Paid plans start at $139.95 and go up to enterprise solutions. Not to mention the various add-ons and apps.
You don’t want to overpay for features you don’t need. Or pick a cheaper plan that limits your ability to grow.
In this guide, you’ll learn which Semrush plan matches your needs, whether you’re a solo blogger tracking 100 keywords or an agency managing 40+ client websites.
Semrush’s Core Pricing Plans Explained
Semrush offers four main subscription tiers:
Pro plan at $139.95/month: Best for freelancers and startups
Guru plan at $249.95/month: Caters to growing businesses and small agencies
Business plan at $499.95/month: Serves larger agencies and enterprises
Enterprise plan (custom pricing): For organizations that need custom solutions
Beyond these core plans, Semrush also offers a range of other tools through the App Center. This is where you can add specialized tools for needs like local SEO and social media management.
There’s also a free plan, and you can get a free trial of the Pro and Guru subscriptions too.
Semrush’s Pro plan offers a wealth of keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitor research features.
At $139.95/mo, it’s Semrush’s cheapest plan, and is ideal for freelance SEOs, bloggers, and small business owners.
The Pro plan lets you set up 5 projects and track up to 500 keywords with Position Tracking.
But these limits don’t apply to things like keyword and competitor research. Instead, you’re limited in the number of daily “requests” you can make.
This is the number you’ll want to pay attention to if you plan to use the tool suite for more than just tracking your own projects.
With the Pro plan, you can generate up to 3,000 reports per day across various analytics tools, with each report showing up to 10,000 results.
For example, in the Keyword Magic Tool to generate thousands of keyword ideas:
You won’t have access to historical data in these reports. But you’ll still be able to filter for metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, search intent, and more.
In terms of technical SEO, Pro plan users can crawl up to 100,000 pages with Site Audit. This is enough for beginners and owners of smaller sites. But it can be a bit limiting for large ecommerce stores or agencies managing massive sites.
You won’t get API access with the Pro plan (probably not a concern for most people). You also won’t get access to some content marketing features (see the Guru plan section below).
Pro Plan Limits
5 projects
500 keywords to track
3,000 daily reports
100,000 pages to crawl
10,000 results per report
250 keyword metrics updates per month
500 SEO Ideas Units (used in tools like the On Page SEO Checker)
5 scheduled PDF reports
Guru Plan ($249.95/month): Advanced Features for Growing Teams
Semrush’s Guru plan significantly expands on the Pro plan’s capabilities.
At $249.95/mo, it’s ideal for growing marketing teams and small agencies that need more comprehensive tools and data access.
The plan increases your project limit to 15 and lets you track up to 1,500 keywords.
Other limit increases over the Pro plan include:
5,000 reports per day (vs. 3,000)
30,000 results per report (vs. 10,000)
1,000 keyword metrics updates per month (vs. 250)
300,000 Site Audit URL crawls (vs. 100,000)
You’ll also get access to tools like:
Topic research, for finding and prioritizing new content ideas:
Content Marketing Template, to streamline your optimizations:
You’ll also be able to integrate with Looker Studio, which further expands your reporting capabilities.
And you’ll get access to historical data within Semrush itself—all the way back to 2012:
The Guru plan gives you access to the essential Semrush toolkit. And its limits are likely enough for most SEOs and business owners, with the exception of large agencies, big ecommerce stores (300K+ pages), and enterprises.
Guru Plan Limits
15 Projects
1,500 keywords to track
5,000 daily reports
300,000 pages to crawl
30,000 results per report
1,000 keyword metrics updates per month
800 SEO Ideas Units
20 scheduled PDF reports
Business Plan ($499.95/month): Enterprise-Grade Capabilities
The Business plan, at $499.95/mo, targets larger agencies and marketing teams that need extensive data access and advanced features.
This plan also offers much higher limits than the Pro and Guru plans across the board.
Business plans allow for 40 projects, 5,000 keywords to track, and 10,000 daily reports.
You can use Semrush’s most advanced features, including API access, extended limits for site audits, and white-label reporting options.
You’ll also get access to new metrics, like Share of Voice for tracking your overall online presence compared to your competitors:
And for PPC optimization, you’ll also be able to see up to 50,000 results per PLA listings report (as opposed to 10 on the Pro and Guru plans):
These capabilities make it particularly valuable for agencies managing multiple client accounts. It’s also ideal for large in-house teams coordinating complex marketing campaigns.
For example, the API access allows teams to integrate Semrush data directly into their custom reporting dashboards or internal tools. This can streamline workflows and provide more customizable (and therefore more impactful) data analysis.
Business Plan Limits
40 projects
5,000 keywords to track
10,000 daily reports
1,000,000 pages to crawl
50,000 results per report
5,000 keyword metrics updates per month
2,000 SEO Ideas Units
50 scheduled PDF reports
Enterprise Plan: Custom Solutions for Large Organizations
The Enterprise tier moves beyond Semrush’s standardized pricing to offer customized solutions for large organizations with complex needs.
Unlike the fixed-price plans, Enterprise solutions are tailored to each organization’s specific requirements and scale.
The Semrush Enterprise platform is an entirely separate solution from the “core” Semrush platform. You get access to everything in the Business tier, but you also get a completely new dashboard with enterprise-level SEO and automation tools and capabilities.
You’ll also get access to vetted SEO experts, seamless document sharing functionality, and extensive reporting and automation features.
It’s designed for enterprise-level businesses (think Samsung, Salesforce, and SAP). This means it’s way beyond what the average person needs.
But for those with huge data, automation, and optimization requirements, Semrush Enterprise is an incredibly powerful platform.
Free Plan vs. Free Trial
Semrush’s free plan offers a solid introduction to the platform’s capabilities. You can access basic keyword research, site auditing, and competitive analysis features
for free.
This makes it an excellent option for those just starting their SEO journey or wanting to test the platform before committing.
However:
The free plan comes with significant limitations in terms of the number of reports you can generate and the depth of data you can access.
You’re limited to:
10 daily requests in many of the tools
1 project
100 URL crawls per month
Arguably, the most notable restriction is that you can only track 10 keywords. So you can’t monitor a full SEO campaign effectively.
That’s why the free trial of Semrush’s paid plans offers a better way to evaluate Semrush’s full capabilities.
For 7 days, you can access all features of your chosen plan, helping you make an informed decision about whether the investment makes sense for your needs.
Semrush offers a range of add-ons you can tag onto your subscription. These include local SEO packages, the .Trends suite for market research, and a social media management platform.
