<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Searchers outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), the manual action will apply but not within the EEA.

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-europe-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google&#8217;s <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-released-massive-search-quality-improvements-with-march-2024-core-update-and-multiple-spam-updates-438144#site-reputation-abuse-aka-parasite-seo-is-spam-too">site reputation abuse</a> manual action will no longer impact the search results in the European Economic Area (EEA) starting August 30, 2026. This is in response to the European Commission&#8217;s <a href="https://searchengineland.com/report-eu-probe-google-site-reputation-abuse-464592">investigation over the site reputation abuse policy</a> and its requiring Google to adjust its systems for that policy not to be enforced within the EEA.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What is changing. </strong>On August 30th, manual actions applied under Google&#8217;s site reputation policy will have different effects for those searching in the EEA than for those outside it. This is how it will differ, <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/08/update-site-reputation-policy">says</a> Google:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>For users outside the EEA, a <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">manual action</a> regarding Google&#8217;s site reputation policy will directly affect search results for the portion of the site affected. As before, the rest of the site won’t be affected.</li>



<li>For users inside the EEA, the impact of the manual action will not apply. The affected section of the site may be separated in our systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It seems like Google&#8217;s site reputation abuse manual actions won&#8217;t specifically apply within the EEA but its systems for treating the portion of the site that hosts third-party content as a &#8220;parasite SEO&#8221; strategy will be treated as its own site and not as part of the existing site.   The concept of Google <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sites-within-a-site-38586.html">treating sections of a site as its own site</a> is not new to Google&#8217;s site reputation abuse spam prevention, and that still seems to be happening in the EEA regions. But manual actions over site reputation abuse will not apply in the EEA regions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What Google said. </strong>A Google spokesperson told us:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">&#8220;Our European users are no less frustrated by parasite SEO and other deceptive, pay-to-play tactics that degrade search results, and we stand by our Site Reputation Policy. While we remain concerned about efforts to weaken our spam policies, we&#8217;ve agreed to make changes to our enforcement approach for users in Europe and clarify our policies to address the European Commission&#8217;s concerns.&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>More details. </strong>In March 2024, Google released the <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-released-massive-search-quality-improvements-with-march-2024-core-update-and-multiple-spam-updates-438144">March 2024 core update</a>, along with several spam policies including the new <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-released-massive-search-quality-improvements-with-march-2024-core-update-and-multiple-spam-updates-438144#site-reputation-abuse-aka-parasite-seo-is-spam-too">site reputation abuse policy</a>. Google&#8217;s anti-spam policies are essential to how Google fights deceptive pay-for-play tactics, aka “parasite SEO,” that can degrade Google&#8217;s search results. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The adjustment Google announced specifically applies to how Google handles manual actions under the Site Reputation Policy (SRAP) for search results displayed to users inside the European Economic Area (EEA). Google is not pausing or weakening its core spam enforcement in Europe.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Manual action notifications will still be sent to sites based in the EEA region over site reputation abuse but those penalties will not impact the site&#8217;s placement in Google&#8217;s search results for searchers within the EEA region. It will affect what searchers see outside the EEA. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google wrote, &#8220;Site owners will continue to be <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175" target="_blank" rel="noopener">notified within Search Console</a> when a manual action is applied. If you believe an action was taken in error, you can submit a <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reconsideration request</a>. Eligible sites will, following the reconsideration request, also have the <a href="https://www.cedr.com/mediation-services/schemes/platform-to-business-services/the-google-search-mediation-scheme" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opportunity to bring disputes to mediation</a>. Because many pages are viewed by people globally, it’s possible that any given page might have a manual action taken on it, but that change will only affect search results shown to users outside the EEA.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care. </strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If your website or client&#8217;s site has a site reputation abuse manual action and it gets Google search traffic from searchers in the EEA region, than you might notice even more traffic after this rolls out.  </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It is still recommended that if you want to rank well outside of the EEA, you do not violate the <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#site-reputation">site reputation abuse policy</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I am a bit surprised that Google actually is changing how it handles a spam policy based on the region of the searcher but I guess Google decided it has no other choice. </p>


Google’s site reputation abuse manual action will no longer impact the search results in the European Economic Area (EEA) starting August 30, 2026. This is in response to the European Commission’s investigation over the site reputation abuse policy and its requiring Google to adjust its systems for that policy not to be enforced within the EEA.
What is changing. On August 30th, manual actions applied under Google’s site reputation policy will have different effects for those searching in the EEA than for those outside it. This is how it will differ, says Google:
For users outside the EEA, a manual action regarding Google’s site reputation policy will directly affect search results for the portion of the site affected. As before, the rest of the site won’t be affected.
For users inside the EEA, the impact of the manual action will not apply. The affected section of the site may be separated in our systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site.
It seems like Google’s site reputation abuse manual actions won’t specifically apply within the EEA but its systems for treating the portion of the site that hosts third-party content as a “parasite SEO” strategy will be treated as its own site and not as part of the existing site.   The concept of Google treating sections of a site as its own site is not new to Google’s site reputation abuse spam prevention, and that still seems to be happening in the EEA regions. But manual actions over site reputation abuse will not apply in the EEA regions.
What Google said. A Google spokesperson told us:
“Our European users are no less frustrated by parasite SEO and other deceptive, pay-to-play tactics that degrade search results, and we stand by our Site Reputation Policy. While we remain concerned about efforts to weaken our spam policies, we’ve agreed to make changes to our enforcement approach for users in Europe and clarify our policies to address the European Commission’s concerns.”
More details. In March 2024, Google released the March 2024 core update, along with several spam policies including the new site reputation abuse policy. Google’s anti-spam policies are essential to how Google fights deceptive pay-for-play tactics, aka “parasite SEO,” that can degrade Google’s search results. 
The adjustment Google announced specifically applies to how Google handles manual actions under the Site Reputation Policy (SRAP) for search results displayed to users inside the European Economic Area (EEA). Google is not pausing or weakening its core spam enforcement in Europe.
Manual action notifications will still be sent to sites based in the EEA region over site reputation abuse but those penalties will not impact the site’s placement in Google’s search results for searchers within the EEA region. It will affect what searchers see outside the EEA. 
Google wrote, “Site owners will continue to be notified within Search Console when a manual action is applied. If you believe an action was taken in error, you can submit a reconsideration request. Eligible sites will, following the reconsideration request, also have the opportunity to bring disputes to mediation. Because many pages are viewed by people globally, it’s possible that any given page might have a manual action taken on it, but that change will only affect search results shown to users outside the EEA.”
Why we care. 



If your website or client’s site has a site reputation abuse manual action and it gets Google search traffic from searchers in the EEA region, than you might notice even more traffic after this rolls out.  
It is still recommended that if you want to rank well outside of the EEA, you do not violate the site reputation abuse policy.
I am a bit surprised that Google actually is changing how it handles a spam policy based on the region of the searcher but I guess Google decided it has no other choice.

Searchers outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), the manual action will apply but not within the EEA.

Google won’t respect manual actions for site reputation abuse in European Economic Area

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>Google's Demand Gen tools aim to shorten the path from discovery to conversion while making it easier to scale creative across campaigns.

