Google Search Console has released what it calls platform properties, which is a way to see how well your social and video content is performing within Google Search. Google will let you see the performance of your content on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube performs on Google Search.
More details. Google wrote, “Now, you can easily track which search terms lead people to your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube content on Search, and see exactly how your audience is interacting with your posts.” You can see this information within Google Search Console’s performance report, insights report and achievement sections.
Performance report: View your total clicks, impressions, and additional metrics. Filter and sort this data to see which specific posts and queries are driving the most traffic. If you prefer to analyze your performance using another tool you can export the data.
Insights report: View a high-level overview of your recent traffic trends, your top-performing posts, and how people discover your account on Google.
Achievements: Track your growth and celebrate milestones, such as reaching a new threshold for total clicks from Google Search in the last 28 days.
This is similar to the social channels details we had in the Search Console insights reports.
Here is a screenshot of my X account performance report:
Here is a screenshot from Google’s blog post of the insights report:
How to set it up. You will need to verify your platform property within your Google Search Console account, here is how to do that:
Open Search Console
Go to the Search Console verification page, or open the property selector dropdown anywhere in Search Console and click “Add property.”
Select one of the four available platforms: Instagram, Tiktok, X, YouTube.
Follow the onscreen verification steps to securely authorize the connection.
Slow rollout. Google said platform properties will roll out gradually over the coming weeks, so there is a chance you won’t see this yet. To learn more about platform properties and how to set them up, see Google’shelp center documentation. We actually saw Google publish this help document a few weeks ago, but then it was quickly removed.
Why we care. Previously, Google has not given us a real way to see how our content performs on domains/properties we do not own. But now, we are going to have access to see how our content performs of domains/properties we do not have developer access to. This is pretty cool and I am excited to see what we can learn from this.
Be the brand AI recommends.
See where your brand appears in AI search, where competitors are winning, and what it takes to become the answer AI recommends.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/gsc-social-profile-1-RB4jI4.webp?fit=714%2C438&ssl=1438714Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-07 13:00:002026-07-07 13:00:00Google Search Console gains reporting on social and video platforms
For most of the past decade, organic marketers have operated with a clear north star: visibility. Get on Page 1. Get in the featured snippet. Get seen.
That north star has now moved.
The question I put to the room at SMX Advanced on June 5 wasn’t, “How do you get found?” It was the even harder question: “How do you get chosen?”
In 2026, the answers are no longer the same, and the gap between them is where most brands lose ground.
In AI search, your reputation precedes you
The complex, multi-touchpoint user journey of exploration, evaluation, and conversion has been dramatically compressed. A single AI prompt now does the same work that previously required a dozen searches, three Reddit threads, and a couple of comparison sites.
AI search doesn’t reward the brand that shouted the loudest in paid media or stuffed the most keywords into its metadata. Instead, it rewards the brand with the strongest reputation in the spaces that matter, the same spaces the user journey once encompassed. Reddit threads, comparison sites, and the like all get ingested by LLMs and blended into a single synthesized answer.
In other words, your brand is no longer just what you say it is. It’s how AI understands your brand, and the algorithm is reading everything everyone else has ever said about you.
Brand-owned content, across websites and social channels, will always be self-serving and promotional. AI looks for third-party validation to back up those claims.
This shift changes everything for organic marketers. Our job has gone beyond building visibility to building a brand that, once found, is correctly understood and ultimately chosen. Those are three distinct challenges, and they require three distinct strategies.
Be the brand AI recommends.
See where your brand appears in AI search, where competitors are winning, and what it takes to become the answer AI recommends.
See your AI visibility
Found: Be present in your audience’s actual search ecosystem
The first challenge is still about discoverability, but we now work with a much broader canvas than just Google. Consumers now discover brands across ChatGPT, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Google, Quora, LinkedIn, and, yes, word of mouth. There are dozens of entry points into the discovery ecosystem, and you need to be credibly present in the ones your specific audience actually uses.
This starts with understanding your audience’s sources of influence: the publications, platforms, communities, and voices they genuinely trust. The intersection of semantic relevance, domain authority, and audience affinity tells you which third-party properties are worth targeting. For one B2B audience, that might be Wired, Tom’s Guide, or a LinkedIn group that actively discusses vendors in a particular vertical. For another, it’s r/smallbusiness and a Substack newsletter with 40,000 subscribers.
Once you know where your audience spends time, you can create content and earn your spot in the conversation in those exact places. This is targeted, audience-first, performance-driven PR and organic strategy that puts your brand in the conversations already happening at the decision point.
The data underscores the importance of earned media. Across the top commercial sectors we analyzed, 93% of AI search citations come from third-party sources. If you’re only investing in content that sits on your own domain, you’re invisible to the systems now doing the heavy lifting of brand discovery.
Understood: Consistent signals across every surface
Getting found is necessary, but it’s not a standalone effort. If you’re getting found by machines, your brand is understood well enough to be surfaced.
LLMs go beyond crawling your website. They synthesize a consensus picture of your brand from everything about you that exists online: reviews, Reddit discussions, press coverage, YouTube commentary, Trustpilot ratings, forum threads, and more. If those signals conflict with what you’re saying about yourself, you have a problem.
A brand that claims premium positioning but has thousands of articles questioning whether it’s actually luxury, a history of heavy discounting, and a Trustpilot score of 1.3 isn’t going to be recommended by AI as a premium option, regardless of how well-crafted its homepage copy is. The algorithm has read the whole story, not just your version of it.
This means brand messaging consistency is now an SEO issue. Every piece of owned, earned, and paid content needs to reinforce the same core associations — because the model is building a cohesive picture from all of it. Conflicting signals confuse customers and actively suppress your AI visibility.