Here’s a breakdown of the add-ons and their pricing:
Add-on
Pricing
Key Features
Extra users
$45-$100/month, depending on plan
Add extra users to your plan (with shared limits)
Local Essential/Advanced
$50-$60/month
Listing management, GBP optimization, and map rank tracker
.Trends
$289/month per user
Consumer trends and market research tools
Social Media Management
$19.99-$39.99/month
Social posting, tracking, and analytics
Agency Growth Kit
$69-$249/month
Lead management, CRM, and client portal
ImpactHero
$200/month
Buyer journey optimization
Semrush also has an extensive App Center. Here, you’ll find apps to help with pretty much every aspect of SEO and digital marketing.
You can get free trials of many apps, and their prices vary.
Semrush Pricing Plans Compared to Competitors
Semrush is often a bit pricier than some of its competitors, at least at some of the plan levels.
But price isn’t everything, and it’s worth comparing the different platforms in detail to understand the value each one can provide for YOUR specific situation.
Semrush vs. Ahrefs Pricing
Semrush and Ahrefs have fairly similar pricing structures. Semrush is slightly more expensive in each of the three pricing brackets, but notably only by $0.95 in the middle tier (Guru/Standard).
On the face of it, the two options in all three cases are fairly similar:
Semrush offers 5, 15, and 40 projects, while Ahrefs offers 5, 20, and 50 projects
While Semrush lets you track 500, 1.5K, and 5K keywords, Ahrefs lets you track 750, 2K, and 5K
Semrush lets you audit 100K, 300K, and 1M URLs, while Ahrefs’ limits are 100K, 500K, and 1.5M
But it’s worth noting that Ahrefs’ cheapest (Lite) plan limits you to just 500 credits across various tools per month.
With a Semrush Pro subscription (the cheapest one Semrush offers), the limits are 3,000 reports/requests per day.
But the numbers aren’t everything. There are other differences between the two tools that you’ll need to factor in when making your choice.
Moz offers two cheaper pricing plans than both Semrush and Ahrefs. These are pretty limited (with the cheapest only letting you track 50 keywords per month).
But they’re still viable options for those on a budget that are just starting out with their first SEO tool.
Moz does offer feature-rich plans at higher price points, but often with lower limits than Semrush plans.
For example, the most expensive Moz plan still only lets you track 25 sites (compared to 40) and 3,000 tracked keywords (vs. 5,000 on a Semrush Business plan).
It’s also worth noting that beyond the pricing plans, the two platforms are very different. For example, Semrush’s database has more than 26.4 billion keywords compared to Moz’s 1.25 billion.
The most basic way to choose between the different Semrush pricing plans is to consider your budget and your reporting needs.
If you have a limited budget, the free and Pro plans are going to be the obvious choice. But once you start needing larger reports or to track 1500+ keywords, the Guru and Business plans are the ones to go for.
But let’s see which plans are best for which types of business and website owners.
Solopreneurs and Bloggers
For solopreneurs and blog owners, the Pro plan is usually going to be enough. You can manage up to 5 projects, and 500 keywords will be enough tracking capabilities for most small sites.
The reporting limits are generous enough too, and most beginners won’t max out on them.
But many people will be fine with the free Semrush plan—particularly if you have pretty limited keyword research needs and your site is smaller than 100 pages. It’ll give you a good feel for the platform’s core features before you sign up for a subscription.
You’ll want to upgrade to the Pro plan when you:
Track more than 10 keywords
Need daily position monitoring
Have a site that grows beyond 100 pages (for Site Audit crawls)
Small businesses typically find the sweet spot with the Guru plan. The additional keyword tracking and content marketing features make it ideal for sites of all sizes with moderate content production workflows.
The Pro plan suits you if:
You manage a single business website
You need basic competitive analysis
Content creation isn’t your primary focus
The Guru plan becomes a better option when:
You manage multiple business websites, or multiple client sites
Content marketing is a key part of your strategy
You need access to historical data
You need to crawl up to 300K pages per month (Site Audit)
Medium-Sized Businesses and Ecommerce Stores
Mid-sized companies often benefit most from the Business plan—particularly if they’re managing multiple websites or serving many clients.
The Guru plan becomes essential for teams or individuals that:
Create 10+ pieces of content per month
Require advanced topic research tools
Send lots of reports to stakeholders or clients
Manage multiple sites or brands
Agencies
Agencies are going to be better off with the Business plan in most cases. The limits of the lower plans are just unlikely to be enough for agencies with many clients.
However, if your agency is just starting out, the Guru plan offers a cost-effective way to serve up to 15 clients with some powerful tools.
Note: If you need to increase any particular limit, you can contact the sales team or pay for more via your subscription dashboard.
Start with Guru if you:
Serve up to 15 clients
Need white-label reports
Require content marketing tools
Want historical data access
Choose the Business plan when you:
Manage 15+ client accounts
Need API access
Require advanced white-labeling
Share reports across large teams
Semrush also offers the Agency Growth Kit. This starts at $69/month (on top of your subscription) for a CRM, client portals, and white-lable PDF reports.
But for those who want to boost their visibility on the Agency Partners platform or who need unlimited client portals, pricing increases to $149 and then $249 per month.
Enterprise Businesses
Enterprise organizations should consider the custom Enterprise tier. This platform was built from the ground up for enterprise-scale operations.
The platform offers a range of enterprise-specific solutions and features the core subscriptions don’t offer. You can read more about Semrush Enterprise here.
The Business plan is the best of the three core plans if your business isn’t quite ready for the enterprise offering. Its generous limits, integration capabilities, and API access mean it’s a cost-effective choice for many big brands and businesses.
Still Not Sure Which Plan to Choose?
Choosing the right Semrush plan ultimately depends on your specific marketing goals and resources.
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Search intent is one of the most crucial pillars in SEO and keyword research. If you don’t understand why users are typing certain keywords into Google, how can you…
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SEO is, for a large part, all about getting the right content in front of the right audience. When you’ve been doing that for a while, there comes a time when you want to scale content production. Scaling content creation means you aim to make more content to reach new targets. While that’s a good idea, you need to find a way to scale while keeping the same level of quality you’ve always had. Let’s go over how to scale your content production step by step, showing common problems and solutions.
Content scaling is about making your content process more efficient. The goal should be to make more content without lowering the quality. First, you must examine every step of your content creation process — from brainstorming to research, editing, publishing, and reporting. Once you have the process detailed, you can find ways to do those tasks faster and predictably.
