Google drops $50K ad spend requirement for Lead Form assets

Google has quietly updated its documentation for Lead Form assets, removing one of the biggest barriers that prevented smaller advertisers from using the format.

Why we care. The long-standing requirement for advertisers to spend more than $50,000 in Google Ads before becoming eligible for certain Lead Form experiences has disappeared from the Help documentation. If this reflects a product change—and not just a documentation update—it could make Google-hosted lead generation available to significantly more advertisers.

What’s changed. The $50,000 spend threshold is gone.

Previously, advertisers needed to meet one of two requirements to use Lead Forms in certain formats:

  • Spend more than $50,000 USD in Google Ads.
  • Or qualify as a reputable advertiser spending more than $1,000 per account (or $15,000 across accounts) and complete Advertiser Verification.

The updated documentation removes the $50,000 lifetime spend requirement entirely. The only eligibility path now mentioned is the advertiser reputation and verification requirement.

That is the most significant change in the update and substantially lowers the documented barrier to entry.

Campaign support has changed. Google has also simplified where Lead Form assets can be used.

Previously:

  • Search
  • Performance Max
  • Display
  • Video (beta)

Now:

  • Search
  • Performance Max

References to Video campaigns have been removed from the overview, while Display is no longer listed as a supported campaign type. Interestingly, the requirements section still references Display campaigns, suggesting the documentation may not yet be fully aligned across all Help pages.

More lead delivery options. Google expanded the documented methods for receiving leads.

Newly documented options include:

  • Email notifications
  • Zapier integration

These join existing delivery methods:

  • CSV download
  • Webhooks
  • Google Ads API

The addition of Zapier gives advertisers a no-code way to automatically send leads into thousands of CRM platforms and business applications.

Better clarification on lead retention. Google also clarified how long lead data is stored.

The updated documentation now explicitly states:

  • Manual CSV downloads are available for 30 days.
  • Google stores lead data for 60 days.
  • API exports can access up to 60 days of lead data.

Previously, the 60-day retention period wasn’t clearly explained alongside manual downloads.

New positioning. Google also refreshed how it describes Lead Form assets.

The previous documentation focused on generating leads and increasing conversions.

The updated version emphasizes:

  • Higher-quality leads
  • Higher lead volume
  • Easier implementation
  • OTP verification for improving lead quality

Expanded country availability. Google added more than two dozen additional countries where Lead Form assets are eligible, including Bahrain, Croatia, Estonia, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Serbia, Slovenia and Tunisia.

Bottom line. Google’s latest Lead Form documentation refresh includes several usability improvements, expanded integrations and broader geographic availability. But the standout update is the disappearance of the $50,000 Google Ads spend requirement—potentially opening one of Google’s most valuable lead-generation formats to far more advertisers.

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How to report PPC performance without lying to yourself (or your boss)

How to report PPC performance without lying to yourself (or your boss)

Early in my career, I was responsible for reporting metrics for a company’s homepage. A member of the usability team wanted to know how much traffic a particular widget was getting. When we pulled the numbers, the result was underwhelming: About 2.5% of visitors actually used it.

But that’s not the number that ended up in the report. Instead, the widget’s usage was reframed as “a couple thousand visits per month.” That was technically true. It also told a completely different story from 2.5%.

That moment taught me something I’ve carried throughout my paid search career: Data isn’t black and white, and the person presenting it has a responsibility to tell an accurate story, not just a flattering one.

Data doesn’t lie, but PPC practitioners sometimes do. In PPC, we have more opportunities to blur that line than most people realize. Here’s where it happens and how to make sure your reporting holds up so you stay honest and ethical.

Conversions aren’t just conversions

If there’s one number that gets flattened most often in paid search reporting, it’s conversions.

A “conversion” can mean something completely different depending on what’s actually being counted. A form fill isn’t a marketing qualified lead (MQL). An MQL isn’t a sale.

For example, a phone call, a chat initiation, and a user watching 50% of a video are all conversion actions I’ve seen tracked in the same account, sometimes rolled into the same headline number and reported as “conversions.”

When you tell a client or stakeholder, “We got an excellent number of conversions,” without specifying what that conversion actually was, that’s not reporting. That’s editorializing, and it’s not a solid foundation for PPC strategy decisions.

Before you present a conversion number, ask yourself:

  • What action is actually being counted? A form fill, a call, a chat, a video view, or a purchase?
  • How far is that action from an actual business outcome? A lead and a closed sale aren’t the same type of win.
  • Would the person reading this report make a different decision if they knew what was behind the number?

If the answer to the third question is yes, you owe them that context, and you should include it when you deliver the report.

See exactly how your competitors win.

Uncover the keywords, ads, landing pages, and strategies driving your competitors’ paid search success—and find your next opportunity to outperform them.

Analyze your competitors

Your CTR benchmark is probably a decade out of date

I still hear practitioners say a campaign is performing well because its click-through rate is “over 2%.” That benchmark comes from an era of PPC that doesn’t exist anymore.

Today’s bidding algorithms are far more sophisticated at finding users who resemble your existing converters. That alone pushes click-through rate (CTR) up across the board, independent of anything you did strategically.

A 2% CTR benchmark from 10 years ago tells you almost nothing about whether a modern, algorithmically targeted campaign is actually healthy and meeting its goals.

Reporting that “CTR is above benchmark” without acknowledging what’s driving that lift, whether it’s better targeting, better creative, or simply a more capable algorithm finding easier audiences, is another way data gets presented as good news without earning that designation.

I don’t think there’s a legitimate universal benchmark left to point to. The algorithm has gotten too good at finding easy clicks for a single number to mean the same thing across accounts, industries, or even campaigns within the same account.

Stakeholders will always ask the fundamental question: “Are these numbers good or bad?”

As subject matter experts, our job isn’t to hand them a legacy benchmark to check off, especially one that doesn’t really exist in any meaningful form.

True expertise means redefining success and shifting the conversation away from vanity metrics that the algorithm inflates for us. It means anchoring our reports in the business outcomes we were hired to drive.

It’s also important to explain how modern bid strategies affect the metrics you’re reporting.

Dig deeper: Why a lower CTR can be better for your PPC campaigns

Raw numbers and percentages tell different stories — use both

The widget story I opened with is really a story about raw numbers versus percentages, and that same tension shows up constantly in paid search reporting.

When you’re breaking down conversions by type, for example, showing that phone calls make up 40% of conversions versus leads at 60% tells a very different story than saying “142 calls, 213 leads.” Neither version is wrong. But presenting only one of them, especially the one that happens to look better, is a choice. It isn’t neutral reporting.

It’s something we have to be conscious of whenever we present data.

The fix isn’t complicated: Show the data in more than one way.

By presenting raw counts and percentages together, you give whoever reads the report enough context to understand what actually happened, instead of what you want them to take away from the report. Percentages add context to the data.

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.


What you choose to focus on in a report is itself a form of manipulation

This kind of manipulation by omission is something I think about most often because I’ve seen it cost advertisers real money and create confusion.

For example, I once took over an account from another practitioner who had been telling the business that its low cost per click (CPC) was a sign of success.

If a low CPC were actually the goal, it’d be easy to hit that number by running everything through the Display Network or another upper-funnel campaign. But that campaign type may not align with what the brand actually needs.

In my example, because the business had been told for months that a low CPC meant good performance, it had bought into the wrong metric entirely.

In reality, a higher CPC often drives better business outcomes and can even result in a lower cost per acquisition because you’re paying more to reach higher-intent, higher-value users instead of optimizing for cheap clicks that don’t convert. For my client, that turned out to be true.

Focusing a stakeholder’s attention on the metric that makes your work look best instead of the one that reflects their actual goals is one of the quietest ways data gets weaponized in this industry. We should be client-first when it comes to reporting data.

Attribution can hide whether your spend is doing anything at all

Even accurate reporting on conversions, CTR, and CPC can still mask a bigger question: Would those conversions have happened anyway?

Attribution models give credit for conversions across touchpoints, but it’s important to remember that credit isn’t causation. A branded search campaign can show a huge volume of “conversions” that would’ve happened through organic or direct traffic, regardless of whether the ad ever ran. The report looks great, but the incremental business impact may be close to zero.

This doesn’t mean we wouldn’t run a brand campaign. It means the data needs more context and nuance.

Incrementality testing — whether that’s using a holdout group, running a geo experiment, or conducting a conversion lift study — is the only real way to answer whether your media spend is creating new business or simply claiming credit for outcomes that would’ve happened anyway.

Reporting conversion volume without ever addressing incrementality is one of the most common and most defensible-sounding ways paid search data tells an incomplete story.

Dig deeper: Why your B2B PPC metrics may be lying to you

3 manipulation tactics worth naming directly

Most of the metric issues above happen without anyone intending to mislead. But a few specific patterns are worth calling out because once you see them, you can’t unsee them in your own reporting.