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Demand-Gen-AI-tools-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google is adding new messaging, travel and AI-powered creative capabilities to Demand Gen, giving advertisers more ways to turn discovery into leads and customers across YouTube and other Google inventory.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The updates are part of Google&#8217;s August Demand Gen Drop and build on hundreds of improvements the company says it made to the campaign type during the second half of 2025.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What’s new.</strong> Google is testing a way for people to start conversations with brands through messaging apps directly from Demand Gen ads on YouTube.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The feature is designed to shorten the journey for high-intent prospects, allowing someone who discovers a brand through a video ad to move directly into a conversation rather than navigating through a more traditional conversion path.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Messaging meets Demand Gen.</strong> For lead generation advertisers, the test introduces another potential action beyond sending users to a website or landing page.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google&#8217;s focus is on moving customers who already demonstrate strong intent closer to a purchase by making it easier to contact the advertiser from the ad experience.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Travel gets more personalized.</strong> Google is also expanding Demand Gen capabilities specifically for travel advertisers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Demand Gen ads will be able to surface local activities, events and real-time offers, while hotel advertising is becoming more personalized so relevant properties can be shown to the audiences Google considers most appropriate.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That could make Demand Gen more useful for travel businesses looking to connect discovery-focused advertising with offers based on what travelers may actually want to do or book.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>AI video creation expands.</strong> Google&#8217;s Multimodal Video Creation in Asset Studio is now generally available, giving more advertisers access to its AI-powered video production workflow.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Advertisers can move from storyboarding through to producing horizontal and vertical video assets within a single workflow.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>The numbers.</strong> Google says the hundreds of Demand Gen improvements introduced during the second half of 2025 are, on average, driving a 30% increase in conversions or conversion value for advertisers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google is now building on those changes with tools focused more specifically on acquiring customers and generating higher-quality leads.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care.</strong> Demand Gen is gaining more ways to turn attention into action, particularly through direct messaging from YouTube ads and more personalized travel experiences. The wider availability of AI video creation could also make it faster and cheaper to produce the multiple formats needed across Demand Gen inventory, potentially lowering one of the biggest barriers to scaling these campaigns.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bottom line.</strong> <a href="https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/demand-gen-drop-august-2026/">Google&#8217;s August Demand Gen Drop</a> pushes the campaign type further toward measurable customer acquisition, combining direct conversations, more personalized travel advertising and scalable AI-generated video creative.</p>


Google is adding new messaging, travel and AI-powered creative capabilities to Demand Gen, giving advertisers more ways to turn discovery into leads and customers across YouTube and other Google inventory.
The updates are part of Google’s August Demand Gen Drop and build on hundreds of improvements the company says it made to the campaign type during the second half of 2025.
What’s new. Google is testing a way for people to start conversations with brands through messaging apps directly from Demand Gen ads on YouTube.
The feature is designed to shorten the journey for high-intent prospects, allowing someone who discovers a brand through a video ad to move directly into a conversation rather than navigating through a more traditional conversion path.
Messaging meets Demand Gen. For lead generation advertisers, the test introduces another potential action beyond sending users to a website or landing page.
Google’s focus is on moving customers who already demonstrate strong intent closer to a purchase by making it easier to contact the advertiser from the ad experience.
Travel gets more personalized. Google is also expanding Demand Gen capabilities specifically for travel advertisers.
Demand Gen ads will be able to surface local activities, events and real-time offers, while hotel advertising is becoming more personalized so relevant properties can be shown to the audiences Google considers most appropriate.
That could make Demand Gen more useful for travel businesses looking to connect discovery-focused advertising with offers based on what travelers may actually want to do or book.
AI video creation expands. Google’s Multimodal Video Creation in Asset Studio is now generally available, giving more advertisers access to its AI-powered video production workflow.
Advertisers can move from storyboarding through to producing horizontal and vertical video assets within a single workflow.
The numbers. Google says the hundreds of Demand Gen improvements introduced during the second half of 2025 are, on average, driving a 30% increase in conversions or conversion value for advertisers.
Google is now building on those changes with tools focused more specifically on acquiring customers and generating higher-quality leads.
Why we care. Demand Gen is gaining more ways to turn attention into action, particularly through direct messaging from YouTube ads and more personalized travel experiences. The wider availability of AI video creation could also make it faster and cheaper to produce the multiple formats needed across Demand Gen inventory, potentially lowering one of the biggest barriers to scaling these campaigns.
Bottom line. Google’s August Demand Gen Drop pushes the campaign type further toward measurable customer acquisition, combining direct conversations, more personalized travel advertising and scalable AI-generated video creative.

Google's Demand Gen tools aim to shorten the path from discovery to conversion while making it easier to scale creative across campaigns.

Google expands Demand Gen with messaging ads, travel tools and AI video creation

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google wrecking ball" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Google's spam update caused exceptional search disruption, with dramatic ranking losses across 20 industries, according to SE Ranking data.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google wrecking ball" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-wrecking-ball-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-august-2026-spam-update-done-rolling-out-485471">Google’s August 2026 spam update</a> saw an 82% increase in top 10 URLs dropping out of the top 100 compared with a period without a confirmed ranking update, according to new SE Ranking data.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">During the update, 16.71% of URLs that had ranked in Google’s top 10 fell beyond position 100 for the same keyword, compared with 9.2% during a similar five-day period in July. That made a top 10 URL about 1.8 times more likely to disappear from the top 100 during the spam update.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>By the numbers. </strong>Here&#8217;s some data SE Ranking shared with Search Engine Land:</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1713" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-volatility-ran-above-baseline-scaled.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485992" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-volatility-ran-above-baseline-scaled.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-volatility-ran-above-baseline-768x642.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-volatility-ran-above-baseline-1536x1285.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>SE Ranking pulled a set of baseline data from a few days before the update rolled out to compare the relative volatility, looking at any rank movement</em>.</figcaption></figure>
</div>

<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1712" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-increase-urls-ranking-top-3-scaled.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485993" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-increase-urls-ranking-top-3-scaled.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-increase-urls-ranking-top-3-768x642.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-increase-urls-ranking-top-3-1536x1284.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>SE Ranking saw a 12% increase in the percentage of URLs ranking top 3 post-update that prior to it didn&#8217;t even crack the top 20</em>.</figcaption></figure>
</div>

<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1840" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-urls-dropping-top-100-scaled.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485996" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-urls-dropping-top-100-scaled.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-urls-dropping-top-100-768x690.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-urls-dropping-top-100-1536x1380.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>SE Ranking highlighted this as the most interesting data point: the increase in the percentage of URLs Google killed off from the top 100 — 82% more than the baseline period showed. </em></figcaption></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Volatility spanned all 20 niches. </strong>The ranking volatility was broad across the 20 industries SE Ranking tracked.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Top 10 volatility ranged from 74.64% in real estate to 85.55% in fashion and beauty. </li>



<li>YMYL categories, including real estate and healthcare, were among the steadiest.</li>



<li>The data doesn&#8217;t show whether particular types of sites, content, or spam tactics were disproportionately affected. SE Ranking didn&#8217;t conduct a URL- or domain-level analysis of the pages that lost rankings or the pages that replaced them.</li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1350" height="1088" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-no-niche-spared.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485997" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-no-niche-spared.png 1350w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/se-ranking-no-niche-spared-768x619.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1350px) 100vw, 1350px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care. </strong>Moving from Google&#8217;s top 10 to beyond position 100 is a huge ranking loss compared to day-to-day search volatility. The 82% increase indicates how disruptive the August 2026 spam update was compared with Google&#8217;s normal search churn.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>About the data</strong>. SE Ranking analyzed U.S. organic Google results for the same 100,000 keywords across 20 industries. It compared rankings from Aug. 17 and Aug. 22, immediately before and after the spam update, with a baseline comparison of July 26 and July 31, when Google had no confirmed ranking update. SE Ranking only tracked positions 1 through 100, so the data doesn&#8217;t show whether the URLs that disappeared were deindexed or simply fell below position 100. It also doesn&#8217;t explain why those particular pages lost their rankings.</p>


Google’s August 2026 spam update saw an 82% increase in top 10 URLs dropping out of the top 100 compared with a period without a confirmed ranking update, according to new SE Ranking data.
During the update, 16.71% of URLs that had ranked in Google’s top 10 fell beyond position 100 for the same keyword, compared with 9.2% during a similar five-day period in July. That made a top 10 URL about 1.8 times more likely to disappear from the top 100 during the spam update.
By the numbers. Here’s some data SE Ranking shared with Search Engine Land:
SE Ranking pulled a set of baseline data from a few days before the update rolled out to compare the relative volatility, looking at any rank movement.