A well-scaled process helps you create a lot of content. This approach helps you build a solid system rather than adding more articles. For instance, your content team could develop a checklist to help review articles, introduce a content calendar to improve planning and set up clear tone-of-voice guidelines. These steps help you stay consistent and true to your brand — whether you produce one weekly article or dozens.
Why scaling content matters
Scaling content production can directly help your business. If you actively publish high-quality content on your site, search engines will understand that your site is active and reliable. By targeting the right audience with the right search intent and message, you could improve your search visibility and generate more traffic for your content. Search engines are likelier to see you as trustworthy when you publish high-quality content.
In addition, producing content more consistently and following a plan can help you reach a bigger audience. More articles mean more opportunities to write about topics that interest your different audience groups. In the end, this will broaden your brand’s presence. You’ll have a bigger chance of people seeing you as a trusted source if you offer helpful insights and solutions to their problems.
All your content can help potential customers make decisions. This content is another way to address their concerns and answer questions. By doing this strategically, you can continue to engage your audience and nudge them closer to making that final decision. Of course, whether that decision is a sale, information request, or newsletter signup doesn’t matter.
Scaling your content production also supports your branding. When you create well-organized content over a longer period, you can support your brand voice and recognition. That reliability helps build trust and strengthens your reputation.
The biggest challenges in scaling content
If you want to scale your content production, you must overcome several hurdles, which, if you don’t consider, will impact the quality and consistency of your content.
Quality control and consistency
When you produce more content, you need to make sure that every piece represents your brand well. However, catching errors or maintaining the proper tone becomes harder because you have more content to review. If you don’t do this well, there’s a risk that your articles will vary in tone or style. Without proper guidelines or a good editorial process, your content quality may suffer when you publish more and more.
For example, you can miss issues like tone, formatting, or factual errors without a standard editing checklist. If you do this for a while and people start to notice, they can form a different view of your brand. It would almost look like you don’t care about these issues. You need to set clear quality benchmarks and a solid review process. Consistent editing with fixed content rules helps everything you publish meet the same standards.
Handling different audience needs
In an ideal world, you write for different groups. You cannot target one group only. Every segment has its own interests, problems, and ideas. But if you scale your output, you risk writing mainly generic articles. No one will like that content.
If you haven’t yet sorted your audience, do so and focus your content on these specific groups. As a result, your content will be more useful for the people in those groups.
Process difficulty and extra management work
More content means more parts to manage. Each article needs research, writing, review, checking, and then publishing. This is fine if you publish a few posts a month because you can handle these steps by hand. But growing your output complicates things when you face many deadlines, writers, or quality checks.
Complexity leads to bottlenecks. If you struggle with one thing, that might eventually slow down everything. Think of it like this: when you don’t scale your editorial process, you will eventually have a pile of articles that need approval. This grinds your publication flow to a halt. Develop a system that divides tasks into repeatable steps. Use content calendars and checklists to track progress and make managing projects easier.
Balancing speed and thoughtfulness
Scaling content production can lead to pressure to cut corners to meet deadlines. When the speed of publication comes into play, there’s a high chance that content will become less developed. This shouldn’t happen. Every piece of content should be carefully planned and produced. Rushing only leads to content that lacks depth, accuracy, or clarity.
Of course, this is easier said than done. You have to find ways to increase efficiency without sacrificing the quality of your content. Start by streamlining your process, breaking it up into smaller tasks. Set up a system that monitors quality while giving you enough room to be flexible.
Building a repeatable content creation process
Scaling your content production reliably requires setting up a solid content process. That process should be easily repeatable and have clear tasks, which will help keep your team on track.
Map the entire content workflow
Describe each content task and work your way through the list of what has to be done. Write down a list of all phases, ranging from conception through publication. This will help you understand where delays or errors creep in. Consider drawing a flow diagram or another visual. This list will act as your directive.
Create a content calendar
Use a content calendar to plan your publishing schedule. Proper planning helps you keep track of deadlines, even if they are for different outlets. Thanks to your content plan, your team can write content in advance and, hopefully, without stressing out about deadlines too much.
Develop detailed briefs and outlines
Content briefs are a great way to align writers — see below for an example. A brief like this should, at least, include the subject, target audience, key messages, and keywords that the writer should target. Once approved, create an outline for the content and fill in the structure. A good content brief speeds up the writing process while ensuring that content is targeted well.
Implement a style guide
A style guide can help you ground every piece of content in a consistent tone of voice and formatting. This guide should include rules for tone, punctuation, formatting, and whatever else makes sense to share. You can easily share this guide with anyone on your team; even freelancers enjoy using it.
Use checklists for each stage
You’ll find it easier to manage once you break the process down into small tasks. Make a checklist for tasks such as researching, writing, and editing. Having a proper checklist helps you make sure that you don’t forget anything. This could be checking facts, improving readability, or using proper SEO tactics. Your lists will help you scale your content production while maintaining quality output.
Standardize tools and platforms
Use well-known tools to manage tasks in your team. Think of project management tools like Jira or Asana, shared calendars in CoSchedule, Canva for visual designs, and document templates in Microsoft Office. Many companies use Google Docs to collaborate on documents. In those cases, you can use one of the standardized Google Docs extensions, which are easier to scale.
Write a good manual or checklist for these tools so that anyone — from in-house writers to external freelancers — follows the same steps. Standardization makes this work and helps apply important SEO best practices properly.
All of these things help your team routinely produce quality content. Making the process repeatable reduces the chance of errors and wasted time, so you can scale without losing what makes your content awesome.
Strategies to scale without losing quality
Careful planning is one of the best ways to scale your content without lowering its quality. Another great option is to use clear methods to make your work more effective.
Develop a strong content strategy and workflow
As always, start with a solid plan that includes your goals, topics, and the audience you want to reach. Creating content for your audience is much easier when everyone truly understands who those people are. A good workflow avoids delays and helps people move from one task to another.
Use a detailed content calendar
We’ve discussed the importance of content calendars, and you really have to see these as your roadmap. A calendar shows all upcoming publications, deadlines, and the status of various projects. A good calendar keeps everyone up to date at all times and makes sure the work is nicely spread out. Good planning prevents missed deadlines.
Use template structures
Templates help you standardize your work, as they offer a reusable structure for common types of content. Each type of content can have its own structure to fill in. These templates help writers speed up their work while maintaining consistency across articles.
