Jul 8 2025
Why Google Ads Fails B2B (And How to Fix It)

This post was sponsored by Vehnta. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Why isn’t Google Ads working for my B2B marketing campaigns?

How do I improve lead quality in B2B Google Ads campaigns?

What’s the best way to scale Account-Based Marketing (ABM) using Google Ads?

The good news: Google Ads isn’t broken in B2B; it’s just being used wrong.

The platform works brilliantly for consumer brands because their strategies align with consumer behavior, but B2B operates in an entirely different universe with complex buying journeys involving multiple stakeholders.

This guide will help you modify Google Ads to perform better for B2B paid marketing campaigns.

Issue 1: AI Automation Optimizes For The Wrong B2B Objectives

Google’s AI-powered automation creates the biggest challenge for you at this time.

Why? The actions that signal customer engagement for Google Ads do not align with how B2B shoppers behave, leading to incorrect AI analysis of and actions taken on B2B ad success.

For example:

  • Performance Max campaigns optimize for volume conversions rather than quality opportunities, resulting in a doubling of lead volume while halving lead quality.
  • Google Smart Bidding tends to attract users who are likely to take lightweight actions, such as downloads or sign-ups; these actions are unlikely to result in qualified B2B buyers, leading to low-value conversions and wasted spend.

How To Fix Google Ad AI’s Misalignment For B2B PPC

Phase 1: Implement Strategic AI Controls

  1. Disable automatic audience expansion in Search campaigns to maintain targeting precision.
  2. Use Target ROAS instead of Target CPA, setting values based on actual customer lifetime value.
  3. Create separate campaigns for different buying stages with stage-appropriate conversion goals.
  4. Start Performance Max with limited budgets (20-30% of total spend) until optimization stabilizes.

Phase 2: Configure B2B-Specific Signals

  1. Upload customer lists with consistent firmographic data as audience signals.
  2. Set up similar audiences based on highest-value customers, not highest-converting leads.
  3. Monitor search terms weekly and add negatives aggressively.
  4. Use custom conversion goals weighted toward pipeline contribution, not form submissions.

The Easy Way

Vehnta accelerates campaign optimization, enabling precise targeting and performance tracking across your entire B2B account list.

With its Similarity feature and AI-powered Keyword & Ad Generator, you can create high-performing, B2B-optimized campaigns in minutes, avoiding wasted spend on low-value conversions.

Insights are available from day one, and campaigns can be optimized manually or with AI. Plus, with seamless Google Ads integration and automated multilingual message diversification at scale, Vehnta lets you go to market faster and more effectively.

What You Get

  • Faster launch cycles.
  • More qualified leads.
  • Better performance.
  • Scalable impact. without the usual manual overhead.

Campaigns are built on intelligent targeting and high-quality inputs, so optimization starts smart and improves from there.

The Result

  • Reduced wasted budget on low-value conversions like downloads or sign-ups.
  • Focused paid ad spend on high-intent, high-fit prospects.

Issue 2: Generic Targeting Wastes Budget On Wrong Audiences

Most B2B campaigns tend to target broad demographics rather than specific firmographics, resulting in wasted spend on prospects that are a poor fit.

Traditional metrics create a “metrics mirage” where campaigns focused on clicks draw unqualified leads instead of high-intent decision-makers.

Additionally, broad messaging often fails to resonate across diverse markets, whereas precise targeting is effective at scale.

One multinational retailer with 500+ locations across four countries cut costs by 60% and tripled engagement by implementing hyper-local, multilingual campaigns tailored to specific regions.

How To Fix PPC Ad Targeting Waste

Phase 1: Implement Firmographic Precision

Phase 2: Configure Account-Level Monitoring

  • Set up cross-domain tracking to monitor multiple touchpoints from the same organization.
  • Use UTM parameters with company identifiers to track organizational buying patterns.
  • Create audiences based on account-level engagement patterns.

The Easy Way

Vehnta’s Similarity engine leverages a 500M+ company database to identify prospects that match your best customers with surgical precision.

Simply:

  1. Insert one or more existing customers or your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) into the Similarity Engine.
  2. The Similarty Engine analyzes economic data, industry sectors, and semantic relevance to find similar companies.

This approach makes targeting 10x faster than manual audience research.

Additionally, it provides precision that extends far beyond basic lookalike audiences.

Then, the Search Terms feature provides full visibility into searches performed by your target audience, organized by company and location for actionable insights.

What You Get

  • A radically faster, more precise way to build high-value target lists.
  • Prospect lists that closely mirror your best customers, aligned to your ICP from day one.
  • Full visibility into the actual search behavior of those companies.

The Result

  • Smarter segmentation.
  • Faster activation.
  • Better-performing campaigns fueled by insight, not assumptions.

Issue 3: Marketing/Sales Alignment Problems

B2C metrics fail to capture the complexity of B2B interactions, resulting in a fundamental disconnect between marketing activities and sales outcomes.

Most B2B marketing teams operate under the myth that success requires high lead volumes, but this creates qualification bottlenecks since most B2B sales teams can effectively pursue only a few qualified opportunities simultaneously.

This quality-over-quantity approach delivers results: an enterprise SaaS provider targeting only $1B+ companies achieved 70% cost reduction and 3x engagement by focusing on ultra-precise targeting aligned with sales capacity.

Steps to Fix Marketing/Sales Misalignment

Align Campaigns with Sales Capacity

  • Calculate your sales team’s true capacity for working on qualified opportunities.
  • Set monthly lead generation goals that align with sales capacity, rather than arbitrary growth targets.
  • Develop lead scoring systems that qualify prospects before they reach the sales team.
  • Implement progressive profiling to gather firmographic information during conversion.

Optimize for Opportunity Quality

The Easy Way

Vehnta’s Insight Collection provides real-time business intelligence that automatically qualifies prospects, focusing on high-quality opportunities from pre-qualified target companies instead of generating hundreds of unqualified leads monthly.

The VisionSphere function provides a ranked list of companies most interested in your business, calculated by proprietary algorithms reflecting genuine buying interest.

What You Get

  • Consistently higher-quality pipeline, driven by real-time insight into which companies actually show buying intent.
  • Focused efforts on prospects that are already aligned with your offering.
  • A ranked view of interested accounts.
  • Clarity on where to prioritize and when to engage.
  • More efficient sales motions.
  • Stronger conversion rates.
  • Faster deal velocity.

All the intelligence you need, without the noise.

Issue 4: Scalability Of ABM Approaches

The challenge of scaling Account-Based Marketing through Google Ads lies in managing hundreds of target accounts while maintaining surgical precision.

Traditional ABM approaches require significant manual effort and dedicated specialists, making it difficult to achieve scale without compromising quality.

However, this complexity can be overcome: a global manufacturer targeting 4,000+ plant locations reduced spend from $160K to $40K while generating 2.5x more qualified leads through automated ABM systems.

How To Fix Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Scalability

Phase 1: Implement Automated Account Intelligence

  • Use advanced similarity algorithms to identify high-value prospects matching your best customers.
  • Automate audience research and list-building processes that typically consume weeks of specialist time.
  • Deploy AI-powered campaign creation that generates optimized targeting in minutes.
  • Set up automated monitoring across hundreds of target accounts without additional team members.

Phase 2 Create Scalable Precision Systems

  • Build campaigns that automatically diversify messaging across multiple languages.
  • Implement systems providing full visibility into search behavior across target companies.
  • Use proprietary algorithms to rank companies by genuine buying interest.
  • Deploy real-time optimization eliminating manual analysis while maintaining quality.

The Easy Way

Vehnta accelerates campaign execution through a truly scalable ABM approach, enabling accurate targeting and real-time performance tracking across your entire B2B account list.

Integrated AI Campaign Generation allows marketers to generate highly relevant, B2B-tailored campaigns in minutes, not days, while minimizing budget waste on low-intent traffic. From day one, teams gain access to actionable insights and can fine-tune performance manually or through automated optimization.

Thanks to seamless Google Ads integration and automated multilingual message diversification at scale, Vehnta eliminates the operational friction that often stalls ABM at the execution phase.

What you get: ABM that finally matches the speed and scale of your growth ambitions, without the typical overhead. Campaigns go live faster, reach the right accounts with precision, and continuously improve through data-driven optimization. Marketing teams save time, reduce costs, and drive more qualified pipeline, while maintaining control and strategic clarity. The complexity is gone; the impact remains.

The Strategic Transformation: From Volume to Value

The transformation from failing to succeeding with B2B Google Ads requires fundamentally rethinking how paid search fits into complex, multi-stakeholder B2B sales processes. Companies achieving breakthrough results abandon volume-based B2C tactics for precision-focused, account-based strategies that create budget efficiency and market dominance within targeted segments.

The competitive opportunity is significant: while competitors chase high-volume keywords and vanity metrics, strategic B2B marketers focus on qualified accounts and pipeline impact using advanced targeting intelligence and automated optimization systems.

Ready to transform your B2B Google Ads approach?

Discover how Vehnta works and achieve precision at scale—cut costs, improve targeting, and align every campaign with how your customers actually buy.

Book a demo: boost leads, cut costs.

Book A Demo

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Vehnta. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 24 2025
The Smart SEO Team’s Guide To Timing & Executing A Large-Scale Site Migration via @sejournal, @inmotionhosting

This post was sponsored by InMotion Hosting. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

We’ve all felt it, that sinking feeling in your stomach when your site starts crawling instead of sprinting.

Page speed reports start flashing red. Search Console is flooding your inbox with errors.

You know it’s time for better hosting, but here’s the thing: moving a large website without tanking your SEO is like trying to change tires while your car is still moving.

We’ve seen too many migrations go sideways, which is why we put together this guide.

Let’s walk through a migration plan that works. One that’ll future-proof your site without disrupting your rankings or overburdening your team.

Free Website Migration Checklist

Step 1: Set Your Performance Goals & Audit Your Environment

Establish Performance Benchmarks

Before you touch a single line of code, you need benchmarks. Think of these as your “before” pictures in a website makeover.

If you skip this step, you’ll regret it later. How will you know if your migration was successful if you don’t know where you started?

Gather your current page speed numbers, uptime percentages, and server response times. These will serve as proof that the migration was worth it.

Document Current Site Architecture

Next, let’s identify what’s working for your site and what’s holding it back. Keep a detailed record of your current setup, including your content management system (CMS), plugins, traffic patterns, and peak periods.

Large sites often have unusual, hidden connections that only reveal themselves at the worst possible moments during migrations. Trust us, documenting this now prevents those 2 AM panic attacks later.

Define Your Website Migration Goals

Let’s get specific about what success looks like. Saying “we want the site to be faster” is like saying “we want more leads.” It sounds great, but how do you measure it?

Aim for concrete targets, such as:

  • Load times under 2 seconds on key pages (we like to focus on product pages first).
  • 99.99% uptime guarantees (because every minute of downtime is money down the drain).
  • Server response times under 200ms.
  • 30% better crawl efficiency (so Google sees your content updates).

We recommend running tests with Google Lighthouse and GTmetrix at different times of day. You’d be surprised how performance can vary between your morning coffee and afternoon slump.

Your top money-making pages deserve special attention during migration, so keep tabs on those.

Step 2: Choose The Right Hosting Fit

Not all hosting options can handle the big leagues.

We’ve seen too many migrations fail because someone picked a hosting plan better suited for a personal blog than an enterprise website.

Match Your Needs To Solutions

Let’s break down what we’ve found works best.

Managed VPS is excellent for medium-sized sites. If you’re receiving 100,000 to 500,000 monthly visitors, this might be your sweet spot. You’ll have the control you need without the overkill.

Dedicated servers are what we recommend for the major players. If you’re handling millions of visitors or running complex applications, this is for you.

What we appreciate about dedicated resources is that they eliminate the “noisy neighbor” problem, where someone else’s traffic spike can tank your performance. Enterprise sites on dedicated servers load 40-60% faster and rarely experience those resource-related outages.

