SEO

Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, reported record-breaking advertising revenue of $65.52 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, year on year. A 12.7% gain in search revenue was accompanied by a strong increase in revenue for YouTube ads by 15.5%. Google’s advertising network was slightly down 2.1%, however, this was an improvement on the 2.6%…

Microsoft reported its strongest financial quarter to date after becoming a $3 trillion company. Search and news advertising revenue increased 8% year on year, excluding traffic acquisition costs that Microsoft pays to publishers. However, despite the rise in search and news advertising revenue marks a slowdown in growth in comparison to the previous quarter’s 10% increase….

Best of the SearchBot showcases Search Engine Land’s SearchBot’s responses to prompts submitted by readers. The language model is based on content from Search Engine Land layered on top of ChatGPT. The editors of Search Engine Land selected this response for its usefulness and have supplemented it with additional relevant content. I am the first generative AI…

Click-through rate (CTR) is a cornerstone metric of PPC marketing.  Calculated as the percentage of people who click on an ad after seeing it, CTR is often treated as a key performance indicator (KPI), commanding disproportionate attention and optimization efforts. Google search interest in the topic of CTR far exceeds that of conversion rate (CVR),…

On-page optimization is a crucial part of any SEO strategy. It includes optimizations made directly to the elements of a webpage to improve rankings in search engines and provide a better user experience. While off-page techniques like link building also play a role, you have full control over on-page factors, making them the foundation of…

Effective SEO now requires a cross-channel, “search everywhere” strategy as search behaviors expand across platforms. Conducting a search universe analysis (SUA) across platforms like Google, YouTube, TikTok and Reddit is vital to benchmark competitors, identify trends, and optimize content. Brands that embrace an expanded search universe and execute integrated multi-platform strategies will gain a competitive…

Two sentences in a Google blog post seem to have convinced more than a few people in the search community that Google’s Search Generative Experience “isn’t going to happen.” Specifically, SGE won’t launch. It will never be more than an “experiment” in Labs or become part of the default Search experience for all (or the…

Spend on Google search ads in the U.S. rose by 17% year-on-year in the final quarter of 2023. Google click growth remained steady at 8% year-on-year, while cost-per-click accelerated to 9% during the same period, according to a the Tinuiti Digital Ads Benchmark Report. Why we care. The increase in Google search ad spend suggests…

Google’s John Mueller had a nice one-liner again on X; he said, “Nobody can guarantee you traffic, sorry.” This means you can’t say making X changes will result in Y traffic for sure. You can’t guarantee it he said. This was in response to an SEO saying his boss wants to know that if they…