Repurpose content thoughtfully
Look at what you already have and see how it can be adapted into a different form. For example, you can split a long-form article into several videos or a series of shorter posts. This strategy saves time while also delivering fresh material in new formats. Make sure to adapt the new content to the correct audience.
Assign clear roles within your team
Find out your team members’ strengths and have them do what they do best. A writer should handle the initial draft while an editor reviews the work. Your trusted subject matter expert should check the content for accuracy. Clear roles help people do what they do best, which helps preserve content quality.
Maintaining high-quality content at scale
It isn’t easy to maintain content quality when scaling content production. To make the process more manageable, you should establish habits and use tools that help you make sure that every piece of content meets your standards.
Follow your style guide
Setting up a good style guide keeps your writing consistent. Your style guide should include information on your content’s tone of voice, the terminology you can and can’t use, and how you structure and format it. Share this guide with your team.
Schedule periodic audits
Similarly, regularly review your existing content to see if it’s outdated or needs to adapt to changes in your brand messaging. This helps keep your older content relevant and accurate.
Use tools when appropriate
Tools can help scale your content production. Even a tool like our Yoast SEO plugin can help your content work. Good content tools can help with formatting, improving readability, checking for keyword placement, and some even help with on-page SEO.
Using Generative AI for scaling content output
Using AI to scale content production might seem like a good idea, but please be careful. Generative AI can definitely be a valuable tool for content processes. However, AI is not without issues and needs interaction from real people.
Human oversight makes sure that the output aligns with your brand’s voice and content standards. You can use generative AI as a starting point or a helpful assistant, but not as a complete replacement for your real writers. Your use of AI should have a clear process to bring the content up to your desired quality level.
Conclusion to scaling content production
Scaling up content production shouldn’t mean lower quality. Mostly, it’s about knowing the content process inside out. Once you have that, you can lay out the steps for everyone to follow. With a good process, you can meet your goals and still maintain the quality of the content. Be sure to set up content templates, calendars, and clear roles for your team. Make the adjustments and see how this can lead to better results.
Bonus: Content brief template for SEO
Are you looking for a basic content brief template that helps scale your content production? Check out the one below:
Content brief section
Details
Title/headline suggestion
[Insert title]
Primary keyword
[Main keyword]
Secondary keywords
[Keyword 1], [Keyword 2]
Search intent
[Informational, commercial, transactional, etc.]
Audience persona
[If needed, description of audience persona]
Content objective
[What is the content meant to achieve]
Benchmark content
[URLs of best-in-class content about this topic]
Word count range
[Word count]
Tone and style guidelines
[Tone and style]
Outline/sections
Introduction; Main points/headings; Subheadings; Conclusion
SEO requirements
Meta title: [Title]; Meta description: [Description]; Header tags: H1, H2, H3; URL: [Proposed URL for content]
AI startup Anthropic (developer of Claude) reportedly reached an annualized revenue of $850 million and forecasts to generate $2.2 billion in revenue in 2025.
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Understanding the difference between search bots and scrapers is crucial for SEO.
Website crawlers fall into two categories:
First-party bots, which you use to audit and optimize your own site.
Third-party bots, which crawl your site externally – sometimes to index your content (like Googlebot) and other times to extract data (like competitor scrapers).
This guide breaks down first-party crawlers that can improve your site’s technical SEO and third-party bots, exploring their impact and how to manage them effectively.
First-party crawlers: Mining insights from your own website
Crawlers can help you identify ways to improve your technical SEO.
Enhancing your site’s technical foundation, architectural depth, and crawl efficiency is a long-term strategy for increasing search traffic.
Occasionally, you may uncover major issues – such as a robots.txt file blocking all search bots on a staging site that was left active after launch.
Fixing such problems can lead to immediate improvements in search visibility.
Now, let’s explore some crawl-based technologies you can use.
Googlebot via Search Console
You don’t work in a Google data center, so you can’t launch Googlebot to crawl your own site.
However, by verifying your site with Google Search Console (GSC), you can access Googlebot’s data and insights. (Follow Google’s guidance to set yourself up on the platform.)
GSC is free to use and provides valuable information – especially about page indexing.
Technically, this is third-party data from Google, but only verified users can access it for their site.
In practice, it functions much like the data from a crawl you run yourself.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog is a desktop application that runs locally on your machine to generate crawl data for your website.
They also offer a log file analyzer, which is useful if you have access to server log files. For now, we’ll focus on Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider.
At $259 per year, it’s highly cost-effective compared to other tools that charge this much per month.
However, because it runs locally, crawling stops if you turn off your computer – it doesn’t operate in the cloud.
Still, the data it provides is fast, accurate, and ideal for those who want to dive deeper into technical SEO.
From the main interface, you can quickly launch your own crawls.
Once completed, export Internal > All data to an Excel-readable format and get comfortable handling and pivoting the data for deeper insights.
Screaming Frog also offers many other useful export options.
It provides reports and exports for internal linking, redirects (including redirect chains), insecure content (mixed content), and more.
The drawback is it requires more hands-on management, and you’ll need to be comfortable working with data in Excel or Google Sheets to maximize its value.
Ahrefs is a comprehensive cloud-based platform that includes a technical SEO crawler within its Site Audit module.
To use it, set up a project, configure the crawl parameters, and launch the crawl to generate technical SEO insights.
Once the crawl is complete, you’ll see an overview that includes a technical SEO health rating (0-100) and highlights key issues.
You can click on these issues for more details, and a helpful button appears as you dive deeper, explaining why certain fixes are necessary.
Since Ahrefs runs in the cloud, your machine’s status doesn’t affect the crawl. It continues even if your PC or Mac is turned off.
Compared to Screaming Frog, Ahrefs provides more guidance, making it easier to turn crawl data into actionable SEO insights.
However, it’s less cost-effective. If you don’t need its additional features, like backlink data and keyword research, it may not be worth the expense.
Semrush Site Audit
Next is Semrush, another powerful cloud-based platform with a built-in technical SEO crawler.
Like Ahrefs, it also provides backlink analysis and keyword research tools.
Semrush offers a technical SEO health rating, which improves as you fix site issues. Its crawl overview highlights errors and warnings.
As you explore, you’ll find explanations of why fixes are needed and how to implement them.
Both Semrush and Ahrefs have robust site audit tools, making it easy to launch crawls, analyze data, and provide recommendations to developers.
While both platforms are pricier than Screaming Frog, they excel at turning crawl data into actionable insights.