Digital PR plays a critical role here. It engineers the external narrative. Through strategic media placements, expert commentary, and search-informed coverage, you shape what journalists write about you and what the models learn about you. The query fan-out (the range of prompts a potential customer might use) requires positive, consistent answers across every touchpoint where an LLM might look.
Chosen: Earning the trust signals that tip the decision
The third challenge is the hardest and arguably the most important. Trust has always been an SEO currency. As clicks decline and zero-click search becomes the norm, its importance has only grown.
Brand appearance in AI Overviews is most strongly correlated with branded web mentions (i.e., the number of times your brand is positively named across authoritative third-party sources), according to an Ahrefs study. This is essentially digital PR’s core output, and it is one of the most powerful levers available to organic marketers right now.
Based on the last 4,000 pieces of U.S.- and U.K.-based coverage we’ve driven for our clients, 91% of AI search citations include expert insight rather than branded content or product pages. This means expert-backed, editorially independent coverage is critical. That’s why your internal experts are your most valuable asset in the current landscape, and why brands investing in genuine thought leadership, original research, and data-backed studies are pulling ahead.
The three content formats consistently driving LLM feature inclusion are product roundups and listicles (getting your brand into trusted “best of” editorials), reliable data-backed research that journalists and LLMs cite as authoritative, and expert thought leadership that positions your people as the go-to voices in your category.
What doesn’t work (and what Google has explicitly flagged in its recent release of GEO guidelines) is seeking inauthentic mentions using methods like artificial link schemes, fake expert personas, and manufactured coverage. Models are increasingly adept at distinguishing genuine authority from manufactured signals, and the reputational downside of getting caught is severe.
None of this works as a one-time effort. Multiple studies, including research from Waseda University, have identified a correlation between AI brand visibility and content recency.
Brands that maintain a steady drumbeat of credible, expert-backed third-party coverage don’t just appear more often in AI responses. They appear more confidently.
Frequency and freshness of coverage both matter. It’s not enough to deliver a one-off PR campaign. This is a strategic investment that needs to be “always on.”
If AI can’t find you, customers won’t either.
Track your visibility across AI search, uncover missed opportunities, and grow your presence where customers are asking questions.
See your AI visibility
The framework in practice
When talking about brand discovery in 2026, three words are essential:
Found: Map your audience’s real sources of influence and be credibly present there — across the fragmented ecosystem where discovery now happens.
Understood: Ensure that everything said about your brand tells a consistent story: one that matches how you want to be positioned and reinforces the associations that drive preference.
Chosen: Continuously generate genuine trust signals through earned coverage, expert commentary, and third-party validation so that when a human or a machine is deciding between you and a competitor, the weight of credible external evidence tips in your favor.
The brands winning in organic search right now haven’t cracked some new technical trick. They’ve built a reputation that’s genuinely worth recommending and made sure the machines know it. Stop chasing the algorithm and start building something worth finding.
Content creators and publishers use many channels beyond their own websites to reach their audiences.
As people gravitate toward firsthand perspectives and different content formats, we want to make
it easier for site owners and creators—even those without their own website—to get a consolidated view
of how all of their content is getting discovered on Search.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/web-design-creative-services.jpg?fit=1500%2C600&ssl=16001500Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-07 00:00:002026-07-07 00:00:00See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search
AI visibility and AI profitability are not the same thing. Most teams are growing one without building the other.
The four most common failure modes are optimizing for mentions over conversions, measuring AI visibility like rankings, chasing tactics without a revenue connection, and running AEO/GEO in a silo.
AI-referred visitors convert at 8.3 times the rate of traditional traffic, close 62 percent faster, and generate 7 times more revenue per visitor. Those numbers only hold if your conversion architecture is built to receive them.
The highest-performing campaigns share four traits: retrieval-ready content, strong authority signals, multi-channel distribution, and conversion systems designed for low-click environments.
You can start building toward profitability in 90 days without a full overhaul, but the phases have to run in order.
You might be showing up in ChatGPT answers. Getting cited in Google’s AI Overviews. Watching your brand mentions climb across the web.
And still not seeing it move the revenue needle.
That’s the problem a lot of marketing teams are grappling with right now. AI visibility is growing. Profitability isn’t keeping pace. After analyzing more than 100 AEO and GEO campaigns at NP Digital, I can tell you the issue isn’t the strategy itself. Most teams are simply optimizing for the wrong outcomes.
If you already know what AEO and GEO are and you’re ready to actually make money from them, this post is for you. I’m going to break down exactly where the profitability gap comes from, what the winning campaigns have in common, and how to build toward revenue, not just visibility.
Why Most AEO/GEO Efforts Don’t Make Money
Getting cited is not the same as getting paid. That distinction sounds obvious, but most AEO/GEO programs are structured around the former and hope the latter follows automatically. It doesn’t.
After auditing campaigns across industries, NP Digital identified four failure modes that consistently prevent AI visibility from converting into revenue.
Optimizing for mentions and citations. Mentions don’t pay the bills; conversions do. If your entire AEO/GEO program is oriented around getting named in AI responses, you’re measuring a proxy, not an outcome. A citation that doesn’t connect to a conversion path is brand awareness you can’t prove.
Measuring AI visibility like rankings. Citation volume tells you nothing about pipeline. Teams that treat AI mention counts the same way they used to track keyword rankings end up with
dashboards full of activity metrics and no way to show leadership what any of it is worth.
Chasing AI-specific tactics in isolation. Schema updates, prompt engineering, entity optimization do matter, but tactics without distribution don’t compound. Teams that bolt on AEO/GEO tactics without building content and authority infrastructure underneath them tend to see short-term citation spikes that fade quickly.
Running AEO/GEO separately from revenue goals. This is the biggest one. Visibility disconnected from business outcomes is overhead. The teams getting budget approved for AI search have tied it to pipeline, not impressions.