WordPress-optimized hosting is ideal if you’re running WordPress. These environments come pre-tuned with built-in caching and auto-updates. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

Understand The Must-Have Features Checklist

Let’s talk about what your web hosting will need for SEO success.

Free Website Migration Checklist

NVMe SSDs are non-negotiable these days. They’re about six times faster than regular storage for database work, and you’ll feel the difference immediately.

A good CDN is essential if you want visitors from different regions to have the same snappy experience. Server-level caching makes a huge difference, as it reduces processing work and speeds up repeat visits and search crawls.

Illustration showing how caching works on a websiteImage created by InMotion Hosting, June 2025

Staging environments aren’t optional for big migrations. They’re your safety net. Keep in mind that emergency fixes can cost significantly more than setting up staging beforehand.

And please ensure you have 24/7 migration support from actual humans. Not chatbots, real engineers who answer the phone when things go sideways at midnight.

Key Considerations for Growth

Think about where your site is headed, not just where it is now.

Are you launching in new markets? Planning a big PR push? Your hosting should handle growth without making you migrate again six months later.

One thing that often gets overlooked: redirect limits. Many platforms cap at 50,000-100,000 redirects, which sounds like a lot until you’re migrating a massive product catalog.

Step 3: Prep for Migration – The Critical Steps

Preparation separates smooth migrations from disasters. This phase makes or breaks your project.

Build Your Backup Strategy

First things first: backups, backups, backups. We’re talking complete copies of both files and databases.

Don’t dump everything into one giant folder labeled “Site Stuff.” Organizing backups by date and type. Include the entire file system, database exports, configuration files, SSL certificates, and everything else.

Here’s a common mistake we often see: not testing the restore process before migration day. A backup you can’t restore is wasted server space. Always conduct a test restore on a separate server to ensure everything works as expected.

Set Up the New Environment and Test in Staging

Your new hosting environment should closely mirror your production environment. Match PHP versions, database settings, security rules, everything. This isn’t the time to upgrade seven different things at once (we’ve seen that mistake before).

Run thorough pre-launch tests on staging. Check site speed on different page types. Pull out your phone and verify that the mobile display works.

Use Google’s testing tools to confirm that your structured data remains intact. The goal is no surprises on launch day.

Map Out DNS Cutover and Minimize TTL for a Quick Switch

DNS strategy might sound boring, but it can make or break your downtime window.

Here’s what works: reduce your TTL to at least 300 seconds (5 minutes) about 48 hours before migration. This makes DNS changes propagate quickly when you flip the switch.

Have all your DNS records prepared in advance: A records, CNAMEs for subdomains, MX records for email, and TXT records for verification. Keep a checklist and highlight the mission-critical ones that would cause panic if forgotten.

Freeze Non-Essential Site Updates Before Migration

This might be controversial, but we’re advocates for freezing all content and development changes for at least 48 hours before migration.

The last thing you need is someone publishing a new blog post right as you’re moving servers.

You can use this freeze time for team education. It’s a perfect moment to run workshops on technical SEO or explain how site speed affects rankings. Turn downtime into learning time.

Step 4: Go-Live Without the Guesswork

Migration day! This is where all your planning pays off, or where you realize what you forgot.

Launch Timing Is Everything

Choose your timing carefully. You should aim for when traffic is typically lowest.

For global sites, consider the “follow-the-sun” approach. This means migrating region by region during their lowest traffic hours. While it takes longer, it dramatically reduces risk.

Coordinate Your Teams

Clear communication is everything. Everyone should know exactly what they’re doing and when.

Define clear go/no-go decision points. Who makes the call if something looks off? What’s the threshold for rolling back vs. pushing through?

Having these conversations before you’re in the middle of a migration saves a ton of stress.

Live Performance Monitoring

Once you flip the switch, monitoring becomes your best friend. Here are the key items to monitor:

  • Watch site speed across different page types and locations.
  • Set up email alerts for crawl errors in Search Console.
  • Monitor 404 error rates and redirect performance.

Sudden spikes in 404 errors or drops in speed need immediate attention. They’re usually signs that something didn’t migrate correctly.

The faster you catch these issues, the less impact they’ll have on your rankings.

Post-Migration Validation

After launch, run through a systematic checklist:

  • Test redirect chains (we recommend Screaming Frog for this).
  • Make sure internal links work.
  • Verify your analytics tracking (you’d be surprised how often this breaks).
  • Check conversion tracking.
  • Validate SSL certificates.
  • Watch server logs for crawl issues.

One step people often forget: resubmitting your sitemap in Search Console as soon as possible. This helps Google discover your new setup faster.

Even with a perfect migration, most large sites take 3-6 months for complete re-indexing, so patience is key.

Step 5: Optimize, Tune, and Report: How To Increase Wins

The migration itself is just the beginning. Post-migration tuning is where the magic happens.

Fine-Tune Your Configuration

Now that you’re observing real traffic patterns, you can optimize your setup.

Start by enhancing caching rules based on actual user behavior. Adjust compression settings, and optimize those database queries that seemed fine during testing but are sluggish in production.

Handling redirects at the server level, rather than through plugins or CMS settings, is faster and reduces server load.

Automate Performance Monitoring

Set up alerts for issues before they become problems. We recommend monitoring:

  • Page speed drops by over 10%.
  • Uptime drops.
  • Changes in crawl rates.
  • Spikes in server resource usage.
  • Organic traffic drops by over 20%.

Automation saves you from constantly checking dashboards, allowing you to focus on improvements instead of firefighting.

Analyze for SEO Efficiency

Server logs tell you a lot about how well your migration went from an SEO perspective. Look for fewer crawl errors, faster Googlebot response times, and better crawl budget usage.

Improvements in crawl efficiency mean Google can discover and index your new content much faster.

Measure and Report Success

Compare your post-migration performance to those baseline metrics you wisely collected.

When showing results to executives, connect each improvement to business outcomes. For example:

  • “Faster pages reduced our bounce rate by 15%, which means more people are staying on the site.”
  • “Better uptime means we’re not losing sales during peak hours.”
  • “Improved crawl efficiency means our new products get indexed faster.”

Pro tip: Build easy-to-read dashboards that executives can access at any time. This helps build confidence and alleviate concerns.

Ready to Execute Your High-Performance Migration?

You don’t need more proof that hosting matters. Every slow page load and server hiccup already demonstrates it. What you need is a plan that safeguards your SEO investment while achieving tangible improvements.

This guide provides you with that playbook. You now know how to benchmark, choose the right solutions, and optimize for success.

This approach can be applied to sites of all sizes, ranging from emerging e-commerce stores to large enterprise platforms. The key lies in preparation and partnering with the right support team.

If you’re ready to take action, consider collaborating with a hosting provider that understands the complexities of large-scale migrations. Look for a team that manages substantial redirect volumes and builds infrastructure specifically for high-traffic websites. Your future rankings will thank you!

FREE CHECKLIST

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by InMotion Hosting. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Images by InMotion Hosting. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 17 2025
See What AI Sees: AI Mode Killed the Old SEO Playbook — Here’s the New One via @sejournal, @mktbrew

This post was sponsored by MarketBrew. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Is Google using AI to censor thousands of independent websites?

Wondering why your traffic has suddenly dropped, even though you’re doing SEO properly?

Between letters to the FTC describing a systematic dismantling of the open web by Google to SEO professionals who may be unaware that their strategies no longer make an impact, these changes represent a definite re-architecting of the web’s entire incentive structure.

It’s time to adapt.

While some were warning about AI passage retrieval and vector scoring, the industry largely stuck to legacy thinking. SEOs continued to focus on E-E-A-T, backlinks, and content refresh cycles, assuming that if they simply improved quality, recovery would come.

But the rules had changed.

Google’s Silent Pivot: From Keywords to Embedding Vectors

In late 2023 and early 2024, Google began rolling out what it now refers to as AI Mode.

What Is Google’s AI Mode?

AI Mode breaks content into passages, embeds those passages into a multi-dimensional vector space, and compares them directly to queries using cosine similarity.

In this new model, relevance is determined geometrically rather than lexically. Instead of ranking entire pages, Google evaluates individual passages. The most relevant passages are then surfaced in a ChatGPT-like interface, often without any need for users to click through to the source.

Beneath this visible change is a deeper shift: content scoring has become embedding-first.

What Are Embedding Vectors?

Embedding vectors are mathematical representations of meaning. When Google processes a passage of content, it converts that passage into a vector, a list of numbers that captures the semantic context of the text. These vectors exist in a multi-dimensional space where the distance between vectors reflects how similar the meanings are.

Instead of relying on exact keywords or matching phrases, Google compares the embedding vector of a search query to the embedding vectors of individual passages. This allows it to identify relevance based on deeper context, implied meaning, and overall intent.

Traditional SEO practices like keyword targeting and topical coverage do not carry the same weight in this system. A passage does not need to use specific words to be considered relevant. What matters is whether its vector lands close to the query vector in this semantic space.

How Are Embedding Vectors Different From Keywords?

Keywords focus on exact matches. Embedding vectors focus on meaning.

Traditional SEO relied on placing target terms throughout a page. But Google’s AI Mode now compares the semantic meaning of a query and a passage using embedding vectors. A passage can rank well even if it doesn’t use the same words, as long as its meaning aligns closely with the query.

This shift has made many SEO strategies outdated. Pages may be well-written and keyword-rich, yet still underperform if their embedded meaning doesn’t match search intent.

What SEO Got Wrong & What Comes Next

The story isn’t just about Google changing the game, it’s also about how the SEO industry failed to notice the rules had already shifted.

Don’t: Misread the Signals

As rankings dropped, many teams assumed they’d been hit by a quality update or core algorithm tweak. They doubled down on familiar tactics: improving E-E-A-T signals, updating titles, and refreshing content. They pruned thin pages, boosted internal links, and ran audits.

But these efforts were based on outdated models. They treated the symptom, visibility loss, not the cause: semantic drift.

Semantic drift happens when your content’s vector no longer aligns with the evolving vector of search intent. It’s invisible to traditional SEO tools because it occurs in latent space, not your HTML.

No amount of backlinks or content tweaks can fix that.

This wasn’t just platform abuse. It was also a strategic oversight.

SEO teams:

Many believed that doing what Google said, improving helpfulness, pruning content, and writing for humans, would be enough.

That promise collapsed under AI scrutiny.

But we’re not powerless.

Don’t: Fall Into The Trap of Compliance

Google told the industry to “focus on helpful content,” and SEOs listened, through a lexical lens. They optimized for tone, readability, and FAQs.

But “helpfulness” was being determined mathematically by whether your vectors aligned with the AI’s interpretation of the query.

Thousands of reworked sites still dropped in visibility. Why? Because while polishing copy, they never asked: Does this content geometrically align with search intent?

Do: Optimize For Data, Not Keywords

The new SEO playbook begins with a simple truth: you are optimizing for math, not words.

The New SEO Playbook: How To Optimize For AI-Powered SERPs

Here’s what we now know:

  1. AI Mode is real and measurable.
    ✅You can calculate embedding similarity.
    ✅You can test passages against queries.
    ✅You can visualize how Google ranks.
  2. Content must align semantically, not just topically.
    ✅Two pages about “best hiking trails” may be lexically similar, but if one focuses on family hikes and the other on extreme terrain, their vectors diverge.
  3. Authority still matters, but only after similarity.
    ✅The AI Mode fan-out selects relevant passages first. Authority reranking comes later.
    ✅If you don’t pass the similarity threshold, your authority won’t matter.
  4. Passage-level optimization is the new frontier.
    ✅Optimizing entire pages isn’t enough. Each chunk of content must pull semantic weight.

How Do I Track Google AI Mode Data To Improve SERP Visibility?

It depends on your goals; for success in SERPs, you need to focus on tools that not only show you visibility data, but also how to get there.

Profound was one of the first tools to measure whether content appeared inside large language models, essentially offering a visibility check for LLM inclusion. It gave SEOs early signals that AI systems were beginning to treat search results differently, sometimes surfacing pages that never ranked traditionally. Profound made it clear: LLMs were not relying on the same scoring systems that SEOs had spent decades trying to influence.