  • Conversion stacking: Counting multiple actions from a single user journey — say, a chat, then a call, then a form fill from the same person — as three separate wins instead of one.
  • Cherry-picked date ranges: Comparing this month to a deliberately slow month last quarter, or quietly excluding the week your account had an outage or tracking issue. A date range chosen against a weak baseline can make almost any account look like it’s improving.
  • Vanity metric substitution: Leading with a metric that looks good — perhaps impressions, clicks, or “reach” – when the metric that actually matters — qualified leads, revenue, or CPA – tells a less flattering story.

I’m not saying every practitioner who uses these patterns is acting in bad faith. Most of the time, it’s habit, not deception. But habits are exactly what need to be questioned if we’re serious about reporting data honestly.

Paid search doesn’t have a governing board. That’s exactly why this matters

Unlike many licensed professions, paid search practitioners don’t answer to a regulatory body. We have platform certifications, not an ethics board. That means the standard for how honestly we present data to clients and stakeholders is largely self-imposed.

I don’t think that gets talked about enough in our industry. It’s easy to frame a number in the best possible light, especially when your job security or a client relationship depends on the story that number tells.

But contextualizing conversions accurately, using current benchmarks, showing both raw numbers and percentages, and focusing on the metrics that actually reflect business outcomes isn’t just good practice. It’s the ethical baseline for PPC.

If we don’t hold ourselves to that standard, no one else will.

Read more at Read More

Google Tag Manager adds guided setup for Google Ads purchase tracking

Google is making it easier to implement Google Ads purchase conversion tracking by introducing a Guided Setup experience in Google Tag Manager, reducing the manual work required to configure tags.

What’s happening. A new “Guided Setup” card is appearing in Google Tag Manager for Google Ads Purchase Conversions.

The beta feature automatically creates the required:

  • Tags
  • Triggers
  • Variables

Instead of requiring users to configure each component manually.

Why we care. Conversion tracking is essential for campaign optimisation, but implementation can be complex—particularly for advertisers new to Google Tag Manager. Guided Setup aims to simplify the process, reducing setup errors and helping advertisers start measuring purchases more quickly.

Between the lines. The update reflects Google’s broader push to lower the technical barriers to measurement as advertisers increasingly rely on automated bidding strategies that depend on accurate conversion data. By automating much of the configuration, Google could improve tracking adoption and data quality across Google Ads accounts.

What we’re watching. The feature is currently in beta, meaning it isn’t yet available to all Google Tag Manager users. Google has not announced when a wider rollout will begin.

The bottom line. Google Tag Manager’s new Guided Setup streamlines Google Ads purchase conversion tracking by automatically configuring key measurement components, making implementation easier for both new and experienced advertisers.

First spotted. The beta feature was shared by Paid Search expert,Vivek Gupta on LinkedIn.

Every click they win is a customer you lose.

See where competitors are investing, which keywords drive their results, and how to capture more of the market.

See who’s stealing your traffic

Read more at Read More

6 Digital PR Strategies to Boost AI Visibility

Digital PR is the single most important strategy to win in AI search.

A study by Muck Rack found that 84% of AI citations come from earned media, third-party sources like editorial coverage, reviews, and forums.

Where AI gets its information

In AI search, third-party validation beats self-promotion.

Publishing onsite content is still important, no doubt. But your AI visibility is mostly shaped by what happens outside your website.

The more frequently your brand name appears across the web, the more likely LLMs are to recognize, trust, and eventually recommend you.

In this guide, I’ll show you six proven digital PR strategies to earn more backlinks and brand mentions, strengthen your offsite authority, and increase your visibility in AI-generated answers.

Why Digital PR Now Shapes AI Visibility

AI systems go well beyond reading your website.

They pull information from dozens of sources across the web, then combine it into a single answer.

How AI systems discover and cite content

The brands that win in AI search are those that appear consistently across those sources.

That’s where digital PR comes in.

It’s how you get featured in the right publications that AI systems already read and reference.

The more places you show up, the more familiar and trustworthy your brand looks to those models.

Here are six digital PR strategies to start building that presence.

Strategy 1: Data-Led PR

Data-led PR revolves around publishing original research and statistical roundups, and distributing the data to relevant publications.

This is one of the most effective ways to build high-quality backlinks.

Why?

Because journalists, bloggers, and marketers are constantly looking for credible data to support their content.

How It Boosts AI Visibility

Backlinks matter a lot for SEO. And they still matter for AI visibility.

Semrush’s study of 1,000 domains found that brands with stronger backlink authority are more likely to appear in AI-generated answers.

Correlation between backlink metrics and AI visibility

Seer Interactive’s study backs this up:

The top two metrics that impact AI visibility are domain authority and high-quality backlinks (from DA 60+ sites).

Data-led content is how you earn those quality backlinks. People love citing fresh numbers.

I helped one of my clients, Resource Guru, put together the “Agency Overworking Report 2025.”

ResourceGuru – Agency overworking report

Since it was published, this report has generated 21 backlinks naturally, including coverage in Forbes.

Agency overworking report – Backlinks

It’s also consistently being cited in AI answers.

ChatGPT – Agency overworking data

How to Do It

First, publish your data-led content.

You have several options:

  • Conduct new research nobody has done before: This is an excellent choice if you’re in a growing field like GEO, where data is scarce, and any credible study will attract attention.
  • Update existing studies: Find stats that haven’t been refreshed in over two years. Outdated data is everywhere, and writers actively look for newer numbers to replace them. If you can be the source that fills that gap, you’ll earn the citation.
  • Compile existing statistics: You don’t always need to generate new data. Aggregating hard-to-find stats into one well-organized resource can be just as link-worthy.

Once your data is live, pitch it proactively.

Find articles in your niche that reference outdated statistics or cite sources that no longer exist. Reach out to the authors and offer your fresher data as a replacement.

Also, pitch your new data to existing statistical roundups in your niche. These pages are usually updated frequently, so the author is more open to new additions.

Here’s an example of a good pitch that I received for my AI SEO stat roundup:

Research outreach pitch example

Strategy 2: AI Citation Outreach

AI citation outreach is the practice of securing placements in the specific sources AI models already pull from.

In my experience, it’s the quickest way to start earning brand mentions in AI responses.

How It Boosts AI Visibility

If you can get into the content AI cites, you can influence the answers AI gives.

For example, my agency Position Digital was included in Exposure Ninja’s listicle on “The Best AI Search Optimisation Agencies in 2026.”

Exposure Ninja – Best AI search optimization agencies

And since that listicle was cited by ChatGPT, my agency ended up being recommended in one of the answers.

ChatGPT – Best AI search optimization agency

How to Do It

LLMs cite content differently. Each model has its own preferences, tendencies, and patterns.

For example, I asked AI Mode and ChatGPT to recommend the best SEO tools.

Here’s what ChatGPT said:

ChatGPT – Best SEO tools

And here’s the AI Mode answer:

Google AI Mode – Best SEO tools

Similar answers. But totally different citations.

So, you need to tailor your strategy to each AI model you want to target.

1. Research user prompts

Start by mapping out the prompts your target audience is likely to type into AI tools.

AI companies haven’t given us prompt data yet, so we’ll have to settle for educated guesses.

Here are some good places to start:

Source Tips
User questions in sales calls Note the exact language prospects use when describing their problem
Queries in Google Search Console Look for ultra-long queries in your performance report
People Also Ask in SERPs Use a free People Also Ask tool to find common questions about a topic
Keyword data in your SEO tool Filter for question keywords starting with who, what, how, why, which

Alternatively, you can use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to find out exactly what your audience is typing into LLMs.

Visibility Overview – Position Digital – Topics & Sources

2. Monitor the cited pages

Once you have your prompt list, run each prompt through each AI model and note which pages are cited.

If you don’t want to do it manually, Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit shows you the sources for each prompt.

You can also use ListBrew to surface “best X” listicles and comparison pages that already get cited in AI answers for your target prompts.

List Brew – AI citations

3. Find the contacts

Find the contact information for each opportunity using tools like Hunter and Apollo.

Tip: Prioritize someone who has editorial control over the content, like the author or content editor, rather than generic email addresses like hello@domain.com.


4. Send personalized pitches

Reach out to each prospect and ask to be included in the content.

Keep the pitch short and specific to their piece. To increase your chances, offer something in return, such as:

  • A free trial or demo of your product
  • A reciprocal mention in one of your own high-traffic pieces

Also, prepare a short blurb that the author can easily copy and paste into the content. It seems simple, but it makes a big difference.

Here’s an example of a pitch I sent during one of my listicle outreach campaigns:

Listicle outreach email pitch example

Strategy 3: Reactive PR

Most digital PR campaigns take weeks or even months to prepare and execute.