NP Digital data tells the story clearly. AI visibility index climbed to 133 across tracked brands, while the profitability outcomes index reached 174. The gap between those two numbers is the opportunity this post addresses.
The Profitability Gap: What Changes When Buyers Use AI
Buyers who find you through AI tools are not the same as buyers who find you through traditional search. They arrive differently, they behave differently, and they convert differently.
The traditional funnel started with discovery through search, a click-through to compare options, an early-stage arrival that needed nurturing, and multiple touchpoints before a decision. The AI-influenced funnel runs differently. Research happens inside AI tools. Buyers validate brands before they ever click. They arrive later, already informed, and convert faster when trust exists.
That shift is an advantage, but only if your conversion architecture is built to receive it.
NP Digital data across 40-plus B2B and B2C campaigns makes the opportunity concrete. AI-referred visitors convert at 5.97 percent. Traditional traffic converts at 0.72 percent. Time to conversion drops from eight days to three. Revenue per visitor rises from $2.56 to $18.04.
The volume is still small. AI traffic accounts for about 0.58 percent of total traffic but drives 5.09 percent of sales. Lifetime value is also stronger at $325, up from $271 for Google-referred traffic.
The math works. But capturing those numbers requires a funnel built for visitors who arrive intent-driven rather than still in the research phase.
What the Profitable Campaigns Have in Common
Across the campaigns NP Digital analyzed, the ones generating real pipeline from AI search shared four traits. These traits reinforce each other, which is why building them together matters.
Content Built for Retrieval
The content types that drive both AI citations and conversions are high-intent formats that answer specific questions buyers ask when they’re close to a decision. Not top-of-funnel awareness pieces.
Comparison pages and alternatives content convert AI-referred traffic at 6.8 percent, the highest of any page type NP Digital tracked. First-party research and original data earn citations because they can’t be replicated elsewhere; they become reference points AI engines return to repeatedly. Bottom-funnel educational content and FAQ frameworks round out the top performers.
Format is as important as topic. Lists and listicles account for 48 percent of AI citations in NP Digital’s research. Step-by-step guides come in at 17 percent. AI engines pull from content structured for easy parsing. Content not formatted for retrieval tends not to get retrieved.
Strong Authority Signals
NP Digital scored six trust signals across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and Perplexity on a one-to-five scale. Third-party citations scored between 4.5 and 4.8, the single most consistent signal across every platform. Expert authorship scored between 4.0 and 4.6.
AI engines reward signals that are difficult to manufacture: named, credentialed authors; external sources citing your content; consistent brand presence across multiple platforms. Publishing on your own site still matters, but earning coverage and mentions outside it is what drives citations.
Multi-Channel Distribution
NP Digital tracked 75 brands across AI platforms and found a direct correlation between monthly publishing channels and AI visibility score. AI engines validate authority through repetition and consistency. Presence across YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, and PR channels signals to AI tools that your brand is real and relevant, not just self-published.
Conversion Architecture for Low-Click Environments
AI-referred visitors arrive pre-qualified. They’ve already done the research, compared options, and formed an opinion. A landing page designed for someone at the top of the funnel is the wrong tool for a visitor who’s already at the bottom.
The brands capturing revenue from this traffic have built accordingly: fast pages, strong trust indicators placed prominently, simplified calls to action, bottom-funnel calculators and tools, and conversational paths that confirm a decision rather than explain a product category.
How to Measure AEO/GEO for Revenue, Not Just Visibility
The metrics most teams track are measuring the wrong thing. Rankings, raw traffic, click-through rate, AI mention counts, these are visibility metrics. They tell you whether people are seeing your brand. They don’t tell you whether it’s generating revenue.
The teams getting AEO/GEO budgets renewed are the ones connecting citations to pipeline. That requires a different measurement stack.
Stop tracking: raw rankings, organic traffic volume as a primary metric, click-through rate, AI mention counts, raw citation tracking, vanity impressions.
Start tracking: influenced conversions, brand search lift, assisted pipeline, returning visitor quality, and conversion rate by intent source.
NP Digital’s outcomes-first measurement framework organizes this into three tiers. At the foundation: visibility and influence signals, including brand search volume, share of voice, community engagement, and earned media. In the middle: demand signals, including multi-touch attribution, AI-driven lead scoring, behavioral intent, and consumption depth. At the top: business outcomes, including revenue, CAC:LTV ratio, retention, expansion, and advocacy.
Build reporting from the bottom up. Track from the top down. The goal is a dashboard leadership reads as a business document, not a marketing activity report.
NP Digital research shows how much KPI priorities have shifted. Leadership priority for rankings dropped from 88 to 63 between 2024 and 2026. Pipeline contribution rose from 23 to 70. Revenue growth held steady at 96 to 98. Your measurement framework needs to reflect where leadership attention already sits.
A practical starting point: for every vanity metric on your current dashboard, add one outcome metric alongside it. That shift is often enough to change the budget conversation.
The 90-Day Plan to Turn AEO/GEO Into Revenue
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. You do need to run the phases in order. Each phase builds on the one before it, and skipping ahead consistently produces weaker results.
Days 1 to 30: Audit and Fix the Foundation
Start by auditing your current AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Search your brand name and core topics. Note where you appear, where competitors appear instead, and where no one appears. Those gaps are your priority list.
From there, identify high-intent content gaps where competitors are getting cited and you aren’t. Improve structured formatting across your highest-traffic pages with clear headers, FAQ sections, and concise direct answers. Strengthen author and entity signals. Clean up trust indicators including reviews, third-party citations, and brand consistency across platforms. Apply schema and retrieval-friendly formatting throughout.
One consistent finding across NP Digital’s audits: brand authority, PR and mentions, and community visibility are almost always the lowest-scored areas. Start there before investing more in content production.