But Profound stopped short of offering explanations. It told you if your content was chosen, but not why. It didn’t simulate the algorithmic behavior of AI Mode or reveal what changes would lead to better inclusion.

That’s where simulation-based platforms came in.

Market Brew approached the challenge differently. Instead of auditing what was visible inside an AI system, they reconstructed the inner logic of those systems, building search engine models that mirrored Google’s evolution toward embeddings and vector-based scoring. These platforms didn’t just observe the effects of AI Mode, they recreated its mechanisms.

As early as 2023, Market Brew had already implemented:

  • Passage segmentation that divides page content into consistent ~700-character blocks.
  • Embedding generation using Sentence-BERT to capture the semantic fingerprint of each passage.
  • Cosine similarity calculations to simulate how queries match specific blocks of content, not just the page as a whole.
  • Thematic clustering algorithms, like Top Cluster Similarity, to determine which groupings of passages best aligned with a search intent.

🔍 Market Brew Tutorial: Mastering the Top Cluster Similarity Ranking Factor | First Principles SEO

This meant users could test a set of prompts against their content and watch the algorithm think, block by block, similarity score by score.

Where Profound offered visibility, Market Brew offered agency.

Instead of asking “Did I show up in an AI overview?”, simulation tools helped SEOs ask, “Why didn’t I?” and more importantly, “What can I change to improve my chances?”

By visualizing AI Mode behavior before Google ever acknowledged it publicly, these platforms gave early adopters a critical edge. The SEOs using them didn’t wait for traffic to drop before acting, they were already optimizing for vector alignment and semantic coverage long before most of the industry knew it mattered.

And in an era where rankings hinge on how well your embeddings match a user’s intent, that head start has made all the difference.

Visualize AI Mode Coverage. For Free.

SEO didn’t die. It transformed, from art into applied geometry.

AI Mode Visualizer Tutorial

To help SEOs adapt to this AI-driven landscape, Market Brew has just announced the AI Mode Visualizer, a free tool that simulates how Google’s AI Overviews evaluate your content:

  • Enter a page URL.
  • Input up to 10 search prompts or generate them automatically from a single master query using LLM-style prompt expansion.
  • See a cosine similarity matrix showing how each content chunk (700 characters) for your page aligns with each intent.
  • Click any score to view exactly which passage matched, and why.

🔗 Try the AI Mode Visualizer

This is the only tool that lets you watch AI Mode think.

Two Truths, One Future

Nate Hake is right: Google restructured the game. The data reflects an industry still catching up to the new playbook.

Because two things can be true:

  • Google may be clearing space for its own services, ad products, and AI monopolies.
  • And many SEOs are still chasing ghosts in a world governed by geometry.

It’s time to move beyond guesses.

If AI Mode is the new architecture of search, we need tools that expose how it works, not just theories about what changed.

We were bringing you this story back in early 2024, before AI Overviews had a name, explaining how embeddings and vector scoring would reshape SEO.

Tools like the AI Mode Visualizer offer a rare chance to see behind the curtain.

Use it. Test your assumptions. Map the space between your content and modern relevance.

Search didn’t end.

But the way forward demands new eyes.

Book Your AI Mode Strategy Session

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by MarketBrew. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 12 2025
Your Next Time Saver: How To Use AI To Save Time On Hosting Maintenance, Agency Edition via @sejournal, @Hanrahan7

This post was sponsored by Cloudways. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Have you ever woken up to a 3 AM client website panic?

Did your client’s ecommerce site crash during a flash sale?

Has another client asked why their site is slow, “even though we’re paying for premium hosting.”

This isn’t just an occasional nuisance.

If you’re managing multiple client sites, hosting maintenance becomes a full-on job in itself. The worst part? None of this time is billable, and every minute spent troubleshooting is a minute you’re not spending on business growth.

Here’s the truth: The way you handle hosting maintenance may be broken. And it’s costing you far more than you realize, in time, money, and missed opportunities.

In this article, we’ll explore:

Ways You’re Accidentally Draining Agency Revenue

You and your agency may lose countless hours to hosting maintenance without realizing the true cost.

Behind every “quick fix” lies a hidden drain on productivity and profits.

Are You Doing This?

A frantic client message or monitoring alert, often hours after the problem started. Then:

  • Developers scramble to check logs and test configurations.
  • The team disables plugins one by one as a diagnostic method.
  • Someone finally contacts hosting support after internal efforts fail.
  • The issue gets resolved (often) after hours of back-and-forth.

The financial impact is staggering when you do the math.

Consider an agency managing just 30 websites.

If each site experiences only 2 hosting incidents per month requiring 3 hours to resolve, that’s 180 hours annually.

This is nearly an entire month’s worth of lost productivity.

  • Average resolution time: 3.5 hours per incident.
  • For an agency with 50 client sites, 4,200 hours/year lost.
  • At a $150/hour billable rate → $630,000 potential revenue wasted.

Beyond direct costs, this broken system creates three major problems:

  1. Team burnout – Constant firefighting demoralizes developers
  2. Client distrust – Repeated issues make your agency look incompetent
  3. Growth stagnation – Leadership spends time troubleshooting instead of scaling

Each downtime incident plants seeds of doubt about your agency’s technical competence. After just a few occurrences, clients start questioning why they’re paying premium rates for what feels like unreliable service. This erosion of confidence makes contract renewals harder and opens the door for competitors.

How To Solve Client Website Hosting Issues

Most agencies cycle through the same ineffective solutions, each with significant drawbacks:

Don’t: Only Take The Staffing Approach

The most common solution is hiring dedicated infrastructure staff. Many agencies believe bringing a systems admin or DevOps engineer on board will solve their hosting woes. While this provides more control, it creates new problems. You’re now responsible for recruiting, managing, and covering the cost of specialized technical talent.

  • $85k+ annual salary for each infrastructure specialist.
  • Ongoing management overhead for technical staff.
  • Limited availability for after-hours emergencies.
  • Still requires hosting provider support for complex issues.

Don’t: Just Take The Managed Hosting Solution

Many agencies turn to managed hosting providers to alleviate their maintenance burden.

Technically adept teams can absolutely handle straightforward server-level maintenance, security patches, and core updates; however, most still require some additional support when faced with:

  • Application-specific troubleshooting (plugin conflicts, theme issues).
  • Custom performance optimization.
  • Specialized configurations.

The key difference lies in how managed hosting providers address these residual needs. Traditional hosting providers might still leave you waiting in support queues, while next-gen platforms automatically begin repairs.

Don’t: Simply Use Website Uptime Monitoring Tools

You may think about attempting to solve the problem through monitoring tools.

Website monitoring tools layer on services like New Relic, Datadog, and UptimeRobot, hoping the better visibility will reduce firefighting.

While these tools provide valuable data, they primarily generate more alerts for your team to interpret and take action on. You’ve essentially traded one problem for another – instead of lacking information, you’re now drowning in it.

  • Alert overload from multiple systems.
  • False positives that waste investigation time.
  • No actionable insights – just more data to interpret.
  • Still requires manual diagnosis and resolution.

Do: Incorporate AI-Powered Hosting Maintenance

Imagine, instead of the chaotic process, you:

  1. Know about issues before clients did.
  2. Understand exactly what went wrong, in plain English.
  3. Get step-by-step instructions to fix it immediately.

Copilots that can do these tasks are your first step towards using and creating a self-learning, auto-healing hosting platform.

They can use intelligent monitoring to detect and help resolve the most common and critical server issues.

Hosting Maintenance: Before & After AI Integration

The Old Way:

  • Client reports site is down (30+ minutes after it actually went down).
  • You spend an hour checking logs and plugins.
  • You contact support and wait 2 hours for a response.
  • Support suggests a fix that may or may not work.
  • Total downtime: 4+ hours.

With Cloudways Copilot:

  • Copilot detects the issue immediately (often before users notice).
  • You receive an alert with exact cause and fix.
  • You implement the solution in minutes.
  • Total downtime: Dramatically reduced resolution time compared to traditional troubleshooting.

How To Get Automatic Hosting & Site Alerts, Repairs & Updates

You can configure Cloudways Copilot to manage many facets of web hosting.

Host Health

Triggers when your entire server goes down, typically from:

Webstack Health

  • Alerts when core services fail (Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PHP-FPM).
  • Catches crashes before they take sites offline.
  • Identifies resource exhaustion issues.

Disk & Inode Health

Warns before you hit critical limits:

  • Disk space (95%+ utilization).
  • Inode usage (separate from storage space).

Result: Instant problem detection!

Copilot continuously monitors your servers and applications for:

  • Performance bottlenecks.
  • Security threats.
  • Resource constraints.
  • Configuration errors.

Unlike traditional monitoring tools that just tell you “something’s wrong,” Copilot identifies the specific issue.

What AI Reports Look Like For Website Maintenance

For each problem detected, Copilot provides:

  1. What happened: The specific error or issue
  2. Where it occurred: Which site, which server
  3. Why it happened: The root cause analysis
  4. How to fix it: Step-by-step resolution instructions

Real-World Example

Instead of just “High CPU Usage” alert, Copilot tells you:

“Your WordPress site on Server X is experiencing high CPU due to a poorly optimized WooCommerce query in Plugin Y. Disable the plugin or contact the developer for an update.”

To be more specific, the example below shows Copilot detecting a DDOS attack, listing malicious IPs, and identifying the file that is being attacked. It then provides remediation steps to prevent the DDOS attack.

Investigation Summary

The investigation shows that much of the server load is driven by multiple concurrent Magento cron tasks and frequent POST requests to the xmlrpc.php endpoint. These factors have caused high CPU usage and intermittent HTTP 500 errors. It appears that the repeated bot visits to xmlrpc.php and resource-intensive Magento cron jobs are the likely cause of the problem.

Remediation Steps

To mitigate the issues related to the potential DDoS attack and improve server performance, please follow these steps:

  1. Block Offending IPs: Use the `.htaccess` file to block the specific IP addresses that are contributing to the abuse. Add the following lines to your .htaccess file:
    1. deny from 66.249.75.34
    2. deny from 114.119.136.249
    3. deny from 182.43.65.168
  2. Implement Cloudflare: If you haven’t already, consider setting up Cloudflare for your application. This will enhance your website’s security and help mitigate DDoS attacks by filtering malicious traffic before it reaches your server. Follow the integration steps provided by Cloudways to set up CNAME records.
  3. Enable Under Attack Mode: Once Cloudflare is set up, enable Under Attack Mode, which performs an extra security check for every visitor and helps protect your site from ongoing DDoS attacks, especially targeting specific URLs like /xmlrpc.php.

By taking these actions, you can significantly reduce the strain on your server and improve its performance.”,

Support links:

https://support.cloudways.com/en/articles/6009152-how-to-integrate-cloudflare-with-your-application

https://support.cloudways.com/en/articles/5120765-how-to-monitor-system-processes-using-htop-command

This is how Cloudways Copilot uses AI to identify hosting and server issues by comparing them to similar cases across the fleet, quickly suggesting the most effective remediation solutions with step-by-step instructions. This saves you time by providing immediate solutions without the need for manual detection, troubleshooting, or back-and-forth support tickets, preventing disappointment for your clients.

Image create by Cloudways, April 2025

At the end of the day, hosting headaches shouldn’t waste your agency’s most valuable resource: time. Every minute spent troubleshooting is a minute taken away from client work, business growth, or simply having a life outside of server emergencies.

Cloudways Copilot tackles this problem at its root by:

  • Detecting issues before clients notice.
  • Pinpointing exactly what broke and why.
  • Showing where problems occurred (specific apps/servers).
  • Providing step-by-step fixes in plain language.
  • Cutting resolution time from hours to minutes.