Reactive PR is about speed — being the first one to respond to breaking news, viral trends, and emerging topics.

How It Boosts AI Visibility

LLM training data has a cutoff date.

When someone asks about a current event, the model can’t rely on what it already knows. It has to search the web for fresh sources.

That’s your window.

When a story first breaks, there are usually only a few credible sources covering it.

If your brand is among the first to publish useful commentary, analysis, or original reporting, your content has a much higher chance of being surfaced and cited by AI systems.

Here’s a solid example:

Search Engine Journal was among the first media outlets to report on Google’s new SEO guidelines.

Search Engine Journal – Google's new guidance

The piece has since gained over 16,000 readers, 500 backlinks, and several AI citations.

ChatGPT – SEO news – Search Engine Journal citation

How to Do It

The biggest challenge with reactive PR is spotting trending stories before they become a trend.

By the time a topic is dominating headlines, you’re already too late.

Success comes from identifying emerging conversations while they’re still gaining traction.

A few ways to do that:

  • Join online communities: Many trends gain momentum on Reddit, X, and Slack before they receive mainstream coverage.
  • Follow industry leaders on LinkedIn: Experts often share breaking news, observations, and predictions here before publishing full articles or reports.
  • Follow the major players in your industry: Product launches, partnerships, acquisitions, funding rounds, and policy changes often create PR opportunities. The sooner you spot these developments, the faster you can react.
  • Track journalist requests: Platforms like Qwoted, Featured, and JournoRequests can reveal stories that journalists are actively working on before they’re published.
  • Use Google Trends and Exploding Topics: These tools help you find emerging topics that your audience is searching for right now.

LinkedIn – Kevin Indig post

A secondary layer of this process is monitoring how stories spread across publications.

Many trends don’t appear out of nowhere in major media — they first circulate through smaller blogs and niche industry sites.

Tracking this ripple effect helps you identify narratives early and position your response while the topic is still evolving.

  • Set up Google Alerts: Create alerts for important keywords, competitors, and industry topics so you get notified as soon as new stories are published.
  • Monitor industry newsletters: Curated newsletters are often one of the fastest ways to discover emerging trends and conversations.

The SEOFOMO newsletter

Once you spot an opportunity, move quickly.

Write a report or a commentary piece on your website and social media, and pitch the story to major news outlets in your field.

Strategy 4: Ego Bait

Ego bait involves creating content that features industry experts and influencers.

The goal is to stroke their ego, making them more likely to share your content, mention your brand, or link back to your site.

Expert quote example

How It Boosts AI Visibility

Featuring recognized experts can improve AI visibility in two ways.

First, it increases the credibility of your content.

An AI SEO study found that pages containing expert quotes receive 4.1 citations in ChatGPT on average, compared to 2.4 for pages without them.

And we’ve seen it firsthand.

Our article on SEO competitor analysis features insights from 20 experts, and it’s cited by both Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Google AI Mode – SEO competitor analysis checklist – Position Digital citation

Expert commentary acts as a trust signal, making the content more authoritative and cite-worthy.

Second, it creates a distribution channel.

When experts are featured in your content, many will share it with their audience, mention it on social media, link to it from their websites, or include it in newsletters.

As those mentions and backlinks accumulate, your brand becomes more visible across the web.

Stronger brand visibility = stronger LLM visibility.

How to Do It

There are three types of ego-bait content you can create:

1. Expert roundups

Use journalist outreach platforms like MentionMatch, Featured.com, and Qwoted to gather expert insights for your content.

Choose the best quotes and feature them on your blog post.

Once it’s live, tag every contributor in your LinkedIn post.

Most will reshare it, comment, or at minimum engage with it, which extends your reach well beyond your own following.

LinkedIn – Sean Begg Flint post

2. Case studies and success stories

Highlight real results from customers, partners, or collaborators.

A well-written case study flatters the subject, gives them something worth sharing, and adds a layer of credibility that generic content can’t replicate.

3. Top experts or influencers lists

Curate lists of respected people, companies, or voices in your category.

Examples include:

  • Top SEO Experts in 2026
  • Most Influential AI Search Voices
  • Leading Growth Marketers in SaaS

Being included in a curated list is often incentive enough for people to share it, especially if the selection feels credible and relevant.

This type of structured content is also highly citable by AI systems.

Google SERP – Top SEO influencers – AI Overview

Strategy 5: Thought Leadership

SEO content is built to rank.

Thought leadership content is designed to establish you as a recognizable voice — both for people and LLMs.

And when you already have an established presence, it’s much easier to market your business.

How It Boosts AI Visibility

Most content gets ignored because it fails to give people a reason to engage.

Thought-provoking content, on the other hand, is designed to challenge assumptions, introduce new perspectives, and spark discussion.

Just look at this “controversial take” from Khanh Linh Le.

This post generated an unusually high number of comments relative to its likes because it challenged conventional thinking and encouraged debate.

LinkedIn – Khanh Linh Le post

Some people agreed. Others pushed back. But everyone had something to say.

That’s the goal: to drive engagement.

Engagement drives shares. Shares drive mentions across blogs, forums, social platforms, and publications.

And when a lot of people talk about you, AI pays attention.

How to Do It

1. Build a LinkedIn presence

The first step is to start posting on LinkedIn.

Why?

Because at the time of Semrush’s study, LinkedIn was the second-most-cited domain in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and Perplexity.

Some tips:

  • Publish consistently: AI citations reward relevance and consistency more than virality. The Semrush study found that 75% of cited authors post at least one post per week.
  • Take a stance: Share opinions, challenge assumptions, and weigh in on debates happening in your industry. Posts that take a clear stance generate far more engagement than informational updates.
  • Use your personal and company pages: Some LLMs like Perplexity gravitate more towards company pages, while others like ChatGPT and AI Mode like citing personal pages.

Anatomy of LinkedIn content in AI search

2. Write guest posts for major publications

Guest blogging is a great way to distribute your ideas and share your expertise in high-authority publications.

When multiple authoritative sources cover the same topic and all point back to you as the originating voice, AI models start to recognize you as the go-to authority on that subject.

At Position Digital, I’ve developed a framework called the Guest Post (GP) Engine.

Here’s how it works:

I publish a blog post on my website.

I then publish variations of that post on other publications, ideally those with a high website authority.

As an example, I wrote about “Content Refreshes” on the Position Digital blog.

I then wrote guest posts on the same topic on Sitebulb and Surfer SEO.

All three articles are now cited by AI Overviews.

Google SERP – Content refresh guide – AI Overview

3. Appear as podcast guests

Podcasts are one of the most underutilized thought leadership channels.

A single appearance can generate:

  • Mentions on the host’s website
  • Show notes and transcripts
  • Social media clips
  • Newsletter features
  • Citations from future content creators

If you’re just getting started, don’t chase after big, established shows.

Start small. Build relationships with newer podcasts in your niche.

Paid Forward Podcast featuring Sean Begg Flint

Smaller shows are easier to get on, their hosts are often more engaged, and the content still gets indexed and cited.

As your reputation grows, the bigger opportunities follow naturally.

Strategy 6: Community Building

Community building is about establishing your brand’s presence in third-party forums, review sites, and customer rating platforms that AI models treat as trusted, independent sources.

This way, your brand is validated not just by what you say about yourself, but by what neutral platforms say about you.

Reddit – AEO – Best AI visibility tools

How It Boosts AI Visibility

AI models trust neutral, community-driven sources over brand-owned marketing.

It’s not an opinion. It’s backed by actual data.

According to another AI visibility study by Semrush, LLMs cite Reddit threads about Microsoft products much more frequently than Microsoft’s own blog.

Let that sink in.

And it’s not just forums like Reddit. Review platforms like Trustpilot and G2, where users can share authentic reviews and ratings, carry significant weight too.

Seer Interactive also did a study of 800k AI responses and found that brands with no Trustpilot profile have a median AI citation rate of just 1%.

Brands with even a minimal profile, as few as 1 to 13 reviews, jump to 53.5%.

The implication is clear:

If AI has to choose between what a brand says about itself and what hundreds of independent users say about that brand, it will often favor the latter.

How to Do It

1. Contribute insights on Q&A platforms like Reddit and Quora

These communities are scraped heavily by AI models and frequently cited in responses.

ChatGPT – Reddit – Sources

But be careful, Reddit and Quora communities have a low tolerance for overt self-promotion.

Accounts that exist purely to promote a product get flagged, downvoted, or banned.

The key is to participate as a real contributor, not as a marketer.

Be transparent about who you are and what company you represent, but focus primarily on being helpful.

A good approach is to contribute meaningfully to 3–5 relevant threads per week.

Only mention your brand when it is genuinely relevant to the question or adds value to the discussion.

You can also host an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session to share your knowledge while building brand awareness.

