<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>ChatGPT Ads adds automated bidding, platform targeting and view-through conversions as it expands into Latin America.

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Chatgpt-automatted-ads-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">ChatGPT Ads is adding a new Maximize results bid strategy, platform-level targeting and view-through conversion reporting, while expanding into Brazil and Mexico</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The updates give advertisers more control over where campaigns appear while simultaneously introducing more automation into how bids are managed.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What’s new.</strong> Advertisers can now select Maximize results as their campaign bid strategy, allowing ChatGPT Ads to automatically set and adjust bids based on the campaign&#8217;s selected goal.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The system is designed to generate as many results as possible from the available budget, shifting bid decisions from the advertiser to ChatGPT Ads&#8217; automated bidding system.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="707" height="713" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/ChatGPT-ads-automatted-bidding.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485708" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/ChatGPT-ads-automatted-bidding.png 707w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/ChatGPT-ads-automatted-bidding-95x95.png 95w" sizes="(max-width: 707px) 100vw, 707px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Automated bidding arrives. </strong>Rather than manually controlling individual bids, advertisers select their desired campaign goal and allow ChatGPT Ads to optimize bidding toward that outcome.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Platform targeting. </strong>Advertisers are also gaining more control over where their ChatGPT campaigns can run. When creating a campaign, an Eligible platforms setting lets advertisers select one or more supported surfaces: iOS app, Android app or Web.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That could be useful for advertisers that see meaningful differences in conversion rates, customer value or user behavior between mobile apps and the web.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>View-through conversions. </strong>ChatGPT Ads Manager now reports one-day view-through conversions at the campaign, ad group and individual ad levels.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A view-through conversion is recorded when someone converts within one day of seeing an eligible ad without a qualifying ad click receiving credit for that conversion.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The addition means advertisers may see more conversions attributed to ChatGPT Ads beyond those generated directly from clicks, making it important to distinguish between click-through and view-through performance when evaluating campaigns.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>WorkMagic integration.</strong> Advertisers can now connect ChatGPT Ads with WorkMagic to view ChatGPT campaign performance alongside other advertising channels.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The integration can also send conversion signals back to OpenAI through the Conversions API, providing another route for advertisers to feed outcome data into the platform.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care.</strong> Automated bidding, platform targeting, view-through attribution and conversion signal integrations give advertisers more ways to optimize and measure campaigns, but they also introduce familiar questions around automation and attribution. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In particular, advertisers should watch how Maximize results performs against more controlled bidding approaches and how much reported performance is driven by newly visible view-through conversions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bottom line. </strong>ChatGPT Ads is getting more sophisticated and more widely available, adding automated bidding, platform controls and view-through attribution just as the advertising platform expands into dozens of new markets.</p>


ChatGPT Ads is adding a new Maximize results bid strategy, platform-level targeting and view-through conversion reporting, while expanding into Brazil and Mexico
The updates give advertisers more control over where campaigns appear while simultaneously introducing more automation into how bids are managed.
What’s new. Advertisers can now select Maximize results as their campaign bid strategy, allowing ChatGPT Ads to automatically set and adjust bids based on the campaign’s selected goal.
The system is designed to generate as many results as possible from the available budget, shifting bid decisions from the advertiser to ChatGPT Ads’ automated bidding system.




Automated bidding arrives. Rather than manually controlling individual bids, advertisers select their desired campaign goal and allow ChatGPT Ads to optimize bidding toward that outcome.
Platform targeting. Advertisers are also gaining more control over where their ChatGPT campaigns can run. When creating a campaign, an Eligible platforms setting lets advertisers select one or more supported surfaces: iOS app, Android app or Web.
That could be useful for advertisers that see meaningful differences in conversion rates, customer value or user behavior between mobile apps and the web.
View-through conversions. ChatGPT Ads Manager now reports one-day view-through conversions at the campaign, ad group and individual ad levels.
A view-through conversion is recorded when someone converts within one day of seeing an eligible ad without a qualifying ad click receiving credit for that conversion.
The addition means advertisers may see more conversions attributed to ChatGPT Ads beyond those generated directly from clicks, making it important to distinguish between click-through and view-through performance when evaluating campaigns.
WorkMagic integration. Advertisers can now connect ChatGPT Ads with WorkMagic to view ChatGPT campaign performance alongside other advertising channels.
The integration can also send conversion signals back to OpenAI through the Conversions API, providing another route for advertisers to feed outcome data into the platform.
Why we care. Automated bidding, platform targeting, view-through attribution and conversion signal integrations give advertisers more ways to optimize and measure campaigns, but they also introduce familiar questions around automation and attribution. 
In particular, advertisers should watch how Maximize results performs against more controlled bidding approaches and how much reported performance is driven by newly visible view-through conversions.
Bottom line. ChatGPT Ads is getting more sophisticated and more widely available, adding automated bidding, platform controls and view-through attribution just as the advertising platform expands into dozens of new markets.

ChatGPT Ads adds automated bidding, platform targeting and view-through conversions as it expands into Latin America.

ChatGPT Ads adds automated bidding, platform targeting

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>Google is expanding LSA categories ahead of its migration into Google Ads, giving businesses more precise ways to target leads.

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Local-Service-Ads-categories-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google expanded the list of businesses eligible for Local Services Ads (LSAs), adding more granular categories across restaurants, automotive services and beauty businesses as it prepares to migrate LSA campaigns into Google Ads.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A comparison of Google&#8217;s previous and current &#8220;Getting started with Local Services Ads&#8221; documentation shows the underlying LSA model remains largely intact, but the number and specificity of supported categories has grown substantially.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What changed.</strong> The most noticeable update is Google&#8217;s eligibility list. Previously, several industries were represented by broad categories such as &#8220;Restaurant,&#8221; &#8220;Dessert and coffee,&#8221; &#8220;Auto repair shop,&#8221; &#8220;Car wash and detailing&#8221; and a smaller selection of beauty services.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The updated document breaks many of those industries into far more specific categories. Restaurants, for example, can now fall under categories ranging from American, Chinese and Italian restaurants to pizza, sushi, steak houses, vegan restaurants and dozens more. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Automotive gets more granular.</strong> Google has similarly expanded automotive classifications beyond broad categories such as auto repair and car washing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The current list includes categories such as Auto Air Conditioning Service, Auto Glass Repair Service, Brake Shop, Car Battery Store, Car Inspection Service, Oil Change Service, Tire Shop and Transmission Shop, among others. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google told us the increased specificity is intentional. Separating something like a transmission shop from general auto maintenance allows businesses to more precisely identify the services they provide and potentially reach customers looking for those particular services.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Google Verified changes.</strong> The documentation also adds a new Pre-badge ads section. Eligible businesses that have passed preliminary checks can begin receiving LSA leads while completing the remaining requirements needed for the Google Verified badge. Those listings appear below providers that have completed the full onboarding process.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google has also broadened where its Verified badge isn&#8217;t available. The previous document said it was unavailable for dining verticals. The current documentation says the badge is unavailable for auto, beauty and dining categories.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why this matters now.</strong> The changes come as Google begins a much bigger <a href="https://searchengineland.com/local-services-ads-come-to-google-ads-via-performance-max-482692">transition for Local Services Ads</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google confirmed that it&#8217;s continuing to invest in LSAs while gradually moving campaign management into Google Ads through 2027. The first phase starts with select U.S. home and storefront service advertisers in August 2026, expands to additional advertisers later this year, and reaches non-U.S. accounts and remaining categories in 2027. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What isn&#8217;t changing.</strong> Despite the migration, Google says the fundamental LSA model isn&#8217;t going away.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Advertisers will continue paying for valid leads rather than clicks, campaigns will remain keywordless, and ads will continue appearing exclusively in their existing local placements on Google Search and Google Maps. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google told us that existing setups will automatically migrate into Google Ads, so advertisers won&#8217;t need to rebuild campaigns simply because the management platform is changing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care.</strong> The expanded categories give local advertisers more precise ways to tell Google exactly what they do before their campaigns move into Google Ads. That&#8217;s particularly important for businesses previously grouped into broad categories such as auto repair or restaurants, where the intent behind a search for a transmission specialist or sushi restaurant can be very different.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bottom line.</strong> Google&#8217;s updated LSA documentation isn&#8217;t simply a longer eligibility list. It shows Google making Local Services Ads more granular across several industries at the same time that it prepares to move the product into Google Ads — keeping its pay-per-lead, high-intent structure while changing where and how advertisers manage it. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Dig deeper. </strong>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://support.google.com/localservices/answer/6224841?hl=en">Getting started with Local Services Ads</a></li>



<li><a href="https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/17213585?hl=en">Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals</a></li>
</ul>


Google expanded the list of businesses eligible for Local Services Ads (LSAs), adding more granular categories across restaurants, automotive services and beauty businesses as it prepares to migrate LSA campaigns into Google Ads.
A comparison of Google’s previous and current “Getting started with Local Services Ads” documentation shows the underlying LSA model remains largely intact, but the number and specificity of supported categories has grown substantially.
What changed. The most noticeable update is Google’s eligibility list. Previously, several industries were represented by broad categories such as “Restaurant,” “Dessert and coffee,” “Auto repair shop,” “Car wash and detailing” and a smaller selection of beauty services.
The updated document breaks many of those industries into far more specific categories. Restaurants, for example, can now fall under categories ranging from American, Chinese and Italian restaurants to pizza, sushi, steak houses, vegan restaurants and dozens more. 
Automotive gets more granular. Google has similarly expanded automotive classifications beyond broad categories such as auto repair and car washing.
The current list includes categories such as Auto Air Conditioning Service, Auto Glass Repair Service, Brake Shop, Car Battery Store, Car Inspection Service, Oil Change Service, Tire Shop and Transmission Shop, among others. 
Google told us the increased specificity is intentional. Separating something like a transmission shop from general auto maintenance allows businesses to more precisely identify the services they provide and potentially reach customers looking for those particular services.
Google Verified changes. The documentation also adds a new Pre-badge ads section. Eligible businesses that have passed preliminary checks can begin receiving LSA leads while completing the remaining requirements needed for the Google Verified badge. Those listings appear below providers that have completed the full onboarding process.
Google has also broadened where its Verified badge isn’t available. The previous document said it was unavailable for dining verticals. The current documentation says the badge is unavailable for auto, beauty and dining categories.
Why this matters now. The changes come as Google begins a much bigger transition for Local Services Ads.
Google confirmed that it’s continuing to invest in LSAs while gradually moving campaign management into Google Ads through 2027. The first phase starts with select U.S. home and storefront service advertisers in August 2026, expands to additional advertisers later this year, and reaches non-U.S. accounts and remaining categories in 2027. 
What isn’t changing. Despite the migration, Google says the fundamental LSA model isn’t going away.
Advertisers will continue paying for valid leads rather than clicks, campaigns will remain keywordless, and ads will continue appearing exclusively in their existing local placements on Google Search and Google Maps. 
Google told us that existing setups will automatically migrate into Google Ads, so advertisers won’t need to rebuild campaigns simply because the management platform is changing.
Why we care. The expanded categories give local advertisers more precise ways to tell Google exactly what they do before their campaigns move into Google Ads. That’s particularly important for businesses previously grouped into broad categories such as auto repair or restaurants, where the intent behind a search for a transmission specialist or sushi restaurant can be very different.
Bottom line. Google’s updated LSA documentation isn’t simply a longer eligibility list. It shows Google making Local Services Ads more granular across several industries at the same time that it prepares to move the product into Google Ads — keeping its pay-per-lead, high-intent structure while changing where and how advertisers manage it. 
Dig deeper. 




Getting started with Local Services Ads
Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals

Google is expanding LSA categories ahead of its migration into Google Ads, giving businesses more precise ways to target leads.

Google expands Local Services Ads categories ahead of migration

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to build an AI content workflow from the ground up" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Build a reliable AI content system in Claude Code with the right context, specialized agents, and human review.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to build an AI content workflow from the ground up" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-an-AI-content-workflow-from-the-ground-up-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I’ve spent months building and rebuilding an AI content pipeline in <a href="https://searchengineland.com/claude-code-seo-work-470668">Claude Code</a>. It now supports article updates and production for a company blog and external publications, and it usually gets pieces to about 95% of the way to publication.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That process taught me an important lesson: The hardest part isn’t getting AI to produce an article. It’s figuring out what the finished article needs to look like, then building the workflow and inputs that can reliably get you there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If I were starting over, I’d work backward from the finished piece. I’d define what good looks like first, then determine what the system needs to take a keyword and turn it into an almost-ready-to-publish article.</p>



<h2 id="h-is-an-ai-content-system-worth-building" class="wp-block-heading">Is an AI content system worth building?</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For me, having this tool has allowed me to maximize my resources and create content that I otherwise couldn&#8217;t have.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">However, it does come with risks. I&#8217;ve done my best to mitigate those with research, lots of human quality gates, and AI fact-checkers. But with Google aggressively noindexing noncommodity content, it may not make sense for your brand. Also, this isn&#8217;t a quick build.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hopefully, you already have many of the components needed to create the different agents. If not, you can build them in stages and iterate over time. Plus, you may be able to reuse some of your new agents for other workflows.</p>


<a href="https://www.semrush.com/ai-seo/overview?utm_campaign=ic_sel_0101ai&#038;utm_source=searchengineland.com&#038;utm_medium=overlay&#038;onboarding=off" target="_blank">
  <div>
    
    <div>
      
      <div id="semrush-one-headline" class="headline-responsive">
        Be the brand <span>AI recommends</span>.
      </div>
      <p id="semrush-one-subhead">
        See where your brand appears in AI search, where competitors are winning, and what it takes to become the answer AI recommends.
      </p>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span id="semrush-one-cta">See your AI visibility</span>
    </div>
    </div>
    </a>




<h2 id="h-define-quality-to-uncover-needed-inputs" class="wp-block-heading">Define &#8216;quality&#8217; to uncover needed inputs</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A successful content pipeline generally needs to produce useful, original content in your brand voice. The pieces should be helpful to your ideal customer profile (ICP), accurately describe your business and offerings, and sound human. Ideally, they’d also have ranking and citation potential.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Once you know what you want to produce, you can create a list of everything you need to get there. Some will be constant for every run. Hard-code these into your workflow because they represent shared context required across all runs. Others, like the topic, angle, and keyword, will be input with every run.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Constants include:</strong>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Brand explainer that states who you are, along with information about your ICP. For B2B, include industry, seniority, and pain points. The latter can be derived from client call transcripts or sales call transcripts. For B2C, include age, sex, profession, pain points, etc.</li>



<li>Brand voice guidelines detailing how you communicate. This would include examples and not just adjectives. If your current brand voice guidelines are only a list of adjectives, you&#8217;ll want to expand them before using them for a content pipeline. You don&#8217;t want to say &#8220;friendly, but formal.&#8221; Instead, provide examples of what this looks like in practice, as well as examples of what to avoid. Don’t have a voice guide? Work with your LLM to create a doc based on your best content.</li>



<li>Example content briefs, outlines, and articles that follow your best practices.</li>



<li>Product, service, and/or methodology descriptions to help the LLM describe what you do accurately. Sales collateral could be helpful here.</li>



<li>Information about your existing content. If you want internal link suggestions or to make sure that the pieces are distinct from the things that are already live on your site, you&#8217;ll want to share a Screaming Frog export with this information or your sitemap.</li>



<li>Links to or copies of internal research and case studies. This will help you create noncommodity content.</li>



<li>If you want your piece to be cited or if you want it to rank well, you also need to include information about best practices. Your organization may already have these types of writing or publication guidelines. If not, you can use Claude to help you research and generate this document. At its most basic, you want it to create a meta description, suggest a URL slug, and integrate any keywords or concepts that you give it in a natural way. You can make this more robust by requiring SERP research to analyze top-ranking or top-cited content for particular terms, requiring answer-forward passages, keeping paragraphs a particular length, etc.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You may have more criteria for a finished piece. If so, list them out.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/train-claude-sound-like-your-brand-479023">How to train Claude to sound like your brand</a></em></strong>



<h2 id="h-determine-the-order-of-operations" class="wp-block-heading">Determine the order of operations</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now that we know what quality looks like and what inputs it takes to get there, we need to determine the order of operations.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To some extent, this will mirror a regular content process. After all, that’s what we’re replicating. So while you can think of this build as onboarding a new writer and editor, you also need to consider the complications that using AI to create content introduces. The two main issues are robotic-sounding language and hallucinated “facts.”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Generally, with content creation, you research a topic, create the outline, write the piece, and edit it. Sometimes, different people handle these steps depending on the size of the team.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The agents in your workflow will handle those same tasks. However, you&#8217;ll also want to build in additional human review gates that you might not need with a human-run content workflow.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To keep everything flowing appropriately and make sure no steps are skipped, I recommend an orchestrator agent that describes the workflow from start to finish and what each agent is responsible for. This document will need to be updated if you change your workflow or agent responsibilities. The orchestrator agent can be created at the end or simultaneously.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For each of the following steps, I&#8217;ve shared suggested documentation and information about how to build it. Work with your favorite LLM to build the actual agent docs, but be sure to review them so that you understand what they do and why. This will make troubleshooting easier.</p>



<h3 id="h-step-1-workflow-kickoff" class="wp-block-heading">Step 1: Workflow kickoff</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Consider how you want to kick off your workflow. I have a separate locally hosted dashboard that lets me input a keyword and an angle. Once I click submit, Claude starts researching the topic.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have multiple ICPs or a specific product you want to mention per article, specify those as initial inputs before your workflow kicks off.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To start, I recommend focusing on one type of content, such as blog posts or LinkedIn posts. Later, you can add if/then functionality to create multiple content types using the workflow.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s best, though, to get a working process for one content type and then add on, rather than trying to do too much at once and ending up with a workflow that doesn&#8217;t work well for anything.</p>



<h3 id="h-step-2-research" class="wp-block-heading">Step 2: Research</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Once a topic is submitted, it should start an agent that researches the topic, what your brand&#8217;s already written about it, and current SERPs to identify gaps your new piece could fill. I have mine output a dossier that can be handed off to subsequent agents.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Agent:</strong> Researcher</li>



<li><strong>Suggested documentation:</strong>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>List of reputable, citable sources in your industry where the agent should look first.</li>



<li>List of sources to avoid.</li>



<li>Research requirements, such as timeliness or size thresholds.</li>



<li>Your sitemap or a list of your content.</li>



<li>Links to or documentation for your original research and data.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>If you want your agent to look at SERPs, note what types of results it should analyze. For example:
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Do you want it to look at AI Overviews to see who&#8217;s being cited for a particular keyword? </li>



<li>Do you want it to look at top-ranking sites except for list sites? </li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><strong>How to build:</strong>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Share with your LLM precisely what you want the research to achieve. </li>



<li>Be as specific as possible, especially when it comes to what qualifies as a good source and your own content.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/claude-code-powered-second-brain-agency-work-479879">How to build a Claude Code-powered second brain for agency work</a></em></strong>



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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-text-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-css-opacity has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background"/>



<h3 id="h-step-3-outline" class="wp-block-heading">Step 3: Outline</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Once the research is complete, I recommend having Claude generate an outline and adding a human review gate.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That way, you can get a sense of what the finished piece will look like without having expended as many tokens. At this point, you&#8217;ll need to decide whether to scrap the piece, revise the outline, or continue.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Agent:</strong> Outliner</li>



<li><strong>Suggested inputs and documentation:</strong> Example outline, voice guide, research dossier from your research agent</li>



<li><strong>How to build:</strong>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Provide the LLM with an example outline and detail all the components that it must have. For example, if you like hierarchical outlines, state that clearly and describe the must-have sections.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-step-4-write" class="wp-block-heading">Step 4: Write</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The LLM can now create the content based on the outline and research.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Agent:</strong> Writer</li>



<li><strong>Suggested inputs and documentation:</strong> Research dossier, outline, brand voice guide, ICP information, case studies, first-party research</li>



<li><strong>How to build:</strong>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Provide the LLM with an example of high-quality content written from an outline. </li>



<li>Have it analyze the narrative flow and logical progression of the piece, as well as the words used and how they&#8217;re used. If you follow any rules, like bottom line up front (BLUF) or mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (MECE), be explicit about when to apply them.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/content-audit-workflows-claude-481099">6 content audit workflows to build in Claude</a></em></strong>



<h3 id="h-step-5-edit-fact-check-and-iterate" class="wp-block-heading">Step 5: Edit, fact-check, and iterate</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Rather than placing a human review gate after content is written, I like to run at least one editor pass. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For a robust system, I use a regular editor who checks for conformity with brand standards and assesses the draft against the stated angle and outline. I also run a fact-checker that verifies accuracy by double-checking stats and an AI editor to help remove AI tells.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">These editors don’t just make copyedits. They also assess whether the piece needs additional revisions and suggest them. For better results, each of these should be run in a new context window.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I originally had one editor handling structure, coverage, and style together. Splitting it into two — one for structure and coverage and another for phrasing and AI tells — produced better output than asking one context to fix everything at once.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Similarly, I found that asking an editor to fact-check resulted in two poorly done jobs. It&#8217;s also a great place to put in a <a href="https://searchengineland.com/self-improving-ai-content-workflows-483404">feedback loop</a>.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Agents:</strong> Editor, fact checker, AI editor.</li>



<li><strong>Suggested inputs and documentation:</strong> Editorial guidelines, voice guide, research dossier, writer’s draft.</li>



<li><strong>How to build:</strong> Each of these three agents needs distinct instructions.
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Editor:</strong> The initial editor should be responsible for verifying style guide compliance. If you have specific words you don&#8217;t want used, it should check for those and remove or replace them. It can also check for narrative structure, logical order, vague phrasing, and any missing bridges between sections. Be clear on what its job is. Provide examples as necessary.</li>



<li><strong>Fact checker:</strong> The fact-checker exists to help remove hallucinated information. It should have an adversarial bent. It should assume that everything stated in the article is wrong and attempt to disprove it.</li>



<li><strong>AI editor:</strong> No doubt, there are certain AI tells that raise your hackles. Here’s the chance to build an agent to strike those from your prose. In addition to your own personal pet peeves, consider adding some of these <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/detect-ai-content-prevent-plagiarism">signs of AI writing</a> to your agent doc. This editor should not focus on style, but strictly just on the AI tells.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is the final human review gate, unless you want to publish to a CMS via API. I run two passes with my editors before a piece gets handed to a human. This reduces the amount of editing humans need to do, but it won&#8217;t get the piece to 100%. Nor should you ever want to publish something that hasn&#8217;t been touched by a human.</p>



<h2 id="h-give-your-ai-content-system-the-right-context" class="wp-block-heading">Give your AI content system the right context</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Opus and Fable can help you create these agent docs quickly. However, you still need to provide the context that will make the content worth reading. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you don&#8217;t have the appropriate inputs, like information about your ICP, examples of quality content, or links to first-party research, no content workflow is going to help you create noncommodity content that resonates with your audience. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Give your favorite LLM this article and have it work with you through the process so you have all the information you need as you build.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/scale-seo-content-updates-claude-code-483862">How to scale SEO content updates with Claude Code</a></em></strong>


<a href="https://www.semrush.com/ai-seo/overview?utm_campaign=ic_sel_0102ai&#038;utm_source=searchengineland.com&#038;utm_medium=overlay&#038;onboarding=off" target="_blank">
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       Track your visibility across AI search, uncover missed opportunities, and grow your presence where customers are asking questions.
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<h2 id="h-where-to-take-your-content-workflow-next" class="wp-block-heading">Where to take your content workflow next</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you want to take this further, you can:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Add keyword and entity research to support the research step.</li>



<li>Include additional content types, either as standalone pieces or as add-ons for the pieces you’re creating, like a LinkedIn newsletter based on your blog post.</li>



<li>Integrate a blog content refresh process. </li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The content refresh process has been an important part of my workflows, allowing me to update content with new stats and information. If the entire workflow feels like too much, remember that you can start with one agent.</p>

I’ve spent months building and rebuilding an AI content pipeline in Claude Code. It now supports article updates and production for a company blog and external publications, and it usually gets pieces to about 95% of the way to publication.
That process taught me an important lesson: The hardest part isn’t getting AI to produce an article. It’s figuring out what the finished article needs to look like, then building the workflow and inputs that can reliably get you there.
If I were starting over, I’d work backward from the finished piece. I’d define what good looks like first, then determine what the system needs to take a keyword and turn it into an almost-ready-to-publish article.
Is an AI content system worth building?
For me, having this tool has allowed me to maximize my resources and create content that I otherwise couldn’t have.
However, it does come with risks. I’ve done my best to mitigate those with research, lots of human quality gates, and AI fact-checkers. But with Google aggressively noindexing noncommodity content, it may not make sense for your brand. Also, this isn’t a quick build. 
Hopefully, you already have many of the components needed to create the different agents. If not, you can build them in stages and iterate over time. Plus, you may be able to reuse some of your new agents for other workflows.
AI recommends.
      
See your AI visibility
    
Define ‘quality’ to uncover needed inputs
A successful content pipeline generally needs to produce useful, original content in your brand voice. The pieces should be helpful to your ideal customer profile (ICP), accurately describe your business and offerings, and sound human. Ideally, they’d also have ranking and citation potential.
Once you know what you want to produce, you can create a list of everything you need to get there. Some will be constant for every run. Hard-code these into your workflow because they represent shared context required across all runs. Others, like the topic, angle, and keyword, will be input with every run.
Constants include:




Brand explainer that states who you are, along with information about your ICP. For B2B, include industry, seniority, and pain points. The latter can be derived from client call transcripts or sales call transcripts. For B2C, include age, sex, profession, pain points, etc.
Brand voice guidelines detailing how you communicate. This would include examples and not just adjectives. If your current brand voice guidelines are only a list of adjectives, you’ll want to expand them before using them for a content pipeline. You don’t want to say “friendly, but formal.” Instead, provide examples of what this looks like in practice, as well as examples of what to avoid. Don’t have a voice guide? Work with your LLM to create a doc based on your best content.
Example content briefs, outlines, and articles that follow your best practices.
Product, service, and/or methodology descriptions to help the LLM describe what you do accurately. Sales collateral could be helpful here.
Information about your existing content. If you want internal link suggestions or to make sure that the pieces are distinct from the things that are already live on your site, you’ll want to share a Screaming Frog export with this information or your sitemap.
Links to or copies of internal research and case studies. This will help you create noncommodity content.
If you want your piece to be cited or if you want it to rank well, you also need to include information about best practices. Your organization may already have these types of writing or publication guidelines. If not, you can use Claude to help you research and generate this document. At its most basic, you want it to create a meta description, suggest a URL slug, and integrate any keywords or concepts that you give it in a natural way. You can make this more robust by requiring SERP research to analyze top-ranking or top-cited content for particular terms, requiring answer-forward passages, keeping paragraphs a particular length, etc.
You may have more criteria for a finished piece. If so, list them out.
Dig deeper: How to train Claude to sound like your brand



Determine the order of operations
Now that we know what quality looks like and what inputs it takes to get there, we need to determine the order of operations.
To some extent, this will mirror a regular content process. After all, that’s what we’re replicating. So while you can think of this build as onboarding a new writer and editor, you also need to consider the complications that using AI to create content introduces. The two main issues are robotic-sounding language and hallucinated “facts.”
Generally, with content creation, you research a topic, create the outline, write the piece, and edit it. Sometimes, different people handle these steps depending on the size of the team. 
The agents in your workflow will handle those same tasks. However, you’ll also want to build in additional human review gates that you might not need with a human-run content workflow.
To keep everything flowing appropriately and make sure no steps are skipped, I recommend an orchestrator agent that describes the workflow from start to finish and what each agent is responsible for. This document will need to be updated if you change your workflow or agent responsibilities. The orchestrator agent can be created at the end or simultaneously.
For each of the following steps, I’ve shared suggested documentation and information about how to build it. Work with your favorite LLM to build the actual agent docs, but be sure to review them so that you understand what they do and why. This will make troubleshooting easier.
Step 1: Workflow kickoff
Consider how you want to kick off your workflow. I have a separate locally hosted dashboard that lets me input a keyword and an angle. Once I click submit, Claude starts researching the topic.
If you have multiple ICPs or a specific product you want to mention per article, specify those as initial inputs before your workflow kicks off.
To start, I recommend focusing on one type of content, such as blog posts or LinkedIn posts. Later, you can add if/then functionality to create multiple content types using the workflow. 
It’s best, though, to get a working process for one content type and then add on, rather than trying to do too much at once and ending up with a workflow that doesn’t work well for anything.
Step 2: Research
Once a topic is submitted, it should start an agent that researches the topic, what your brand’s already written about it, and current SERPs to identify gaps your new piece could fill. I have mine output a dossier that can be handed off to subsequent agents.
Agent: Researcher
Suggested documentation:

List of reputable, citable sources in your industry where the agent should look first.
List of sources to avoid.
Research requirements, such as timeliness or size thresholds.
Your sitemap or a list of your content.
Links to or documentation for your original research and data.
If you want your agent to look at SERPs, note what types of results it should analyze. For example:

Do you want it to look at AI Overviews to see who’s being cited for a particular keyword? 
Do you want it to look at top-ranking sites except for list sites? 
How to build:

Share with your LLM precisely what you want the research to achieve. 
Be as specific as possible, especially when it comes to what qualifies as a good source and your own content.
Dig deeper: How to build a Claude Code-powered second brain for agency work




	
	
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
Step 3: Outline
Once the research is complete, I recommend having Claude generate an outline and adding a human review gate. 
That way, you can get a sense of what the finished piece will look like without having expended as many tokens. At this point, you’ll need to decide whether to scrap the piece, revise the outline, or continue.
Agent: Outliner
Suggested inputs and documentation: Example outline, voice guide, research dossier from your research agent
How to build:

Provide the LLM with an example outline and detail all the components that it must have. For example, if you like hierarchical outlines, state that clearly and describe the must-have sections.
Step 4: Write
The LLM can now create the content based on the outline and research.
Agent: Writer
Suggested inputs and documentation: Research dossier, outline, brand voice guide, ICP information, case studies, first-party research
How to build:

Provide the LLM with an example of high-quality content written from an outline. 
Have it analyze the narrative flow and logical progression of the piece, as well as the words used and how they’re used. If you follow any rules, like bottom line up front (BLUF) or mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (MECE), be explicit about when to apply them.
Dig deeper: 6 content audit workflows to build in Claude



Step 5: Edit, fact-check, and iterate
Rather than placing a human review gate after content is written, I like to run at least one editor pass. 
For a robust system, I use a regular editor who checks for conformity with brand standards and assesses the draft against the stated angle and outline. I also run a fact-checker that verifies accuracy by double-checking stats and an AI editor to help remove AI tells.
These editors don’t just make copyedits. They also assess whether the piece needs additional revisions and suggest them. For better results, each of these should be run in a new context window.
I originally had one editor handling structure, coverage, and style together. Splitting it into two — one for structure and coverage and another for phrasing and AI tells — produced better output than asking one context to fix everything at once.
Similarly, I found that asking an editor to fact-check resulted in two poorly done jobs. It’s also a great place to put in a feedback loop.
Agents: Editor, fact checker, AI editor.
Suggested inputs and documentation: Editorial guidelines, voice guide, research dossier, writer’s draft.
How to build: Each of these three agents needs distinct instructions.

Editor: The initial editor should be responsible for verifying style guide compliance. If you have specific words you don’t want used, it should check for those and remove or replace them. It can also check for narrative structure, logical order, vague phrasing, and any missing bridges between sections. Be clear on what its job is. Provide examples as necessary.
Fact checker: The fact-checker exists to help remove hallucinated information. It should have an adversarial bent. It should assume that everything stated in the article is wrong and attempt to disprove it.
AI editor: No doubt, there are certain AI tells that raise your hackles. Here’s the chance to build an agent to strike those from your prose. In addition to your own personal pet peeves, consider adding some of these signs of AI writing to your agent doc. This editor should not focus on style, but strictly just on the AI tells.
This is the final human review gate, unless you want to publish to a CMS via API. I run two passes with my editors before a piece gets handed to a human. This reduces the amount of editing humans need to do, but it won’t get the piece to 100%. Nor should you ever want to publish something that hasn’t been touched by a human.
Give your AI content system the right context
Opus and Fable can help you create these agent docs quickly. However, you still need to provide the context that will make the content worth reading. 
If you don’t have the appropriate inputs, like information about your ICP, examples of quality content, or links to first-party research, no content workflow is going to help you create noncommodity content that resonates with your audience. 
Give your favorite LLM this article and have it work with you through the process so you have all the information you need as you build.
Dig deeper: How to scale SEO content updates with Claude Code



  
customers won’t either.
      
See your AI visibility
    
Where to take your content workflow next
If you want to take this further, you can:
Add keyword and entity research to support the research step.
Include additional content types, either as standalone pieces or as add-ons for the pieces you’re creating, like a LinkedIn newsletter based on your blog post.
Integrate a blog content refresh process. 
The content refresh process has been an important part of my workflows, allowing me to update content with new stats and information. If the entire workflow feels like too much, remember that you can start with one agent.

Build a reliable AI content system in Claude Code with the right context, specialized agents, and human review.

How to build an AI content workflow from the ground up

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>Google is unifying Google tag and Tag Manager with no-code event tracking, streamlined management and faster data transmission.

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-unifies-tag-and-tag-manager-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google is overhauling its tagging tools, bringing Google tag and Google Tag Manager closer together while introducing no-code event tracking, faster data transmission and a simplified Tag Manager interface.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Aug. 20 update is designed to make measurement setup less technically demanding while giving advertisers a more unified way to manage data flowing into products including Google Ads and Google Analytics.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What’s changing.</strong> Google tags will be upgraded into fully capable Google Tag Manager containers, meaning websites currently using only Google tag will gain access to Tag Manager features such as interface-driven tagging, debugging and version control.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="485" height="151" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-tags.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485692"/></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google says the upgrade won&#8217;t change how existing Google tags behave on webpages. Each Google destination will also retain its own tag, preserving existing setups and automation event triggers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care.</strong> Conversion tracking is often one of the most technically challenging parts of campaign measurement, particularly for smaller advertisers without dedicated analytics or development teams. Google&#8217;s visual tagging and unified setup could lower that barrier considerably. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">At the same time, advertisers with sophisticated Tag Manager implementations should review Google&#8217;s proposed optimization changes carefully before publishing them rather than assuming a simpler configuration will behave identically to their existing setup.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>The interface gets simpler.</strong> Google is redesigning Tag Manager&#8217;s Overview page and reorganizing some of its existing functionality.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A new Settings section will provide a centralized place for container-wide settings, while more technical features — including triggers, variables, templates and folders — will sit within a collapsible Advanced section.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">No existing functionality is being removed as part of the redesign.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>No-code event tracking.</strong> One of the more significant additions is visual tagging, which will allow advertisers to create events and set up conversions without manually writing code.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="472" height="523" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-Visual-tagging.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485691"/></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Advertisers will be able to navigate through their website and select elements directly to define events. Google will then handle technical components such as selectors and triggers behind the scenes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin described the experience as allowing advertisers to navigate through an action such as a purchase in the same way a customer would while Google handles the technical setup.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Tag performance could improve.</strong> Google is also changing how optimized Tag Manager containers transmit measurement data.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Previously, Google Tag Manager could load additional <code>gtag.js</code> JavaScript when sending data to a Google destination. Optimized containers will instead be able to send data directly to Google destinations, which Google says can reduce measurement latency and potentially improve website performance.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>A clearer view of data flows.</strong> The unified tagging platform will also provide a visual map showing which Google destinations — such as Google Ads or Google Analytics — are receiving measurement data.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The aim is to make it easier for advertisers to understand their measurement setup and identify potential configuration problems.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Container optimization is optional.</strong> Existing Tag Manager users will be prompted to optimize their containers through a new in-account optimization banner, but Google won&#8217;t make the changes automatically.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Users with edit, approve or publish permissions will be able to initiate the process and preview all proposed changes before publishing them to their workspace.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Optimization will also bring existing Google tag settings into the new Settings tab while leaving event tags unchanged.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Deployment changes.</strong> Google says all new deployment snippets will eventually use the same format and will no longer contain the <code>gtag config</code> command.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Instead, Google recommends configuring initialization behavior using the <code>gtm init</code> trigger. Advertisers that need to preserve a legacy setup can configure the trigger to wait for the config command.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Account management gets more connected.</strong> Optimized containers can also be linked directly with their Google destination accounts, making the container visible and manageable from other Google product interfaces.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Those links will be established automatically during optimization with Read access by default, although permissions can subsequently be changed through Tag Manager.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>More partner integrations.</strong> Google is also expanding its tagging ecosystem with integrations involving Akamai, Cloudflare, Duda, Fastly and Webflow, which Marvin said are intended to help businesses maintain accurate and secure measurement data.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bottom line.</strong> <a href="https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/17079602">Google is turning its separate tagging products into a more unified measurement system</a>, combining Tag Manager&#8217;s advanced capabilities with Google tag while making event and conversion tracking increasingly accessible without code.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Dig deeper.</strong> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ginnymarvin_measurement-googletagmanager-googleanalytics-ugcPost-7496236851339358209-a_gv/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAACBLQBQB7QvtpGJoL-7nYMngCeBhJXn69S8">Marvin announces new Google Tag/Tag Manager update.</a>


Google is overhauling its tagging tools, bringing Google tag and Google Tag Manager closer together while introducing no-code event tracking, faster data transmission and a simplified Tag Manager interface.
The Aug. 20 update is designed to make measurement setup less technically demanding while giving advertisers a more unified way to manage data flowing into products including Google Ads and Google Analytics.
What’s changing. Google tags will be upgraded into fully capable Google Tag Manager containers, meaning websites currently using only Google tag will gain access to Tag Manager features such as interface-driven tagging, debugging and version control.




Google says the upgrade won’t change how existing Google tags behave on webpages. Each Google destination will also retain its own tag, preserving existing setups and automation event triggers.
Why we care. Conversion tracking is often one of the most technically challenging parts of campaign measurement, particularly for smaller advertisers without dedicated analytics or development teams. Google’s visual tagging and unified setup could lower that barrier considerably. 
At the same time, advertisers with sophisticated Tag Manager implementations should review Google’s proposed optimization changes carefully before publishing them rather than assuming a simpler configuration will behave identically to their existing setup.
The interface gets simpler. Google is redesigning Tag Manager’s Overview page and reorganizing some of its existing functionality.
A new Settings section will provide a centralized place for container-wide settings, while more technical features — including triggers, variables, templates and folders — will sit within a collapsible Advanced section.
No existing functionality is being removed as part of the redesign.
No-code event tracking. One of the more significant additions is visual tagging, which will allow advertisers to create events and set up conversions without manually writing code.




Advertisers will be able to navigate through their website and select elements directly to define events. Google will then handle technical components such as selectors and triggers behind the scenes.
Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin described the experience as allowing advertisers to navigate through an action such as a purchase in the same way a customer would while Google handles the technical setup.
Tag performance could improve. Google is also changing how optimized Tag Manager containers transmit measurement data.
Previously, Google Tag Manager could load additional gtag.js JavaScript when sending data to a Google destination. Optimized containers will instead be able to send data directly to Google destinations, which Google says can reduce measurement latency and potentially improve website performance.
A clearer view of data flows. The unified tagging platform will also provide a visual map showing which Google destinations — such as Google Ads or Google Analytics — are receiving measurement data.
The aim is to make it easier for advertisers to understand their measurement setup and identify potential configuration problems.
Container optimization is optional. Existing Tag Manager users will be prompted to optimize their containers through a new in-account optimization banner, but Google won’t make the changes automatically.
Users with edit, approve or publish permissions will be able to initiate the process and preview all proposed changes before publishing them to their workspace.
Optimization will also bring existing Google tag settings into the new Settings tab while leaving event tags unchanged.
Deployment changes. Google says all new deployment snippets will eventually use the same format and will no longer contain the gtag config command.
Instead, Google recommends configuring initialization behavior using the gtm init trigger. Advertisers that need to preserve a legacy setup can configure the trigger to wait for the config command.
Account management gets more connected. Optimized containers can also be linked directly with their Google destination accounts, making the container visible and manageable from other Google product interfaces.
Those links will be established automatically during optimization with Read access by default, although permissions can subsequently be changed through Tag Manager.
More partner integrations. Google is also expanding its tagging ecosystem with integrations involving Akamai, Cloudflare, Duda, Fastly and Webflow, which Marvin said are intended to help businesses maintain accurate and secure measurement data.
Bottom line. Google is turning its separate tagging products into a more unified measurement system, combining Tag Manager’s advanced capabilities with Google tag while making event and conversion tracking increasingly accessible without code.
Dig deeper. Marvin announces new Google Tag/Tag Manager update.

Google is unifying Google tag and Tag Manager with no-code event tracking, streamlined management and faster data transmission.

Google unifies Google tag and Tag Manager, adds no-code event tracking

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-search-is-here-but-marketers-still-call-it-SEO-Study.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="AI search is here, but marketers still call it SEO- Study" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-search-is-here-but-marketers-still-call-it-SEO-Study.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-search-is-here-but-marketers-still-call-it-SEO-Study-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-search-is-here-but-marketers-still-call-it-SEO-Study-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-search-is-here-but-marketers-still-call-it-SEO-Study-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>New research shows how marketers define AI search, where they’re putting budget, and what vendors need to prove to earn their trust.


The SEO industry has been debating what to call AI search optimization. GEO. AEO. LLM optimization. AI search optimization. Every few weeks, a new acronym gains traction on LinkedIn, shows up in an agency deck, or gets debated during a conference happy hour.
To be clear, the debate isn’t meaningless. Language shapes how teams hire, budget, measure, and explain the work.
But there’s a difference between the language the industry uses to signal expertise and the language buyers use to solve a problem.
In previous research, we examined how new AI search terms were being adopted across social and hiring platforms and among industry influencers. This time, Fractl surveyed 343 U.S. marketing decision-makers to understand how they describe, fund, and evaluate AI search optimization. (Disclosure: I’m the co-founder of Fractl.)



Key takeaways:




81% of marketers still refer to their internal AI search visibility strategy as SEO.
70% of marketers would search for either “AI search optimization” (46%) or simply “SEO” (24%) when looking for help with AI search visibility online.
C-suite marketers use “GEO” (28%) and “AEO” (17%) at roughly three times the rate of individual contributors (9% and 3%).
36% of marketers cited excessive buzzword usage without a clear explanation of what each term means as the No. 1 vendor red flag.
66% of marketers report having used AI-based tools to research marketing vendors.
Marketers allocate 24% of their search or content budgets, on average, to AI search visibility.
The findings suggest that AI search is changing the mechanics of visibility faster than it is changing the vocabulary of the buyers funding it.
Most marketers still describe this work as SEO. Many are still looking up the new acronyms. And when they evaluate vendors, they’re far more interested in measurable case studies, clear methodologies, and credible expertise than terminology fluency.
Half the industry is still looking up the vocabulary
The AI search vocabulary may feel settled within industry circles, but most marketing teams are still catching up.
Half of marketers said they’ve researched a term they didn’t know after seeing it used by a peer or competitor. Only 27% of marketing teams have formally adopted a term beyond SEO to describe their AI search activities, while 42% have decided against it, and 31% are still undecided.
This isn’t resistance to AI search strategy. It’s a sign that buyers still need clearer language.
This is where vendors need to be careful. When marketers were asked how they respond to terms like GEO or AEO in a pitch, 42% said it depends on how much context is provided. Another 30% saw the language as innovative, but 22% said it had no impact, and 7% said it made the vendor seem less trustworthy.




The takeaway: Don’t let the acronym carry the pitch.
Use the term if it helps, but define it through the work. Explain how AI search changes discovery, brand citations, third-party authority, content structure, and measurement. Then connect it back to the language buyers already understand: SEO performance, visibility, authority, qualified traffic, and revenue influence.
The segmentation data shows why this matters. Senior leaders are more likely to adopt new terminology, with 36% of directors and C-suite executives saying their teams have moved beyond SEO. But C-suite leaders were also the most likely to report looking up unfamiliar terms, at 56%.
That suggests many executives are interested in the category before their organizations have a shared operating model for it. They may be asking about GEO because they saw it in a board deck, while the SEO, content, PR, and analytics teams are still figuring out what changes in execution.
For agencies and platforms, the opportunity is to make AI search easier to understand, budget for, and act on, rather than to win the naming debate.
AI recommends.
      
See your AI visibility
    
AI search budgets are here, but strategy is still unsettled
AI search may still be an unsettled category, but marketers are already funding it.
On average, marketers are now allocating 24% of their total search or content budget to AI search visibility. Most teams aren’t sitting this out. Up to 82% have committed at least some of their budget, and 43% are allocating more than 20%.
That budget shift is the clearest sign that AI search has moved from experimentation to planning.
The teams investing the most are closest to performance measurement. SEO and performance marketing teams allocate a higher share of their budgets to AI search visibility than content and brand teams. That makes sense. These teams are most likely to notice changes in impressions, rankings, traffic quality, attribution paths, and assisted conversions first.
But the biggest challenge marketers cited wasn’t measurement. It was keeping pace with how quickly the landscape is changing.
Twenty-eight percent said the speed of change is their top challenge, ahead of measuring performance or visibility in AI-generated results (17%), identifying which AI search platforms to prioritize (15%), and the absence of industry standards or best practices (13%).
For vendors, agencies, and internal SEO leaders, the mandate is bigger than another dashboard. Teams need a strategy that can evolve as search surfaces continue to change.




Right now, platform focus is fragmented. ChatGPT leads, with 34% of marketers prioritizing it for AI search visibility, followed by Gemini at 16%, Claude at 6%, and Copilot or Bing AI at 5%. Only 1% named Perplexity, despite the attention it gets within SEO and AI circles. Another 14% said their team hasn’t picked a target platform yet.
A platform-by-platform strategy may be useful for advanced teams, but many companies are still one step earlier. 
They need to know whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, or AI Overviews are pulling from listicles, Reddit threads, analyst pages, trade media, YouTube transcripts, their own site, or competitor-owned content, and which of those sources they can realistically influence.
Marketers should avoid both extremes. Don’t dismiss AI search because your traffic hasn’t collapsed. But don’t overcorrect by chasing every new answer engine separately.
Start by identifying where AI search is already influencing your category. Audit the prompts your buyers are likely to use. Track how your brand, competitors, and publishers are represented across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and Perplexity. Then look for the recurring sources, citations, comparisons, and entity signals shaping those answers.
For vendors, the opportunity is to help teams prioritize. The winning pitch isn’t “we optimize for every AI platform.” It’s “we can show you where AI search is already changing discovery in your category, which platforms matter most right now, and what actions are most likely to improve visibility.”
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
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Case studies beat acronym fluency by 4:1
Agencies have spent the past year repositioning around AI search, GEO, and AEO. Pitch decks have new glossaries. Capability slides have new headers. Service pages have been rewritten around AI visibility.
But when decision-makers evaluate a vendor, the signals they trust are much more familiar.




Case studies with measurable, verifiable results were the top credibility signal, selected by 34% of marketers. Clear methodology followed at 22%, and team expertise or a demonstrated track record came in at 15%.
Combined, 71% of decision-makers ranked case studies, methodology, or team track record as their top credibility signal. Terminology fluency ranked at just 9%.
Agencies should take this as a reset. The strongest pitch isn’t about acronym fluency. It’s about showing that you understand what changed, what to do about it, and how to measure what happened next.
The red-flag data reinforces the same point. The biggest turnoff was heavy use of buzzwords without a clear explanation, cited by 36% of marketers. Another 21% pointed to a lack of case studies or trackable results, while 20% flagged vague or unsubstantiated performance claims. Repackaged SEO services with new AI branding also raised concerns for 16%.
Senior SEO teams don’t need to avoid AI search positioning. They need to make the methodology visible.
Show which prompts were tested. Show where the brand appeared, where competitors appeared, and which sources influenced the answer. Show whether the issue is technical accessibility, weak entity signals, outdated comparison content, missing third-party validation, thin category-level authority, or an absence from trusted industry sources. Then show what changed after the work was done.
The strongest AI search pitch isn’t “we do GEO.” It’s a clear proof chain: Here’s how AI search represents your category, here’s where your brand is missing or misrepresented, here’s what influences those answers, and here’s the work required to improve visibility.
AI search is becoming part of the vendor discovery loop
The marketers being sold AI visibility services are already using AI tools to evaluate the companies pitching them.
Two-thirds of marketers said they’ve personally used an AI search tool such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini to research or evaluate a marketing vendor or agency.
Adoption is highest among the groups most likely to influence search investment: SEO specialists (89%), performance marketers (84%), and C-suite leaders (81%).
That changes what “visibility” means for agencies and platforms selling into this market.
Vendor discovery no longer starts and ends with Google, LinkedIn, trade media, review platforms, or referrals. 
AI search tools and peer recommendations are now tied as marketers’ first stop when researching AI search solutions or partners, with each selected by 34% of respondents.
Traditional discovery channels, such as Google Search, LinkedIn, industry publications, and trade media, followed at 22%, while agency review platforms like G2 and Clutch came in at 8%.
This is the feedback loop senior SEO teams should be watching.




A prospect may search Google, ask peers in a Slack community, and prompt ChatGPT before ever filling out a form. Those surfaces aren’t separate anymore. They reinforce each other.
Agencies should audit the full discovery path: what AI tools say about them, which third-party sources those answers rely on, how peers describe them in communities, and whether their case studies are visible enough to support the claims being made.
Start with the prompts your buyers are already likely to run. Ask which agencies specialize in AI search visibility, which SEO firms have credible case studies, how your company compares with competitors, and which vendors are trusted for GEO, AEO, LLM optimization, and AI search optimization. Then look at the sources shaping those answers.
customers won’t either.
      
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AI search success depends on visibility, not vocabulary
If your brand is absent, misrepresented, or supported by weak evidence, that’s not just an AI visibility problem. It’s a sales visibility problem.
Vocabulary isn’t strategy. Marketers are still using familiar terms, evaluating familiar proof points, and rewarding vendors that can explain the work clearly. What’s changing is where they discover and validate those vendors.
The winners of the next phase won’t be the agencies arguing hardest for a new acronym. They’ll be the ones that make themselves easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to evaluate and trust across Google, AI search tools, and the peer networks marketers already rely on.

New research shows how marketers define AI search, where they’re putting budget, and what vendors need to prove to earn their trust.

AI search is here, but marketers still call it SEO

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-Google-Business-Profile-needs-a-business-continuity-plan.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Your Google Business Profile needs a business continuity plan" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-Google-Business-Profile-needs-a-business-continuity-plan.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-Google-Business-Profile-needs-a-business-continuity-plan-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-Google-Business-Profile-needs-a-business-continuity-plan-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-Google-Business-Profile-needs-a-business-continuity-plan-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Reduce the business impact of suspensions, verification issues, and missing reviews with practical preparation before problems occur.


Reduce the business impact of suspensions, verification issues, and missing reviews with practical preparation before problems occur.

Your Google Business Profile needs a business continuity plan

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to build content briefs around audience situations" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Search volume tells you what people search for. The context behind those searches can reveal what your content should actually address.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to build content briefs around audience situations" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/How-to-build-content-briefs-around-audience-situations-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Keyword research can help you understand what people search for, but it doesn’t tell you why they’re searching or what they need next.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Better <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/content-brief">content briefs</a> start with the situations your audience finds themselves in, then use those situations to shape what you create and how you measure success.</p>



<h2 id="h-when-keywords-become-the-brief" class="wp-block-heading">When keywords become the brief</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Briefing keywords alone is one of the reasons we have a slew of 300-word articles written somewhere between 2015-2018 that we’re now responsible for cleaning up.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It’s why every accountant in the U.S. has an FAQ answering “what’s the fiscal year?” on their website somewhere. We wanted to chase the perceived volume of impressions and clicks that answering that kind of question would get us.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1458" height="1418" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/semrush-fiscal-year.png" alt="Semrush - fiscal year" class="wp-image-485559" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/semrush-fiscal-year.png 1458w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/semrush-fiscal-year-768x747.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1458px) 100vw, 1458px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For a specialist service like accounting, answering these kinds of basic questions to get a shot at visibility for broad questions does your expertise a disservice.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It leaves you with pie on your face because you’re putting yourself up against the governmental agency that dictates these kinds of things and saying, “Hey, I’m better than the entity that set these standards. Google, please give searchers my answer instead.”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s never going to happen. Honestly, I’m not sure why we ever thought it was a good way to gain visibility in our areas of expertise.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Plus, when you’re offering that information on your website, you’re assuming people coming to your website don’t already know it. And it should raise two uncomfortable questions as a business owner:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Why am I trying to outrank the entity that should clearly be the only answer served for this question?</li>



<li>Why, as a business owner, would I want clients that don’t already know the answer to this broad, basic question or know how to find it out themselves?</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This should lead us to take a step back and look to understand the larger picture keywords were always trying to tell us: What journey is our audience on, and how can we answer their concerns along the way?</p>


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<h2 id="h-from-keywords-to-audience-situations" class="wp-block-heading">From keywords to audience situations</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As the return of conversational search with large language models should remind us, humans don’t natively think in keywords.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It’s not “best new sweet snacks 2026,” it’s:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>“My wife is pregnant and craving weird sweets she’s not tried before.”&nbsp;</li>



<li>“I want to give new candy out for Halloween this year.”&nbsp;</li>



<li>“I want to impress my friends with something different for dessert at the next dinner.”</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The situation is much more aligned with topic-level thinking than individual keywords.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It’s also more aligned with how large language models are trained to think alongside folks using their platform.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Topics themselves are the first step into category entry points (CEP). If you’re drawing a blank on topics, Semrush has a topics overview to kick-start your thinking.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1399" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/semrush-topics-1-scaled.png" alt="Semrush topics" class="wp-image-485561" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/semrush-topics-1-scaled.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/semrush-topics-1-768x525.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/semrush-topics-1-1536x1049.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">CEPs are much more qualitative and people-based. They’re the jump from the topic back to the situation that created it. They’re the 7 W’s, as described in Jenni Romaniuk’s Better Brand Health:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Why.</li>



<li>When.</li>



<li>Where.</li>



<li>While.</li>



<li>With whom.</li>



<li>With/for what.</li>



<li>How feeling.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Answering those 7 W’s is the exercise you want to go through when building a brief. And honestly, it’s the exercise you should go through before creating anything new for your website or your brand.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The people most likely to help you with this are the folks who interact with your audience the most: support, sales, in-store staff (if you have them), or anyone who’s become a public brand representative in some way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One element to understand here: This process is based in brand science and marketing principles. It’s not easily expressed in a metric the same way keyword volume is.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Keyword volume, though, has always been abstracted away from your actual audience and their concerns.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Using the 7 W’s forces you, your team, and your leadership to ground your choices in your actual audience. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Less measurable, more defendable: “This is the feedback we got from our support team from the last six months” versus “This has the biggest search volume in the U.S. for our vertical.” </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you were a business owner, what would you prefer to act on? Hopefully, the latter.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/build-brand-worth-finding-discovery-signals-481644">Building a brand worth finding: Signals that fuel discovery</a></em></strong>



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			<p class="inline-form-text text-center mb-0">Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.</p>
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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-text-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-css-opacity has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background"/>



<h2 id="h-the-actual-brief" class="wp-block-heading">The actual brief</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The fields I’d suggest having in the brief:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>One line for each of the 7 W’s. Include who on the team you got the information from, if you can — the traceability can be useful if your team needs to fact-check or get a slightly different level of detail.</li>



<li>The scenario you’re solving for: the panicky business owner near the end of their first financial year, someone taking over a new business, or the young apprentice learning the ropes.</li>



<li>Everything else you’d have for a typical content brief: the content type (informational, consideration, transactional), short suggested outline, any brand tone notes, existing coverage check, length guidance, and the measure of success.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This gives your content a shape focused on the situations your audience finds themselves in and the journey they’re on — and cements, with real feedback from real people, where your brand isn’t answering their concerns. It also gives you a direct, scaffolded way to answer those questions within the context of your brand and business.</p>



<h2 id="h-the-proof-is-in-the-pudding" class="wp-block-heading">The proof is in the pudding</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have a leadership team that may be skeptical of working this way, I’d suggest doing what I usually suggest: Test it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Write a traditional keyword-based brief and one based around the 7 W’s and those scenarios. Review the quality of what you get back from your writers and, if you can, A/B test them on the website for things like scroll depth, interaction, and impressions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hopefully, you’ll come away with an audience that has more of its concerns about your business answered before purchasing a product or service from you. Your internal teams should also be more attuned to their audience&#8217;s concerns than they were when they focused on keywords.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s a win-win for your business in the long term, much more so than ranking No. 1 for “what’s the fiscal year” for your entire tenure with the company.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/customers-build-confidence-search-journey-484509">How customers build confidence across the search journey</a></em></strong>

Keyword research can help you understand what people search for, but it doesn’t tell you why they’re searching or what they need next. 
Better content briefs start with the situations your audience finds themselves in, then use those situations to shape what you create and how you measure success.
When keywords become the brief
Briefing keywords alone is one of the reasons we have a slew of 300-word articles written somewhere between 2015-2018 that we’re now responsible for cleaning up.
It’s why every accountant in the U.S. has an FAQ answering “what’s the fiscal year?” on their website somewhere. We wanted to chase the perceived volume of impressions and clicks that answering that kind of question would get us.




For a specialist service like accounting, answering these kinds of basic questions to get a shot at visibility for broad questions does your expertise a disservice.
It leaves you with pie on your face because you’re putting yourself up against the governmental agency that dictates these kinds of things and saying, “Hey, I’m better than the entity that set these standards. Google, please give searchers my answer instead.”
That’s never going to happen. Honestly, I’m not sure why we ever thought it was a good way to gain visibility in our areas of expertise.
Plus, when you’re offering that information on your website, you’re assuming people coming to your website don’t already know it. And it should raise two uncomfortable questions as a business owner:
Why am I trying to outrank the entity that should clearly be the only answer served for this question?
Why, as a business owner, would I want clients that don’t already know the answer to this broad, basic question or know how to find it out themselves?
This should lead us to take a step back and look to understand the larger picture keywords were always trying to tell us: What journey is our audience on, and how can we answer their concerns along the way?
customers find first.
      
Start your free trial
    
From keywords to audience situations
As the return of conversational search with large language models should remind us, humans don’t natively think in keywords. 
It’s not “best new sweet snacks 2026,” it’s: 
“My wife is pregnant and craving weird sweets she’s not tried before.” 
“I want to give new candy out for Halloween this year.” 
“I want to impress my friends with something different for dessert at the next dinner.”
The situation is much more aligned with topic-level thinking than individual keywords.
It’s also more aligned with how large language models are trained to think alongside folks using their platform.
Topics themselves are the first step into category entry points (CEP). If you’re drawing a blank on topics, Semrush has a topics overview to kick-start your thinking.




CEPs are much more qualitative and people-based. They’re the jump from the topic back to the situation that created it. They’re the 7 W’s, as described in Jenni Romaniuk’s Better Brand Health: 
Why.
When.
Where.
While.
With whom.
With/for what.
How feeling.
Answering those 7 W’s is the exercise you want to go through when building a brief. And honestly, it’s the exercise you should go through before creating anything new for your website or your brand.
The people most likely to help you with this are the folks who interact with your audience the most: support, sales, in-store staff (if you have them), or anyone who’s become a public brand representative in some way.
One element to understand here: This process is based in brand science and marketing principles. It’s not easily expressed in a metric the same way keyword volume is. 
Keyword volume, though, has always been abstracted away from your actual audience and their concerns.
Using the 7 W’s forces you, your team, and your leadership to ground your choices in your actual audience. 
Less measurable, more defendable: “This is the feedback we got from our support team from the last six months” versus “This has the biggest search volume in the U.S. for our vertical.” 
If you were a business owner, what would you prefer to act on? Hopefully, the latter.
Dig deeper: Building a brand worth finding: Signals that fuel discovery




	
	
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
The actual brief
The fields I’d suggest having in the brief:
One line for each of the 7 W’s. Include who on the team you got the information from, if you can — the traceability can be useful if your team needs to fact-check or get a slightly different level of detail.
The scenario you’re solving for: the panicky business owner near the end of their first financial year, someone taking over a new business, or the young apprentice learning the ropes.
Everything else you’d have for a typical content brief: the content type (informational, consideration, transactional), short suggested outline, any brand tone notes, existing coverage check, length guidance, and the measure of success.
This gives your content a shape focused on the situations your audience finds themselves in and the journey they’re on — and cements, with real feedback from real people, where your brand isn’t answering their concerns. It also gives you a direct, scaffolded way to answer those questions within the context of your brand and business.
The proof is in the pudding
If you have a leadership team that may be skeptical of working this way, I’d suggest doing what I usually suggest: Test it.
Write a traditional keyword-based brief and one based around the 7 W’s and those scenarios. Review the quality of what you get back from your writers and, if you can, A/B test them on the website for things like scroll depth, interaction, and impressions.
Hopefully, you’ll come away with an audience that has more of its concerns about your business answered before purchasing a product or service from you. Your internal teams should also be more attuned to their audience’s concerns than they were when they focused on keywords.
That’s a win-win for your business in the long term, much more so than ranking No. 1 for “what’s the fiscal year” for your entire tenure with the company.
Dig deeper: How customers build confidence across the search journey

Search volume tells you what people search for. The context behind those searches can reveal what your content should actually address.

How to build content briefs around audience situations

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Why transaction data alone isn't enough for performance marketing, and how persistent customer profiles change the equation.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div><div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-485363" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Rokt-20260824-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Performance marketers have access to a wealth of detailed conversion data. A purchase can reveal product choices, basket value, discounts, channel, location, and dozens of other attributes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The limitation is that paid media decisions rarely depend on the transaction alone. A $100 order from a first-time buyer and a $100 order from a customer who purchases every two weeks may look identical in a conversion feed, even though they represent very different customer relationships.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Connect those orders to a persistent profile and they stop matching. One belongs to a customer who buys every two weeks. The other is a first purchase. The transaction was never the difference. The history is.</p>



<h2 id="h-start-with-identity-coverage" class="wp-block-heading">Start with identity coverage</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Connected history starts with recognizing the customer across interactions. How a brand gets there depends on the business. Ecommerce retailers have authenticated accounts. Subscription businesses have identity by design. Physical retail, grocery, and QSR have the harder problem: the transaction happens whether or not anyone identifies themselves. That&#8217;s the job loyalty does. It attaches an in-store or drive-through purchase to a known customer.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Enrollment in loyalty programs isn&#8217;t the same as identity coverage. What matters is the share of your transactions you can tie to a known customer. Not how many members you have. How many purchases arrive with someone attached.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That coverage supports three kinds of customer data:</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Identity and governance: </strong>Identifiers, consent, permitted uses, how profiles relate to each other. This is what makes the rest possible.</li>



<li><strong>Loyalty program state: </strong>Tier, points balance, reward eligibility, redemption history, tenure. This only exists where a program does.</li>



<li><strong>Derived attributes:</strong> Purchase cadence, time between orders, category affinity, time-of-day and location patterns, channel mix, offer response. These are computed from linked events rather than recorded in a source system, and they need identified history rather than a loyalty program specifically.</li>
</ol>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The third category is where transactions become useful for performance marketing.</p>



<h2 id="h-turn-history-into-signals-that-drive-decisions" class="wp-block-heading">Turn history into signals that drive decisions</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Derived attributes shouldn&#8217;t all be refreshed or activated in the same way. Brands need to calibrate their useful windows against their own customer behavior and the decision each signal is intended to inform.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Consider purchase cadence. Knowing that someone bought coffee this morning is useful. Knowing that they usually purchase every weekday morning creates a different signal. When that customer skips three days, no new event arrives. The purchase that did <em>not</em> happen is the signal. Cadence works only when it is recalculated often enough to register the absence.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Category affinity behaves differently. Because it can be calculated across many purchases, its relevance changes more gradually. One purchase in a new category means little; repeated purchases indicate an emerging preference.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A useful discipline is to work backward from the media decision. If the goal is audience definition, exclusion, or conversion-value optimization, determine which derived attribute improves that decision, how it is calculated, and how current it needs to be.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The two $100 orders diverge here. One fits an established cadence and the other does not. The repeat buyer belongs in a suppression list for acquisition campaigns. The first-time buyer is the one worth paying to acquire.</p>



<h2 id="h-make-connected-history-operational" class="wp-block-heading">Make connected history operational</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Go back to that drive-through purchase. It only becomes connected history if it resolves to the same profile as the app session and the loyalty account. The identifier was captured at the register. Whether it lands on the right profile is a separate problem, and it is the one that decides whether any of the derived attributes above can be built. That means unified data across web, app, and POS, profiles that reflect recent activity, audience logic that holds wherever the signal is used, and consent that travels with the data rather than sitting in a separate system.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Platforms such as <a href="https://www.mparticle.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener sponsored nofollow">Rokt mParticle</a> provide that connective layer.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Two $100 orders, one of them worth acting on differently.</p>


Performance marketers have access to a wealth of detailed conversion data. A purchase can reveal product choices, basket value, discounts, channel, location, and dozens of other attributes.
The limitation is that paid media decisions rarely depend on the transaction alone. A $100 order from a first-time buyer and a $100 order from a customer who purchases every two weeks may look identical in a conversion feed, even though they represent very different customer relationships.
Connect those orders to a persistent profile and they stop matching. One belongs to a customer who buys every two weeks. The other is a first purchase. The transaction was never the difference. The history is.
Start with identity coverage
Connected history starts with recognizing the customer across interactions. How a brand gets there depends on the business. Ecommerce retailers have authenticated accounts. Subscription businesses have identity by design. Physical retail, grocery, and QSR have the harder problem: the transaction happens whether or not anyone identifies themselves. That’s the job loyalty does. It attaches an in-store or drive-through purchase to a known customer.
Enrollment in loyalty programs isn’t the same as identity coverage. What matters is the share of your transactions you can tie to a known customer. Not how many members you have. How many purchases arrive with someone attached.
That coverage supports three kinds of customer data:
Identity and governance: Identifiers, consent, permitted uses, how profiles relate to each other. This is what makes the rest possible.
Loyalty program state: Tier, points balance, reward eligibility, redemption history, tenure. This only exists where a program does.
Derived attributes: Purchase cadence, time between orders, category affinity, time-of-day and location patterns, channel mix, offer response. These are computed from linked events rather than recorded in a source system, and they need identified history rather than a loyalty program specifically.
The third category is where transactions become useful for performance marketing.
Turn history into signals that drive decisions
Derived attributes shouldn’t all be refreshed or activated in the same way. Brands need to calibrate their useful windows against their own customer behavior and the decision each signal is intended to inform.
Consider purchase cadence. Knowing that someone bought coffee this morning is useful. Knowing that they usually purchase every weekday morning creates a different signal. When that customer skips three days, no new event arrives. The purchase that did not happen is the signal. Cadence works only when it is recalculated often enough to register the absence.
Category affinity behaves differently. Because it can be calculated across many purchases, its relevance changes more gradually. One purchase in a new category means little; repeated purchases indicate an emerging preference.
A useful discipline is to work backward from the media decision. If the goal is audience definition, exclusion, or conversion-value optimization, determine which derived attribute improves that decision, how it is calculated, and how current it needs to be.
The two $100 orders diverge here. One fits an established cadence and the other does not. The repeat buyer belongs in a suppression list for acquisition campaigns. The first-time buyer is the one worth paying to acquire.
Make connected history operational
Go back to that drive-through purchase. It only becomes connected history if it resolves to the same profile as the app session and the loyalty account. The identifier was captured at the register. Whether it lands on the right profile is a separate problem, and it is the one that decides whether any of the derived attributes above can be built. That means unified data across web, app, and POS, profiles that reflect recent activity, audience logic that holds wherever the signal is used, and consent that travels with the data rather than sitting in a separate system.
Platforms such as Rokt mParticle provide that connective layer.
Two $100 orders, one of them worth acting on differently.

Why transaction data alone isn't enough for performance marketing, and how persistent customer profiles change the equation.

The power of connected customer history by Rokt mParticle

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>The issue started earlier this week and today, Friday, Google has confirmed it is a bug on its end.

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/broken-google-logo-favicon-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google confirmed it is working on fixing a bug with favicons not showing properly within Google Search. Rajan Patel, Google&#8217;s VP, Engineering for Search, <a href="https://x.com/rajanpatel/status/2090852799982813612">said</a> &#8220;It&#8217;s an issue on our end. We identified the issue and we&#8217;re addressing it as quickly as we can. Sorry that this happened.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The issue started earlier this week, when I saw a significant <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-favicons-breaking-41904.html">spike in complaints about favicons disappearing</a> from the Google Search result snippets.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What it looks like. </strong>Here are some screenshots of Google showing a default globe icon, which means Google is not able to pull the proper favicon from the site. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1706" height="604" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-snippet-broken-favicon-up7VQ0u4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485666" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-snippet-broken-favicon-up7VQ0u4.png 1706w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-snippet-broken-favicon-up7VQ0u4-768x272.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-snippet-broken-favicon-up7VQ0u4-1536x544.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1706px) 100vw, 1706px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This was already resolved:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1658" height="606" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/backlinko-favicon-RgTiKcVW.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485667" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/backlinko-favicon-RgTiKcVW.png 1658w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/backlinko-favicon-RgTiKcVW-768x281.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/backlinko-favicon-RgTiKcVW-1536x561.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1658px) 100vw, 1658px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But there are still sites, like LinkedIn, that are not showing the proper favicons:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1616" height="1014" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/linkedin-google-favicon.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485668" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/linkedin-google-favicon.png 1616w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/linkedin-google-favicon-768x482.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/linkedin-google-favicon-1536x964.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1616px) 100vw, 1616px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Fix coming. </strong>Again, Rajan Patel, Google&#8217;s VP, Engineering for Search, <a href="https://x.com/rajanpatel/status/2090852799982813612">said</a> &#8220;It&#8217;s an issue on our end. We identified the issue and we&#8217;re addressing it as quickly as we can. Sorry that this happened.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care. </strong>Having a unique favicon in the Google Search results can help make your search result snippet stand out from the rest.  Having a default icon can potentially lead to fewer clicks on the search listing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google is working on a fix and we can see that some favicons are already resolved. Hopefully the fix will roll out soon, but it has been almost a full week since the issue started.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Fixed Sunday August 23. </strong>This issue was mostly fixed by Saturday, August 22nd but should now be fully fixed by Sunday, Aiugust 23rd according to Google&#8217;s Rajan Patel:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-x wp-block-embed-x"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Google favicon bug should be 100% fixed now &#8211; old story at <a href="https://t.co/r8qjCGgHuz">https://t.co/r8qjCGgHuz</a> <a href="https://t.co/mBAQuYnzzI">https://t.co/mBAQuYnzzI</a> <a href="https://t.co/KSJlPNP34Q">pic.twitter.com/KSJlPNP34Q</a>&mdash; Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) <a href="https://x.com/rustybrick/status/2091493424390115524?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 23, 2026</a></blockquote>
</div></figure>


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Google confirmed it is working on fixing a bug with favicons not showing properly within Google Search. Rajan Patel, Google’s VP, Engineering for Search, said “It’s an issue on our end. We identified the issue and we’re addressing it as quickly as we can. Sorry that this happened.”
The issue started earlier this week, when I saw a significant spike in complaints about favicons disappearing from the Google Search result snippets.
What it looks like. Here are some screenshots of Google showing a default globe icon, which means Google is not able to pull the proper favicon from the site. 




This was already resolved:




But there are still sites, like LinkedIn, that are not showing the proper favicons:




Fix coming. Again, Rajan Patel, Google’s VP, Engineering for Search, said “It’s an issue on our end. We identified the issue and we’re addressing it as quickly as we can. Sorry that this happened.”
Why we care. Having a unique favicon in the Google Search results can help make your search result snippet stand out from the rest.  Having a default icon can potentially lead to fewer clicks on the search listing.
Google is working on a fix and we can see that some favicons are already resolved. Hopefully the fix will roll out soon, but it has been almost a full week since the issue started.
Fixed Sunday August 23. This issue was mostly fixed by Saturday, August 22nd but should now be fully fixed by Sunday, Aiugust 23rd according to Google’s Rajan Patel:


The Google favicon bug should be 100% fixed now – old story at https://t.co/r8qjCGgHuz https://t.co/mBAQuYnzzI pic.twitter.com/KSJlPNP34Q— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 23, 2026




  
before your competitors.
      
Start your free trial

The issue started earlier this week and today, Friday, Google has confirmed it is a bug on its end.

Google working on fix for broken favicons in Google Search

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Duane Forrester-Search Engine Land 20 for 20" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>AI is forcing SEO to evolve fast, but Duane Forrester says success still comes from serving users, building trust, and learning continuously.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Duane Forrester-Search Engine Land 20 for 20" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/duane-forrester-search-engine-land-20-for-20-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5cU_K6Hjcuk?feature=oembed" rel="noopener noreferrer">Watch this video on YouTube</a>
</div></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/author/duane-forrester">Duane Forrester</a> has watched search evolve from the days of meta keyword stuffing and penny clicks through mobile, personalization, “(not provided),” AI, and LLMs.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">After more than 25 years in the industry, including a decade at Microsoft, Forrester believes search is entering another foundational shift. To him, it feels a lot like the industry&#8217;s earliest days.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In our conversation for Search Engine Land&#8217;s 20th anniversary, Forrester reflected on the moments that shaped search, what he learned from working inside Bing, the career advice that changed how he works, and why SEOs need to become lifelong learners to survive what comes next.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here are some highlights from our Search Engine Land 20 for 20 conversation.</p>



<h2 id="h-seo-is-back-in-the-wild-west" class="wp-block-heading">SEO is back in the Wild West</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester started in SEO before Google existed. At the time, practitioners had little documentation, few tools, and almost no direct access to search engines.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Learning meant running experiments, reading code, and sharing discoveries with other SEOs in online communities and at conferences.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Today feels surprisingly familiar.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">AI has created another period where the rules are being written in real time. The difference? Practitioners now have an overwhelming amount of research, documentation, and technology.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Keeping up with all of it? Forget it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Anyone trying to stay at the absolute leading edge of AI is setting themselves up for frustration, Forrester said. Unless you work inside companies such as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, or Anthropic, you probably can&#8217;t see the true leading edge anyway.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Instead, focus on making steady progress. Keep learning and keep the leading edge in sight.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester said he feels more exhausted — and more excited — than at any other point in his career.</p>



<h2 id="h-the-seo-community-was-built-on-sharing" class="wp-block-heading">The SEO community was built on sharing</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In search&#8217;s early years, communities such as WebmasterWorld served as a shared knowledge base.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">People built reputations under usernames by answering questions, sharing discoveries, and helping each other understand a field that barely had a playbook.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Conferences brought that community together in person. Forrester remembers realizing there were other people who spoke the same strange language he did, and who were eager to trade ideas and help one another.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He said that spirit still exists, although the industry has become more insular in the AI era.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">His advice is simple: participate. Publish what you&#8217;re learning. Go to meetups. Talk to people. Ask questions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester follows the same approach with <a href="https://duaneforresterdecodes.substack.com/">his Substack</a>. He uses it to document what he&#8217;s learning, which exposes him to more research, people, and ideas.</p>



<h2 id="h-working-inside-a-search-engine-changed-some-seo-assumptions" class="wp-block-heading">Working inside a search engine changed some SEO assumptions</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One of Forrester&#8217;s biggest surprises after joining Microsoft was seeing how compartmentalized search engines are.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He recalled asking someone on the Bing Webmaster Tools team for backlink data. The employee responded by asking whether links actually affected rankings.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester was stunned.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The employee wasn&#8217;t joking or trying to mislead him. Links simply weren&#8217;t part of his job. He didn&#8217;t have access to that part of the system.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That experience permanently changed how Forrester interpreted statements from search engine representatives. Working at Google or Microsoft doesn&#8217;t mean someone understands every part of search.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It also taught him another lesson: SEOs can obsess over tiny details that have little practical impact.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Today, Forrester focuses on the &#8220;big blocks&#8221; instead of the small ones. Or, as he puts it with a cooking analogy, stick with the &#8220;chunky onions.&#8221;</p>



<h2 id="h-search-engines-really-do-care-about-the-user" class="wp-block-heading">Search engines really do care about the user</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester also pushed back on the idea that search engines and SEOs are natural adversaries.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When Google tells SEOs to focus on users and their journeys, Forrester said that isn&#8217;t simply corporate misdirection.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Search engines are chasing the same customers marketers are.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That doesn&#8217;t mean Google will explain every ranking system or reveal proprietary information. It also doesn&#8217;t mean every Google employee can answer every SEO question.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But the underlying goal — satisfying the user — is real.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That&#8217;s also why Forrester believes SEOs need to move beyond labels such as &#8220;technical SEO&#8221; and &#8220;content SEO.&#8221; Technical excellence won&#8217;t save content that misses user intent. Likewise, great content can struggle if a site lacks the technical foundation needed to earn trust.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Modern search requires both.</p>



<h2 id="h-not-provided-changed-seo-in-many-ways" class="wp-block-heading">&#8216;(not provided)&#8217; changed SEO in many ways</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Few Google decisions still frustrate Forrester like the loss of keyword referral data.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He described &#8220;(not provided)&#8221; as a slap in the face to the SEO industry because it removed valuable data and forced businesses to make decisions with less information.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But it also had an unintended effect.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The data gap created demand for third-party SEO platforms. Forrester pointed to companies such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and Conductor as examples of tools that became increasingly important as marketers sought additional data sources.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In his view, that shift helped SEO grow beyond its &#8220;cottage industry&#8221; roots.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He still wants the data back.</p>



<h2 id="h-the-career-lesson-that-changed-everything" class="wp-block-heading">The career lesson that changed everything</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One of Forrester&#8217;s most important career moments came when a Microsoft manager told him he was underperforming.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester thought he was about to lose his job.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then he had lunch with longtime industry veteran <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanspencer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stephan Spencer</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Spencer helped him realize the problem wasn&#8217;t his ability. He was simply trying to keep too much work in his head.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester built a system that broke projects into subprojects, tasks, deadlines, and individual work items.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Within months, his performance improved dramatically. By his annual review, he hadn&#8217;t lost his job. Instead, he earned a promotion and the largest bonus available.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He still organizes both his professional and personal projects using versions of that system.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The lesson is simple: when your workload becomes overwhelming, the answer isn&#8217;t always to work harder. Sometimes it&#8217;s to build a better system.</p>



<h2 id="h-search-won-t-disappear-it-will-become-infrastructure" class="wp-block-heading">Search won&#8217;t disappear. It will become infrastructure</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So what does Forrester think search will look like 20 years from now?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Agents.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Instead of manually researching a new coffee maker, we may tell a digital assistant what we need. It will research the options, apply what it knows about us, and return a shortlist — or eventually complete the purchase for us.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That doesn&#8217;t mean search disappears.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forrester expects search to become an infrastructure layer beneath these experiences. It will supply the information agents need to understand and act on our requests.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Content will still matter. Trust may matter even more.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Brands and businesses need to demonstrate their trustworthiness to people and machines.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Despite all the technological change, Forrester believes the core job of search marketing will remain remarkably familiar.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Understand what someone wants at the moment they want it — and be the best answer.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The technology will change dramatically.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The mission probably won&#8217;t.</p>


Watch this video on YouTube








Duane Forrester has watched search evolve from the days of meta keyword stuffing and penny clicks through mobile, personalization, “(not provided),” AI, and LLMs.
After more than 25 years in the industry, including a decade at Microsoft, Forrester believes search is entering another foundational shift. To him, it feels a lot like the industry’s earliest days.
In our conversation for Search Engine Land’s 20th anniversary, Forrester reflected on the moments that shaped search, what he learned from working inside Bing, the career advice that changed how he works, and why SEOs need to become lifelong learners to survive what comes next.
Here are some highlights from our Search Engine Land 20 for 20 conversation.
SEO is back in the Wild West
Forrester started in SEO before Google existed. At the time, practitioners had little documentation, few tools, and almost no direct access to search engines.
Learning meant running experiments, reading code, and sharing discoveries with other SEOs in online communities and at conferences.
Today feels surprisingly familiar.
AI has created another period where the rules are being written in real time. The difference? Practitioners now have an overwhelming amount of research, documentation, and technology.
Keeping up with all of it? Forget it.
Anyone trying to stay at the absolute leading edge of AI is setting themselves up for frustration, Forrester said. Unless you work inside companies such as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, or Anthropic, you probably can’t see the true leading edge anyway.
Instead, focus on making steady progress. Keep learning and keep the leading edge in sight.
Forrester said he feels more exhausted — and more excited — than at any other point in his career.
The SEO community was built on sharing
In search’s early years, communities such as WebmasterWorld served as a shared knowledge base.
People built reputations under usernames by answering questions, sharing discoveries, and helping each other understand a field that barely had a playbook.
Conferences brought that community together in person. Forrester remembers realizing there were other people who spoke the same strange language he did, and who were eager to trade ideas and help one another.
He said that spirit still exists, although the industry has become more insular in the AI era.
His advice is simple: participate. Publish what you’re learning. Go to meetups. Talk to people. Ask questions.
Forrester follows the same approach with his Substack. He uses it to document what he’s learning, which exposes him to more research, people, and ideas.
Working inside a search engine changed some SEO assumptions
One of Forrester’s biggest surprises after joining Microsoft was seeing how compartmentalized search engines are.
He recalled asking someone on the Bing Webmaster Tools team for backlink data. The employee responded by asking whether links actually affected rankings.
Forrester was stunned.
The employee wasn’t joking or trying to mislead him. Links simply weren’t part of his job. He didn’t have access to that part of the system.
That experience permanently changed how Forrester interpreted statements from search engine representatives. Working at Google or Microsoft doesn’t mean someone understands every part of search.
It also taught him another lesson: SEOs can obsess over tiny details that have little practical impact.
Today, Forrester focuses on the “big blocks” instead of the small ones. Or, as he puts it with a cooking analogy, stick with the “chunky onions.”
Search engines really do care about the user
Forrester also pushed back on the idea that search engines and SEOs are natural adversaries.
When Google tells SEOs to focus on users and their journeys, Forrester said that isn’t simply corporate misdirection.
Search engines are chasing the same customers marketers are.
That doesn’t mean Google will explain every ranking system or reveal proprietary information. It also doesn’t mean every Google employee can answer every SEO question.
But the underlying goal — satisfying the user — is real.
That’s also why Forrester believes SEOs need to move beyond labels such as “technical SEO” and “content SEO.” Technical excellence won’t save content that misses user intent. Likewise, great content can struggle if a site lacks the technical foundation needed to earn trust.
Modern search requires both.
‘(not provided)’ changed SEO in many ways
Few Google decisions still frustrate Forrester like the loss of keyword referral data.
He described “(not provided)” as a slap in the face to the SEO industry because it removed valuable data and forced businesses to make decisions with less information.
But it also had an unintended effect.
The data gap created demand for third-party SEO platforms. Forrester pointed to companies such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and Conductor as examples of tools that became increasingly important as marketers sought additional data sources.
In his view, that shift helped SEO grow beyond its “cottage industry” roots.
He still wants the data back.
The career lesson that changed everything
One of Forrester’s most important career moments came when a Microsoft manager told him he was underperforming.
Forrester thought he was about to lose his job.
Then he had lunch with longtime industry veteran Stephan Spencer.
Spencer helped him realize the problem wasn’t his ability. He was simply trying to keep too much work in his head.
Forrester built a system that broke projects into subprojects, tasks, deadlines, and individual work items.
Within months, his performance improved dramatically. By his annual review, he hadn’t lost his job. Instead, he earned a promotion and the largest bonus available.
He still organizes both his professional and personal projects using versions of that system.
The lesson is simple: when your workload becomes overwhelming, the answer isn’t always to work harder. Sometimes it’s to build a better system.
Search won’t disappear. It will become infrastructure
So what does Forrester think search will look like 20 years from now?
Agents.
Instead of manually researching a new coffee maker, we may tell a digital assistant what we need. It will research the options, apply what it knows about us, and return a shortlist — or eventually complete the purchase for us.
That doesn’t mean search disappears.
Forrester expects search to become an infrastructure layer beneath these experiences. It will supply the information agents need to understand and act on our requests.
Content will still matter. Trust may matter even more.
Brands and businesses need to demonstrate their trustworthiness to people and machines.
Despite all the technological change, Forrester believes the core job of search marketing will remain remarkably familiar.
Understand what someone wants at the moment they want it — and be the best answer.
The technology will change dramatically.
The mission probably won’t.

AI is forcing SEO to evolve fast, but Duane Forrester says success still comes from serving users, building trust, and learning continuously.

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