What’s coming next makes Cloudways Copilot even better:

  • One-click fixes – Resolve common errors automatically with a single click
  • Automated resolutions – Let Copilot handle routine tasks like server-wide cache purges and backup management
  • Developer workflows – Automate performance monitoring and testing to free up your team

Best of all? During our early access period, Cloudways Copilot is completely free. We’re currently onboarding users through our limited-access program – visit the Cloudways Copilot page and submit your details to secure your spot.

SECURE MY SPOT

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Cloudways. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Images by Cloudways. Used with permission.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 4 2025
How To Host Or Migrate A Website In 2025: Factors That May Break Rankings [+ Checklist] via @sejournal, @inmotionhosting

This post was sponsored by InMotion Hosting. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Is your website struggling to maintain visibility in search results despite your SEO efforts?

Are your Core Web Vitals scores inconsistent, no matter how many optimizations you implement?

Have you noticed competitors outranking you even when your content seems superior?

In 2025, hosting isn’t just a backend choice. It’s a ranking signal.

In this guide, you’ll learn how hosting decisions impact your ability to rank, and how to choose (or migrate to) hosting that helps your visibility.

Learn to work with your rankings, not against them, with insights from InMotion Hosting’s enterprise SEO specialists.

Jump Straight To Your Needs

Best For Hosting Type How Easy is Migration?
Growing SMBs VPS Easy: Launch Assist (free)
Enterprise / SaaS Dedicated Very Easy: White-Glove + Managed Service

Don’t know which one you need? Read on.

Hosting Directly Impacts SEO Performance

Your hosting environment is the foundation of your SEO efforts. Poor hosting can undermine even the best content and keyword strategies.

Key Areas That Hosting Impacts

Core Web Vitals

Server response time directly affects Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Input Delay (FID), two critical ranking factors.

Solution: Hosting with NVMe storage and sufficient RAM improves these metrics.

Crawl Budget

Your website’s visibility to search engines can be affected by limited server resources, wrong settings, and firewalls that restrict access.

When search engines encounter these issues, they index fewer pages and visit your site less often.

Solution: Upgrade to a hosting provider that’s built for SEO performance and consistent uptime.

Indexation Success

Proper .htaccess rules for redirects, error handling, and DNS configurations are essential for search engines to index your content effectively.

Many hosting providers limit your ability to change this important file, restricting you from:

– Editing your .htaccess file.

– Installing certain SEO or security plugins.

– Adjusting server settings.

These restrictions can hurt your site’s ability to be indexed and affect your overall SEO performance.

Solution: VPS and dedicated hosting solutions give you full access to these settings.

SERP Stability During Traffic Spikes

If your content goes viral or experiences a temporary surge in traffic, poor hosting can cause your site to crash or slow down significantly. This can lead to drops in your rankings if not addressed right away.

Solution: Using advanced caching mechanisms can help prevent these problems.

Server Security

Google warns users about sites with security issues in Search Console. Warnings like “Social Engineering Detected” can erode user trust and hurt your rankings.

Solution: Web Application Firewalls offer important protection against security threats.

Server Location

The location of your server affects how fast your site loads for different users, which can influence your rankings.

Solution: Find a web host that operates data centers in multiple server locations, such as two in the United States, one in Amsterdam, and, soon, one in Singapore. This helps reduce loading times for users worldwide.

Load Times

Faster-loading pages lead to lower bounce rates, which can improve your SEO. [Server-side optimizations], such as caching and compression, are vital for achieving fast load times.

These factors have always been important, but they are even more critical now that AI plays a role in search engine results.

40 Times Faster Page Speeds with Top Scoring Core Web Vitals with InMotion Hosting UltraStack One. (Source: InMotion Hosting UltraStack One for WordPress )Image created by InMotion Hosting, 2025.

2025 Update: Search Engines Are Prioritizing Hosting & Technical Performance More Than Ever

In 2025, search engines have fully embraced AI-driven results, and with this shift has come an increased emphasis on technical performance signals that only proper hosting can deliver.

How 2025 AI Overview SERPs Affect Your Website’s Technical SEO

Google is doubling down on performance signals. Its systems now place even greater weight on:

  • Uptime: Sites with frequent server errors due to outages experience more ranking fluctuations than in previous years. 99.99% uptime guarantees are now essential.
  • Server-Side Rendering: As JavaScript frameworks become more prevalent, servers that efficiently handle rendering deliver a better user experience and improved Core Web Vitals scores. Server-optimized JS rendering can make a difference.
  • Trust Scores: Servers free of malware with healthy dedicated IP addresses isolated to just your site (rather than shared with potentially malicious sites) receive better crawling and indexing treatment. InMotion Hosting’s security-first approach helps maintain these crucial trust signals.
  • Content Freshness: Server E-Tags and caching policies affect how quickly Google recognizes and indexes new or updated content.
  • TTFB (Time To First Byte): Server location, network stability, and input/output speeds all impact TTFB. Servers equipped with NVMe storage technology excel at I/O speeds, delivering faster data retrieval and improved SERP performance.
Infographic Illustrating How Browser Caching Works (Source: Ultimate Guide to Optimize WordPress Performance )Created by InMotion Hosting. May, 2025

Modern search engines utilize AI models that prioritize sites that deliver consistent, reliable, and fast data. This shift means hosting that can render pages quickly is no longer optional for competitive rankings.

What You Can Do About It (Even If You’re Not Into Technical SEO)

You don’t need to be a server administrator to improve your website’s performance. Here’s what you can do.

1. Choose Faster Hosting

Upgrade from shared hosting to VPS or dedicated hosting with NVMe storage. InMotion Hosting’s plans are specifically designed to boost SEO performance.

2. Use Monitoring Tools

Free tools like UptimeRobot.com, WordPress plugins, or cPanel’s resource monitoring can alert you to performance issues before they affect your rankings.

3. Implement Server-Side Caching

Set up caching with Redis or Memcached using WordPress plugins like W3 Total Cache, or through cPanel.

4. Add a CDN

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can enhance global performance without needing server changes. InMotion Hosting makes CDN integration easy.

5. Utilize WordPress Plugins

Use LLMS.txt files to help AI tools crawl your site more effectively.

6. Work with Hosting Providers Who Understand SEO

InMotion Hosting offers managed service packages for thorough server optimization, tailored for optimal SEO performance.

Small Business: VPS Hosting Is Ideal for Reliable Performance on a Budget

VPS hosting is every growing business’s secret SEO weapon.

Imagine two competing local service businesses, both with similar content and backlink profiles, but one uses shared hosting while the other uses a VPS.

When customers search for services, the VPS-hosted site consistently appears higher in results because it loads faster and delivers a smoother user experience.

What Counts as an SMB

Small to medium-sized businesses typically have fewer than 500 employees, annual revenue under $100 million, and websites that receive up to 50,000 monthly visitors.

If your business falls into this category, VPS hosting offers the ideal balance of performance and cost.

What You Get With VPS Hosting

1. Fast Speeds with Less Competition

VPS hosting gives your website dedicated resources, unlike shared hosting where many sites compete for the same resources. InMotion Hosting’s VPS solutions ensure your site runs smoothly with optimal resource allocation.

2. More Control Over SEO

With VPS hosting, you can easily set up caching, SSL, and security features that affect SEO. Full root access enables you to have complete control over your server environment.

3. Affordable for Small Businesses Focused on SEO

VPS hosting provides high-quality performance at a lower cost than dedicated servers, making it a great option for growing businesses.

4. Reliable Uptime

InMotion Hosting’s VPS platform guarantees 99.99% uptime through triple replication across multiple nodes. If one node fails, two copies of your site will keep it running.

5. Better Performance for Core Web Vitals

Dedicated CPU cores and RAM lead to faster loading times and improved Core Web Vitals scores. You can monitor server resources to keep track of performance.

6. Faster Connections

Direct links to major internet networks improve TTFB (Time To First Byte), an important SEO measure.

7. Strong Security Tools

InMotion Hosting provides security measures to protect your site against potential threats that could harm it and negatively impact your search rankings. Their malware prevention systems keep your site safe.

How To Set Up VPS Hosting For Your SEO-Friendly Website

  1. Assess your website’s current performance using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Search Console
  2. Choose a VPS plan that matches your traffic volume and resource needs
  3. Work with your provider’s migration team to transfer your site (InMotion Hosting offers Launch Assist for seamless transitions)
  4. Implement server-level caching for optimal performance
  5. Configure your SSL certificate to ensure secure connections
  6. Set up performance monitoring to track improvements
  7. Update DNS settings to point to your new server

Large & Enterprise Businesses: Dedicated Hosting Is Perfect For Scaling SEO

What Counts As An Enterprise Business?

Enterprise businesses typically have complex websites with over 1,000 pages, receive more than 100,000 monthly visitors, operate multiple domains or subdomains, or run resource-intensive applications that serve many concurrent users.

Benefits of Dedicated Hosting

Control Over Server Settings

Dedicated hosting provides you with full control over how your server is configured. This is important for enterprise SEO, which often needs specific settings to work well.

Better Crawlability for Large Websites

More server resources allow search engines to crawl more pages quickly. This helps ensure your content gets indexed on time. Advanced server logs provide insights to help you improve crawl patterns.

Reliable Uptime for Global Users

Enterprise websites need to stay online. Dedicated hosting offers reliable service that meets the expectations of users around the world.

Strong Processing Power for Crawlers

Dedicated CPU resources provide the power needed to handle spikes from search engine crawlers when they index your site. InMotion Hosting uses the latest Intel Xeon processors for better performance.

Multiple Dedicated IP Addresses

Having multiple dedicated IP addresses is important for businesses and SaaS platforms that offer API microservices. IP management tools make it easier to manage these addresses.

Custom Security Controls

You can create specific firewall rules and access lists to manage traffic and protect against bots. DDoS protection systems enhance your security.

Real-Time Server Logs

You can watch for crawl surges and performance issues as they happen with detailed server logs. Log analysis tools help you find opportunities to improve.

Load Balancing for Traffic Management

Load balancing helps spread traffic evenly across resources. This way, you can handle increases in traffic without slowing down performance. InMotion Hosting provides strong load balancing solutions.

Future Scalability

You can use multiple servers and networks to manage traffic and resources as your business grows. Scalable infrastructure planning keeps your performance ready for the future.

Fixed Pricing Plans

You can manage costs effectively as you grow with predictable pricing plans.

How To Migrate To Dedicated Hosting

  1. Conduct a thorough site audit to identify all content and technical requirements.
  2. Document your current configuration, including plugins, settings, and custom code.
  3. Work with InMotion Hosting’s migration specialists to plan the transition
  4. Set up a staging environment to test the new configuration before going live
  5. Configure server settings for optimal SEO performance
  6. Implement monitoring tools to track key metrics during and after migration
  7. Create a detailed redirect map for any URL changes
  8. Roll out the migration during low-traffic periods to minimize impact
  9. Verify indexing status in Google Search Console post-migration

[DOWNLOAD] Website Migration Checklist

Free Website Migration Checklist download from InMotion Hosting – step-by-step guide to smoothly transfer your websiteImage created by InMotion Hosting, May 2025

    Why Shared Hosting Can Kill Your SERP Rankings & Core Web Vitals

    If you’re serious about SEO in 2025, shared hosting is a risk that doesn’t come with rewards.

    Shared Hosting Issues & Risks

    Capped Resource Environments

    Shared hosting plans typically impose strict limits on CPU usage, memory, and connections. These limitations directly impact Core Web Vitals scores and can lead to temporary site suspensions during traffic spikes.

    Resource Competition

    Every website on a shared server competes for the same limited resources.

    This becomes even more problematic with AI bots accessing hundreds of sites simultaneously on a single server.

    Neighbor Problems

    A resource-intensive website on your shared server can degrade performance for all sites, including yours. Isolated hosting environments eliminate this risk.

    Collateral Damage During Outages

    When a shared server becomes overwhelmed, not only does your website go down, but so do connected services like domains and email accounts. InMotion Hosting’s VPS and dedicated solutions provide isolation from these cascading failures.