Days 31 to 60: Create and Distribute for Profitability
Create the content types that drive both citations and conversions: comparison pages, original research and proprietary data, buyer guides, and FAQ expansions. These formats earn citations and convert the traffic those citations send.
Distribute across LinkedIn, YouTube, PR placements, expert commentary opportunities, and community channels like Reddit. The goal is consistent presence across multiple ecosystems. AI engines validate authority through repetition across platforms, not just depth on your own site.
Days 61 to 90: Optimize Conversion and Measurement
With the foundation fixed and the content layer built, optimize for what happens when AI-referred visitors arrive.
Improve bottom-funnel UX for high-intent visitors. Add calculators, tools, and simplified calls to action. Optimize assisted conversion flows. On the measurement side, track influenced pipeline from AI-assisted traffic, compare conversion quality across platforms, and build an executive dashboard tied to revenue rather than visibility metrics.
The window to establish AI search presence is real and won’t stay open indefinitely. The brands building this infrastructure now are accumulating authority signals that compound over time and become increasingly difficult for competitors to overcome.
FAQs
How do you connect AEO/GEO to revenue?
The connection runs through your measurement framework and your conversion architecture. On the measurement side, track influenced conversions, assisted pipeline, and brand search lift rather than citation counts. On the conversion side, build landing pages and CTAs designed for visitors who arrive already informed. AI-referred visitors are pre-qualified and need a fast path to a decision, not an introduction to your product category.
What metrics should you track for AEO/GEO profitability?
Move away from rankings, raw traffic, and citation volume as primary KPIs. The metrics that connect to profit are influenced conversions, brand search lift, assisted pipeline, returning visitor quality, and conversion rate by intent source. Build toward a three-tier measurement stack: visibility and influence at the foundation, demand signals in the middle, and business outcomes at the top.
What content converts best from AI-referred traffic?
Comparison pages and alternatives content convert AI-referred traffic at 6.8 percent, the highest of any page type in NP Digital’s research. First-party research, bottom-funnel educational content, and FAQ frameworks also perform well. Format matters as much as topic. Lists and listicles account for 48 percent of AI citations because they’re structured for easy extraction.
Conclusion
The winners in AI search don’t just focus on earning the most citations but make sure they can turn citations into pipeline.
That requires connecting visibility to conversion architecture, measuring outcomes rather than activity, and building the content and authority signals that AI engines reward consistently over time. None of those things happen by accident.
The brands doing this work now are building compounding advantages. Authority signals accumulate. Citation patterns stabilize. Conversion infrastructure improves with data. Starting later means starting behind.
If you want support building an AEO/GEO strategy tied to revenue rather than just visibility, NP Digital’s team works through exactly this kind of profitability infrastructure with clients.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-06 16:00:002026-07-06 16:00:00How To Make AEO and GEO Profitable
Advanced architecture is no longer just technical structure. It determines whether your content can be found, understood, and surfaced by search engines and AI systems.
Our next SMX Now on July 15 features Shari Thurow, co-founder, information scientist, and search director at the Information Architecture Gateway. She’ll explain how advanced architecture works and where most AI, SEO, and site development workflows fall short.
The session introduces a five-phase framework Thurow has tested through decades of client work with organizations including Microsoft, Google Cloud, Abbott Laboratories, CVS Pharmacy, WebMD, Sony Music, the Library of Congress, Best Buy, and Merriam-Webster. You’ll learn how architecture decisions shape labeling systems, wayfinding networks, taxonomy, wireframes, and AI access to valuable content.
It also challenges long-standing misconceptions, including the three-click rule, the idea that taxonomy is only a hierarchy, and the belief that AI can generate effective wireframes without a deeper architectural model.
You’ll leave with a practical framework for building sites that communicate more clearly with users, search engines, and human-centered AI systems.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/beyond-navigation-advanced-architecture-ai-y15e6L.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-06 15:33:462026-07-06 15:33:46SMX Now: Build better site architecture for SEO, AI, and users
Has your website seen better days, and are you looking to restore it to its former glory? Look no further. We will help you get your site up to today’s standards and make that splash online. We cover all the key areas you need to consider. Feel free to skip the steps that are already up to date, but be honest with yourself about what work still needs to be done. Your website only gets a millisecond to make a first impression, so let’s make the most of it. Now it’s time to peek under the hood, brush off the dust on those pages, and refresh your content.
Consider making big changes to your old website first, such as updating the domain or CMS.
Check and update your CMS, plugins, and data privacy setup to meet modern standards.
Refresh your content and keyword research to ensure relevance and improve SEO performance.
Evaluate technical aspects like mobile-friendliness, core web vitals, and accessibility for better user experience.
Use the Yoast SEO plugin to streamline the process of updating your old website and maintain its performance.
Check your site’s set-up
Want to make any big changes? Do that first
Before we delve into the depths of your old website, it’s worth considering any major changes you want to make. Maybe you’ve always wanted to change your domain name or your URL structure, but it was too much work when everything was up and running. Or perhaps you could benefit from switching to a different CMS or hosting provider. If you do want to make sitewide changes, you’ll be far better off planning this from the start.
Old or new domain?
You will have registered your domain when your website was still live, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still available now. Check whether your old domain is still yours or available. If it’s not, you’ll need to choose another one. This can give you a chance to start over fresh with a whole new website.
When you’re looking to get a new domain, consider how you want to build your website. You can hire someone to custom-build a website for you. But if you want to save on costs, website builders like Wix and WordPress let you create a website without coding. Although both allow you to create websites yourself, we recommend WordPress if you want the option to grow and alter your website beyond what the available templates offer.
There are also AI builders to consider when creating a new website. For example, Bluehost’s AI Website Builder generates your website by giving a prompt and answering a few follow-up questions. A quick way to get back online, with hosting, a domain, and even human support included if needed.