Semrush is slightly more cost-effective than Ahrefs, making it a solid choice for those new to technical SEO.
Each uses separate rendering engines for mobile and desktop, but both contain “Googlebot/2.1” in their user-agent string.
If you analyze your server logs, you can isolate Googlebot traffic to see which areas of your site it crawls most frequently.
This can help identify technical SEO issues, such as pages that Google isn’t crawling as expected.
To analyze log files, you can create spreadsheets to process and pivot the data from raw .txt or .csv files. If that seems complex, Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyzer is a useful tool.
In most cases, you shouldn’t block Googlebot, as this can negatively affect SEO.
However, if Googlebot gets stuck in highly dynamic site architecture, you may need to block specific URLs via robots.txt. Use this carefully – overuse can harm your rankings.
Fake Googlebot traffic
Not all traffic claiming to be Googlebot is legitimate.
Many crawlers and scrapers allow users to spoof user-agent strings, meaning they can disguise themselves as Googlebot to bypass crawl restrictions.
For example, Screaming Frog can be configured to impersonate Googlebot.
However, many websites – especially those hosted on large cloud networks like AWS – can differentiate between real and fake Googlebot traffic.
They do this by checking if the request comes from Google’s official IP ranges.
If a request claims to be Googlebot but originates outside of those ranges, it’s likely fake.
Other search engines
In addition to Googlebot, other search engines may crawl your site. For example:
In your robots.txt file, you can create wildcard rules to disallow all search bots or specify rules for particular crawlers and directories.
However, keep in mind that robots.txt entries are directives, not commands – meaning they can be ignored.
Unlike redirects, which prevent a server from serving a resource, robots.txt is merely a strong signal requesting bots not to crawl certain areas.
Some crawlers may disregard these directives entirely.
Screaming Frog’s Crawl Bot
Screaming Frog typically identifies itself with a user agent like Screaming Frog SEO Spider/21.4.
The “Screaming Frog SEO Spider” text is always included, followed by the version number.
However, Screaming Frog allows users to customize the user-agent string, meaning crawls can appear to be from Googlebot, Chrome, or another user-agent.
This makes it difficult to block Screaming Frog crawls.
While you can block user agents containing “Screaming Frog SEO Spider,” an operator can simply change the string.
If you suspect unauthorized crawling, you may need to identify and block the IP range instead.
This requires server-side intervention from your web developer, as robots.txt cannot block IPs – especially since Screaming Frog can be configured to ignore robots.txt directives.
Be cautious, though. It might be your own SEO team conducting a crawl to check for technical SEO issues.
Before blocking Screaming Frog, try to determine the source of the traffic, as it could be an internal employee gathering data.
Ahrefs Bot
Ahrefs has a crawl bot and a site audit bot for crawling.
When Ahrefs crawls the web for its own index, you’ll see traffic from AhrefsBot/7.0.
When an Ahrefs user runs a site audit, traffic will come from AhrefsSiteAudit/6.1.
Both bots respect robots.txt disallow rules, per Ahrefs’ documentation.
If you don’t want your site to be crawled, you can block Ahrefs using robots.txt.
Alternatively, your web developer can deny requests from user agents containing “AhrefsBot” or “AhrefsSiteAudit“.
Semrush Bot
Like Ahrefs, Semrush operates multiple crawlers with different user-agent strings.
Be sure to review all available information to identify them properly.
The two most common user-agent strings you’ll encounter are:
SemrushBot: Semrush’s general web crawler, used to improve its index.
SiteAuditBot: Used when a Semrush user initiates a site audit.
Rogerbot, Dotbot, and other crawlers
Moz, another widely used cloud-based SEO platform, deploys Rogerbot to crawl websites for technical insights.
Moz also operates Dotbot, a general web crawler. Both can be blocked via your robots.txt file if needed.
Another crawler you may encounter is MJ12Bot, used by the Majestic SEO platform. Typically, it’s nothing to worry about.
Non-SEO crawl bots
Not all crawlers are SEO-related. Many social platforms operate their own bots.
Meta (Facebook’s parent company) runs multiple crawlers, while Twitter previously used Twitterbot – and it’s likely that X now deploys a similar, though less-documented, system.
Crawlers continuously scan the web for data. Some can benefit your site, while others should be monitored through server logs.
Understanding search bots, SEO crawlers and scrapers for technical SEO
Managing both first-party and third-party crawlers is essential for maintaining your website’s technical SEO.
Key takeaways
First-party crawlers (e.g., Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Semrush) help audit and optimize your own site.
Googlebot insights via Search Console provide crucial data on indexation and performance.
Third-party crawlers (e.g., Bingbot, AhrefsBot, SemrushBot) crawl your site for search indexing or competitive analysis.
Managing bots via robots.txt and server logs can help control unwanted crawlers and improve crawl efficiency in specific cases.
Data handling skills are crucial for extracting meaningful insights from crawl reports and log files.
By balancing proactive auditing with strategic bot management, you can ensure your site remains well-optimized and efficiently crawled.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/IMG1-GSC-Page-Indexing-Report-wyNDwZ.png?fit=2048%2C1320&ssl=113202048http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-02-25 15:00:002025-02-25 15:00:00A guide to web crawlers: What you need to know
Budgeting for paid ad campaigns has long been a static process – set a monthly budget, monitor spending, and adjust incrementally as needed.
This method works for industries with stable demand and predictable conversion rates but falls short in dynamic, competitive markets.
Still, static budgets aren’t obsolete. In industries with long sales cycles, consistent conversion trends, or strict financial planning – like B2B SaaS and healthcare – planned budgets remain essential.
The key isn’t choosing between static and dynamic budgeting; it’s knowing when and how to adjust PPC spend using data-driven signals.
The role of Smart Bidding and Performance Max in budgeting
Automation has changed our budgeting strategies, but it hasn’t eliminated the need for human oversight.
While Google’s Smart Bidding and Performance Max (PMax) campaigns help optimize performance, they do not fully control budget allocation the way some advertisers may assume.
Smart Bidding: What it does (and doesn’t do) for budgeting
Smart Bidding (i.e., Target ROAS, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, and Maximize Conversion Value) uses real-time auction signals to adjust bids but does not shift budgets between campaigns.
If a campaign has an insufficient budget, smart bidding won’t automatically pull spend from another campaign; this still requires manual adjustments or automated budget rules.