    Limited Access to Server Logs

    Without detailed server logs, diagnosing and resolving technical SEO issues becomes nearly impossible. Advanced log analysis is essential for optimization.

    Restricted Configuration Access

    Shared hosting typically prevents modifications to server-level configurations that are essential for optimizing technical SEO.

    Inability to Adapt Quickly

    Shared environments limit your ability to implement emerging SEO techniques, particularly those designed to effectively handle AI crawlers. Server-level customization is increasingly important for SEO success.

    In 2025, Reliable Hosting Is a Competitive Advantage

    As search engines place greater emphasis on technical performance, your hosting choice is no longer just an IT decision; it’s a strategic marketing investment.

    InMotion Hosting’s VPS and Dedicated Server solutions are engineered specifically to address the technical SEO challenges of 2025 and beyond. With NVMe-powered storage, optimized server configurations, and 24/7 expert human support, we provide the foundation your site needs to achieve and maintain top rankings.

    Ready to turn your hosting into an SEO advantage? Learn more about our SEO-first hosting solutions designed for performance and scale.

    LEARN MORE

    Image Credits

    Featured Image: Image by Shutterstock. Used with permission.

    In-Post Image: Images by InMotion Hosting. Used with permission.

    Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
    May 13 2025
    How To Increase Google Discover Visibility Naturally Using These Ranking Signals via @sejournal, @rollerads

    This post was sponsored by RollerAds. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

    Want more visibility in Google Discover?

    Not sure how to get into Google’s personalized news feeds?

    Discover isn’t like search. You don’t rank for keywords.

    You get selected.

    And that means the best way to get featured isn’t to optimize for keywords; it’s to optimize for specific algorithmic signals.

    In this guide, we’ll cover the core ranking signals that help Google determine which content belongs in Discover feeds, and how you can naturally boost those signals using tools like push notifications.

    Google Discover Optimization Tips: Which Signals Tell Google Your Content Belongs in Discover?

    Google Discover uses a different algorithm from traditional search results.

    While it still considers many of the same quality indicators, Discover visibility depends less on keywords and more on how your content performs in the real world.

    Here are the most important content quality signals for Discover.

    1. E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust

    A good rule of thumb is to follow the “E-E-A-T” guideline:

    • Experience: Firsthand, real-world familiarity with the subject.
    • Expertise: Deep knowledge and skill in your content niche.
    • Authoritativeness: Recognition from other trusted sources.
    • Trustworthiness: Accurate, unbiased, and reliable information.

    2. Engagement Metrics

    These tell Google your content resonates with users and may be worth promoting more widely.

    3. Strong Visuals & Headlines

    Discover is highly visual, so if you don’t stand out immediately, the users are likely to scroll past your content.

    Take your time to polish headlines to get attention, but make sure they accurately reflect the content of your article, post, or whatever you’re writing right now.

    Engaging headlines, images, and videos perform better, especially when those assets are optimized for mobile.

    4. Technical SEO & Mobile Optimization

    While you don’t need to “rank” per se, you do need a well-optimized site, which includes:

    • Fast load times: Consider page speed and overall efficiency. Use PageSpeed Insights to ensure your web pages are optimized for user performance.
    • Mobile-friendly layouts: Google Discover is only available on mobile devices, as there is currently no desktop version.
    • Structured data: Google relies on structured data to categorize content and provide relevant suggestions for users. To attract more engaged and relevant users, you need to add tags and structure data so that Google can better recognize and categorize your content.
    • Internal linking & link building: It will help you create your own network of content. This concerns old articles, too, as they might serve as a gateway to newer pieces of content.
    • RSS or Atom Feed: Allow users to follow you to receive updates quickly. Google generates a feed for you automatically, but you can connect your own.
    • Google Web Stories: Similar to Instagram, these stories appear under the Visual Stories banner on mobiles and serve to expand your reach. Stories are easy to create, engaging, interactive, and fun.

      Track, test, improve. Use Google Search Console (GSC) to monitor your performance and statistics. Unlike Google Analytics, it has a dedicated tab for monitoring Google Discover traffic.

      5. Freshness & Topical Relevance

      Valuable content addresses and solves pain points.

      For content to have a better chance of showing up in Discover feeds, it should be:

      • Accurate.
      • Timely.
      • Trending.
      • Helpful.
      • Continuously updated.

      This is especially powerful if your content is tied to current events or spikes in interest, as shown in Google Trends.

      To discover what users search for, try:

      • Google Search: Enter a query and scroll down to view related and popular requests.
      • Google Search’s Autocomplete: Start typing a search and observe the suggested autocomplete queries; these are the queries that many others regularly search for.
      • Google Trends: Identify how popular a content direction is in any part of the world. This is also great for identifying seasonality.

      How Google Discover Works

      1. Google Discover suggests your content, which should include all the positive signals mentioned above.
      2. The Google app user engages with your content within Google Discover, adding to Google’s knowledge of how users interact with your website.
      3. These engagements (visitor volume, time on page, user experience, etc.) indicate to Google that your content is well-suited for similar readers.
      4. Google increases your reach and visibility on Google Discover.
      5. Those new viewers engage with your content in a similar pattern.
      6. The cycle repeats, spreading your optimized content to more Google Discover timelines.

      This is known as a positive loop because your content consistently passes positive ranking signals back to Google’s Discover algorithm, thereby continuing to increase in engagement.

      How Do I Create A Positive Loop & Show Up In Google Discover?

      Now that you know what Google is looking for, here’s how to naturally boost those signals.

      We know that Google Discover places your content based on:

      • High-clickthrough rates.
      • Long time-on-page.
      • Repeat visitors.

      So, how can you increase those metrics?

      By getting a dedicated reader base that is always ready to consume your new content.

      Push notifications are a great way to alert your dedicated readers that new content is out.

      And they will feed your Google Discover algorithm data.

      How To Use Push Notifications To Boost These Google Signals

      Many publishers avoid push notifications, believing they’re too promotional or might harm user experience (UX).

      However, modern push notification platforms allow you to take a more hybrid approach, combining editorial updates with monetization to boost visibility.

      Why Hybrid Push Notifications Help Boost Discover Visibility

      Done right, push notifications help your content get discovered organically by:

      • Increasing CTR with a second wave of distribution.
      • Driving fast engagement shortly after publication.
      • Bringing back repeat readers to increase session depth.
      • Boosting behavioral signals that Google uses to judge quality.

      In other words, push notifications support the very engagement metrics that can lead to more Discover visibility.

          When users receive a mix of informative and promotional pushes, each message feels fresh, encouraging clicks and boosting your CTR.

          Higher engagement signals to Google that your content is valuable, increasing the chances of it being featured on Discover.

          And since Discover traffic is largely made up of new visitors, each one becomes a fresh opportunity to grow your subscriber base.

          Once users opt in, you can keep re-engaging them, creating a cycle of rising visibility, CTR, and traffic.

          Image created by RollerAds April, 2025

          How to Implement Hybrid Push Format to Get on Discover Faster

          In a recent case study, one RollerAds publisher increased their revenue from $0 to $60,000 per month by pairing great content with hybrid push notifications and Discover-optimized distribution. The key was creating content that signals quality and leveraging distribution to show it.

          With a tool like RollerAds, you can gain a streamlined way to:

          • Send personalized push notifications for your latest content.
          • Mix promotional and editorial messaging without spamming your readers.
          • Increase engagement, retention, and revenue simultaneously.

          Simply register your site, get a custom strategy from your account manager, and start boosting content visibility, without compromising user experience.

          Even better? You can monetize this traffic directly with ad formats designed for Discover audiences, no intrusive pop-ups or poor user experience. Just clear, engaging content with a side of revenue.

          For SEJ readers, use the code SEJ30 to add +30% to your funds before July 1st, 2025.

          Just show the code to your account manager on RollerAds before your first payment.

          Getting featured on Google Discover isn’t just about luck; it’s about strategy.

          From creating high-quality, relevant content to optimizing visuals, headlines, and mobile performance, every step counts. However, to truly stand out and amplify your chances, pairing content strategy with smart tools, such as hybrid push notifications from RollerAds, can make all the difference.

          Engaging your audience through push updates not only drives more clicks but also signals content quality to Google, boosting your Discover reach. With the right monetization tools, you can convert that traffic into substantial revenue.

          Image Credits

          Featured Image: Image by RollerAds. Used with permission.

          In-Post Image: Images by RollerAds. Used with permission.

          Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
          May 8 2025
          Ultimate PPC Campaign Optimization: 6 New Ways To Easily Run Dozens Of PPC Campaigns For Different Sectors via @sejournal, @CallRail

          Tip #1. Boost Relevance: Use Industry-Specific Conversion Signals To Customize Google Ads Messaging

          Increasing clicks is as easy as increasing how relevant your ads are to your potential customers.

          Sounds easy, but when you’re managing different brands, many industries, or multiple brick-and-mortar locations, it can quickly become difficult to understand exactly what each individual person needs.

          What’s New That You Should Change & Try

          Google Ads Responsive Search Ads and Assets (Structured Snippets) now allow faster VOC-driven testing.

          Voice-of-customer (VOC) insights from tools like CallRail reveal what customers actually say before converting.

          Now, you can use this real language to supercharge your ad messaging.

          Is This Change Worth It?

          Yes.

          When you align your ad messaging with what your customers actually say, you boost ad relevance, increase clickthrough rates, and lower your cost per lead by matching real search intent.

          You’ll see:

          • Higher relevance: This is crucial in paid advertising is critical because it directly impacts three major outcomes: cost, performance, and customer experience.
          • Lower Costs: Ad platforms like Google Ads reward high relevance with better quality scores, which can lower your cost per click (CPC) and help you win better ad placements without paying a premium.
          • Higher Engagement: When your ads match exactly what users are searching for or thinking about, you naturally boost clickthrough rates (CTR) because the ad feels more useful and timely.
          • Better Conversion Rates: Relevant ads lead to more qualified traffic, meaning users are more likely to take action once they land on your site, whether that’s calling, booking, or buying.
          • Improved Brand Trust: Ads that clearly resonate with real customer language and needs feel authentic, which strengthens brand credibility over time.

          Which Industries Benefit Most From This PPC Engagement Boosting Technique?

          • Legal Services: Top keywords we’ve identified for you are [free consult] & [local attorney]
          • Home Services: [emergency repair] & [same-day service] are great seed keywords for this industry.
          • Medical/Dental: [accepts insurance] & [licensed doctor] are good starting points for PPC keyword lists.

          Your industry not listed? See other industry insights here.

          How did we discover those seed keywords?

          By analyzing customer responses, transcripts, and chats for true language keywords that your customers are likely typing into search or ChatGPT.

          How To Find Your Best PPC Conversion Signals

          Effort Manual Method CallRail
          Time Required High Low
          Accuracy Depends on human analysis Automated and precise
          Insights Available CTRs, keyword performance CTRs, keyword-level call tracking, automated trends
          Effort Intensive Minimal

          Manual Method For Finding PPC Conversion Signals

          • Analyze Campaign Data: Manually review metrics like click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost per conversion to evaluate performance.
          • Identify High-Performing Keywords: Manually analyze calls to find and optimize keywords driving the best results while excluding irrelevant terms.
          • Track User Behavior: Use tools like Google Analytics to observe user actions, such as pages visited or time on site, before converting.
          • Tie Conversions to Campaign Factors: Manually connect conversion data to specific ads, keywords, or timeframes for insights.
          • Challenges: Time-intensive, prone to human error, and limited in precision without advanced tools.

          CallRail Method for Finding PPC Conversion Signals

          • Call Tracking: Easily and quickly track inbound calls back to specific ads, campaigns, or keywords to identify high-performing strategies.
          • Keyword-Level Attribution: Automatically pinpoint which keywords drive calls or form submissions without manual effort.
          • Automated Insights: Leverage AI-generated call transcripts, summaries, and data to detect patterns, trends, and high-performing campaigns effortlessly.
          • Integrations: Connect with platforms like Google Ads or HubSpot to centralize and streamline conversion tracking.
          • Key Benefits: Saves time, eliminates guesswork, provides precise and actionable insights to optimize PPC campaigns effectively.