Reddit – Sweaty Startup – SEO AMA

2. Create optimized profiles in review sites

Depending on your niche, set up and optimize your profiles on review platforms like:

  • G2, GetApp, and Software Advice for B2B SaaS
  • Trustpilot and Clutch for agencies and service providers
  • Tripadvisor and Google Reviews for hospitality and local businesses

After that, make sure to ask your existing customers to leave positive reviews and ratings.

3. Write content on Medium

Medium is another platform that AI frequently cites, according to the Semrush study above.

Use it to republish condensed versions of your best content or share original perspectives that complement your main blog.

Publishing the same ideas on Medium that you’d put on your own site gives those ideas a better chance of being cited.

Show Up Where AI is Already Looking

The quickest path to AI citations is getting into the pages AI already trusts.

Start by using Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to uncover the prompts your audience is typing into AI chatbots.

Then, review the sources each AI platform cites for those prompts and find a way to earn a placement there.

When you’re ready to go deeper into how to optimize for citations and influence AI answers, read this guide on LLM seeding.

The post 6 Digital PR Strategies to Boost AI Visibility appeared first on Backlinko.

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Hosting guide: How to pick the right host for your site

Do you want to start a blog or online store? Then you’ll need a website. But did you know you’ll also need web hosting to get your website online? There are many aspects to web hosting, and you might not be sure what it entails. You have to choose a host, a hosting type, and many other things. That’s why we wrote this guide, to help you understand what it is and pick the right host for your site!

Key takeaways

  • Web hosting makes your website accessible online, requiring you to choose a host and type of hosting.
  • Decide between fully-hosted and self-hosted options based on your control and data ownership preferences.
  • When picking a host, consider server location, storage space, audience size, and additional services offered.
  • Understand the different types of hosting: shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting to find what suits your needs.
  • Specialized hosting plans exist for WordPress.org sites, which come optimized and may include support for security and updates.

What is web hosting?

Let’s start with the basics. Web hosting is a service that makes sure your website is accessible through the internet. The pages and files that your website consists of live on a server. Whenever someone visits your website, that server sends over the necessary ‘files’ to display your site to the site visitors. This server is owned by a web hosting company, and you can rent space to store your website files on a server that meets your needs. Without web hosting, your website simply can not exist.

It’s also good to know that, although it doesn’t have a direct effect, your choice of hosting impacts your SEO. Reliable hosting improves the security, speed and uptime of your website. All factors that tell search engines that your website is trustworthy and a good option to show to their users. Upgrading your hosting plan or switching to a new hosting company can therefore improve your site performance, just make sure to choose reliability and your website’s needs over low prices.

So, where do you start? By looking at web hosts or hosting companies. These companies provide servers and internet connectivity in a data center. In other words, they provide space for your website’s data, so it can exist and other people can find it. 

Fully-hosted versus self-hosted

The first choice you have to make when picking the right host for your site is whether you want to create a fully-hosted or self-hosted website. The difference is pretty self-explanatory. Fully hosted means every site on the platform is hosted on its own servers. These companies take care of all the hosting stuff for you, such as Shopify and WordPress.com

Self-hosted, on the other hand, means you’ll have to arrange hosting yourself. A good example is WordPress.org. Now, you might be thinking: why would I want to do everything myself? And while it’s true that self-hosting is extra work, it also means you own all the data yourself. Plus, you get access to the full codebase and can choose your own hosting company.

How to choose a hosting company

These days, there are thousands of companies to choose from. They all have their own benefits and hosting plans. So, how do you pick the right host for your site? What should you focus on? First, it’s important to take a couple of things into account.

Server location

As those real estate TV shows always say: location is everything. It’s not necessarily everything when it comes to hosting, but it is important. Where your host’s servers are located is an important factor in your site’s speed. Why? The smaller the distance between your audience and your server, the faster your website is. For example, if your audience is located in the US but your host is based on the other side of the world, that could slow down your site for visitors, which is something you want to avoid.

Storage space

Second, consider what kind of website you want to create. This impacts how much storage space you need to acquire. For example, a small blog needs far fewer resources than a big online shop with thousands of products. Consider how many pages your site will have and how much content it will have. If you already know you want to build a large website with many large images and videos, you’ll need to look at hosting plans with more storage space.

How big is your audience?

We know this is a hard one to answer. But you might already have an idea of the number of page views you want to reach. Take this number into account when deciding on a hosting company and plan. Because every time someone views a page on your site, it adds to the amount of bandwidth you use. In other words, all the texts and images on that page need to be downloaded onto each visitor’s computer before they can be displayed in their web browser. 

Other services offered

A final consideration is the need for other services related to your website. Many hosting companies offer additional services, such as email hosting, SSL certificates, automated website backups, and website builders. The website plan you choose should provide the services you need to get you up and running, preferably beyond basic hosting. For example, choosing a hosting plan that comes with a website builder helps you create your website right away.

screenshot of the Bluehost AI Website Builder
The Bluehost AI Website Builder

Bluehost has recently launched an AI Website Builder. You answer a few questions, and it generates your website for you. It lets you make changes through chat, and you see changes in real time, no coding or design skills needed. Just describe what you want. Hosting and a domain are included, and human support is available if needed. Ideal if you’re setting up a website for your small business and want it to go live quickly. If your website is a bit more complex, for example, when you want to create a membership portal, this might not be the best option.

Extra questions to ask

In addition to server location, storage space, and the number of visitors, there are tons of other factors that determine your ideal hosting company. That’s why we compiled a couple of additional questions you could ask yourself (and a hosting company) when picking the right host for your site. 

  • Do I need help or support setting things up? 
  • Does the company offer live chat and phone support, and do they respond quickly? 
  • What happens if my site gets hacked or goes down in the middle of the night? Will they help? 
  • What is my budget? 
  • Do I need the ability to add more websites? 
  • Does this hosting company have good reviews? 
  • And, for higher-end packages, what type of hardware, like SSD storage, CPUs, and memory chips, do I need for my site? 

Different types of hosting

Finally, let’s look at the different types of hosting. In this guide, we’ll focus on the three most common ones: shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and VPS hosting. But there are lots of other options out there.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting means you share the same server resources with multiple customers. These server resources determine how much space, bandwidth, mailboxes, etc., you have available. It also means there will be resource limits on each hosting package. Don’t worry, sharing resources doesn’t mean other customers can see or access your data. Shared hosting is probably the cheapest option, but it might not be the best choice if you expect to need a lot of server space and bandwidth.

Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting does exactly what it says on the tin. You’ll get a dedicated, fully allocated hardware server for your use only. This means you’re not sharing the server with other customers. Instead, you’ll have your own personal server with its own processors, hard disks, and memory. This makes dedicated hosting an interesting choice for bigger sites, such as large online shops or corporate sites.

VPS hosting

VPS hosting stands for Virtual Private Server. A VPS is a virtual machine on a physical server that is divided into different sections. You get your own space on this server, with access to a certain amount of resources, like memory and processors. Unlike with shared hosting, these resources are for your use only. Additionally, you can optimize your VPS server to your own preferences. For example, you can determine which software runs on it and adjust the settings to your liking, just like with dedicated hosting.

Hosting plans for WordPress.org sites

If you’re planning to create a WordPress.org website, then we’ve got good news for you. There are tons of hosting companies that offer hosting plans specifically for WordPress.org sites. The benefit? The plans are completely optimized for WordPress-based websites. Usually, they already have WordPress installed, so you don’t have to take care of that anymore. Sometimes they also offer security and update services. This means you don’t have to worry about your site’s security or updating WordPress and the plugins you have installed. 

To help you out, here is a list of WordPress hosting companies.

Conclusion

Now you know all the basics about hosting companies, hosting plans, and the different types of hosting. Still, it’s good to consider which factors are important to you before choosing a hosting company and plan. Because your site’s hosting can impact factors like site speed and the amount of content you can host. 

If you want more information about hosting, we recommend checking out our Technical SEO course. The course dives into considerations when choosing a host, as well as practical tips for making your site easy for search engines to find. And much more!

FAQ

After reading this post, I realized that I might need a better host. Is it possible to switch hosts?

It’s possible, but it’s going to depend on your setup and where you’re moving to. Luckily, most hosts offer great support. Typically, they’ll guide you through all the processes you need to go through. These processes are, for example, moving your files, your database, and maybe some configuration info.

When you’re choosing your host, it’s worth getting in touch with their support team to see what kinds of services they offer and how much they can help you with that.

Okay, but there are many hosting options out there. Is there a tool that lets me enter my data and help me choose?

Oh, that’s tricky! There are lots of tools on the internet to help you pick a hosting provider, but it’s a bit of a minefield. We recommend checking out yoast.com/hosting.

But really, do your own research. Get a feel for what your budget is, what kind of features you might need, and talk to the support people. Many of these companies and websites also offer live chat.