SE Ranking saw a 12% increase in the percentage of URLs ranking top 3 post-update that prior to it didn’t even crack the top 20.



SE Ranking highlighted this as the most interesting data point: the increase in the percentage of URLs Google killed off from the top 100 — 82% more than the baseline period showed. 



Volatility spanned all 20 niches. The ranking volatility was broad across the 20 industries SE Ranking tracked.
Top 10 volatility ranged from 74.64% in real estate to 85.55% in fashion and beauty. 
YMYL categories, including real estate and healthcare, were among the steadiest.
The data doesn’t show whether particular types of sites, content, or spam tactics were disproportionately affected. SE Ranking didn’t conduct a URL- or domain-level analysis of the pages that lost rankings or the pages that replaced them.




Why we care. Moving from Google’s top 10 to beyond position 100 is a huge ranking loss compared to day-to-day search volatility. The 82% increase indicates how disruptive the August 2026 spam update was compared with Google’s normal search churn.
About the data. SE Ranking analyzed U.S. organic Google results for the same 100,000 keywords across 20 industries. It compared rankings from Aug. 17 and Aug. 22, immediately before and after the spam update, with a baseline comparison of July 26 and July 31, when Google had no confirmed ranking update. SE Ranking only tracked positions 1 through 100, so the data doesn’t show whether the URLs that disappeared were deindexed or simply fell below position 100. It also doesn’t explain why those particular pages lost their rankings.

Google's spam update caused exceptional search disruption, with dramatic ranking losses across 20 industries, according to SE Ranking data.

Google’s August 2026 spam update hit rankings harder than normal

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="What you’ll lose and gain when moving from Google Display to Demand Gen" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>New inventory and AI-powered creative come with trade-offs. See which controls and capabilities change in Demand Gen.


<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="What you’ll lose and gain when moving from Google Display to Demand Gen" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/What-youll-lose-and-gain-when-moving-from-Google-Display-to-Demand-Gen-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You’re not imagining it. Before we could stop to think about the <a href="https://searchengineland.com/prepare-google-dsa-sunset-ai-max-483290">implications of a DSA-less world</a>, Google announced that Display campaigns, too, will be heading to the big UI in the sky, joining Smart Shopping, Discovery, and Local campaigns. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As Google pushes advertisers toward more automated campaign types, campaigns with the most granular controls are disappearing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google’s deprecation of this campaign type isn’t surprising. The use of standalone Display Network campaigns has declined significantly since <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-demand-gen-campaigns-migration-and-best-practices-433014">Demand Gen</a> developed similar capabilities, and advertisers have shifted budgets toward AI-driven alternatives.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-folds-display-ads-into-demand-gen-campaigns-478727">After the announcement in May</a>, Google released a migration tool that first appeared in accounts in June. The rollout has been phased. In January 2027, the ability to create new standalone Display campaigns will be permanently disabled. Google anticipates auto-migration later in 2027, but hasn’t specified when it will begin.</p>



<h2 id="h-what-changes-when-display-moves-to-demand-gen" class="wp-block-heading">What changes when Display moves to Demand Gen</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For those who have seen the migration tool in their account, Google has given us the ability to update live campaigns while keeping the last 42 days of performance history intact, minimizing the learning period in the newly created Demand Gen campaign.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re familiar with Demand Gen, you&#8217;ll know that individual network selection is available. However, the migration tool will create a Google Display Network-only Demand Gen campaign. Other channels can be added once the migration is complete.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google <a href="https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/17051545#how_to" target="_blank" rel="noopener">provides a guide</a> in the Help Center that walks you through the migration process.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1072" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-DIsplay-to-Demand-Gen-migration.png" alt="Google DIsplay to Demand Gen migration" class="wp-image-485900" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-DIsplay-to-Demand-Gen-migration.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-DIsplay-to-Demand-Gen-migration-768x402.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-DIsplay-to-Demand-Gen-migration-1536x804.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google indicates that after a campaign is migrated from the Display Network to Demand Gen, performance may fluctuate. The budget the campaign has spent during the day up to the time it&#8217;s migrated won&#8217;t be respected in the newly migrated Demand Gen campaign.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The biggest change in your newly created Demand Gen campaign will be the unavailability of certain bid strategies and ad formats. Currently, Demand Gen supports the bid strategies Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Maximize Clicks. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re using Manual CPC, Viewable Impressions, or Pay for Conversions, you&#8217;ll need to switch to an alternative bid strategy. Demand Gen also doesn&#8217;t support bid adjustments, seasonality adjustments, or portfolio bidding.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Business Data feeds, uploaded HTML5 ads, and third-party ads are also not supported. However, Google notes they&#8217;ll be coming soon, with the latter two planned for late 2026. Brand Lift and Search Lift studies are also not supported for GDN in Demand Gen campaigns.</p>


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<h2 id="h-what-you-gain-with-demand-gen" class="wp-block-heading">What you gain with Demand Gen</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Demand Gen does, however, offer additional network reach through inventory in the Discover network and Maps. There are also ad formats unique to Demand Gen, plus additional generative image tools.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1416" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/GDN-in-Demand-Gen.png" alt="GDN in Demand Gen" class="wp-image-485901" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/GDN-in-Demand-Gen.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/GDN-in-Demand-Gen-768x531.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/GDN-in-Demand-Gen-1536x1062.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As Display moves to Demand Gen, Google continues to make changes to the campaign type. Here are some to be aware of:</p>



<h3 id="h-lookalike-audiences" class="wp-block-heading">Lookalike Audiences</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Once a strict targeting method intended to serve audiences with similar characteristics to a first-party seed list, <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-shifts-lookalike-to-ai-signals-in-demand-gen-469400">Lookalike Audiences</a> have undergone major changes.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As of March 2026, Google updated Lookalike Audiences from restrictive targeting to “audience suggestions.” While still valuable, Google will now use your seed list as a signal for its models to reach high-intent customers outside your similarity thresholds.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you wish to use Lookalike Audiences as a signal, keep in mind that there’s a latency period of up to 96 hours between the time you create a new Lookalike segment and when it populates.</p>



<h3 id="h-view-through-conversion-optimization" class="wp-block-heading">View-through-conversion optimization</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This past April, Google introduced <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-updates-demand-gen-view-through-conversion-optimization-485127">view-through-conversion optimization</a> in Demand Gen. This enables your campaign to optimize bids toward users who view a YouTube or Discover ad, don’t click, but convert later. If you struggle to find enough conversions to utilize a conversion-focused bid strategy, this could help significantly.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This wouldn’t impact a campaign serving only within the Display network. However, Google announced in July that Demand Gen campaigns running on Discover that use view-through-conversion optimization would move from CPC to CPM billing.</p>



<h3 id="h-youtube-affiliate-videos" class="wp-block-heading">YouTube affiliate videos</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Demand Gen also offers enhanced ways to interact with YouTube audiences through a variety of ad formats. Google recently announced an Affiliate Partnership boost that allows you to use organic YouTube affiliate videos within campaigns like Demand Gen. This is currently only in pilot.</p>



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<h2 id="h-how-to-prepare-for-the-display-to-demand-gen-transition" class="wp-block-heading">How to prepare for the Display-to-Demand Gen transition</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google hasn’t yet given us a date for the start of auto-migration. If you migrate before Q4, allow adequate time for potential performance fluctuations before peak season.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Build out any audiences you may want to use with Lookalike Audiences early enough for them to populate, and be mindful of the loss of advanced bid adjustments, such as the seasonality adjustment or portfolio bidding.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The deprecation of Display Network campaigns may feel like a step back for advertisers who have used them for years, but the additional features and testing capabilities can help push non-search creative further.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Combined with the additional networks and ad formats, these capabilities make now the best time to hone your strategy before Q4.</p>