          The Manual Way:

          1. Spend hours manually analyzing call transcripts for high-intent phrases.
          2. Create tightly themed ad groups based on these phrases.
          3. Constantly refine keyword match types to match real search behavior (favor phrase match for accuracy).
          4. Use dynamic keyword insertion carefully to keep VOC language in ads.

          Easy Way With CallRail: 

          1. Use CallRail’s free trial to extract VOC insights.
          2. Insert VOC themes into responsive search ad headlines and structured snippets.

          Tip #2. Save Time: Automate Campaign Creation With Pre-Built Google Ads Templates & CRM Signals

          Launching campaigns faster without sacrificing quality can transform how efficiently your agency operates.

          Is This Change Worth It?

          Absolutely.

          When you automate campaign creation, your team gets more time back to focus on strategy instead of setup.

          It means:

          • Faster launches.
          • Fewer errors.
          • Campaigns that are tailored more precisely to your clients’ real needs.

          What’s New That You Should Change & Try

          Google Ads Customer Match and Microsoft Ads Customer Match now enable direct CRM syncing to personalize campaigns automatically.

          You can dynamically create or adjust campaigns based on real customer behavior without manual uploads.

          Why Do This

          Automating your campaign setup drastically reduces your manual workload, speeds up your time-to-market, and helps your team personalize campaigns at scale across locations or services.

          Which Industries Benefit Most From This Time-Saving PPC Technique?

          • Franchise & Multi-Location Retail
          • Home Services (HVAC, plumbing, roofing)
          • B2B SaaS with structured sales pipelines

          How To Set Up Automated PPC Campaign Launching

          The Manual Way:

          1. Build templated campaign structures with core keywords, ads, and extensions.
          2. Pre-create negative keyword lists to prevent budget waste.
          3. Use shared audiences and budgets across locations.

          Easy Way With CallRail:

          1. Connect CallRail and your CRM to automatically trigger ad group or campaign launches.

          Tip #3. Maximize ROI: Make Budget Optimization Dynamic With Real-Time Call Quality Feedback

          Prioritizing ad spend on only the highest quality leads gives you better results without raising your budget.

          Is This Change Worth It?

          Definitely.

          Budget optimization with real-time PPC feedback ensures that you’re spending on what actually drives value: qualified leads.

          It’s one of the fastest ways to improve ROI and prove your worth to your clients.

          What’s New That You Should Change & Try

          Google Ads Offline Conversion Imports and Enhanced Conversions for Leads now allow you to sync call quality and CRM outcomes directly into Google Ads bidding models.

          Why Do This

          Prioritizing your budget based on high-quality leads maximizes your ROI, eliminates wasted ad spend, and delivers more valuable outcomes for your business or agency.

          Which Industries Benefit Most From This Budget Optimization Technique

          • Healthcare & Dental Clinics
          • Legal & Financial Services
          • Auto Services

          How To Optimize Your Budget Based On Real-Time Call Quality

          Manual Way:

          • Score calls manually within your CRM for quality.
          • Adjust campaign-level bid adjustments or device-level bidding based on quality trends.
          • Create automated rules to pause poor-performing keywords or boost strong ones.

          Easy Way With CallRail:

          1. Use call scoring to automatically sync quality signals.
          2. Set Google Ads offline conversion imports to trigger budget shifts based on call outcomes.

          Tip #4: Boost Engagement: Use Enhanced Click-to-Call Campaigns With Visual SERP Signals

          Visual and call-first strategies make it easier for customers to connect and convert faster.

          Is This Change Worth It?

          Yes, especially if your audience is mobile-first.

          Adding call-focused enhancements and visuals doesn’t just boost engagement—it shortens the path between search and conversion, making it easier for ready-to-buy users to reach you.

          What’s New That You Should Change & Try

          Google Ads Call Ads, Image Extensions, and Microsoft Ads Multimedia Ads now create visually compelling, mobile-first experiences optimized for immediate customer action.

          Why Do This

          Upgrading your ads with richer visuals and call-driven formats helps you drive higher engagement on mobile, improve click-to-call rates, and accelerate customer connections.

          Which Industries Benefit Most From This Engagement-Boosting Technique

          • Restaurants & Local Retail
          • Urgent Services (locksmiths, HVAC repair)
          • Senior Services (assisted living, home care)

          How To Enhance Your Click-to-Call Campaigns

          Manual Way:

          • Add call extensions and image extensions to mobile ads.
          • Schedule call ads during business hours only.
          • Use structured snippets highlighting key services.

          Easy Way With CallRail:

          1. Integrate CallRail click-to-call tracking.
          2. Analyze peak call times and optimize ad schedules accordingly.

          Tip #5: Smarter Targeting: Layer First-Party Lead Journey Data Into Performance Max Campaigns

          Bringing offline lead intelligence into your campaigns boosts targeting precision and conversion rates.

          Is This Change Worth It?

          Absolutely.

          Using your first-party data to influence Performance Max campaigns gives you more control, better targeting, and higher returns, especially in a world where third-party cookies are disappearing.

          What’s New That You Should Change & Try

          Google Ads Performance Max campaigns now support Customer Value Mode (2024 smart bidding innovation) to better optimize for high-value leads.

          Why Do This

          Feeding your first-party lead journey data into campaigns improves your targeting precision, nurtures your prospects at the right moment, and increases your conversion rates while lowering acquisition costs.

          Which Industries Benefit Most From This Smart Targeting Strategy

          • Real Estate
          • Home Improvement & Contractors
          • Higher Education & Vocational Schools

          How To Layer Lead Journey Data Into Your Performance Max Campaigns

          Manual Way:

          1. Export CRM lead journey stages manually.
          2. Create custom audience segments inside Google Ads.
          3. Build distinct asset groups based on customer intent (“researching,” “ready to buy”).

          Easy Way With CallRail:

          1. Use CallRail to sync call outcomes and CRM data into Google Ads.
          2. Automate audience signal feeding to Performance Max.

          Tip #6: Lower CPCs: Run Campaigns By Location With Local Keyword + Phone Call Clustering

          Geo-targeted strategies help you win more conversions while keeping your ad costs low.

          Is This Change Worth It?

          Definitely.

          Location-based clustering lets you dominate profitable micro-markets without blowing your budget. It’s one of the smartest ways to lower CPCs and outmaneuver bigger competitors.

          What’s New That You Should Change & Try

          Google Ads Location Extensions, Dynamic Location Insertion, and Microsoft Ads Location Extensions now provide better local customization tools, enhanced by AI call tracking.

          Why Do This

          Using hyperlocal targeting based on real-world call and keyword data helps you increase your relevance, lower your CPCs, and dramatically improve your local conversion rates.

          Which Industries Benefit Most From This Geo-Targeting Upgrade

          • Multi-Location Healthcare
          • Legal Services in competitive markets
          • Home Services (regional licensing differences)

          How To Run Localized Campaigns With Call Clustering

          Manual Way:

          1. Segment geo-targeted campaigns by ZIP code.
          2. Analyze location performance reports weekly.
          3. Use ad customizers to insert city/region names dynamically into ad copy.

          Easy Way With CallRail:

          1. Leverage CallRail’s AI keyword clustering to identify top-performing regions.
          2. Automatically adjust geographic targeting based on call conversion trends.

          Scale Smart, Not Wide

          Scaling PPC for your SMB clients across different sectors is no longer about throwing more campaigns against the wall and hoping something sticks. It’s about smarter personalization, automation, and quality-driven optimizations.

          Tangible PPC elements like keywords, ad groups, budget rules, and conversion actions remain critical to long-term success, especially when fueled by clean first-party data.

          By implementing even 1–2 of these new methods per client vertical, you can reduce your manual work, improve your lead quality, and drive better outcomes for your agency and your clients.

          Ready to future-proof your PPC strategy?

          Start with data. Start with automation. And start by refining the tangible parts of your campaigns to dominate every sector you serve.

          Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
          Apr 29 2025
          We Figured Out How AI Overviews Work [& Built A Tool To Prove It] via @sejournal, @mktbrew

          This post was sponsored by Market Brew. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

          Wondering how to realign your SEO strategy for maximum SERP visibility in AI Overviews (AIO)?

          Do you wish you had techniques that mirror how AI understands relevance?

          Imagine if Google handed you the blueprint for AI Overviews:

          • Every signal.
          • Every scoring mechanism.
          • Every semantic pattern it uses to decide what content makes the cut.

          That’s what our search engineers did.

          They reverse-engineered how Google’s AI Overviews work and built a model that shows you exactly what to fix.

          It’s no longer about superficial tweaks; it’s about aligning with how AI truly evaluates meaning and relevance.

          In this article, we’ll show you how to rank in AIO SERPs by creating embeddings for your content and how to realign your content for maximum visibility by using AIO tools built by search engineers.

          The 3 Key Features Of AI Overviews That Can Make Or Break Your Rankings

          Let’s start with the basic building blocks of a Google AI Overviews (AIO) response:

          What Are Embeddings?

          Embeddings are high-dimensional numerical representations of text. They allow AI systems to understand the meaning of words, phrases, or even entire pages, beyond just the words themselves.

          Rather than matching exact terms, embeddings turn language into vectors, or arrays of numbers, that capture the semantic relationships between concepts.

          For example, “car,” “vehicle,” and “automobile” are different words, but their embeddings will be close in vector space because they mean similar things.

          Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Google Gemini use embeddings to “understand” language; they don’t just see words, they see patterns of meaning.

          What Are Embeddings?: InfographicImage created by MarketBrew.ai, April 2025

          Why Do Embeddings Matter For SEO?

          Understanding how Large Language Models (LLMs) interpret content is key to winning in AI-driven search results, especially with Google’s AI Overviews.

          Search engines have shifted from simple keyword matching to deeper semantic understanding. Now, they rank content based on contextual relevance, topic clusters, and semantic similarity to user intent, not just isolated words.

          Vector Representations of WordsImage created by MarketBrew.ai, April 2025

          Embeddings power this evolution.

          They enable search engines to group, compare, and rank content with a level of precision that traditional methods (like TF-IDF, keyword density, or Entity SEO) can’t match.

          By learning how embeddings work, SEOs gain tools to align their content with how search engines actually think, opening the door to better rankings in semantic search.

          The Semantic Algorithm GalaxyImage created by MarketBrew.ai, April 2025

          How To Rank In AIO SERPs By Creating Embeddings

          Step 1: Set Up Your OpenAI Account

          • Sign Up or Log In: If you haven’t already, sign up for an account on OpenAI’s platform at https://platform.openai.com/signup.
          • API Key: Once logged in, you’ll need to generate an API key to access OpenAI’s services. You can find this in your account settings under the API section.

          Step 2: Install The OpenAI Python Client To Simplify This Step For SEO Pros

          OpenAI provides a Python client that simplifies the process of interacting with their API. To install it, run the following command in your terminal or command prompt:

          pip install openai

          Step 3: Authenticate With Your API Key

          Before making requests, you need to authenticate using your API key. Here’s how you can set it up in your Python script:

          import openai

openai.api_key = 'your-api-key-here'

          Step 4: Choose Your Embedding Model

          At the time of this article’s creation, OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-small is considered one of the most advanced embedding models. It is highly efficient for a wide range of text processing tasks.

          Step 5: Create Embeddings For Your Content

          To generate embeddings for text:

          response = openai.Embedding.create(

model="text-embedding-3-small",

input="This is an example sentence."

)

embeddings = response['data'][0]['embedding']

print(embeddings)

          The result is a list of numbers representing the semantic meaning of your input in high-dimensional space.

          Step 6: Storing Embeddings

          Store embeddings in a database for future use; tools like Pinecone or PostgreSQL with pgvector are great options.

          Step 7: Handling Large Text Inputs

          For large content, break it down into paragraphs or sections and generate embeddings for each chunk.