I’m just starting out with my site, and I don’t know how many visits I’ll get. I’m hoping for a lot, of course, but I might get only a few. So, when picking a host, what should I look for in terms of bandwidth?

It’s good that you’re thinking about bandwidth beforehand, but don’t let it dictate your choice. Instead, research how much different hosting companies charge for their different packages, and how the prices change as you need to scale. Maybe you can start off small and upgrade later. Again, shop around, review pricing and packages, and talk to support staff.

The post Hosting guide: How to pick the right host for your site appeared first on Yoast.

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SEO for Lawyers: a 10-Step Playbook to Rank Higher and Win More Clients

Your firm has a website, a handful of blog posts, and maybe a paid listing on Avvo, yet the personal injury firm three blocks over keeps showing up first…

The post SEO for Lawyers: a 10-Step Playbook to Rank Higher and Win More Clients appeared first on Mangools.

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Google Image Search drops clean search box and adds gallery of images

Google Image Search has turned 25 years old and with that, Google has decided to completely revamp the Google Image Search home page at images.google.com from a clean search box, to a gallery of image collections.

“Today, we’re introducing a brand new browseable home for Google Images, featuring a dynamic, immersive gallery of images from across the web — updated in real time and intelligently tailored to your unique interests,” Brad Kellet, Senior Engineering Director, Search announced.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the new Google Image Search homepage:

This is what the old Google Image Search home page looked like:

Features as well. Google is not only showing a gallery of images on its new image search home page but there are search features as well. The search box is at the top, where you can search by text, voice, by image and so forth.

You can also browse and save ideas to your collections on Google Image Search. Those images will appear as tabs above the main gallery, making it easy to jump back in and continue exploring based on what inspires you, Google explained.

Here are screenshots of how that works:

Availability. Google said this new Google Images home page will roll out over the coming weeks on desktop in the U.S. in English. You will need to sign in to your Google Account to try it out.

Read more at Read More

Google AI Overviews now lets you create image

Google now lets you create images directly within AI Overviews in Google Search. “To help bring those unique ideas to life, we’re bringing image generation directly into AI Overviews in Search,” Google announced.

This uses Google’s latest Nano Banana AI model within AI Overviews to create these images.

Google said, “This update transforms a simple text prompt into a high-quality, custom visual made completely from scratch, seamlessly bridging the gap between imagination and reality.”

What it looks like. Here is a video of this in action:

Availability. Google will roll out this image generation feature within AI Overviews over the coming weeks in English, for all regions that currently support image creation in AI Mode.

Google also announced a redesign for Google Image Search, on its 25th anniversary of Google Image Search.

Why we care. This may have an impact on traffic to publishers, as it will add more AI-generated content (the images) to the AI Overview, potentially discouraging clicks from Google Search. Plus, if people get the image they want in the AI Overview, it might even discourage some use of Google Image Search – maybe?

In any event, it is wild to know that Google Image Search is now 25 years old.

Read more at Read More

Visual semantics: The missing piece of topical authority

Visual semantics- The missing piece of topical authority

SEO has long focused on what a page says. Increasingly, it also needs to account for how that information is presented.

As Google gets better at understanding page layout, structure, and functionality, visual semantics is becoming an important part of how search engines interpret webpages.

What is visual semantics?

Visual semantics is a meaning model for segmenting, classifying, and understanding documents by working alongside textual semantics.

Google is changing how it interprets web documents, shifting from “web text” to “web layout” to better identify real expertise, uniqueness, and originality by giving more weight to the functional components of a webpage.

Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines cite “human effort and involvement” as one of the most important quality principles, with “design effort” identified as one aspect of that evaluation.

Webpage layout has always been an important part of SEO, dating back to Google’s Page Layout algorithms. Those early algorithms focused primarily on ad placement and simple document-ranking signals, unlike today’s more sophisticated approaches to understanding webpages.

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Why Google is paying more attention to page layout

Google has introduced newer inventions and patents that highlight the importance of understanding webpage layout. Most webpages are no longer built with only prose or simple text-over-text layouts. Instead, they contain much denser information. 

Every 10 to 20 pixels can introduce a new interaction point, engagement element, clickable module, comparison unit, or dynamic component designed to help users.

That’s why some of Google’s leading engineers, including those who have worked on Gemini and AI Mode, are also associated with newer inventions such as Structured Information Cards and layout-aware multimodal document understanding.

Below is a direct citation from Google’s work on structured information cards and layout-aware multimodal document understanding. Google often finds important information within interactive card structures rather than ordinary paragraphs. 

As a result, it needs systems that can understand how different card types are structured, including product cards, hotel cards, real estate cards, trip cards, credit card cards, and other information cards.

In other words, modern search engines must understand not only the text on a page but also the layout, hierarchy, visual relationships, annotations, and functional meaning of each structured information block.

A citation from Google’s “Layout-aware Multimodal Document Understanding” patent
A citation from Google’s “Layout-aware Multimodal Document Understanding” patent

Why layout matters for search engines

Understanding structured information cards and layout-aware document interpretation requires neural networks, and possibly a new type of LLM, that can “verbalize” web documents with annotations and high-confidence citations.

Google can’t reliably rank a flight booking website, a credit card application aggregator, or similar platforms without understanding the data embedded in these documents. 

Much of that data is presented through uniquely designed card structures, comparison modules, tables, and interactive layouts rather than plain text.

Below is an early example of document layout understanding from Microsoft called ViPS, which Google has also cited.

Later, Google patented an alternative approach based on HTML-heavy segmentation.

Both approaches are closely related and rely heavily on HTML to determine which text belongs to each section, component, entity, or visual block on a page.

With the rise of embedding-based algorithms, concepts such as “chunking” have become widely discussed in the SEO industry. 

However, many discussions about text or document chunking miss a critical point: Chunking isn’t only a linguistic process. It’s also a layout-aware and structure-aware process.

If a document isn’t visually segmented and structurally understandable to search engines, the content itself becomes harder to interpret. In that case, it doesn’t matter how many entities, predicates, triples, or entity relationships you include, or how accurate they are. 

Search engines still need to understand where each piece of information belongs, how it relates to the surrounding elements, and which visual or functional component gives it meaning.

Dig deeper: Image SEO for multimodal AI

How centerpiece annotation affects rankings

In modern search, information quality alone isn’t enough. Information also needs to be presented within a layout that helps machines understand its boundaries, hierarchy, context, and purpose.

Google explained this concept through “centerpiece annotation,” describing visual annotations that help its systems better understand a document.

Martin Splitt from Google said the “centerpiece annotation” represents the “primary content” of a webpage. 

Later, documents disclosed during Google’s antitrust case showed that centerpiece annotation was also used to classify and rank news documents. 

The centerpiece annotation was primarily limited to about 400 characters, though those documents also reveal several other noteworthy details.

For example, below you can see how Google extracts the centerpiece annotation from HTML. The sentence is interrupted by unnecessary HTML elements, such as Facebook, email, Twitter (X), and Google+ share buttons.

HTML elements

In the next example from Google’s DOJ documents, proper HTML structure prevents share-button boilerplate from interrupting the centerpiece annotation, allowing Google to extract the content correctly.

What visual semantics looks like in practice

Below is a simple SEO case study. Although it involved 19 changes, the biggest ranking improvement came from one simple adjustment: moving a calculator component from the bottom of the page to the top, making it the centerpiece annotation.

The results of that change are shown below.

Metric Previous Current Increase / Change Success %
Total clicks 3.47 million 4.53 million +1.06 million clicks +30.5%
Total impressions 84.1 million 167 million +82.9M impressions +98.6%
Average CTR 4.1% 2.7% -1.4 percentage points -34.1%
Average position 8.9 8.5 Improved by 0.4 positions +4.5% improvement

This project closely connects visual semantics and textual semantics because it’s a programmatic SEO case study involving more than 100,000 pages.

At that scale, even a small sentence edit, component update, or layout adjustment is multiplied across every URL. That’s why Google re-crawled the entire website after the layout changes and why impressions and clicks increased afterward.

The project is a converter website that ranks for queries such as “2m to cm” and millions of similar numeric and metric variations. In this type of search environment, more than 10,000 competing websites provide essentially the same data and the same answer.

These websites have the same topical coverage and factual accuracy. The competitive advantage doesn’t come from providing a better answer because “1 meter to cm” has the same value everywhere.

It comes from retrieval cost, document understanding efficiency, internal PageRank distribution, and how clearly the answer is presented for Google’s initial ranking systems.

Google's Content Warehouse API leak includes similar semantic labels and annotations for webpages and PDF documents 
Google’s Content Warehouse API leak includes similar semantic labels and annotations for webpages and PDF documents 

In these types of queries, you can’t differentiate yourself by changing the answer. You differentiate yourself by changing how the answer is structured, annotated, prioritized, and visually presented.