To overcome the budget allocation limitations of Smart Bidding, use:
Portfolio bidding strategies: Setting bid strategies at the campaign level lets you use a common bidding approach (e.g., Target ROAS or Target CPA) across multiple campaigns. This enables more efficient spending across campaigns with similar goals without manual adjustments.
Shared budgets: Assigning a single budget across multiple campaigns ensures high-performing campaigns receive adequate funding while preventing overspending on lower-performing ones.
Performance Max: A black box for budget allocation?
PMax automates asset and bid optimization across multiple Google properties (Search, Display, YouTube, Discovery, etc.), but you don’t control which channel yorur budget goes to.
Google’s algorithm decides how much to allocate to each network, which can sometimes result in excessive spend on lower-performing placements like Display rather than Search.
Instead of relying solely on PMax, run separate Search campaigns alongside it to ensure an adequate budget is allocated to high-intent traffic.
When setting a tCPA or tROAS, allow a 10-20% margin for flexibility to help Google’s algorithm optimize effectively.
For example, if your ideal tCPA is $100, setting it to $115 gives Google room to secure conversions that may exceed your target while still delivering strong performance.
Since tCPA operates as an average, not every lead will cost the same amount.
Once you are consistently hitting your target, gradually lower the tCPA (or raise the tROAS) to improve budget efficiency without restricting conversions.
Underfunding efficient campaigns
If a campaign has a long conversion delay (i.e., B2B lead gen), Smart Bidding may incorrectly shift the budget elsewhere before enough data accumulates.
Solution
Extend conversion windows in Smart Bidding settings. The default is 30 days, but advertisers can adjust the window from one day up to 90 days.
Manually monitor lagging conversions and adjust budgets proactively.
Lack of budget control in PMax campaigns
Performance Max doesn’t allow advertisers to set separate budgets for Search, YouTube, and Display.
As a result, Google may (advertiser sentiment is that they do) favor low-cost clicks from Display rather than higher-intent Search traffic.
Solution
Run branded and high-intent non-branded Search campaigns separately to control budget spend on direct-response traffic.
Apply negative keywords via account-level negatives. While PMax doesn’t allow campaign-level negatives, account-level negative keyword lists can help block irrelevant or redundant queries. The maximum number of negative keywords allowed to be applied is 100. Google has stated that it created this limit because PMax isn’t meant to be a heavily restricted campaign type.
By monitoring your search impression share, you can identify when branded queries are slipping into PMax instead of the dedicated Search campaign. This will allow you to adjust bid strategies and audience signals accordingly.
Use audience exclusions in PMax to prevent excessive Display spend on irrelevant audiences.
Advanced tip
Tools like Optmyzr can help advertisers determine how their budget is allocated in PMax with the PMax Channel Distribution feature.
Although we may not have much control over the allocation, we can at least be aware of it.
How to use first-party data to improve budget allocation
An underutilized strategy for improving budgeting is leveraging first-party data to allocate spend toward high-value audiences.
As privacy restrictions tighten and tracking capabilities decline, it’s important to shift your focus from broad automated bidding to first-party audience targeting.
Use customer match to prioritize high-value audiences
Instead of spending equally across all users, advertisers can upload Customer Match lists (based on past purchasers, high-LTV customers, or CRM data) and adjust budgets accordingly.
Example
If historical data shows that repeat customers generate a higher ROAS than new users, more budget should be allocated to remarketing campaigns targeting Customer Match audiences.
Advanced tip
To maximize campaign efficiency, consider using value-based bidding (VBB) to ensure your budget prioritizes high-value conversions rather than just the volume of leads.
By assigning different conversion values based on customer lifetime value (LTV), using Customer Match, GA4 insights, or CRM data, you can direct more spending toward audiences that generate the highest long-term revenue.
Changes to customer match lists
Google recently introduced two key updates to Customer Match lists that will impact how advertisers manage audience data.
As of Jan. 13, stricter policy enforcement means you must comply with Google’s advertising standards. Violations could lead to restricted access or account suspension after a seven-day warning.
To stay compliant and maximize audience targeting, be sure to regularly refresh your lists and align your data collection with Google’s updated policies.
Apply GA4 data for smarter budget scaling
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides insights into conversion paths, high-value audience segments, and multi-channel attribution.
Instead of relying solely on Google Ads conversion tracking, use GA4 to determine which audience segments should receive higher budgets.
Best practice
Create custom lists/audiences around users with high engagement signals (repeat visits, add-to-cart actions, lead form interactions) and allocate more budget toward these users.
Create custom lists/audiences around low-intent users who bounce after viewing one page. To reduce wasted ad spend, decrease your bids or exclude them.
Instead of distributing the budget equally across all hours, allocate more to high-converting time periods.
Example
If the lead volume is highest between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., increase bids and budget during these hours.
If your business hours are from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m., lower your bids during the hours you aren’t operating to prevent unnecessary ad expenses.
Industry-specific budgeting approaches
As we all know, no two industries are the same, so the approach to budgeting should also be different. Here’s how different business models should think about budget allocation:
B2B lead generation
Budgeting for B2B lead generation requires a long-term view.
As such, budget pacing should be planned over months. Don’t make frequent (i.e., daily or weekly) adjustments that could cause instability in the account.
Because the cycle is longer, conversions often take some time to materialize, so conversion delays should be considered when evaluating Smart Bidding performance.
If budgets are adjusted too soon based on incomplete data, campaigns may be underfunded before the true impact of conversions is realized.
Seasonality plays a large role in budgeting decisions for ecommerce brands.
Aggressively increase budgets ahead of major sales events, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday shopping, to capitalize on higher purchase intent.
Reacting to performance mid-season will likely result in missed opportunities if the budget is exhausted too early.
Also, rather than spreading spend evenly across all potential buyers, prioritize high-LTV customers using Customer Match lists and past purchase data.
This ensures that ad spend is directed toward audiences likely to generate repeat purchases and higher average order values (AOVs).
Budget allocation for local businesses should be narrowly geo-targeted.
Instead of distributing spend evenly across an entire service area (although you should have some presence in the area), analyze past geographic conversion data to determine which locations typically generate the highest return.
The budget should then be allocated accordingly, ensuring that high-performing areas receive the majority of ad spend.
Another important factor is setting up call tracking.
Since many conversions happen over the phone rather than through online forms, integrate call-tracking data to identify which campaigns generate high-quality leads.
By analyzing call duration, lead quality, and customer inquiries, you can refine budget allocation to optimize for calls that convert into sales or appointments.
Each industry requires a different budgeting approach tailored to its sales cycles, customer behavior, and conversion patterns.