<h2 id="h-treat-the-migration-as-a-strategy-shift" class="wp-block-heading">Treat the migration as a strategy shift</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The transition from Display to Demand Gen represents more than just a change in campaign type — it’s a shift in how we approach automated media buying.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As Google continues to roll out rapid updates, from billing model shifts to AI-integrated creative tools, success will depend on staying agile enough to adapt rather than mastering every new technical toggle.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The learning curve can be steep, so proactive planning — especially around audience seeding and performance testing ahead of peak seasons — will be your greatest asset.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Treat the migration as an opportunity to refine your strategy through more sophisticated intent-based targeting, and you can position your accounts to thrive through the transition.</p>

You’re not imagining it. Before we could stop to think about the implications of a DSA-less world, Google announced that Display campaigns, too, will be heading to the big UI in the sky, joining Smart Shopping, Discovery, and Local campaigns. 
As Google pushes advertisers toward more automated campaign types, campaigns with the most granular controls are disappearing.
Google’s deprecation of this campaign type isn’t surprising. The use of standalone Display Network campaigns has declined significantly since Demand Gen developed similar capabilities, and advertisers have shifted budgets toward AI-driven alternatives.
After the announcement in May, Google released a migration tool that first appeared in accounts in June. The rollout has been phased. In January 2027, the ability to create new standalone Display campaigns will be permanently disabled. Google anticipates auto-migration later in 2027, but hasn’t specified when it will begin.
What changes when Display moves to Demand Gen
For those who have seen the migration tool in their account, Google has given us the ability to update live campaigns while keeping the last 42 days of performance history intact, minimizing the learning period in the newly created Demand Gen campaign. 
If you’re familiar with Demand Gen, you’ll know that individual network selection is available. However, the migration tool will create a Google Display Network-only Demand Gen campaign. Other channels can be added once the migration is complete.
Google provides a guide in the Help Center that walks you through the migration process.




Google indicates that after a campaign is migrated from the Display Network to Demand Gen, performance may fluctuate. The budget the campaign has spent during the day up to the time it’s migrated won’t be respected in the newly migrated Demand Gen campaign.
The biggest change in your newly created Demand Gen campaign will be the unavailability of certain bid strategies and ad formats. Currently, Demand Gen supports the bid strategies Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Maximize Clicks. 
If you’re using Manual CPC, Viewable Impressions, or Pay for Conversions, you’ll need to switch to an alternative bid strategy. Demand Gen also doesn’t support bid adjustments, seasonality adjustments, or portfolio bidding.
Business Data feeds, uploaded HTML5 ads, and third-party ads are also not supported. However, Google notes they’ll be coming soon, with the latter two planned for late 2026. Brand Lift and Search Lift studies are also not supported for GDN in Demand Gen campaigns.
your competitors win.
      
Analyze your competitors
    
What you gain with Demand Gen
Demand Gen does, however, offer additional network reach through inventory in the Discover network and Maps. There are also ad formats unique to Demand Gen, plus additional generative image tools.




As Display moves to Demand Gen, Google continues to make changes to the campaign type. Here are some to be aware of:
Lookalike Audiences
Once a strict targeting method intended to serve audiences with similar characteristics to a first-party seed list, Lookalike Audiences have undergone major changes. 
As of March 2026, Google updated Lookalike Audiences from restrictive targeting to “audience suggestions.” While still valuable, Google will now use your seed list as a signal for its models to reach high-intent customers outside your similarity thresholds. 
If you wish to use Lookalike Audiences as a signal, keep in mind that there’s a latency period of up to 96 hours between the time you create a new Lookalike segment and when it populates.
View-through-conversion optimization
This past April, Google introduced view-through-conversion optimization in Demand Gen. This enables your campaign to optimize bids toward users who view a YouTube or Discover ad, don’t click, but convert later. If you struggle to find enough conversions to utilize a conversion-focused bid strategy, this could help significantly.
This wouldn’t impact a campaign serving only within the Display network. However, Google announced in July that Demand Gen campaigns running on Discover that use view-through-conversion optimization would move from CPC to CPM billing.
YouTube affiliate videos
Demand Gen also offers enhanced ways to interact with YouTube audiences through a variety of ad formats. Google recently announced an Affiliate Partnership boost that allows you to use organic YouTube affiliate videos within campaigns like Demand Gen. This is currently only in pilot.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
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How to prepare for the Display-to-Demand Gen transition
Google hasn’t yet given us a date for the start of auto-migration. If you migrate before Q4, allow adequate time for potential performance fluctuations before peak season. 
Build out any audiences you may want to use with Lookalike Audiences early enough for them to populate, and be mindful of the loss of advanced bid adjustments, such as the seasonality adjustment or portfolio bidding.
The deprecation of Display Network campaigns may feel like a step back for advertisers who have used them for years, but the additional features and testing capabilities can help push non-search creative further.
Combined with the additional networks and ad formats, these capabilities make now the best time to hone your strategy before Q4.
Treat the migration as a strategy shift
The transition from Display to Demand Gen represents more than just a change in campaign type — it’s a shift in how we approach automated media buying. 
As Google continues to roll out rapid updates, from billing model shifts to AI-integrated creative tools, success will depend on staying agile enough to adapt rather than mastering every new technical toggle.
The learning curve can be steep, so proactive planning — especially around audience seeding and performance testing ahead of peak seasons — will be your greatest asset.
Treat the migration as an opportunity to refine your strategy through more sophisticated intent-based targeting, and you can position your accounts to thrive through the transition.

New inventory and AI-powered creative come with trade-offs. See which controls and capabilities change in Demand Gen.

Moving from Google Display to Demand Gen: What you’ll lose and gain

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Reddit-is-the-keyword-research-tool-youre-probably-not-using.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Reddit is the keyword research tool you&#039;re probably not using" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Reddit-is-the-keyword-research-tool-youre-probably-not-using.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Reddit-is-the-keyword-research-tool-youre-probably-not-using-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Reddit-is-the-keyword-research-tool-youre-probably-not-using-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Reddit-is-the-keyword-research-tool-youre-probably-not-using-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Use Semrush to mine Reddit's rankings for content gaps, unanswered questions, and opportunities to strengthen your search visibility.

Almost every conversation about Reddit and SEO in the last two years has focused on participation. Should you post? Comment? Pay someone to seed a thread? Build a subreddit?
Those are the wrong questions. 
Reddit is a massive repository of ranking data that can reveal what your audience is searching for and where your content falls short.
It ranks for hundreds of millions of keywords, with millions ranking on Page 1. It also surfaces in millions of AI Overview queries. That data is publicly visible in a tool you’re probably already paying for.
You don’t need a Reddit account. You need a Semrush login and about two hours.
I saw this firsthand with an enterprise travel client. Reddit eventually became one of its top three competitors by Organic Share of Voice. A threat analysis uncovered opportunities for net-new content, existing content optimization, and an FAQ library. The client wasn’t even aware of the branded Reddit community around its brand.
The process turns Reddit’s organic footprint into a content roadmap: the questions your audience is asking, the ones your site doesn’t answer, and the ones AI systems are already citing Reddit for.
Why Reddit is worth mining
As of August, Semrush data shows reddit.com ranking for roughly 166 million keywords, including more than 10 million in position No. 1, 31 million in the top three, and 65 million on page one. More than 35 million of those keywords trigger AI Overviews, with Reddit cited in more than 15 million – a 46% citation rate.
Two developments helped drive this:
Google partnership: Signed in February 2024, the same day Reddit filed for its IPO, and reportedly worth about $60 million a year. The deal gave Google real-time access to Reddit content through its Data API. Reddit’s SERP visibility had already started climbing in late 2023, but the partnership accelerated it. Google’s “hidden gems” and “helpful content” updates were rewarding Reddit even before the agreement.
OpenAI partnership: Announced three months later and estimated at around $70 million annually, it gave ChatGPT a pipeline into fresher, more conversational content.
The result is a platform that functions as a de facto source of information for both traditional search and generative answers. It’s driven Reddit to become one of the most visited websites on the planet. Its August estimated traffic is now up to 440 million monthly organic visits, according to Semrush.
There’s a wrinkle worth knowing about. In July, The Wall Street Journal reported that Reddit was weighing whether to renew its agreement with Google — even considering restricting Google’s structured AI access — because AI Overviews have eroded referral traffic across the web. Reddit’s stock dropped roughly 9% on the news.
The negotiation is ongoing. Reddit’s dominance in the SERP depends in part on business arrangements that can change. That makes the data worth mining now.
Dig deeper: A smarter Reddit strategy for organic and AI search visibility