That’s why changing the centerpiece annotation caused Google to reprocess the layout, rerank the pages, and further improve the site’s rankings.

Dig deeper: How to make products machine-readable for multimodal AI search

What is the cost of retrieval, and how does it relate to visual semantics?

“The cost of ranking a document” can’t be higher than the “cost of not ranking a document.” I introduced this concept years ago in one of my conference presentations. Google cares about search quality, but its systems also weigh quality against cost. If a website costs more to process than its quality justifies, Google will look for an alternative.

Google reduced the HTML file size limit to 2 MB and carried out large-scale deindexing following the December 2025 core update.

At the same time, it sent a clear signal to websites that scale AI-generated content without meaningful human effort. Google appears less tolerant of practices it accepted for years, and its indexing decisions are likely to become even more selective.

Retrieval costs increase when a webpage doesn’t clearly explain itself or fails to demonstrate sufficient relevance and responsiveness, especially around the “centerpiece annotation.” Google’s Content Warehouse API leak suggests the company truncates documents and predicts quality based on initial signals. If a document doesn’t meet relevance and responsiveness thresholds during those early evaluations, it won’t be considered a candidate.

During Google’s antitrust trial, Pandu Nayak, then Google’s vice president of Search, explained that Google doesn’t run its most computationally expensive algorithms on every webpage because it lacks sufficient click data. Instead, it first evaluates core topicality signals to determine whether a page is worth indexing and keeping as a candidate.

Nayak also explained that RankBrain-like algorithms are expensive to run, so Google reserves them for results that have at least one click, demonstrate strong topicality, and include annotations that justify the investment in crawling, rendering, evaluation, and further processing.

In other words, classifying documents by their layout, components, and structured information cards is a more efficient way to reduce retrieval costs while improving search quality.

Today, most large-scale content publishers rely on AI to generate more text. Far fewer invest in front-end and back-end systems that improve user engagement, interaction, and document understanding.

That distinction increasingly separates low-quality and high-quality sources. Low-quality sources primarily scale text. High-quality sources scale systems, layouts, components, structured information cards, and user interactions that help both users and search engines understand content more efficiently.

Below is Google’s concept of website representation vectors.

Google classifies websites using visual and layout-related embeddings and features to determine whether they resemble expert, apprentice, or amateur sources.

  • “For instance, the website classifications may include a first category of websites authored by experts in the knowledge domain (for example, doctors), a second category authored by apprentices (for example, medical students), and a third category authored by laypersons…”

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How does Google’s helpful content system relate to visual semantics?

The helpful content system is a classifier that identifies which websites genuinely provide helpful information or meaningful engagement and which only imitate usefulness without fulfilling the searcher’s underlying intent.

Much of the SEO industry’s analysis of the helpful content system has focused on textual features. Early discussions centered on keyword stuffing, gibberish content, or adding “unique information” to improve information gain. However, many of the system’s algorithms appear to focus on the function and type of a source.

Google first classifies websites by their type rather than their content quality. That means the same content can rank differently on an affiliate website than it does on an ecommerce website. 

So how does Google distinguish among affiliate sites, aggregators, service providers, ecommerce sites, and SaaS platforms? The answer is visual semantics. What a page can do, or can’t do, is largely determined by its layout and page components.

The biggest distinction between relevance and responsiveness comes from engagement, not understanding.

Classifying search results by their page elements helps Google understand what type of document it's evaluating
Classifying search results by their page elements helps Google understand what type of document it’s evaluating

Google created systems such as neural matching to align the entity type and entity ID in a query with the most relevant documents. In simple terms, if the entity in the query doesn’t match the entity in the document, that page becomes less likely to rank. This is primarily about relevance.

Relevance alone isn’t enough. A document may rank because it’s relevant, but if it doesn’t support meaningful user actions, such as purchasing, comparing, ordering, reviewing, filtering, or watching, it isn’t responsive to the user’s actual task.

That’s why the helpful content system shouldn’t be viewed only as a system that evaluates page text. It also evaluates page function. A helpful page isn’t simply one that contains relevant words. It’s one that helps users complete the action, decision, or information-seeking task behind the query.

Google reinforced this idea by adding “misleading functionality” to its spam policies after the Helpful Content updates. A page can appear helpful by imitating a function without actually providing it.

For example, a page may suggest users can compare, filter, calculate, book, review, or purchase something even though those functions don’t genuinely exist. In those cases, the page may appear functional to both users and algorithms, but it isn’t truly responsive to the user’s task.

Google doesn’t classify websites only by page layout and design. It also appears to apply result-type constraints within the SERP. For example, a query such as “best women’s glasses” may return listicles, ecommerce category pages, product grids, videos, and commercial guides in the same results page.

To satisfy multiple search intents, Google can apply diversity constraints that limit how many ecommerce pages, listicles, videos, or other result types appear together.

Google’s DOJ documents include functions such as “max_total” and “BlogCategorizer,” which show how Twiddlers can classify results and limit the number of pages from the same cluster, category, or source type.

A similar annotation appears in the Google Content Warehouse API leak through the “WebrefFatcatCategory” module, which assigns categorical weight to a result.

In other words, Google doesn’t simply rank documents individually. It also classifies, clusters, and constrains results based on page type, source category, and categorical diversity. As a result, a page may be relevant enough to rank but still be limited by the overall composition of the SERP.

Even when a generated ranked entity list, such as a “best products” page, ranks successfully, it doesn’t rank simply because it’s a blog article. It ranks because it functions as a commercial resource. It helps users compare, evaluate, filter, review, and move closer to a decision. In that sense, Google can rank nonfunctional content when it effectively serves a functional category.

Viewed through this lens, “helpful” in the context of the helpful content system is closely aligned with “functional.”

The following case study demonstrates this principle. We moved identical content from an affiliate website to an ecommerce website, supported it with an integrated topical map, and saw rankings improve almost immediately.

The content itself didn't change. What changed was the function, context, and source type surrounding it. By placing the same information within a more functional, commercial, and task-oriented environment, Google interpreted the document as more useful for the user's search activity.
The content itself didn’t change. What changed was the function, context, and source type surrounding it. By placing the same information within a more functional, commercial, and task-oriented environment, Google interpreted the document as more useful for the user’s search activity.

How is click data used to rerank search results through visual semantics?

Google increasingly understands the purpose of a webpage through its layout, not just its text. As a result, click data is aggregated according to the type of source. Many SEOs assume that long clicks, or longer dwell times, signal quality. 

However, that’s not always true, according to Google’s research. Depending on the category, shorter dwell times can indicate a successful experience, while longer sessions may signal an “engagement trap.”

Below is Google’s reranking model, which applies different ranking and rank-modification models based on user behavior captured by its tracking components.

Another example comes from Google’s “Merging Search Engine Results” patent, alongside the “Twiddler’s anatomy” diagram revealed in the DOJ documents.

“Merging search engine results” is the name of the patent, which aligns with the “Twiddler” functionality above
Merging search engine results” is the name of the patent, which aligns with the “Twiddler” functionality above

Google also uses the concept of the “Life of a Click” to help engineers understand how search ranking algorithms interpret user behavior.

Taken together, these systems suggest that click data becomes a more meaningful classification signal when interpreted alongside a webpage’s design rather than through text alone.

Classifying documents by their visual structure can be more efficient than analyzing millions of documents, billions of word tokens, co-occurrences, named entity resolutions, attribute extractions, and value corrections.

If certain document layouts consistently generate stronger user satisfaction, Google can classify those pages as more helpful or functional. It can then use those signals to identify other documents with similar layout patterns, component structures, and interaction models.

This means topical authority doesn’t come only from a topical map that defines which topics to cover. It also comes from understanding which page layouts, component structures, information cards, comparison modules, and functional designs best match each topic, query, and search activity.

A proper topical map shouldn’t define only entities, attributes, predicates, and contextual relationships. It should also define the page type and functional layout needed to satisfy both relevance and responsiveness.

This leads to the concepts of coverage and domain-level classification. The following three examples illustrate this approach.

The first example is AudioToText.com, a sub-brand built around a single topic.

GSC Metrics of Audiototext.com. The third-party Semrush data is shown below.

Despite covering only one topic across 12 languages, or 13 pages in total, the site continues to grow in search visibility for three reasons:

  • Its exact-match domain reinforces relevance.
  • Its visual semantics improve responsiveness.
  • It earns its first clicks quickly, allowing Google to run more computationally expensive ranking systems sooner.

Click satisfaction from the other language versions may also reinforce the English version through cross-lingual information retrieval. 

Google can use webpage layout understanding and chain-of-reasoning to classify AudioToText.com as a “no-signup transcription tool” and rank it in AI Overviews. This suggests Google isn’t only reading the text. It’s also interpreting the page’s function, visual annotations, and interaction model.