Understanding these nuances ensures that your PPC budgets are allocated strategically for maximum impact, whether it’s long-term pacing for B2B, seasonal surges for ecommerce, or localized targeting for service-based businesses.
A smarter approach to budgeting
Budgeting for your PPC campaigns doesn’t involve choosing between static and dynamic models; it involves strategically using both.
Smart Bidding and PMax improve efficiency but require human oversight.
First-party data should play a bigger role in spend allocation.
Budget scaling should be incremental and structured.
Industry-specific needs should dictate budget pacing strategies.
The best budgets are adaptable, data-driven, and aligned with long-term profitability rather than short-term spend fluctuations.
Those who master this approach will gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly automated advertising landscape.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/PPC-budgeting-in-2025-When-to-adjust-scale-and-optimize-with-data-800x450-57PRRv.png?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1450800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-02-25 14:00:002025-02-25 14:00:00PPC budgeting in 2025: When to adjust, scale, and optimize with data
There are numerous reports that the Google Search Console API is delayed and not showing data sooner than this past Thursday, February 20th. If you use this API for your own tools, or bring in this data through Looker Studio reports, Big Query or other tools, your reports may be delayed.
More details. The delays started around last Wednesday and some are now saying some data for Thursday is slowly coming in. However, generally, data is as recent as today through the Search Console API.
The web interface is not impacted, so you can get data from going to Google Search Console directly.
Some are saying data for Thursday is now coming in, but others are not sure yet.
Google has not comments on this issue yet.
Why we care. If you are noticing weird data in your tools or reports and that data generally comes from Google Search Console’s API, this is why.
I suspect the data flow will return to normal in the coming days, but if you do report and you see weirdness in those reports, this is your explanation.
For more, if you need that data, access it directly through the web interface.
If you feel like you’re being pulled in different directions with your SEO program, you aren’t alone.
How do you know where to focus first for the most impact? And when that’s done, what do you do next?
It can be challenging to decide which SEO tasks to prioritize because they all impact the end user in some way – but some more than others. This is where discernment comes into play.
This article will help you build a path to get your SEO program organized from point A to point B and figure out how to prioritize tasks to get ROI quicker.
Frameworks for identifying high-impact SEO opportunities
When every SEO task feels urgent, knowing where to focus first can make or break your strategy. These three frameworks can help you prioritize what moves the needle.
1. Technical SEO audit
A technical SEO auditis your roadmap for identifying and fixing the issues that directly impact search visibility and user experience.
The right audit reveals the most urgent technical barriers to ranking – and helps you prioritize based on impact.
But not all audits are created equal. Here’s a breakdown of the different types:
Basic SEO audit
This is where automated software scans your site and flags common SEO issues. While the insights can be helpful, they come in a generic, one-size-fits-all report.
This type of audit is ideal if you’re working with a tight budget or just want to get a basic overview before bringing in an expert.
It’s never a bad idea, but it won’t provide an in-depth analysis.
Mid-level SEO audit
Here, you can expect a professional SEO specialist or vendor to go beyond automated reports and offer additional insights that software alone might miss.
While these can pinpoint issues that require attention, they may not provide detailed solutions.
This approach is useful when you need to identify potential problem areas but aren’t ready for a full-scale SEO strategy.
Comprehensive SEO audit
This is a full technical audit conducted by experienced technical SEOs.
This deep dive involves top-tier tools, data analysis, and an in-depth website and SEO review by skilled analysts specializing in technical SEO and business strategy.
Tools assist the process, but the real value comes from expert analysis, which makes it a time-intensive but highly valuable investment.
Knowing these key differences in audits can help you make an informed decision before you invest.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful tool for prioritizing tasks by urgency and importance.
Applying it to your SEO strategy helps you determine which tasks need immediate attention and which can wait.
To get started, divide tasks into four quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Urgent and important
These are the critical issues that directly impact rankings and user experience.
For example, this could be a slow site or fixing a misconfigured robots.txt file that is blocking search engines from crawling and indexing key pages.
Whatever tasks you put in this category will be non-negotiable. Addressing these items can sometimes have an immediate impact on your ability to compete.
Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent
These will be the longer-term strategies that build sustainable growth.
For instance, maybe developing a long-term content strategy focused on topic authority and evergreen content falls here.
These efforts don’t require immediate attention but are essential for long-term SEO success.
Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important
This bucket is for handling tasks that are time-sensitive but don’t significantly influence rankings or user experience.
This could be something like responding to a minor Google Search Console alert about a non-critical issue.
While these tasks may not have a high impact, taking care of them prevents minor issues from accumulating into big projects.
Quadrant 4: Neither urgent nor important
Anything that falls into this category is something you avoid.
One example might be spending hours tweaking meta descriptions that already meet best practices without significant SEO gains.
These activities consume time and resources without delivering meaningful results.
Using the Eisenhower Matrix helps your SEO by enhancing:
Clarity: Identify and fix what demands attention now versus what can wait.
Efficiency: Prioritize the highest ROI tasks without getting bogged down.
Focus: Stay aligned with business goals, eliminating distractions.
3. The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule)
The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of efforts.
In SEO, focusing on the most impactful tasks helps you drive faster, more meaningful results without spreading yourself too thin.
Keyword targeting
It’s common for a small subset of your keywords to drive most organic traffic.
Instead of spreading your efforts thin across all keywords, focus on optimizing the ones that deliver the most value.
Use SEO tools to identify the top-performing 20% of keywords that bring in most of your traffic and conversions.
Prioritize pages that rank between Positions 5 and 20 for those high-value keywords. These are low-hanging fruit that can move up with improvements.
Expand content for high-value keywords by answering related questions and creating supporting content.
Content focus
Most of your website’s traffic and engagement likely comes from a handful of high-performing pages.
Instead of endlessly creating new content, invest in improving the 20% of pages that already generate the most traffic and leads.
Identify your top 20% of pages by traffic and conversions using analytics tools.
Revamp those pages by updating outdated content to enhance optimization and engagement.
Create supporting content to build topical authority around your best pages.
Technical fixes
Technical SEO can feel overwhelming because there’s always more to fix. But, a small subset of technical issues typically has the most impact on site performance.
Focus on fixing the top 20% of technical issues that cause 80% of your performance problems.
Prioritize high-impact fixes like:
Resolving crawl errors so search engines can access your site.
Improving page load speed for user experience and rankings.
Fixing broken links to avoid losing link equity and frustrating users.