  
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Reddit as a query layer
When Reddit outranks you for “best running shoes for flat feet,” that ranking is telling you something specific: A real person asked that question in language a real person uses, other real people answered it, and Google decided that exchange was the best available result. 
Reddit didn’t win because of technical SEO. It won because it had the answer in a format people trusted. You can’t replicate the format. You can absolutely answer the question.
That’s the whole exercise. Reddit’s ranking footprint is a map of unmet informational demand in your category, already sorted by what Google has decided is worth surfacing.
Before you start, establish whether Reddit is actually a competitive factor in your vertical. Spend 30 minutes running the Domain Overview filter on two or three of your core non-brand themes or terms and look at the raw count. That number tells you most of what you need to know.
Niche B2B, regulated, highly technical, or specific/narrow categories: Reddit’s influence is often muted or more limited. The conversations exist, but they’re small, and Google isn’t ranking them. In those verticals, this analysis will produce a thin list, and you should spend your time elsewhere — but it’s worth doing the analysis first to discover that.
Larger consumer brands, competitive retail, health, finance, software, travel, and anything with an opinionated buying process: Reddit is almost certainly outranking you on hundreds, if not thousands, of queries, and the gap analysis will produce more work than you can staff.
Knowing which one you’re in before you build the deck saves you from presenting a threat that isn’t there.
Dig deeper: Reddit’s AI search influence goes beyond training data



How to mine Reddit’s rankings for content opportunities
You’ll need Semrush. Two reports do most of the work: Domain Overview and Keyword Gap.
Step 1: Pull Reddit’s non-brand rankings in your category
Open Domain Overview, enter reddit.com, and go to the Organic Research report.
Under Advanced Filters, set Include → Keyword → Containing, then enter a non-brand term tied to your products or services. Since I’m an avid runner and did this same analysis for a running shoe company, for this example, let’s use “running” as the main category. Use one core theme at a time, like “running shoe” or “women’s running shoe.”
Apply a Position filter set to Top 10, hit apply, and export to Excel.
You now have every query in that theme where Reddit holds a top-10 position. If the theme is broad and the list is really long, tighten to Top 3 positions. If it’s thin, loosen it. The right cutoff depends entirely on how much volume the topic has.
Repeat for your three to five core non-brand themes. Don’t do more than that on a first pass — you’ll drown in rows before you’ve built any judgment about what matters.
Depending on the industry and niche, this will help identify how much of a threat Reddit is to your brand and industry. Sometimes when I’ve run this analysis, I don’t find anything worthwhile. Other times, I can find tens of thousands of keywords.

			
				




Step 2: Isolate the AI Overview layer
This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that pays off in 2026. Reddit consistently shows up in AI-powered search as a cited source.
Stay in the same report. Remove the position filter. Open the SERP Features filter, go to SERP Features on SERP, and select AI Overviews.



Export that list to Excel.
What you’re looking at is every query in your theme where Reddit appears on a SERP that also generates an AI Overview. Reddit is cited in more than 15 million of those queries.
Feed this export directly into your prompt research. These queries are the raw material for the questions you should be testing in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to see whether your brand shows up at all.
Bonus: If you use the custom RegEx to identify potential prompts in the domain’s Google Search Console data, you can marry these two data sets using your favorite LLM. I used Claude.

			
				




Dig deeper: How to build an organic Reddit strategy that drives SEO impact




	
	
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Step 3: Run the branded pass
Now filter for your own brand name and your competitors’ brand names. What comes back is usually one of two things, and both are useful.
Bottom-of-funnel support content: People asking whether your product is worth it, why a feature broke, how to cancel, or whether a workaround exists. This is a customer support FAQ written by your customers. If Reddit is ranking for “does [your product] work with [integration]” and your own help center isn’t, that’s not a Reddit problem.
Comparison content further up the funnel: Examples include “[your brand] vs. [competitor],” “[competitor] alternatives,” or “is [your brand] better than [competitor].” These are high-intent queries where a thread of strangers is currently shaping the narrative about your product.
You can’t remove those threads. You can publish something better and get cited alongside them.
Additionally, I would run the branded analysis on three to five of your closest organic competitors.

			
				




Step 4: Run the Keyword Gap report
Open the Keyword Gap report. Put your domain in the first field, add reddit.com as a competitor, and keep both set to Root Domain and Organic Keywords. Compare.
Click the Weak tab, set the position filter for competitors to Top 10, apply, and export. Note — you might need to limit it to Top 3 depending on the industry, domain, and volume of keywords. You can also filter by search volume and sort by queries with 100 or 250 average monthly searches or more.
You now have every keyword where you and Reddit both rank, and Reddit ranks better — filtered to positions that actually get impressions.
The Weak tab matters more than the Missing tab. Missing keywords are speculative. You have no proof you can compete, and most aren’t related specifically to your brand, industry, or product. Weak keywords mean Google already considers your page relevant enough to rank. You’re not building from zero. You’re closing a gap on pages that already have a foothold.




Dig deeper: 10 Reddit comment frameworks that drive engagement without sounding like ads



What to do with the exports
Four files, one job: turn them into a topical map. Cluster the non-brand exports by theme and intent, then compare that map against your existing content. 
You’ll typically find three buckets:
Optimization candidates: You have a page, it ranks, and Reddit ranks better. Usually, the fix is depth and specificity — Reddit wins on the long tail of qualifiers your page glosses over.
Net-new creation: Reddit ranks, and you have nothing. Prioritize by cluster density, not individual volume. Twenty related questions with modest volume each is a stronger content brief than one head term.
FAQ and support content: Mostly from the branded pass. It’s fast to produce, disproportionately effective for AI citation, and it takes a conversation currently happening on someone else’s platform and gives it a home on yours.
One tracking note: Add reddit.com as a tracked competitor in Semrush Position Tracking, and — if you’re running prompt-level visibility monitoring in a tool like Peec AI — add it there, too.
What this isn’t
This isn’t a Reddit activation strategy. Nothing in this process involves posting, commenting, seeding, or otherwise participating on the platform. That’s a separate discipline with real risk — Reddit communities are unusually good at detecting and punishing brand astroturfing, and the downside of getting caught outweighs the upside of a well-placed comment.
The exercise here is pure keyword intelligence. You’re using one of the largest ranking datasets in your category to improve your own topical authority on your own domain.
Bonus tip: One valuable Reddit takeaway for your PR and social teams is which Reddit communities and subreddit threads are ranking for your industry and brand.
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Turn Reddit’s ranking footprint into a content roadmap
Reddit spent two decades accumulating the exact thing search engines and language models now want most: real people answering real questions in real language.
You can’t buy that. But you can read the map it produced, find the questions your category is asking, and answer them better on a property you actually control.
Start with the threat assessment. Then run the gap. What content do you need to add? What content do you need to optimize?

Use Semrush to mine Reddit's rankings for content gaps, unanswered questions, and opportunities to strengthen your search visibility.