In other words, Google can use agentic retrieval based on visual signals to understand what a page does and determine whether it deserves to rank for a specific query.

The Audiototext.com’s single-page topical map representation with the fundamentals are below.

The webpage was designed with minimal text while placing its primary conversion element, the content upload component, above the fold.

If that component were moved lower on the page or made smaller, rankings would likely decline, and text changes alone wouldn’t be enough to recover them.

Another example is attorneys.lexinter.net, which ranks primarily through a subdomain because its core content was moved there together with a filtering engagement component.

The primary domain didn’t meet the required thresholds, but moving the content to a subdomain with additional functional elements produced better results.

The same subdomain testing approach also worked for Pricelisto.com. Although most of the design and content remained the same, we added functions and annotations related to purchasing, comparing, examining, and reviewing.

Those functional additions made the pages behave less like passive content and more like task-completing commercial resources. As a result, the site avoided filters associated with the Helpful Content System.

The improvement didn’t come from changing the text. It came from changing how the document functioned, how users interacted with it, and how clearly Google understood the purpose of each page component.

Search engines try to reduce retrieval costs by avoiding computationally expensive algorithms whenever possible. As a result, domains affected by historical or domain-level signals may not receive a completely fresh evaluation immediately.

Testing on a subdomain can give Google a clearer reason to reprocess documents, reevaluate their layouts, and run more advanced evaluation systems. That makes it easier to determine whether improvements come from new designs, functionality, annotations, or document structures rather than from the historical state of the primary domain.

How is visual semantics related to the future of search?

Google is experimenting with fundamental changes to search results, including replacing the traditional search bar with new interfaces.

One example is its Jan. 29 patent, “AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user.” The patent describes generating a landing page that uses visual segmentation, annotations, and generative AI to satisfy a user’s query.

The patent places significant emphasis on "landing page score," using click data and explicit user feedback signals
The patent places significant emphasis on “landing page score,” using click data and explicit user feedback signals

In other words, Google can use visual semantics not only to rank web documents but also to construct new types of search results.

Dig deeper: Google patent hints it could replace your landing pages with AI versions

Google’s patent work is often complemented by its research. For example, the paper “Neural Design Network: Graphic Layout Generation with Constraints” explores how systems can understand, classify, and even generate webpage layouts to improve search performance.

This suggests that layout isn’t only a design consideration. It can also serve as a retrieval, classification, and ranking signal.

Google’s multimodal document understanding also connects to its latest announcement, Google Embedding 2, which uses generative neural networks to understand and vectorize text, images, videos, audio, and documents.

This matters because different versions of the same web document can be compared through their vector representations. Doing so makes it possible to evaluate how well Google understands layout differences, visual structure, and document-level meaning.

In other words, layout changes aren’t merely visual. They can also produce different vector representations, which may affect how a document is understood, classified, and retrieved.

Below is Google’s example of the neural network process for understanding page layouts. The centerpiece annotation that helps classify a webpage as an ecommerce category page, product page, or SaaS page comes from these types of labeling systems.

In the future, Google could apply these same principles to construct its own landing pages from multiple search results.

The patent shown below also illustrates how Google could adjust SERP features based on an entity’s primary attributes. That suggests search results aren’t simply ranked and displayed. They can also be reorganized, redesigned, and presented as dynamic interfaces based on the entity, query intent, and available document structures.

Centerpiece annotation and query processing

Google classifies and augments queries differently from how people naturally think about them. That means one of the most important parts of creating a topical map is understanding search terms the way Google’s systems do and augmenting them accordingly. This process is called query semantics. Below is an example of query augmentation from ChatGPT.

In this example, we searched for “best search engine optimization information sources,” and GPT expanded the query as follows:

  • Best SEO information sources: search engine optimization resources Google research, patents, SEO blogs

If you perform a search in ChatGPT, open the Network tab in Chrome DevTools, filter for XHR requests, and inspect the JSON file associated with the https://chatgpt.com/backend-api/conversation/6a* path. Look for search_model_queries, which shows what the system actually searches for.

Google also has a patent called query augmentation, shown below.

The patent is attributed to engineers, including Krishna Bharat and Anand Shukla. These names are significant because they also appear on patents and systems related to AI Overviews and AI Mode.

For example, the “Search with Stateful Chat” patent includes query augmentation as one of its steps, and its terminology and inventors overlap with this system.

The centerpiece annotation is the primary visual annotation that reflects a webpage’s purpose, function, and context. The context created through the augmented query needs to align with that centerpiece annotation.

The following case study shows how I classified query variations and their contexts across different document types, each with a distinct purpose, function, and visual structure, for a local service directory.

Let’s use “air conditioner” queries as an example. Each query variation should be matched with the appropriate page type, layout, and function.

  • Experience queries require a forum-style layout. For a query such as “How do I repair my AC?” the intent is experience-based. A forum structure works best because users expect real problems, answers, troubleshooting paths, and personal experiences. This content can also live on a subdomain to separate experiential content from the main commercial website.
  • Local service queries require a directory page. For “Air conditioner installation in [City],” the intent is local and service-oriented. The best page type is a local directory or listing page with providers, service areas, ratings, contact options, and conversion elements.
  • Price queries require a hybrid layout. For “air conditioner installation prices,” the intent is both informational and commercial. The page should provide an immediate answer with average prices, cost factors, and price ranges while also presenting local providers, comparisons, and quote-related elements.
  • Instructional queries require an informational layout. For “How to install an air conditioner,” the intent is instructional. The page should minimize local service elements and instead focus on a step-by-step guide, required tools, safety considerations, visuals, and practical instructions.

In short, a topical map should define not only which topics to cover but also the appropriate layout, components, and page function for each search activity. The following example shows some of the early results from this project after classifying query augmentation models for different query variations.

Early GSC results for the same brand.
Early GSC results for the same brand.

If there’s no need for a separate page for the [Local], [Service], [Forum], or [Instructional List] intent, we simply prune it. If other pages are too similar, we merge them.

As a result, the number of pages decreases along with retrieval costs, while PageRank concentration and relevance per document increase. Below are four closely connected components:

  • Mock-up design in draw.io.
  • Production design in Figma.
  • Topical map for different query types.
  • Content brief aligned with the Figma and draw.io designs.

Early on, we defined the topical authority formula as:

  • Historical data x Topical coverage

Later, we expanded it to:

  • Historical data x Topical coverage ÷ Cost of retrieval

Today, I’d extend the formula with one additional factor:

  • ((Historical data x Topical coverage) ÷ Cost of retrieval) x Right visual annotations

Even if you have the lowest retrieval cost, the highest topical relevance, the broadest topical coverage, strong accuracy, the longest duration of satisfied click data, and positive historical performance, none of it matters if the centerpiece annotation is wrong or the page isn’t functional.

Google’s ranking system largely functions as a decision tree. If the first decision-making layer rejects a website, the later evaluations, tests, and reranking processes won’t occur.

To maximize your chances of ranking from the start, visual annotations should be optimized just as carefully as the page’s text, images, and links.

Below is a conceptual model of this system.

A website consists of “letters, pixels, and bytes.” Data2Website is the process of turning a dataset that Google’s algorithms favor into a website by combining textual and visual semantics through those letters, pixels, and bytes.

The example above shows how a local law firm benefited from a topical map, semantically optimized content briefs, specific sentence structures, and visual design decisions.

The Semrush results below show the impact on the firm’s local rankings.

We previously applied the same principles to another ecommerce website.

If you examine the screenshots closely, you’ll see that the same principles carry over from an ecommerce design to a local service provider.

For every attribute within an entity-seeking query, such as “best law firm in Houston” or “birth test kit prices,” you can classify those attributes within the query network and organize them according to their importance.

Some attributes require review components, while others require directly commercial components.

Below are two design examples from the sibling websites Morethanpanel.com and StreamingMafia.com. Their above-the-fold and below-the-fold sections are structured similarly, covering different types of user engagement and functionality.

The above-the-fold area is often referred to as the macro-context because it contains the main content. Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines use the concept of main content to emphasize the importance of relevance, accuracy, and completeness in this section.

The below-the-fold area corresponds to what Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines describe as supplementary content, which we refer to as the micro-context. This section typically contains less important attributes and most internal links.

The next example shows the mock-up design and the distribution of factual content, opinionated content, structured content, and unstructured content.

Google doesn’t always prioritize factual or opinionated content, or structured versus unstructured content. Instead, it evaluates these characteristics based on how the search query is augmented. To improve language relevance, we distribute different types and formats of content using different visualization, verbalization, commercialization, and contextualization techniques.

The following example applies the same approach to the second website in the same industry, together with its topical map, content briefs, and authorship rules.