Optimizing usability to retain visitors and improve your ability to compete in the search results.
Optimizing existing content by adding internal links, updating outdated information, or including relevant keywords.
Quick wins are valuable because they deliver early signs of progress. This helps build momentum and gain stakeholder buy-in.
However, relying solely on quick wins isn’t enough to achieve a sustainable SEO program.
That’s where long-term strategies come in.
Long-term strategies
Long-term strategies require more time and effort but are key to creating a strong foundation.
These strategies help your website become more authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant in the eyes of both search engines and your audience.
Examples of long-term strategies include:
Content creation that targets important keywords and answers user questions in-depth. Try SEO siloing to build authority around a topic.
Earning backlinks through your high-quality content and partnerships.
Refreshing top-performing content to make sure it remains evergreen and relevant. I recommend spending 50% of your content resources on maintaining older but high-performing content.
Continuing education so you can stay ahead of the curve. Consider annual SEO training with additional learning opportunities throughout the year. Search evolves fast, and you want to be able to forecast what’s coming up so you can start working on it early.
Foundational efforts don’t deliver instant results, but as your site’s authority grows, you’ll see compounding benefits with higher rankings, more traffic, and increased user trust.
Fast gains, lasting growth: Crafting a balanced SEO plan
A good SEO roadmap should include both short-term quick wins and long-term projects. But where to start?
Here’s one scenario: You could focus 70% of your time on quick wins early on to show immediate results and 30% on long-term efforts.
Over time, you might adjust the balance to a 50/50 split as your site becomes more stable and foundational work becomes a bigger priority.
Prioritizing your SEO strategies is the key to driving meaningful results.
SEO isn’t about doing everything at once. It’s about doing the right things at the right time.
When you focus on high-impact tasks and continuously refine your approach, you’ll build a more competitive search engine presence that pays off for years to come.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Eisenhower-matrix-example-MTqGQj.png?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=17681024http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-02-25 13:00:002025-02-25 13:00:00SEO prioritization: How to focus on what moves the needle
Chegg, the publicly traded education technology company, has sued Google over its AI Overviews, claiming they have hurt its traffic and revenue. The company said that AI Overviews is “materially impacting our acquisitions, revenue, and employees.”
Second, we announced the filing of a complaint against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. These two actions are connected, as we would not need to review strategic alternatives if Google hadn’t launched AI Overviews, or AIO, retaining traffic that historically had come to Chegg, materially impacting our acquisitions, revenue, and employees. Chegg has a superior product for education, as evident by our brand awareness, engagement, and retention. Unfortunately, traffic is being blocked from ever coming to Chegg because of Google’s AIO and their use of Chegg’s content to keep visitors on their own platform. We retained Goldman Sachs as the financial advisor in connection with our strategic review and Susman Godfrey with respect to our complaint against Google.
More details. CNBC reports that “Chegg is worth less than $200 million, and in after-hours trading Monday, the stock was trading just above $1 per share.” Chegg has engaged Goldman Sachs to look at options to get acquired or other strategic options for the company.
Chegg reported a $6.1 million net loss on $143.5 million in fourth-quarter revenue, a 24% decline year over year, according to a statement. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $142.1 million in revenue. Management called for first-quarter revenue between $114 million and $116 million, but analysts had been targeting $138.1 million. The stock was down 18% in extended trading.
The report goes on to say that Google forces companies like Chegg to “supply our proprietary content in order to be included in Google’s search function,” said Schultz, adding that the search company uses its monopoly power, “reaping the financial benefits of Chegg’s content without having to spend a dime.”
Here is more from Chegg’s statement:
While we made significant headway on our technology, product, and marketing programs, 2024 came with a series of challenges, including the rapid evolution of the content landscape, particularly the rise of Google AIO, which as I previously mentioned, has had a profound impact on Chegg’s traffic, revenue, and workforce. As already mentioned, we are filing a complaint against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, making three main arguments.
First is reciprocal dealing, meaning that Google forces companies like Chegg to supply our proprietary content in order to be included in Google’s search function.
Second is monopoly maintenance, or that Google unfairly exercises its monopoly power within search and other anti-competitive conduct to muscle out companies like Chegg.
And third is unjust enrichment, meaning Google is reaping the financial benefits of Chegg’s content without having to spend a dime.
As we allege in our complaint, Google AIO has transformed Google from a “search engine” into an “answer engine,” displaying AI-generated content sourced from third-party sites like Chegg. Google’s expansion of AIO forces traffic to remain on Google, eliminating the need to go to third-party content source sites. The impact on Chegg’s business is clear. Our non-subscriber traffic plummeted to negative 49% in January 2025, down significantly from the modest 8% decline we reported in Q2 2024.
We believe this isn’t just about Chegg—it’s about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries. It’s about the digital publishing industry. It’s about the future of internet search.
In summary, our complaint challenges Google’s unfair competition, which is unjust, harmful, and unsustainable. While these proceedings are just starting, we believe bringing this lawsuit is both necessary and well-founded.
Google statement. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said, “With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites.”
Why we care. Will Chegg win in a court against Google? Will Google have to rethink its AI Overviews and find better ways to send traffic to publishers and site owners? It is hard to imagine but this may be the first large lawsuit over Google’s new AI Overviews.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/google-legal3-name-ss-1920-800x450-ZHJQZI.jpeg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1450800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-02-24 23:10:412025-02-24 23:10:41Google sued by Chegg over AI Overviews hurting traffic and revenue
Microsoft is testing a new version of Bing named Copilot Search, where it uses Copilot AI to provide a different style of search results. It looks different from the main Bing Search, it looks different from Copilot and it looks different from the Bing generative search experience.
More details. The folks over at Windows Latests reported, “Microsoft is testing a new feature on Bing called “AI Search,” which replaces blue links with AI-summarized answers. Sources tell me it’s part of Microsoft’s efforts to bridge the gap between “traditional search” and “Copilot answers” to take on ChatGPT. However, the company does not plan to make “AI search” the default search mode.”
You can access it at bing.com/copilotsearch?q=addyourqueryhere – just replace the text “addyourqueryhere” with your query.
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot I captured of this interface:
Why we care. Everyone is looking to build the future of search now – with Google Gemini, Google’s AI Overviews, Microsoft Bing, Copilot, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity and the dozens of other start up AI search engines – the future of search is something they are all trying to crack.
This seems to be one new test that Microsoft is trying out for a new approach to AI search.