Reddit is the keyword research tool you’re probably not using

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Your images have a new job in AI search" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>AI doesn't see your images the way a human does. See what it detects, what it misses, and whether the page confirms the right story.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Your images have a new job in AI search" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Your-images-have-a-new-job-in-AI-search-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For more than a century, images have helped people decide what to buy without seeing the product in person. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In 1897, <a href="https://sites.udel.edu/anomalousbooks/sears-catalog/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sears told shoppers</a> its catalog illustrations would let them &#8220;order intelligently&#8230; as well as if you were in our store selecting the goods from stock.&#8221; The picture stood in for the physical visit. By 1916, that visual strategy had scaled to <a href="https://sites.udel.edu/anomalousbooks/sears-catalog/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">50 million catalogs a year</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Decades later, the Delia&#8217;s catalog proved the same rule. At its peak of <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90436690/the-rise-and-fall-of-delias-the-catalog-that-ruled-america" target="_blank" rel="noopener">55 million mailings a year</a>, photo producer Jim Trzaska noted that teenage girls &#8220;would use the book itself as a sales tool to sell their parents on the clothing by showing them a picture.&#8221; Social media eventually scaled that same trick to a feed of strangers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now the audience has changed. An AI answer engine can look at your photo, break it down into mathematical tokens, and interpret what it sees. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">An image that once had to communicate clearly to a person now also has to communicate clearly to a machine — what’s in the frame, what it means, and whether the surrounding page supports that meaning.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That changes the job of <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/image-optimization-for-seo">image SEO</a>. You need to consider whether the machine can read your image and interpret the message you want to send.</p>



<h2 id="h-the-image-is-a-doorway-that-opens-both-the-query-and-the-answer" class="wp-block-heading">The image is a doorway that opens both the query and the answer</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">With users now running roughly <a href="https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/google-search-lens-october-2024-updates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">20 billion</a> visual searches through Google Lens every month, the search bar is a text box and a camera.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On Pinterest, visual search already accounts for <a href="https://searchlab.nl/en/statistics/pinterest-statistics-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">30% of all searches and converts 62% better than text</a>, because a camera finds the exact thing faster than words can describe it. Pinterest Lens alone handles <a href="https://searchlab.nl/en/statistics/pinterest-statistics-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1.5 billion visual searches</a> a month.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In China, Alibaba&#8217;s camera-first shopping<a href="https://medium.com/@ivanzhouyq/visual-search-is-revolutionizing-e-commerce-case-studies-of-alibaba-and-pinterest-6849da622c88"> </a>has surpassed <a href="https://medium.com/@ivanzhouyq/visual-search-is-revolutionizing-e-commerce-case-studies-of-alibaba-and-pinterest-6849da622c88" target="_blank" rel="noopener">10 million visual searches</a> per day for years. Camera-to-cart is built, monetized, and mainstream.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google holds a patent filed in 2023 and published in April 2026, describing an answer flow where the cited source is chosen by image match first, then the surrounding text is pulled in to build the answer.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://andy-chadwick.com/insights/visual-citations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Andy Chadwick</a>, who identified the patent, highlights that this is a patent application, not confirmed production behavior. Google files thousands of these, and plenty never ship as described. But directionally, it’s the clearest public signal yet that the picture, not the paragraph, is what gets your page pulled into the answer.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddOWHDs9_mk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Your product is now your landing page</a>. A plumber, for example, might show pictures of leaky faucets on a website alongside text explaining what the problem is and how the service can help.&nbsp;</p>



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Page</strong></td><td><strong>Type of image</strong></td><td><strong>Purpose (traditional)</strong></td><td><strong>Purpose (AI/multimodal GEO)</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Homepage</td><td>High-quality, original brand images</td><td>First impression, brand identity</td><td>Give the answer engine an original, non-stock hero it can match.&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>Product pages</td><td>Multiple high-resolution, different angles</td><td>Carousels, 360, close-ups</td><td>Make packaging and product text OCR-legible so the AI reads the right attributes.</td></tr><tr><td>Blog/info</td><td>Infographics, diagrams</td><td>Inform, break up text</td><td>Any claim in the graphic must also exist as machine-readable text or alt so the engine can extract and quote it.</td></tr><tr><td>About/team</td><td>Portraits, office photos</td><td>Build trust</td><td>Feed entity and authorship signals (who, credentials) that tie the page to a known person for E-E-A-T and citation.</td></tr><tr><td>Service</td><td>Team/workplace, before-and-after</td><td>Clarify services</td><td>Control the co-occurrence: what sits in frame tells the AI a service story.</td></tr><tr><td>Contact</td><td>Location images, maps</td><td>Visual context</td><td>Reinforce location and local business signals the AI relies on.</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



<div aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/products-machine-readable-multimodal-ai-search-465151">How to make products machine-readable for multimodal AI search</a></em></strong>


<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">
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<h2 id="h-one-image-two-questions-two-audits" class="wp-block-heading">One image: Two questions, two audits</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You know the machine reads your image and pulls it into answers. The next question is how you check whether yours holds up.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There are two ways to audit an image for this:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Did AI correctly understand what&#8217;s in the image?</li>



<li>Did you put the right things in the image to begin with?</li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-what-is-factually-in-this-image" class="wp-block-heading">What is factually in this image?</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A stainless steel coffee maker with a thermal carafe. Is that object in the shot, and does the copy on the page name it? This is the denotation layer, and <a href="https://metehan.ai/blog/visual-query-fan-out-screaming-frog/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metehan Yesilyurt&#8217;s visual query fan-out analysis</a> maps it well.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It’s object-level, literal, and checkable. Most brands fail it anyway, because they wrote copy for a mood and shot a photo or picked a stock photo for a different vibe.</p>



<h3 id="h-what-does-this-image-imply" class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What does this image imply?</strong></h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">&#8220;A professional office setup for a team&#8221; isn&#8217;t an object you can point to. It’s a meaning the composition carries, or fails to carry, to a human and now to a machine.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is the connotation layer that <a href="https://searchengineland.com/image-seo-multimodal-ai-466508">my co-occurrence audit measures</a>. Did anyone brief the branding and the photography to build the intended meaning, and does that meaning survive when the machine strips the image down to its semantic residue?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Visual query fan-out analysis asks whether you described what is there. Co-occurrence audits ask whether you put the right thing there in the first place. Both matter because what you intended to communicate isn&#8217;t necessarily what the machine can detect. Here, you can see that the bracelet and watch in the photo were detected, but the ring wasn&#8217;t.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1714" height="1248" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Cartier-campaign-visual.png" alt="Cartier campaign visual where the ring is not detected but the bracelet and the watch are. " class="wp-image-485843" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Cartier-campaign-visual.png 1714w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Cartier-campaign-visual-768x559.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Cartier-campaign-visual-1536x1118.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1714px) 100vw, 1714px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em><em>Cartier campaign visual where the ring is not detected but the bracelet and the watch are.&nbsp;</em></em></figcaption></figure>
</div>


<div aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<h3 id="h-the-job-has-changed" class="wp-block-heading">The job has changed</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Image SEO&#8217;s old job</strong></td><td><strong>The multimodal image GEO job</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Rank the image in Google Images</td><td>Get the image retrieved and cited by the answer engine</td></tr><tr><td>Match search intent for a human browsing</td><td>Give the machine the semantic residue it reads to build an answer</td></tr><tr><td>File naming for keywords</td><td>File naming plus in-image legibility, the AI reads the pixels, not just the filename</td></tr><tr><td>Alt text written for humans and accessibility</td><td>Alt text written as claims the engine can extract and quote, not keyword strings</td></tr><tr><td>Compression and Core Web Vitals for page speed</td><td>Compression that preserves legibility, so the model can still parse packaging and product text</td></tr><tr><td>File formats and lazy loading for load performance</td><td>Same hygiene, now in service of the image being machine-parseable at retrieval time</td></tr><tr><td>E-E-A-T signals around the page</td><td>Entity and authorship signals the AI ties to a known source when it decides what to cite</td></tr><tr><td>One image, one job: look good to a person</td><td>Co-occurrence control: what sits in frame tells the AI a brand story you may not have approved</td></tr><tr><td>Emotional resonance judged by a human eye</td><td>Sentiment alignment: what the vision model reads as emotion has to match your creative direction</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



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<h2 id="h-what-to-actually-measure-the-multimodal-image-geo-scorecard" class="wp-block-heading">What to actually measure: The multimodal image GEO scorecard</h2>



<h3 id="h-ownership-rate" class="wp-block-heading">Ownership rate</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Share of hero images that are genuinely yours, not a duplicate, near-duplicate, or visually similar stand-in that half your category also uses.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>How to measure</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Use Google Cloud Vision API&#8217;s Web Detection feature. It returns four useful result types: </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><code>fullMatchingImages</code> (fully matching images). </li>



<li><code>partialMatchingImages</code> (images that share key-point features, such as cropped versions). </li>



<li><code>visuallySimilarImages</code> (images that share some visual features).</li>



<li><code>pagesWithMatchingImages</code> (pages containing matching images).</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Evidence</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google&#8217;s Visual Citations patent was filed in 2023 and published in April 2026. It describes an answer flow in which the image match is selected first, followed by the surrounding text. Chadwick, who surfaced the patent, notes that it’s a patent application, not confirmed production behavior.</p>



<h3 id="h-context-match" class="wp-block-heading">Context match</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Context match measures whether what sits next to your product in the frame tells the AI the brand story you approved.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>How to measure</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Use Google Cloud Vision&#8217;s <code>OBJECT_LOCALIZATION</code> to identify detected objects, including their names, mids, confidence scores, and bounding boxes. You can then assess the &#8220;visual neighbors&#8221; against your brand guidelines. The API doesn&#8217;t judge the context for you.</p>



<h3 id="h-sentiment-alignment" class="wp-block-heading">Sentiment alignment</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Sentiment alignment measures whether the emotion the vision model reads from your lifestyle photography matches the creative direction you briefed.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>How to measure</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Use Google Cloud Vision&#8217;s <code>FACE_DETECTION</code> to review <code>faceAnnotations</code> and emotion enums ranging from UNKNOWN to VERY_UNLIKELY, UNLIKELY, POSSIBLE, LIKELY, and VERY_LIKELY. Target VERY_LIKELY.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Use detection confidence as a gate: Trust scores of 0.90 or higher, consider 0.70–0.89 acceptable for secondary shots, and discard anything under 0.60 as noise.</p>



<h3 id="h-legibility-rate" class="wp-block-heading">Legibility rate</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Legibility rate measures the share of top product images where the machine correctly reads packaging copy, on-pack claims, product attributes, or anything written in the shot.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>How to measure</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Use Google Cloud Vision&#8217;s <code>TEXT_DETECTION</code> for OCR.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Failure thresholds from Cognex and arXiv literature, rather than Google&#8217;s own specifications, include character heights under ~30px, contrast under ~40 grayscale values, stylized fonts, and glare on reflective packaging.</p>



<h3 id="h-fan-out-coverage-or-content-gap-score" class="wp-block-heading">Fan-out coverage (or content gap score)</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Fan-out coverage measures the share of what your image visually shows or implies that your on-page text never actually confirms. One real buyer question can fan out into a dozen sub-questions, so coverage is important.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>How to measure</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph" id="h-">Use the same visual query fan-out method with Screaming Frog and the OpenAI Vision API. The tool flags queries you could already win if the page text backed up what the photo shows. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Note: </strong>This is a qualitative metric.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/image-seo-multimodal-ai-466508">Image SEO for multimodal AI</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-how-to-make-your-images-work-for-ai" class="wp-block-heading">How to make your images work for AI</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The audits tell you where your images are falling short. Start with the changes that have the biggest impact on what AI can see, understand, and retrieve.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Shoot your own photos. The single highest-leverage move is replacing stock and shared hero images with photography that only you have. It fixes ownership rate and dedup survival in one shot, literally.</li>



<li>Make the image legible.</li>



<li>Put the answer next to the picture. The patent mechanism and plain sense both say the text adjacent to the retrieved image is what gets pulled into the answer. Caption it. Label it. Put the fact that the buyer needs directly under the image, not three scrolls away.</li>



<li>Cover the fan-out, not the keyword. Several plain images answering several sub-questions on one page are a great way to do that.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The old job was to make an image that a human would stop and look at. The new job is to make an image a machine can read, tell apart from everyone else&#8217;s, and carry it into an answer.</p>

For more than a century, images have helped people decide what to buy without seeing the product in person. 
In 1897, Sears told shoppers its catalog illustrations would let them “order intelligently… as well as if you were in our store selecting the goods from stock.” The picture stood in for the physical visit. By 1916, that visual strategy had scaled to 50 million catalogs a year.
Decades later, the Delia’s catalog proved the same rule. At its peak of 55 million mailings a year, photo producer Jim Trzaska noted that teenage girls “would use the book itself as a sales tool to sell their parents on the clothing by showing them a picture.” Social media eventually scaled that same trick to a feed of strangers.
Now the audience has changed. An AI answer engine can look at your photo, break it down into mathematical tokens, and interpret what it sees. 
An image that once had to communicate clearly to a person now also has to communicate clearly to a machine — what’s in the frame, what it means, and whether the surrounding page supports that meaning.
That changes the job of image SEO. You need to consider whether the machine can read your image and interpret the message you want to send.
The image is a doorway that opens both the query and the answer
With users now running roughly 20 billion visual searches through Google Lens every month, the search bar is a text box and a camera. 
On Pinterest, visual search already accounts for 30% of all searches and converts 62% better than text, because a camera finds the exact thing faster than words can describe it. Pinterest Lens alone handles 1.5 billion visual searches a month. 
In China, Alibaba’s camera-first shopping has surpassed 10 million visual searches per day for years. Camera-to-cart is built, monetized, and mainstream.
Google holds a patent filed in 2023 and published in April 2026, describing an answer flow where the cited source is chosen by image match first, then the surrounding text is pulled in to build the answer. 
Andy Chadwick, who identified the patent, highlights that this is a patent application, not confirmed production behavior. Google files thousands of these, and plenty never ship as described. But directionally, it’s the clearest public signal yet that the picture, not the paragraph, is what gets your page pulled into the answer.
Your product is now your landing page. A plumber, for example, might show pictures of leaky faucets on a website alongside text explaining what the problem is and how the service can help. 

PageType of imagePurpose (traditional)Purpose (AI/multimodal GEO)
HomepageHigh-quality, original brand imagesFirst impression, brand identityGive the answer engine an original, non-stock hero it can match. 
Product pagesMultiple high-resolution, different anglesCarousels, 360, close-upsMake packaging and product text OCR-legible so the AI reads the right attributes.
Blog/infoInfographics, diagramsInform, break up textAny claim in the graphic must also exist as machine-readable text or alt so the engine can extract and quote it.
About/teamPortraits, office photosBuild trustFeed entity and authorship signals (who, credentials) that tie the page to a known person for E-E-A-T and citation.
ServiceTeam/workplace, before-and-afterClarify servicesControl the co-occurrence: what sits in frame tells the AI a service story.
ContactLocation images, mapsVisual contextReinforce location and local business signals the AI relies on.






