment methods or risk suspension. Advertisers expressed frustration, citing financial strain, loss of cashflow flexibility and lack of benefits. Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed that only a small subset of advertisers...

Google Ads introduced Brand Report, a new dashboard tool that gives advertisers consolidated insights into reach and frequency across campaigns. The tool simplifies how brand advertisers track campaign performance by providing deduplicated metrics in one place, rather than scattered across multiple reports. The details . Brand Report consolidates data from multiple tools, streamlining analysis of KPIs and demographic performance. Advertisers can filter results by age, gender, and other on-target demographics. Accessible directly in the Google Ads dashboard under “Insights and reports.” Why we care. This update is significant because it finally solves the headache of piecing together reach and frequency data from multiple places. By providing deduplicated metrics in one dashboard, you can now easily see who they’re actually reaching across campaigns, spot where they’re overspending on the same audiences, and make faster, smarter decisions about their brand advertising inves...

OpenAI has confirmed it is working to restore access to a number of its services including its popular ChatGPT service, its APIs and Sora. OpenAI said it has found the cause for the issue and have started recovery. Some of the services are now being restored. What happened. OpenAI said at 11 am PT on its status report , “We are currently experiencing an issue with high error rates on ChatGPT, the API, and Sora. We are currently investigating and will post an update as soon as we are able.” Later the AI company confirmed, “This issue is caused by an upstream provider and we are currently monitoring.” Fix coming. On X, ChatGPT added that it has restarted recovery of its systems: Most of ChatGPT, the API, and Sora have been down for a couple of hours and we're sorry for the trouble this is causing. We’ve identified the issue and have started recovery. We hope to be back asap. https://t.co/YiG0F9YxNN — OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 26, 2024 Service returning. It seems som...

Google’s  June 2024 spam update  rollout is now complete. The spam update started on December 19, 2024, about seven days ago, finishing on December 26, 2024. This was the third spam update of the 2024 year and started a day after Google  completed  the  December 2024 core update . This update was a general and broad spam update, it was not a link spam update and did not automate the  site reputation abuse policy , which is still only done via manual actions. Google  wrote , “The rollout was complete as of December 26, 2024.” What we saw. While the update was announced the day after the December core update, it does seems that it  hit very hard  within a few days and was much  more widespread  than some previous spam updates. Although, it is still a bit too early to dig too much into the update. If you were hit by this update, you may notice the rankings drops in Search Console. Keep in mind, holiday traffic can be very volatile...

Google launched seven official and confirmed  algorithmic updates  in 2024, four core updates and three spam updates. The March 2024 core update was massive, updating several systems within the core algorithm, plus bringing in a few new large spam policies. In 2023 , Google had 9 confirmed algorithmic updates. In 2022 and 2021, Google had 10 confirmed algorithmic updates. Google confirmed algorithm update summary We whipped up this timeline documenting all the confirmed Google search algorithm updates in 2024, so you can visualize the updates over the year. Four Google core updates in 2024 Google had four core updates in 2024, the same number as it had in 2023, but in 2022 Google only had two core updates. We had core updates in March, August, November and December. March 2024 core update . The Google March 2024 core update started rolling out March 5, took 45 days to complete, and finished on April 19. Google told us this core update was its large...

When moving from non-conversion to conversion-based bidding, Google appears to automatically enable broad match on campaigns. This affects existing exact and phrase match keywords, converting them to broad match without user confirmation. Why we care. Advertisers switching to conversion-based bidding could unknowingly have their keywords shifted to broad match. Broad match can drastically alter campaign targeting, leading to spikes in irrelevant clicks. The response: Advertisers, including Navah Hopkins from Optmyzr, flagged the issue, raising concerns about wasted budget and campaign performance. Navah led the criticism, reminding us that she isn’t one to just disapprove of Google with no cause – “Those of you who know me know I’m usually pretty balanced when it comes to Google “choices” but this is a pretty horrible one (especially for those who aren’t as comfortable with Google Ads).” Harrison Jack Hepp (Founder of Industrious Marketing) questions what happens to the or...

Google has expanded its AI-organized search results for local queries on restaurants. As a reminder, Google announced AI-organized search results back at Google I/O in May, then officially began rolling them out in October for recipes and meal inspiration on mobile and now they are rolling out for dining recommendations. What Google said. Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google, said on X: Happy to share we’ve launched a new way to get dining recs on Search. If you’re looking for something like “restaurants with a view Chicago,” you’ll get a results page organized with AI. This includes unique, AI-generated categories based on your search with helpful resources from the web, like articles, videos, forums, etc. We launched something similar for meal planning back in October – and there’s still more to come! What it looks like. Here is a video showing these results organized by these categories: Why we care. This may change how much traffic your site or business gets from Goo...

Another year in SEO has flown by. While 2023 may have been the wildest year in SEO ever , 2024 was not far behind – with perhaps two of the biggest stories in the history of SEO. Note: This article doesn’t include any stories related to Google algorithm updates. Barry Schwartz wrote a separate recap on that, which will publish Dec. 26. 15. R.I.P., Google cache link For years, the cache link in the Google Search results snippets was a de facto tool for many SEOs and searchers. That all changed in February. Google decided to retire it and officially remove the cache link. Google Search officially retires cache link 14. Reddit-Google Reddit had a heck of a year, greatly accelerated by an incredible surge of organic visibility in Google search results. And by sheer coincidence (surely), Reddit and Google struck a content licensing deal in February. Report: Reddit signs AI content licensing deal with Google Microsoft confirms Reddit blocked Bing Search 13. New insights into ho...

The emergence of ChatGPT search has led to many questions about the quality of the overall results compared to Google.  This is a difficult question to answer, and in today’s article, I will provide some insights into how to do just that.  Note that our understanding is that the technology that makes it possible for OpenAI to offer a search capability is called SearchGPT, but the actual product name is ChatGPT search.  In this article, we will use the name ChatGPT search. What’s in this report This report presents an analysis of 62 queries to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.  Each response was meticulously fact-checked and evaluated for alignment with potential user intents.  The process, requiring about an hour per query, highlighted that “seemingly good” and “actually good” answers often differ. Additionally, when Google provided an AI Overview, it was scored against ChatGPT search.  A combined score for the AI Overviews an...