          Use similarly sized chunks for better cosine similarity calculations. To represent an entire document, you can average the embeddings for each chunk.

          💡Pro Tip: Use Market Brew’s free AI Overviews Visualizer. The search engineer team at Market Brew has created this visualizer to help you understand exactly how embeddings, the fourth generation of text classifiers, are used by search engines.

          Semantics: Comparing Embeddings With Cosine Similarity

          Cosine similarity measures the similarity between two vectors (embeddings), regardless of their magnitude.

          This is essential for comparing the semantic similarity between two pieces of text.

          How Does Cosine Similarity Work? Image created by MarketBrew.ai, April 2025

          Typical search engine comparisons include:

          1. Keywords with paragraphs,
          2. Groups of paragraphs with other paragraphs, and
          3. Groups of keywords with groups of paragraphs.

          Next, search engines cluster these embeddings.

          How Search Engines Cluster Embeddings

          Search engines can organize content based on clusters of embeddings.

          In the video below, we are going to illustrate why and how you can use embedding clusters, using Market Brew’s free AI Overviews Visualizer, to fix content alignment issues that may be preventing you from appearing in Google’s AI Overviews or even their regular search results!

          Embedding clusters, or “semantic clouds”, form one of the most powerful ranking tools for search engineers today.

          Semantic clouds are topic clusters in thousands of dimensions. The illustration above shows a 3D representation to simplify understanding.

          Topic clusters are to entities as semantic clouds are to embeddings. Think of a semantic cloud as a topic cluster on steroids.

          Search engineers use this like they do topic clusters.

          When your content falls outside the top semantic cloud – what the AI deems most relevant – it is ignored, demoted, or excluded from AI Overviews (and even regular search results) entirely.

          No matter how well-written or optimized your page might be in the traditional sense, it won’t surface if it doesn’t align with the right semantic cluster that the finely tuned AI system is seeking.

          By using the AI Overviews Visualizer, you can finally see whether your content aligns with the dominant semantic cloud for a given query. If it doesn’t, the tool provides a realignment strategy to help you bridge that gap.

          In a world where AI decides what gets shown, this level of visibility isn’t just helpful. It’s essential.

          Free AI Overviews Visualizer: How To Fix Content Alignment

          Step 1: Use The Visualizer

          Input your URL into this AI Overviews Visualizer tool to see how search engines view your content using embeddings. The Cluster Analysis tab will display embedding clusters for your page and indicate whether your content aligns with the correct cluster.

          MarketBrew.ai dashboard Screenshot from MarketBrew.ai, April 2025

          Step 2: Read The Realignment Strategy

          The tool provides a realignment strategy if needed. This provides a clear roadmap for adjusting your content to better align with the AI’s interpretation of relevance.

          Example: If your page is semantically distant from the top embedding cluster, the realignment strategy will suggest changes, such as reworking your content or shifting focus.

          Example: Embedding Cluster AnalysisScreenshot from MarketBrew.ai, April 2025
          Example of New Page Content Aligned with Target EmbeddingScreenshot from MarketBrew.ai, April 2025

          Step 3: Test New Changes

          Use the “Test New Content” feature to check how well your content now fits the AIO’s top embedding cluster. Iterative testing and refinement are recommended as AI Overviews evolve.

          AI Overviews authorScreenshot by MarketBrew.ai, April 2025

          See Your Content Like A Search Engine & Tune It Like A Pro

          You’ve just seen under the hood of modern SEO – embeddings, clusters, and AI Overviews. These aren’t abstract theories. They’re the same core systems that Google uses to determine what ranks.

          Think of it like getting access to the Porsche service manual, not just the owner’s guide. Suddenly, you can stop guessing which tweaks matter and start making adjustments that actually move the needle.

          At Market Brew, we’ve spent over two decades modeling these algorithms. Tools like the free AI Overviews Visualizer give you that mechanic’s-eye view of how search engines interpret your content.

          And for teams that want to go further, a paid license unlocks Ranking Blueprints to help track and prioritize which AIO-based metrics most affect your rankings – like cosine similarity and top embedding clusters.

          You have the manual now. The next move is yours.

          Reveal What Google’s AI Really Sees

          Image Credits

          Featured Image: Image by Market Brew. Used with permission.

          In-Post Image: Images by Market Brew. Used with permission.

          Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
          Apr 16 2025
          PPC Unlocked: Fast Wins For Smarter Ad Strategies via @sejournal, @CallRail

          Click fraud in lead generation can drain your marketing budget and corrupt your data, leading to misguided strategic decisions.

          While automated detection tools serve as a first line of defense, relying solely on them is not enough.

          This guide presents practical, hands-on approaches to identify and combat click fraud in your lead generation campaigns in Google Ads.

          Understanding Modern Click Fraud Patterns

          Click fraud isn’t just about basic bots anymore. The people running these scams have gotten much smarter, and they’re using tricks that your regular fraud tools might miss.

          It’s a big business, and if you think you are not affected, you are wrong.

          Here’s what’s really happening to your ad budget: Real people in click farms are getting paid to click on ads all day long.

          They use VPNs to hide where they’re really coming from, making them look just like normal customers. And they’re good at it.

          The bots have gotten better, too. They now copy exactly how real people use websites: They move the mouse naturally, fill out forms like humans, and even make typing mistakes on purpose.

          When these smart bots team up with real people, they become really hard to spot.

          The scammers are also messing with your tracking in clever ways. They can trick your website into thinking they’re new visitors every time.

          They can make their phones seem like they’re in your target city when they’re actually on the other side of the world.

          If you’re counting on basic click fraud protection to catch all this, you’re in trouble. These aren’t the obvious fake clicks from years ago – they’re smart attacks that need smart solutions.

          That being said, the good old competitor trying to click 50 times on your ad is also still existent and not going away anytime soon.

          Luckily, it is safe to say that Google can spot and detect those obvious fraud clicks in many cases.

          Google’s Click Fraud Dilemma: Walking The Revenue Tightrope

          Google faces a tricky problem with click fraud.

          Every fake click puts money in Google’s pocket right now, but too many fake clicks will drive advertisers away. This creates a conflict of interest.

          Google needs to show that it’s fighting click fraud to keep advertisers happy and the ad platform and all of its networks healthy, but it can’t afford to catch every single fake click.

          If it did, its ad revenue would drop sharply in the short term because it also runs the risk of blocking valid clicks if it goes in too aggressively.

          But if it doesn’t catch enough fraud, advertisers will lose trust and move their budgets elsewhere.

          Some advertisers say this explains why Google’s fraud detection isn’t as strict as it could be.

          They argue Google has found a sweet spot where it catches just enough fraud to keep advertisers from leaving, but not so much that it seriously hurts its revenue.

          This balance gets even harder as fraudsters get better at making fake clicks look real.

          This is also why many advertisers don’t fully trust Google’s own click fraud detection and prefer to use third-party tools.

          These tools tend to flag more clicks as fraudulent than Google does, suggesting Google might be more conservative in what it considers fraud.

          The Over-Blocking Problem Of Third-Party Tools

          Third-party click fraud tools have their own business problem: They need to prove they’re worth paying for every month.

          This creates pressure to show lots of “blocked fraud” to justify their subscription costs. The result? Many of these tools are too aggressive and often block real customers by mistake.

          Other tactics are to show lots of suspicious traffic or activities.

          Think about it. If a click fraud tool shows zero fraud for a few weeks, clients might think they don’t need it anymore and cancel.

          So, these tools tend to set their detection rules very strict, marking anything slightly suspicious as fraud. This means they might block a real person who:

          • Uses a VPN for privacy.
          • Shares an IP address with others (like in an office).
          • Browses with privacy tools.
          • Has unusual but legitimate clicking patterns.

          This over-blocking can actually hurt businesses more than the fraud these tools claim to stop.

          It’s like a store security guard who’s so worried about shoplifters that they start turning away honest customers, too.

          Why Click Fraud Tools Are Still Valuable

          Despite these issues, click fraud tools are still really useful as a first line of defense.

          They’re like security cameras for your ad traffic. They might not catch everything perfectly, but they give you a good picture of what’s happening.

          Here’s what makes them worth using:

          • They quickly show you patterns in your traffic that humans would take weeks to spot.
          • Even if they’re sometimes wrong about individual clicks, they’re good at finding unusual patterns, like lots of clicks from the same place or at odd hours.
          • They give you data you can use to make your own decisions – you don’t have to block everything they flag as suspicious.

          The key is to use these tools as a starting point, not a final answer. Look at their reports, but think about them carefully.

          Are the “suspicious” clicks actually hurting your business? Do blocked users fit your customer profile?

          Use the tool’s data along with your own knowledge about your customers to make smarter decisions about what’s really fraud and what’s not.

          In terms of functionality, most third-party click fraud detection tools are somewhat similar to each other.

          A simple Google search on “click fraud tool” shows the market leaders; the only bigger difference is usually pricing and contract duration.

          Tackling Click Fraud With Custom Solutions

          After getting a first impression with third-party click fraud tools, it’s best to build a collection of custom solutions to tackle your individual scenario.

          Every business has a different situation with different software environments, website systems, and monitoring.

          For custom solutions, it’s recommended to work closely with your IT department or developer, as many solutions require some modification on your website.

          The Basics: Selecting An Identifier

          There are a handful of solutions to cover 80% of the basics.

          The first way to do something against click fraud is to find a unique identifier to work with.

          In most cases, this will be the IP address since you can exclude certain IP addresses from Google Ads, thus making it a good identifier to work with.

          Other identifiers like Fingerprints are also possible options. Once an identifier is found, you need to make sure your server logs or internal tracking can monitor users and their identifiers for further analysis.

          The Basics: CAPTCHAs

          Another basic tool, which is often forgotten, is CAPTCHAs.

          CAPTCHAs can detect bots or fraudulent traffic. Google offers a free and simple-to-implement solution with reCAPTCHA.

          CAPTCHAs might seem like an easy answer to bot traffic, but they come with serious downsides.

          Every time you add a CAPTCHA, you’re basically telling your real users, “Prove you’re human before I trust you.” This creates friction, and friction kills conversions.

          Most websites see a drop in form completions after adding CAPTCHAs if they are set too aggressively.

          Smart CAPTCHAs can limit the frequency, but not all CAPTCHA providers allow that option, so choose your provider or solution wisely.

          The Basics: Honeypot Fields

          Honeypot fields are hidden form fields that act as traps for bots.

          The trick is simple but effective: Add extra fields to your form that real people can’t see, but bots will try to fill out.

          Only bots reading the raw HTML will find these fields; regular users won’t even know they’re there. The key is to make these fields look real to bots.

          Use names that bots love to fill in, like “url,” “website,” or “email2.” If any of these hidden fields get filled out, you know it’s probably a bot. Real people won’t see them, so they can’t fill them out.

          Pro tip: Don’t just add “honeypot” or “trap” to your field names. Bots are getting smarter and often check for obvious trap names. Instead, use names that look like regular-form fields.

          Advanced Validation Methods

          Smart Form Validation: Email

          Most businesses only check if an email address has an “@” symbol and looks roughly correct.

          This basic approach leaves the door wide open for fake leads and spam submissions.

          Modern email validation needs to go much deeper. Start by examining the email’s basic structure, but don’t stop there.

          Look at the domain itself: Is it real? How long has it existed? Does it have proper mail server records?

          These checks can happen in real time while your user fills out the form. It should be noted, however, that smart form validation usually requires some sort of third-party provider to check the details, which means you need to rely on external services.

          A common mistake is blocking all free email providers like Gmail or Yahoo. This might seem logical, but it’s a costly error.

          Many legitimate business users rely on Gmail for their day-to-day operations, especially small business owners.

          Instead of blanket blocks, look for unusual patterns within these email addresses. A Gmail address with a normal name pattern is probably fine; one with a random string of characters should raise red flags.

          For enterprise B2B sales, you expect bigger companies to sign up with their company domain email address, so blocking free mail providers might work.