If your website was popular in the past, you will probably have built up some domain authority. Meaning that people know your brand name and can have (positive) associations with it. So when you change your domain name, you’ll lose any domain authority you’ve gained previously.
Your old URLs will no longer work, and you’ll need to plan to migrate your content to your new domain. This can be a lot of work, so don’t underestimate it!
Are your CMS and plugins up to date?
The next thing you’ll want to check is whether your CMS is up to date. Depending on how old your site is, that could mean all kinds of things. As new possibilities arise in web development, a good CMS will adopt these and implement them for you (mostly) automatically. So it’s well worth updating your CMS as a first step! Make sure to back up your site and test the changes first, though.
The impact of out-of-date plugins really depends on which plugins you have installed. But whichever plugins you use, you should check these too. The same goes for themes; they can stop working if they’re too old or no longer supported. Online, the older your technology is, the more vulnerable it is to hacking, so make sure to update what you plan to use and remove unnecessary plugins.
Tip: If you’re using WordPress, go to the Site Health section, located under Tools > Site Health in the backend. This will give an overview of what needs to be done to get your website healthy again.
Check your robots.txt / indexing settings
Noindexing a page means you block search engines from indexing it and showing it in their search results. Some people prefer to noindex their site while they make big changes to it, to avoid leaving users with a bad impression. But you shouldn’t really play around with this unless you know what you’re doing. I would also not recommend doing this if you still get a decent amount of traffic to your site.
To noindex your site, you’ll need to update your robots.txt file. If you’re a Yoast SEO user, you can manage your indexing in yourconfigurationsettings without ever touching your robots.txt file. An easier way to update your site behind the scenes is by using the LightStart plugin.
Check your data privacy set up
If your site has been around for a few years, there’s a good chance your data privacy setup doesn’t meet modern standards. For instance, if your site uses cookies to track user behavior, it’s now a legal requirement to ask users for permission in most regions worldwide. Similarly, if you have user data stored on your site, you absolutely need to ensure it’s stored securely and used in a legally compliant way. If that data is old user data, the safest option is probably just to delete it all.
Check your content
Refresh your keyword research
When it comes to updating the content on your old website, refreshing your keyword research is a good place to start. The words people use in their search queries change over time, so the longer your content has been out of action, the more likely it is that you need to do this. When checking your keywords, you should see whether you’re still using the most suitable ones for your site and audience, and whether you can still compete for those rankings.
Also, you should take AI search into account when researching how to update your content. AI search is now an undeniable part of people’s online search behavior, whether it’s Google presenting users with an AI overview or people using AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini. So make sure to optimize for AI search as part of your SEO efforts.
Is the quality still good enough? Is there room to improve the content by applying the E-E-A-T principles?
Is your information still accurate and up to date? Are there new insights that you could add to the content?
Do the external and internal links still work? Do the meta description or SEO title need updating?
Take a look at each page, and be critical. What could be improved? Do you really need to keep each page? Will you need to rewrite the whole thing, or will some small adjustments be enough? It could take a while to get through all of your content. Make sure to start with your most important pages first.
Check your internal linking and site structure
Making sure your content is high-quality and well-optimized is only half the story. It needs to be findable too. By linking related pages, you make your content easier for your users to find. And on top of that, if you make sure your most important pages get the most internal links, it helps Google get a better idea of your site structure. As a result, those central pages (which we call cornerstone content) are likely to rank higher in search results!
Check the technical SEO
Mobile-friendly is essential
Most people are using their phones or other mobile devices to access the internet. As a result, Google switched to mobile-first indexing years ago. This means that if your site doesn’t work well on mobile, this can impact your overall visibility in search. Responsive site design and proper mobile usability testing are more of a requirement now than a nice extra. Make sure everything works, and that it looks good on all kinds of screen sizes. Don’t treat the desktop version of your website as the default.
Core Web Vitals and page experience
Back in the days of dial-up internet, you always had to wait patiently for pages to load. But that’s a thing of the past; pages that load quickly are a basic expectation nowadays. Loading quickly isn’t the only consideration, because your pages need to actually work well once they’ve loaded. Google has a ranking factor to measure things like this. So you need to make sure you’re meeting expectations for aspects such as:
Loading performance (how fast does stuff appear on the screen?)
Responsiveness (how fast does the page react to user input?)
Visual stability (does stuff move around on the screen while loading?)
The details behind these factors are quite technical, but it’s worth delving into these Core Web Vitals to make sure your technical SEO isn’t holding you back.
Check your media usage
Another thing that changes over time is the best practice for using images and videos on your site. Nowadays, most users expect high-quality images that load quickly, too. Make sure to optimize and properly tag them before mindlessly adding them to your page. When it comes to video, these can increase your visibility on platforms such as YouTube and social media. They also tell search agents that the content on your page is rich and valuable, so make sure to get going with a proper video strategy for your site and other platforms.
Accessibility
For most websites, accessibility is an afterthought. Which is a big shame, as this also means you’re missing out on a whole group of potential customers. Don’t just consider how you experience a website; also accommodate the needs of different types of visitors. Accessibility means making small adjustments and additions that let everyone enjoy your content. You don’t need to redesign everything; there are simple improvements you can make, such as adding alt text to your images.
Structured data
If you want to have the best-looking search results in Google, you’ll need to start adding structured data to your site. Structured data is a way of telling Google about the context or purpose of different types of content. You can label your news items as news, for example, and Google can identify that and add your content to its News section. Or you could label your products using structured data and have a chance of getting listed in Google’s Shopping results. Structured data helps AI search engines and chatbots better understand your site. There are loads of ways structured data can boost your content, so give it a try!
Start publishing and sharing
Check your robots.txt / indexing settings (again)
Give your indexing a final check and make sure the pages you want Google to index are crawlable. You can start by checking your robots.txt or your indexing settings. Google Search Console can be a great help at this point. Submit your sitemap. This will let Google know your site is ready for indexing again, and help it understand what’s changed. Search Console will flag any crawl errors, so you can easily check whether everything is set up correctly.
Start (re)publishing and sharing content
And now for the final step in updating your old site: start publishing content again! Publishing content regularly and sharing it on social media will help you to build awareness of your site. Plus, you might gain some new fans and followers! If your social media pages are outdated, give them a refresh to let people know your site is back and ready to welcome them!
Update your site’s SEO with Yoast
As you can see, there’s a lot to check when updating SEO and refreshing your old website. Once you’ve restored your site to its former glory, make sure you maintain it and your SEO. Otherwise, in a few years, you might be doing this all over again. Luckily, our Yoast SEO plugin can help you update and maintain your old site, too!
Refresh your website with Yoast SEO Premium
Get Yoast SEO Premium and get feedback on your content, access to our SEO training and helpful tools to clean up your site!
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More than two-thirds of SEOs (67.5 percent) say backlinks have a big impact on search rankings, and 59 percent expect that influence to grow.
The Neil Patel Backlink Checker now lives inside Ubersuggest, so your backlink analysis and the rest of your SEO research happen on one platform.
The Backlinks Overview report gives you a site’s domain authority, total backlinks, referring domains, and performance over time at a glance.
Backlink Opportunity lets you compare your profile against up to five competitors and identify specific sites worth pursuing for your own outreach.
Pair backlink data with the Traffic Overview and Top Pages reports to see which of your URLs earn the most links, then create more content in that direction.
How important are backlinks to your online business?
An overwhelming majority (85 percent) believe backlinks have a major influence on their brand authority, while 47.5 percent say building backlinks is every bit as important as content strategy. Additionally, 59 percent say they expect backlinks to have a greater impact in the future.
Plenty of other surveys demonstrate the importance of backlinks, which leads me to a question: Given how pivotal backlinks are to your online success, how do you view them, and how do you track your site’s performance?
Fortunately, the Neil Patel Backlink Checker is now part of Ubersuggest. It’s a top-notch backlink tool that helps you understand how to generate quality backlinks and analyze your site’s performance. It all lives within the platform you’re already using to conduct the rest of your SEO research.
Let’s walk through how the tool works and the best ways to use it for your business goals.
How Ubersuggest’s Backlinks Tool Works
When you first log in to Ubersuggest, look at the left-hand menu. You’ll see all features organized by category. Scroll down to the Link Building section, and click Backlink Overview.
Enter the domain whose backlinks you want to analyze, and then choose the type of report you want. There are two types of reports you can pull up:
URL: This report pulls backlink information only for that specific URL.
Domain: This report pulls all backlink information for that domain, including any subdomains. This option typically gives you the highest backlink count.
Hit Search, and Ubersuggest will get to work.
Once the search completes, you’ll see a backlinks report that shows you the Domain Authority and backlink profile at a glance. You’ll even be able to see the domain’s backlink performance over time.
This report quickly gives you a high-level overview of a site’s backlink performance. Here, you’ll see the number of backlinks you have, and you can analyze their Domain Authority.
As you scroll down, you’ll see a list of individual backlinks. This list shows the linking site’s Domain Authority and Spam Score, helping you instantly filter between good and bad links and spot broken backlink strategies.
You’ll even see the anchor text the linking site has used to link your content. This is a good way to gauge whether links are just random and spammy or actually provide searchers with helpful guidance.
Backlinks Overview alone provides a lot of data, but the Neil Patel Backlink Checker can do more. Dig into its link analysis capabilities, and you’ll see how deeper data and granular metrics enable more complex strategies.
Link Analysis From Your Backlinks Report In Ubersuggest
The list section of our backlinks report is where we can work from to do our more in-depth analysis. By default, our list of URLs shows one link per domain to make the report more useful. That way, if someone links to you 100 times, you’ll see the best link from that site.
If you want to see all 100 links coming from the same site, unclick the “one link per domain” button under the Advanced Filters tab.
If the URL or domain you just pulled up has a lot of backlinks, you’ll see thousands and thousands of links and can comb over each one during your analysis.
Here’s a deeper look at the data you’re provided for each link:
Source Page Title & URL: What is the title of the page linking to the URL/domain you looked up?
Target Page: This is where the link is pointing to. If you look up a URL, it will point to that specific URL. If you look up a domain, you can see where its link is pointing to on that domain.
Domain Authority: How authoritative is the linking site? The higher the number, the better.
Page Authority: How authoritative is the linking page? The higher the number, the better.
Spam Score: A Moz score that shows whether a link is spammy. The higher the percentage, the more likely the link is spam.
Anchor Text: Does the link contain any keywords? You can easily see this through the anchor text column.
First Seen: When did we first find this link?
Last Seen: When did we last crawl and find this link?
When you are looking for specific link opportunities, especially when doing competitor analysis in Ubersuggest, you may want to use the advanced filters to find the best link opportunities.
Here’s how the advanced filters work:
Search Box: In the box, you can type in any keyword or phrase, and it will pull any URLs, titles, or anchor text that contain any of those words. That way, you can find what you are looking for faster.
Zone: If you want to only include or exclude links with certain domain extensions, such as .net, .com, .com.br, .co.uk, etc., you can do so with zone filtering.
Referring Domain: If you want to include or exclude links coming from a specific domain, this is the filtering option you can use.
Anchor: If you want to find links by a specific anchor text, or exclude links with a specific anchor text, you can do so with this filtering option.
New/Lost Toggle: Filter links by whether they were newly gained or recently lost.
Link Type Toggle: Filter results to include all links, follow links, or nofollow links.
Finally, if you want to slice and dice the data in more advanced ways, you can always click the Export to CSV button and play around with the data if you’re a spreadsheet wizard.
Finding Backlink Opportunities With Ubersuggest
Once you take a look at your backlink profile in Ubersuggest, you can navigate to Backlink Opportunity on the left-hand menu to start shaping your strategy.
On this page, you enter your target domain and run a comparison report against up to five of your competitors.
As with the Overview report, you can toggle your search type between Domain and URL. The URL option searches for the exact URL and compares it against the exact URL of a particular competitor page. This helps take a closer look at a page’s performance against a competitor for the same keyword or topic.
Once you hit Search, you get a list of backlinks ranked highest to lowest by domain authority. You’ll also see the referring domain and which of your competitors they’re linking to.
You have the choice of viewing this report by Referring Domain or Backlink. Switching to the Backlink view gives you more granular insight into each link. It also reveals each backlink’s Page Authority score, helping you evaluate link quality and prioritize outreach to strong pages within strong domains.
Strategize Smarter by Analyzing Traffic
Under the Traffic Overview heading, you get organic keywords and monthly organic traffic, domain authority, and backlinks, including nofollow links.
Ubersuggest also has a Top Pages by Traffic feature.
You’ll notice that you can see how many visitors go to each URL, and if you click on View All under Est. Visits, you’ll see a list of keywords that are driving traffic to that URL.
If you click View All under backlinks, you will see all the URLs linking to that page.
Using this feature, you can see which types of pages link to your content. You can also see the anchor text they’re using and visit the page to get an idea of the topics being discussed around your brand.
That’ll give you an idea of which sites to target for backlinks. You can even use this data for general information on which business verticals find your content useful (in case you need to “backdoor” competitive search terms or topics).
FAQs
How many backlinks does my website have?
The exact number depends on your domain’s age, content, and outreach. Run your URL through Ubersuggest to see the number of backlinks and key backlink profile performance metrics in seconds.
How do I find backlinks to my website?
Use Ubersuggest or Google Search Console. Both pull your full backlink profile, including the anchor text and authority score, so you can see which links carry real weight.
How do I check the backlinks of my competitors?
Drop a competitor’s URL into Ubersuggest’s backlinks report. You’ll get a list of every site linking to them, which doubles as a target list for your own outreach.
How do I disavow backlinks?
If you find spammy or bad links pointing to your site, submit them to Google via the Disavow Tool. Use it sparingly, though, as removing legitimate links can tank your rankings.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed the full tour of the Neil Patel Backlink Checker. Now, Ubersuggest users can access it as one of the platform’s many features, making it so much easier to do all your backlink and other SEO research in one place.
You can look up as many domains and URLs as you want, whether you’re checking in on your site’s performance or tracking competitors with Ubersuggest.
Head over to Ubersuggest and start typing in domains and URLs. I put a lot of time, energy, and money into building this tool, so I hope you enjoy it and use it to see some real results in your business.
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Each month, we host the SEO update by Yoast covering the latest in search and AI. In this edition, Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss discussed Google’s evolving stance on AI-driven search, publisher controls in the UK, and how to navigate visibility in an era where traditional SEO tactics are being reconsidered.
Watch the full recap on YouTube to dive deeper into these topics, hear some examples, and hear the answer to audience questions.
Remembering Bruce Clay
In this month’s SEO Update, we honor Bruce Clay, who recently passed away. He was a pioneer in SEO whose work shaped the industry. His mentorship and leadership left a lasting impact on professionals worldwide.
Google warns against manipulating brand mentions for AI
Google issued a clear warning: stop manipulating brand mentions to game AI systems. This includes tactics such as paying for unrelated brand citations, think dog food brands mentioned on sports betting sites, to artificially inflate perceived authority.
Why it matters:
Google’s message is simple: if your brand mentions are irrelevant or forced, they won’t help your authority. Worse, they might backfire as AI systems get better at detecting manipulation. Focus on earning genuine mentions from relevant sources instead.
Actionable takeaway:
Avoid paid or spammy brand mentions.
Build authority through contextually relevant citations.
If your mentions feel unnatural, they probably are.
UK forces Google to give publishers control over AI use
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) struck a deal with Google, requiring the company to let publishers block their content from being used in AI features, without hurting their standard search rankings.
Why it matters:
Publishers can now opt out of AI training data, but there’s a catch. If you block Google’s AI from using your content, you might lose citations in AI overviews, even if you rank well in traditional search. Users will instead see synthesized answers from other sources.
Actionable takeaway:
If your content is truly unique and proprietary, blocking AI access might make sense, but only if you have a monetization strategy beyond search traffic.
For most sites, allowing AI access is better for visibility. Ensure your content is structured and crawlable so AI systems can cite you accurately.
If you block AI access, provide a teaser, like Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, to encourage clicks.
New AI visibility insights in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
Both Google and Bing rolled out new reporting features to help you understand how your content appears in AI-driven search.
Google Search Console grounding queries
Google now shows grounding queries, the specific searches where your content was cited by AI. This helps you see which topics are driving AI visibility.
Why it matters:
Grounding queries indicate that AI systems are using your content to generate answers. If you’re not seeing citations, your content might not be structured or visible enough for AI to reference.
Actionable takeaway:
Check Search Console weekly for grounding queries.
Focus on visible, structured content, so avoid hiding key info in accordions or tabs.
Use this data to refine your content strategy, so double down on what’s working or fix what’s not.
Bing Webmaster Tools: AI performance reports
Bing’s new reports include intents, topics, citation share, and performance comparisons for AI-driven search. This gives you a clearer picture of how your content performs in Bing’s AI experiences, like Copilot.
Why it matters:
Bing’s AI integrations, such as Copilot in Windows, reach millions of business users. Ignoring Bing means missing out on a growing segment of AI-driven traffic.
Actionable takeaway:
Set up Bing Webmaster Tools if you haven’t already.
Compare Bing’s data with Google’s to spot gaps or opportunities.
Use LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude to analyze exports from both tools for deeper insights.
Google’s new publisher profiles and business data integrations
Google introduced publisher profiles and enhanced business data integrations, giving creators and businesses more control over how their content appears in search.
Why it matters:
These tools help you fill out your knowledge graph, which improves visibility across Google’s ecosystem, including Gemini. Think of it as Google+ for publishers, but with a focus on entity authority rather than social networking.
Actionable takeaway:
Create or update your publisher profile in Google Search Console.
Ensure your Google Business Profile is complete and accurate.
Use structured data to connect entities such as authors, brands, and products to your content.
Google updates SEO guidance: Don’t blindly trust AI or SEO tools
Google’s latest guidance warns against blindly following AI-generated SEO advice or third-party tool recommendations. The example? An AI suggested changing “consultant” to “advisor” for a site, only for the site to start competing with financial advisors instead of its actual audience.
Why it matters:
AI and SEO tools can misinterpret context. Always verify recommendations before implementing them.
Actionable takeaway:
Trust but verify, so use AI and tools for ideas, but apply critical thinking.
Check multiple sources, so compare Google’s data with Bing’s, or use tools like Semrush/Ahrefs for cross-referencing.
Prioritize human judgment, because if a recommendation feels off, it probably is.
Schema.org released data showing that 95% of websites use only 12 of the 958 available schema types. Meanwhile, fewer than 1,000 sites use 485+ schema types.
Why it matters:
Schema helps search engines understand your content, but most sites aren’t leveraging its full potential. Using more schema types can improve visibility in AI-driven search and rich results.
Actionable takeaway:
Audit your current schema usage to identify any missed opportunities.
Explore less common schema types, like FAQPage, HowTo, or Event to stand out.
Use Yoast SEO’s schema blocks to simplify implementation.
German court rules Google liable for false AI overview claims
If Google’s AI cites false or harmful information about your business, you now have legal recourse in Germany. However, prevention is better than litigation.
Actionable takeaway:
Monitor AI overviews for inaccuracies about your brand.
Publish accurate, crawlable content to counteract misinformation.
If you find false claims, correct them at the source, such as on Reddit or in forums, and report them to Google.
Google’s open knowledge format: A new way to structure content
Google introduced the Open Knowledge Format (OKF), a way to catalog site content in markdown for AI consumption. This is part of Google’s push for structured, AI-friendly content.
Why it matters:
While Google’s search team advises against duplicate markdown versions of pages, the engineering team is building tools like OKF. This suggests structured content will play a bigger role in AI-driven search.
Actionable takeaway:
Wait and watch, as OKF is new, and adoption isn’t urgent yet.
Focus on structured content, like schema, clear headings, visible text.
Avoid gating critical information behind interactive elements, such as accordions and tabs.
Yoast news: Performance upgrades and new features
We rolled out performance improvements in versions 27.8 and 27.9, of Yoast SEO, including:
Faster admin pages and post editor for large sites.
Speed boosts for SEO analysis. For instance, a sitemap query on a 2M-page site dropped from 300 seconds to 25 milliseconds.
Yoast Duplicate Post plugin upgrades, including improved Rewrite and Republish functionality for easier content repurposing.
Sign up for the next SEO Update by Yoast
The next SEO Update by Yoast is on August 25, 2026, at 4:00 PM CET (10:00 AM EST). Sign up to join live!
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Google has released an update to the recipe results within AI Mode to make them more publisher-friendly. Google added the creator name, recipe ratings and number of ingredients to these AI Mode results for some recipes.
What is new. Robby Stein from Google said there are now “prominent links at the top of responses with useful details and images – like the creator name, recipe ratings and number of ingredients.” He added that this should make it “even easier to discover and visit recipe pages with AI Mode.”
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the treatment:
Previously. Robby Stein, back in March, also announced changes to the recipe results in AI Mode. Then he said, “We’ve heard feedback on recipe results in AI Mode, and we’re making updates to better connect people with recipe creators on the web.”
These changes are to help reduce the AI recipe slop that we see for a lot of these queries.
Why we care. Recipe bloggers, well, content creators in general, have not been happy with how traffic from Google’s AI experiences did not send as much traffic as the traditional search results. Here we see Google trying to make changes to encourage more searchers to click from those AI experiences to the bloggers website.
If Google can add more clickable link units to the AI experiences in search, that can help improve the publisher-Google relationship.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/google-ai-mode-recipe-update-scaled-ivt0zc.jpg?fit=2048%2C1189&ssl=111892048Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-06-30 17:02:472026-06-30 17:02:47Google makes recipes in AI Mode more publisher friendly
Google is updating the All Campaigns selector with a redesigned interface that makes it easier for advertisers to navigate large and complex account structures.
What’s happening. The new All Campaigns selector is rolling out across Google Ads, bringing a refreshed layout and improved navigation tools.
What’s new:
The selector has been moved to a new location in the interface.
Campaigns now appear in an expandable hierarchical view, making campaign groups and nested structures easier to browse.
A new search function lets advertisers quickly locate campaigns and campaign groups.
Why we care. The update could save time for advertisers managing large accounts by making it faster to navigate between campaigns, particularly in accounts with multiple campaign groups or complex organisational structures.
The bottom line. Google’s redesigned All Campaigns selector aims to streamline campaign management with a clearer hierarchy and built-in search, helping advertisers navigate complex accounts more efficiently.
First spotted. The update was identified by performance marketer Vivek Gupta on LinkedIn, and is rolling out gradually, so it may not yet be available in every Google Ads account.