Algorithmic authorship can be explained through the research paper “Are LLMs Reliable Rankers?” It means writing content according to predefined sentence structures and rules. For example, the research shows that the “Rank anything first” framework increased rankings by 20% to 60%.

The system evaluates which words should follow one another to determine how relevance changes. It performs retrieval within a generative retrieval system and identifies the entity-attribute-value triples that best improve relevance. In the example above, “material” is selected as the attribute and “steel” as the value because they strengthen relevance within that context.

  • Factual content: Supports expertise-focused queries.
  • Opinionated content: Supports experience-focused queries.
  • Structured content: Supports attributes such as symptoms, advantages, and benefits.
  • Unstructured content: Supports concepts such as definitions, processes, and importance.
  • Visualization: Presents content using the appropriate semantic attributes.
  • Commercialization: Adds functional components that help users complete their tasks.
  • Contextualization: Maintains relevance by aligning content with the query.
  • Verbalization: Converts visually important information into text that LLMs and search engine crawlers can understand.

Depending on the query, Google may prefer opinionated and unstructured content, factual and structured content, or other combinations supported by different visualization, commercialization, contextualization, and verbalization techniques.

The following example from the online dating industry shows how different webpage components can improve relevance and responsiveness at the same time.

The next examples illustrate different ways to visualize content.

Comparing these two sections, you’ll see that one answer is highly factual, while the other, distinguished by a different background color, is more conversational and opinion-based.

We can create a Q&A component and add opinion-based content as forum-style discussions at the bottom of the page.

We can also ask users questions and let them contribute answers through voting, allowing those responses to be verbalized into content that is continuously updated.

Below is what we call the preceding question component. It reframes the original question using a semantically similar concept and gradually shifts the content from factual to more opinion-based.

The next example shows a horizontal tab component that distributes internal links to related headings, increasing contextual coverage.

The following Semrush data shows the early and later results for the URLs we modified.

The patents and research behind visual semantics

At this point, we’ve introduced the key concepts, definitions, and website examples needed to explain visual semantics.

We could explore these examples, processes, and implementation details in much greater depth, but every conceptual discussion begins with understanding where Google is heading.

Many of Google’s advances in query semantics, visual semantics, Gemini, and AI Search are driven by two influential engineers: Dr. Marc Najork and Michael Bendersky. They are among Google’s most frequently cited researchers in recent years and have played major roles in shaping the company’s AI-related direction.

They are also listed as inventors on the Layout-Aware Document Understanding and Structured Information Cards patents.

Another important contributor is Alexander Grushetsky, who identifies himself as the founder of RankLab, Google’s internal end-to-end ranking platform.

He’s worth mentioning because he’s frequently cited alongside Bendersky and Najork in foundational patents and research papers.

Grushetsky also worked with Bendersky and other Google engineers on item-ranking models based on item types, attribute sets, and attribute values. We’ll explore what RankLab represents in more detail another time.

Today’s search engines and large language models increasingly rely on visual semantics as part of their vectorization and embedding-based ranking systems.

Even the original Transformer research described extending these ideas to web documents and their layouts.

Years later, that vision became reality through WebRef, Google’s Web Page Transformer.

WebRef vectorizes webpages using not only their text but also their visual layout, page components, HTML structure, and overall document context.

Whether your rankings depend primarily on external PageRank, branded search demand, or internal signals such as semantics, a page’s visual context still carries ranking weight alongside its textual relevance.

Read more at Read More

Why standard SEO advice fails for travel websites

Why standard SEO advice fails for travel websites

If you apply standard SEO playbooks to a travel website, you’ll likely exhaust your budget with little to show for it.

Most SEO advice is written for sectors operating in a search ecosystem where organic text listings still dominate most user journeys.

In travel, the rules of search are entirely different because Google isn’t just a search engine. It’s a direct transactional competitor, a visual aggregator, and a gatekeeper to visibility.

Winning in this space requires accepting that what works elsewhere will fail here. To build a search strategy that actually drives bookings, travel brands must abandon standard organic best practices and instead master unique challenges: 

  • Extreme search engine results page (SERP) dominance.
  • Complex regulatory constraints.
  • Intermittent, non-linear user journeys and highly fragmented user intent.

Travel search is driven by data, not webpages

In almost every other industry, the ultimate goal of SEO is to secure a high-ranking organic text listing.

In the travel sector, particularly for high-intent queries involving hotels, flights, and activities, the traditional “blue link” is functionally dead (and becoming even less relevant as AI, AI Overviews, and other LLMs compete for user attention).

If a user searches for “flights from London to Rome” or “boutique hotels in Edinburgh,” the top of the search page is entirely occupied by Google’s own interactive search tools.

Below these tools sit local map packs, sponsored advertisements, and, in the UK and Europe, the massive “Find results on” directory boxes mandated by antitrust regulations.

Boutique hotels in Edinburgh - SERP features

Instead of just writing content, successful travel SEOs focus on feed management and entity optimization.

For accommodations and hotels, this means treating Google Hotel Center with the same priority an ecommerce specialist gives their primary website. You must ensure that your real-time pricing feeds, inventory levels, and tax calculations are integrated directly with Google’s API.

Travel entity optimization requires meticulous calibration of your Google Business Profile. Google’s local algorithms categorize hotels and attractions based on physical attributes rather than editorial text.

Whether your property appears in a filtered search for “dog-friendly hotels with free parking” depends entirely on your structured attributes, customer review sentiment analysis, and precise location coordinates.

In travel, the search engine is a database, and your primary job is to format your data so the database can display it without friction.

Dig deeper: AI referrals to travel sites surge 194% as engagement rises: Adobe

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How social content bypasses your website

Traditional search campaigns operate under the assumption that organic traffic must land directly on a domain you own to have any measurable value.

In the travel sector, this insular approach ignores how modern searchers, especially younger audiences seeking visual reassurance before booking, actually behave.

Google has adapted to this shift by turning its results pages into visual aggregators that pull content directly from external social networks.

Boutique hotels in Edinburgh - SERP feature short videos

For queries driven by discovery or curation, such as “best rooftop bars in Soho” or “hidden beaches in Cornwall,” Google often serves dedicated “Short Videos” carousels and “Perspectives” feeds directly within the main search results.

These features extract short-form video content from TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, allowing users to watch authentic, crowdsourced footage without ever visiting a traditional website. With search engines actively indexing public business posts from platforms like Meta, social media updates are now ingested into search layouts and AI Overviews.

Travel SEO is no longer confined to the boundaries of your content management system. To capture this visual search real estate, digital teams must treat social media profiles as distributed landing pages.

This is further reinforced by Google’s introduction of social and video content analytics within Google Search Console.

Dig deeper: How travel brands can earn AI recommendations

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Fragmented and intermittent intent

The standard content marketing advice for B2B or consumer services is to build comprehensive, long-form informational guides. The theory is that if you write a 4,000-word article covering every possible detail of a destination, you’ll build topical authority and guide the reader smoothly down a conversion funnel.

In travel SEO, this approach often yields high bounce rates and very few conversions. Travelers don’t plan trips in a linear fashion, nor do they want to read extensive blocks of text on mobile devices while walking down a busy street.

Travel planning is highly visual, emotional, and fragmented across different devices and moments.

The Non-Linear Travel Search Journey

A user searching for “things to do in Cornwall” is usually looking for quick inspiration, geography-based grouping, and immediate utility. If they land on a page with lengthy introductory paragraphs and dense blocks of prose, they’ll return to the search results to find a simpler resource.

Travel content must be built for rapid utility rather than high word counts. Instead of writing long essays, your content layouts should rely on interactive, modular components, such as:

  • Tabbed interfaces that allow users to toggle between “Itinerary,” “Cost,” and “Best Time to Visit.”
  • Embedded, interactive maps that show the physical proximity of recommended locations.
  • Bite-sized, structured lists that clearly state opening hours, entry prices, and booking links.

Structuring content this way also makes it much easier for Google to extract your data for its AI Overviews and visual carousels.

Instead of trying to keep users on a long page of text, the goal should be to provide structured, high-value answers that Google can easily parse.

When your site behaves like a functional tool rather than an online magazine, users are much more likely to bookmark your pages and trust your brand when they’re finally ready to book.

Dig deeper: Why Tripadvisor still matters for local SEO in 2026

A different definition of success

Winning at travel SEO requires a fundamental shift in perspective. Success can’t be measured solely by standard keyword rankings or overall organic traffic levels.

It must be evaluated by how effectively your site appears across Google’s SERP features, how reliably your data feeds communicate real-time pricing, and how quickly your landing pages answer highly specific, visual questions.

By stepping away from generic SEO advice and focusing on technical data feeds, regulatory price compliance, and modular user experiences, travel brands can secure a distinct competitive advantage in one of the most crowded landscapes on the web.

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