          Smart Form Validation: Phone

          Phone validation goes far beyond just counting digits. Think about the logic of location first.

          When someone enters a phone number with a New York area code but lists their address in California, that’s worth investigating.

          But be careful with this approach – people move, they travel, and they keep their old numbers. The key is to use these mismatches as flags for further verification, not as automatic rejections.

          The Art Of Smart Data Formatting

          Data formatting isn’t just about making your database look neat. It’s about catching mistakes and fraud while making the form easy to complete for legitimate users.

          Name fields are a perfect example.

          While you want to catch obviously fake names like “asdfgh” or repeated characters, remember that real names come in an incredible variety of formats and styles.

          Some cultures use single names, others have very long names, and some include characters that might look unusual to your system.

          Modify Your Google Ads Campaign Settings To Tackle Click Fraud

          Google offers multiple campaign options to increase reach, on the downside most of those options come along with an increase of click fraud activities.

          App Placements

          Performance Max campaigns can place your ads across Google’s entire network, including in apps. While this broad reach can be powerful, it also opens the door to potential fraud.

          The challenge is that you have limited control over where your ads appear, and some of these automatic placements can lead to wasted ad spend.

          Kids’ games are often a major source of accidental and fraudulent clicks. These apps frequently have buttons placed near ad spaces, and children playing games can accidentally tap ads while trying to play.

          What looks like engagement in your analytics is actually just frustrated kids trying to hit the “play” button.

          Another issue comes from apps that use deceptive design to generate clicks. They might place clickable elements right where ads appear, or design their interface so users naturally tap where ads are located.

          This isn’t always intentional fraud. Sometimes, it’s just poor app design, but it costs you money either way.

          Unlike traditional campaigns, where you can easily exclude specific placements, Performance Max’s automation makes this more challenging.

          The system optimizes for conversions, but it might not recognize that clicks from certain apps never lead to quality leads. By the time you spot the pattern, you’ve already spent money on these low-quality clicks.

          Excluding app placements is for almost all advertisers a must have. Very few advertisers benefit from app placements at all.

          Partner And Display Network

          Lead generation businesses face a unique challenge with Performance Max campaigns that ecommerce stores can largely avoid.

          While ecommerce businesses can simply run Shopping-only campaigns and tap into high-intent product searches, lead gen businesses are stuck dealing with the full Performance Max package, including the often problematic Display Network.

          The Display Network opens up your ads to a mass of websites, many of which might not be the quality placements you’d want for your business.

          While Google tries to filter out bad actors, the display network still includes sites that exist primarily to generate ad clicks.

          These sites might look legitimate at first glance, but they’re designed to encourage accidental clicks or attract bot traffic.

          Some are specifically designed for server bot farms, as they run on expired domains and have no content besides ads.

          Lead generation businesses don’t have this luxury. Their Performance Max campaigns typically run on all networks except shopping. This creates several problems:

          • The quality of clicks varies wildly. Someone might click your medical practice ad while trying to close a pop-up on a gaming site. They’ll never become a patient, but you still pay for that click.
          • Display placements can appear on sites that don’t match your brand’s professional image. Imagine a law firm’s ad showing up on a site full of questionable content – not ideal for building trust with potential clients.
          • Bot traffic and click farms often target display ads because they’re easier to interact with than shopping ads. You might see high click-through rates that look great until you realize none of these clicks are turning into leads.

          All those are reasons to question PMax campaigns for lead gen, but that’s a decision every marketer has to make.

          Advanced Google Ads Settings To Tackle Click Fraud

          If the basics are implemented but there is still a higher amount of suspected click fraud, advanced solutions need to be implemented.

          Besides excluding suspicious IP addresses, you can also build negative audiences.

          The idea is to have a second success page for your lead generation form and only forward potential bots or fake sign-ups to this page.

          To achieve that, your website needs to evaluate potential bots live during the sign-up process.

          You can then setup a dedicated “bot pixel” on the second success page in order to send data of this audience to Google.

          Once enough data is retrieved, you can exclude this audience from your campaigns. This approach is a little trickier to implement but is worth the effort as those audience signals are of high quality if enough data is supplied.

          Make sure to only fire the “bot pixel” on the special success page and only there, otherwise you run the risk of mixing your audiences which would render the system useless.

          Filtering Fake Leads With Conditional Triggers

          Another tracking-based strategy is to set up condition-based conversion tracking. Combined with hidden form fields, you can modify the conversion trigger not to send data if the hidden field was filled.

          In that scenario, you would filter out bots from conversion tracking, sending back only real conversion to your campaign, and therefore, also training the Google algorithm and bidding strategy only on real data.

          You eliminate a majority of fake leads and traffic with this setup.

          Making Sign-Ups More Challenging To Improve Lead Quality

          Another advanced strategy is to make the sign-up process a lot harder.

          Tests have shown that much longer forms are not finished by bots because they are usually trained on simpler and shorter forms, which require only mail, name, phone, and address.

          Asking specific questions and working with dropdowns can dramatically increase the lead quality. It should be noted, however, that longer forms can also hurt the valid signup rate, which is a risk you want to take if you have to deal with bot and fraud traffic.

          A fitting case was a car dealer I worked with. They had a form where people could offer their cars for sale and retrieve a price estimate.

          A short form had almost three times the signup rate than before, but it turned out later that a lot of them were spam signups or even very low-qualified leads.

          A shorter form leads to more spam because it’s easy to sign up. After switching to a longer form, the signups dropped, but quality increased drastically.

          Almost 20 fields long, and potential clients had to upload pictures of their car.

          It took a few minutes to finish the signup, but those who did were committed to doing business and open to discussing the sale, which also made it easier for the salespeople to follow up properly.

          A Hard Truth About Lead Fraud

          Let’s be honest: You can’t completely stop lead fraud. It’s like shoplifting in retail – you can reduce it, you can catch it faster, but you can’t eliminate it entirely.

          The fraudsters are always getting smarter, and for every security measure we create, they’ll eventually find a way around it.

          But here’s the good news: You don’t need perfect protection. What you need is a balanced approach that catches most of the bad leads while letting good ones through easily.

          Think of it like running a store: You want security, but not so much that it scares away real customers.

          The key is to layer your defenses. Use click fraud tools as your first line of defense, add smart form validation as your second, and keep a human eye on patterns as your final check.

          Will some fake leads still get through? Yes. But if you can stop 90% of the fraud, you’re winning the battle.

          Remember: Perfect is the enemy of good. Focus on making fraud expensive and difficult for the bad actors, while keeping your lead generation process smooth and simple for real prospects. That’s how you win in the long run.

          More Resources:

          Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

          Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
          Apr 16 2025
          AI Overviews: We Reverse-Engineered Them So You Don’t Have To [+ What You Need To Do Next]

          This post was sponsored by DAC. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Authors: Dan Lauer & Michael Goodman

          Is the classic funnel model (TOFU-MOFU-BOFU) still relevant in an AI-driven SERP?

          What kinds of queries trigger Google’s AI Overviews?

          How can you structure content so that AI pulls your site into the response?

          Do you really need to change your SEO strategy?

          For years, SEO teams followed a familiar SEO playbook:

          1. Optimize upper-funnel content to capture awareness,
          2. mid-funnel content to drive consideration,
          3. lower-funnel content to convert.

          One page, one keyword, one intent.

          But with the rise of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, and now Google’s AI Mode, that linear model is increasingly outdated.

          So, how do you move forward and keep your visibility high in modern search engine results pages (SERPs)?

          We’ve reverse-engineered AI Overviews, so you don’t have to. Let’s dive in.

          What We’ve Discovered Through Reverse Engineering Google’s AI Overviews (AIO)

          From what we’re seeing across client industries and in how AI-driven results behave, the traditional funnel model – the idea of users moving cleanly from awareness to consideration to conversion – feels increasingly out of step with how people actually search.

          How Today’s Search Users Actually Search

          Today’s users jump between channels, devices, and questions.

          They skim, abandon, revisit, and decide faster than ever.

          AI Overviews don’t follow a tidy funnel because most people don’t either.

          They surface multiple types of information at once, not because it’s smarter SEO, but because it’s closer to how real decisions get made.

          AIOs & AI Mode Aren’t Just Answering Queries – They’re Expanding Them

          Traditionally, SEO strategy followed a structured framework. Take a travel-related topic, for example:

          • Informational (Upper-Funnel) – “How to plan a cruise?”
          • Commercial (Mid-Funnel) – “Best cruise lines for families”
          • Transactional (lower-Funnel) – “Find Best Alaska Cruise Deals”

          However, AI Overviews don’t stick to that structure.

          Instead, they blend multiple layers of intent into a single, comprehensive response.

          How AI Overviews Answer & Expand Search Queries

          Let’s stay with the travel theme. A search for “Mediterranean cruise” might return an AI Overview that includes:

          • Best Time to go (Informational).
          • Booking Your Cruise (Commercial).
          • Cruise Lines (Navigational).

          AI Mode Example for ‘Mediterranean Cruise’

          What’s Happening Here?

          In this case, Google isn’t just answering the query.

          It anticipates what the user will want to know next, acting more like a digital concierge than a traditional search engine.

          The AI Overview Test & Parameters

          • Source: Semrush & Google
          • Tested Data: 200 cruise-related informational queries

          We started noticing this behavior showing up more often, so we wanted to see how common it actually is.

          To get a clearer picture, we pulled 200 cruise-related informational queries from SEMrush and ran them through our custom-built AI SERP scraper. The goal was to see how often these queries triggered AI Overviews, and what kind of intent those Overviews covered.

          The patterns were hard to miss:

          • 88% of those queries triggered an AI Overview
          • More than half didn’t just answer the initial question.
          • 52% mixed in other layers of intent, like brand suggestions, booking options, or comparisons, right alongside the basic information someone might’ve been looking for.

          Using a different query related to Mediterranean Cruises, the AIO response acts as a travel agent, guiding the user on topics like:

          • How to fly,
          • Destinations with region,
          • Cruise prices,
          • Cruise lines that sail to that destination.

          While it’s an Information non-brand search query,  the AIO response is lower-funnel as well.

          Again, less than half of the queries were matched intent.

          Here are some examples of queries that were identified as Informational and provided only the top-of-funnel response without driving the user further down the funnel.

          The Verdict

          Even when someone asks a simple, top-of-funnel question, AI is already steering them toward what to do next, whether that’s comparing prices, picking a provider, or booking a trip.

          What Does This Mean for SEO Strategies Moving Forward?

          If AI Overviews and AI Mode are blending intent types, content, and SEO strategies need to catch up:

          1. It’s no longer enough to rank for high-volume informational keywords. If your content doesn’t address multiple layers of intent, AI will fill the gaps with someone else’s content.
          2. SEO teams need to analyze how AI handles their most important queries. What related questions is it pulling in? Are those answers coming from your site or your competitors?
          3. Think beyond keyword volume. Long-tail queries may have lower search traffic, but they often align better with AI-cited content. Structure your pages with clear headings, bullets, and concise, helpful language—that’s what AI models prefer to surface.

          The Future of SEO in an AI World: Hybrid Intent Optimization

          The fundamentals of technical and on-page SEO still matter. But if your content is still built around single keywords and single intent types, you’re likely to lose visibility as AI continues to reshape the SERP.

          The brands that adapt to this shift by creating content that mirrors the blended, fast-moving behavior of actual users are the ones that will continue to own key moments across the funnel, even as the funnel itself evolves.

          As AI transforms search behavior, it‘s crucial to adapt your SEO strategies accordingly. At DAC, we specialize in aligning your content with the latest search trends to enhance visibility and engagement. Reach out to us today to future-proof your strategy with our award-winning TotalSERP approach and stay ahead in the evolving digital landscape.

          https://www.dacgroup.com/” class=”btn-learn-more button-green medium-size”>Optimize Your SEO For AI Search, Now

          Image Credits

          Featured Image: Image by DAC. Used with permission.

          In-Post Image: Images by DAC. Used with permission.

          Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments