Google Ads is updating its Destination requirements policy to block phone numbers tied to fraud or prior policy violations, part of the company’s ongoing effort to curb deceptive advertising practices. The timeline: Policy update effective: December 10, 2025 Enforcement ramp-up: Over roughly 8 weeks after rollout What’s changing. Phone numbers flagged as fraudulent or with […]

GEO, AI SEO, AEO – call it what you like. The label doesn’t matter nearly as much as understanding the shift behind it. At the center of that shift lies one idea that explains everything: AI availability – and here’s why it matters. What is AI availability? The idea of AI availability comes from Byron […]

Keywords in reviews are generally believed to help local rankings, although their impact is still actively debated within the local SEO community. Regardless of where the truth on ranking impact ultimately lands, keyword-rich reviews can still provide meaningful value for local SEO beyond pure rankings. Below are seven reasons why you should still encourage keyword-rich […]

Google is rolling out asset-level reporting for Display campaigns, giving advertisers a clearer view of how individual creative assets perform — a move that brings Display closer to the visibility already seen in Performance Max campaigns. Why we care. Until now, Display campaign insights have been limited to overall ad performance. With this update, advertisers […]

A recent Google blog post announced the expansion of Opal, a Google tool that uses AI to get people create mini apps, and touted that the tool can be used to create “optimized” content in a “scalable way.” Many SEOs are asking if this is against Google search guidelines, specifically the scaled content abuse policy. […]

A year and a half ago, I wrote “The rise of forums: Why Google prefers them and how to adapt,” arguing that brands should build their own online forums and communities. Let’s look at what’s happened since. As of this writing, Reddit’s stock price has risen 177.6%. If you’d bought 100 shares of RDDT then, […]

An SEO strategy is the foundation for improving organic visibility and driving conversions – whether that means owning Google’s front page or earning mentions in LLMs. A strong strategy aligns stakeholders, unifies teams, and sets clear expectations.  Without one, SEO can feel scattered – a collection of disconnected tactics or endless optimizations thrown at the […]

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity: these are the new operating environments. Your content must be invokable inside them, or no one will see it. At SMX Advanced, I broke down how to build an AI visibility engine: a system for making your net-new facts reusable by humans and agents across synthesis-first platforms. It goes beyond publishing to […]

Grappling with innovation and changing consumer attitudes is second nature to marketers, who have already lived through many technological shifts over the past two decades. But forecasting where things are going is especially hard when it comes to modern AI, which has such unusual, non-deterministic properties. You can’t just extrapolate from the state of AI […]

It’s clear to me that the current “LLM situation” is untenable. These platforms are offering a very expensive set of products with relatively unlimited access. At the same time, you have content creators and publishers in a state of panic as decreased traffic has become the norm.  Add to this that platforms ranging from Google’s […]