People inspecting ChatGPT responses are spotting references to ads in the page source. One line reads: “InReply to user query using the following additional context of ads shown to the user.” The reference appears even when no ad is actually displayed. Driving the news. Digital Marketer Glenn Gabe first flagged the issue on X after […]

SEO has historically been an exercise in reverse-engineering algorithms. Keywords, links, technical compliance, repeat. But that model is being reimagined.  Today, visibility is earned through trust, usefulness, and experience, not just relevance signals or crawlability. Search engines no longer evaluate pages in isolation. They observe how people interact with brands over time. That shift has […]

Ads are now being tested in ChatGPT in the U.S., appearing for some users across different account types. For the first time, advertising is entering an AI answer environment – and that changes the rules for marketers. We’ve used AI as part of ad creation or planning for years across Google, LinkedIn, and paid social. […]

Competitive research is a gold mine of insights in the world of organic discovery. Clients always love seeing insights about how they stack up against their rivals, and the insights are very easily translated into a multi-dimensional roadmap for getting traction on essential topics. If you haven’t already done this, 2026 needs to be the […]

For years, conversations about paid media have revolved around one question: should companies build in-house teams or outsource to agencies? That debate makes sense, but it misses the real issue. The problem isn’t where paid media sits in the org chart. It’s how performance leadership is structured. Many companies run Google Ads and other paid […]

On episode 339 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Kirk Williams, a long-time PPC professional who’s been in the industry since 2009. Kirk is the founder of Zato, a specialist PPC micro-agency, and the author of Ponderings of a PPC Professional and Stop the Scale. He’s also a familiar face on the global […]

Custom GPTs can help SEO teams move faster by turning repeatable tasks into structured workflows. If you don’t have access to paid ChatGPT, you can still use these prompts as standalone references by copying them into your notes for future reuse. You will need to tweak them for your team’s specific use cases, because they […]

For a long time, SEO had the simplest math in marketing: Rank higher → Get more traffic → Fill the sales pipeline To the dissatisfaction of marketing executives, that linear world is breaking fast. Between AI Overviews, zero-click SERPs, and users getting answers directly from LLMs, the old “rank to get traffic and leads” equation […]

Google released v23 of the Google Ads API, the first update of 2026. It marks the start of a faster release cadence. What’s new. The update adds deeper Performance Max reporting, more granular invoicing, AI-powered audience tools, expanded campaign controls, and more: Performance Max transparency: Ad network type breakdowns are now available for PMax campaigns. […]

One of the biggest SEO challenges right now isn’t AI. It’s the irresponsible misinformation surrounding it. SEO isn’t dying — it’s evolving. That means it’s on us to understand how the industry is changing, and to be careful about who we listen to. I’m not easily shocked, but some of the AEO (or GEO) talks […]