Dig deeper: How to make products machine-readable for multimodal AI search



  
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One image: Two questions, two audits
You know the machine reads your image and pulls it into answers. The next question is how you check whether yours holds up. 
There are two ways to audit an image for this: 
Did AI correctly understand what’s in the image?
Did you put the right things in the image to begin with?
What is factually in this image?
A stainless steel coffee maker with a thermal carafe. Is that object in the shot, and does the copy on the page name it? This is the denotation layer, and Metehan Yesilyurt’s visual query fan-out analysis maps it well. 
It’s object-level, literal, and checkable. Most brands fail it anyway, because they wrote copy for a mood and shot a photo or picked a stock photo for a different vibe.
What does this image imply?
“A professional office setup for a team” isn’t an object you can point to. It’s a meaning the composition carries, or fails to carry, to a human and now to a machine.
This is the connotation layer that my co-occurrence audit measures. Did anyone brief the branding and the photography to build the intended meaning, and does that meaning survive when the machine strips the image down to its semantic residue?
Visual query fan-out analysis asks whether you described what is there. Co-occurrence audits ask whether you put the right thing there in the first place. Both matter because what you intended to communicate isn’t necessarily what the machine can detect. Here, you can see that the bracelet and watch in the photo were detected, but the ring wasn’t.
Cartier campaign visual where the ring is not detected but the bracelet and the watch are. 




The job has changed

Image SEO’s old jobThe multimodal image GEO job
Rank the image in Google ImagesGet the image retrieved and cited by the answer engine
Match search intent for a human browsingGive the machine the semantic residue it reads to build an answer
File naming for keywordsFile naming plus in-image legibility, the AI reads the pixels, not just the filename
Alt text written for humans and accessibilityAlt text written as claims the engine can extract and quote, not keyword strings
Compression and Core Web Vitals for page speedCompression that preserves legibility, so the model can still parse packaging and product text
File formats and lazy loading for load performanceSame hygiene, now in service of the image being machine-parseable at retrieval time
E-E-A-T signals around the pageEntity and authorship signals the AI ties to a known source when it decides what to cite
One image, one job: look good to a personCo-occurrence control: what sits in frame tells the AI a brand story you may not have approved
Emotional resonance judged by a human eyeSentiment alignment: what the vision model reads as emotion has to match your creative direction






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See terms.
		
What to actually measure: The multimodal image GEO scorecard
Ownership rate
Share of hero images that are genuinely yours, not a duplicate, near-duplicate, or visually similar stand-in that half your category also uses.
How to measure



Use Google Cloud Vision API’s Web Detection feature. It returns four useful result types: 
fullMatchingImages (fully matching images). 
partialMatchingImages (images that share key-point features, such as cropped versions). 
visuallySimilarImages (images that share some visual features).
pagesWithMatchingImages (pages containing matching images).
Evidence



Google’s Visual Citations patent was filed in 2023 and published in April 2026. It describes an answer flow in which the image match is selected first, followed by the surrounding text. Chadwick, who surfaced the patent, notes that it’s a patent application, not confirmed production behavior.
Context match
Context match measures whether what sits next to your product in the frame tells the AI the brand story you approved.
How to measure



Use Google Cloud Vision’s OBJECT_LOCALIZATION to identify detected objects, including their names, mids, confidence scores, and bounding boxes. You can then assess the “visual neighbors” against your brand guidelines. The API doesn’t judge the context for you.
Sentiment alignment
Sentiment alignment measures whether the emotion the vision model reads from your lifestyle photography matches the creative direction you briefed.
How to measure



Use Google Cloud Vision’s FACE_DETECTION to review faceAnnotations and emotion enums ranging from UNKNOWN to VERY_UNLIKELY, UNLIKELY, POSSIBLE, LIKELY, and VERY_LIKELY. Target VERY_LIKELY.
Use detection confidence as a gate: Trust scores of 0.90 or higher, consider 0.70–0.89 acceptable for secondary shots, and discard anything under 0.60 as noise.
Legibility rate
Legibility rate measures the share of top product images where the machine correctly reads packaging copy, on-pack claims, product attributes, or anything written in the shot.
How to measure



Use Google Cloud Vision’s TEXT_DETECTION for OCR.
Failure thresholds from Cognex and arXiv literature, rather than Google’s own specifications, include character heights under ~30px, contrast under ~40 grayscale values, stylized fonts, and glare on reflective packaging.
Fan-out coverage (or content gap score)
Fan-out coverage measures the share of what your image visually shows or implies that your on-page text never actually confirms. One real buyer question can fan out into a dozen sub-questions, so coverage is important.
How to measure



Use the same visual query fan-out method with Screaming Frog and the OpenAI Vision API. The tool flags queries you could already win if the page text backed up what the photo shows. 
Note: This is a qualitative metric.
Dig deeper: Image SEO for multimodal AI



  
customers won’t either.
      
See your AI visibility
    
How to make your images work for AI
The audits tell you where your images are falling short. Start with the changes that have the biggest impact on what AI can see, understand, and retrieve.
Shoot your own photos. The single highest-leverage move is replacing stock and shared hero images with photography that only you have. It fixes ownership rate and dedup survival in one shot, literally.
Make the image legible.
Put the answer next to the picture. The patent mechanism and plain sense both say the text adjacent to the retrieved image is what gets pulled into the answer. Caption it. Label it. Put the fact that the buyer needs directly under the image, not three scrolls away.
Cover the fan-out, not the keyword. Several plain images answering several sub-questions on one page are a great way to do that.
The old job was to make an image that a human would stop and look at. The new job is to make an image a machine can read, tell apart from everyone else’s, and carry it into an answer.

AI doesn't see your images the way a human does. See what it detects, what it misses, and whether the page confirms the right story.

Your images have a new job in AI search

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="If an AI watermark scares you, your content may be the real issue" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>AI watermarks don’t determine search performance. What matters is whether your content is original, useful, accurate, and worth publishing.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="If an AI watermark scares you, your content may be the real issue" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/If_an_AI_watermark_scares_you_your_content_may_be_the_real_issue-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you were anywhere near the internet last week, you likely heard that Anthropic announced <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-text-watermark" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>machine-readable watermarks for Claude-generated text</strong></a>.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="854" height="686" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Anthropic-AI-watermark-feedback.png" alt="Anthropic AI watermark feedback" class="wp-image-485854" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Anthropic-AI-watermark-feedback.png 854w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Anthropic-AI-watermark-feedback-768x617.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 854px) 100vw, 854px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Come on! Why do you <strong>really</strong> care about watermarks, or honestly, any other signal indicating that AI touched a piece of content?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Are you worried that people will discover you’re publishing <strong>crap</strong>? Or is the real “issue” that you think search engines and AI answer engines will penalize you for using it?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You should absolutely be concerned about the first question.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But let’s discuss why so many people are really panicking:</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“Da rankingz, Nick!”</p>



<h2 id="h-you-re-not-afraid-of-the-watermark-you-re-afraid-of-being-found-out" class="wp-block-heading">You’re not afraid of the watermark. You’re afraid of being found out.</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For many people, the fear isn’t the watermark itself. It’s what others might assume after seeing it: that they lack expertise, didn’t do the work, or charged for an idea a machine produced.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You can’t control those assumptions. You can only control what you publish. (Don’t worry, people are working hard to not get caught)</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1088" height="823" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Claude-watermark-remover.jpg" alt="Claude watermark remover" class="wp-image-485855" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Claude-watermark-remover.jpg 1088w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Claude-watermark-remover-768x581.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1088px) 100vw, 1088px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If being “found out” would embarrass you, the problem probably isn’t the watermark. It’s that you don’t believe the finished work can withstand scrutiny.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There’s also a massive difference between using AI to organize your ideas, challenge your thinking, or improve a draft and blindly publishing its first response.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A watermark may indicate that Claude participated in the process somewhere. It can&#8217;t tell us who originated the idea, how much AI contributed, or whether the finished work is accurate or valuable.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Evidently, anti-watermarks are a business now, too. I share, for example, but I know at least one of you is going to test/purchase it.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1079" height="835" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-watermarks-remover.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-485856" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-watermarks-remover.jpeg 1079w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/AI-watermarks-remover-768x594.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1079px) 100vw, 1079px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A watermark might identify part of the production process. <strong>It can&#8217;t evaluate the finished product.</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But reputation isn’t the only concern. Marketers are already asking whether search engines will treat that signal as a reason to suppress the content.</p>



<h2 id="h-google-doesn-t-care-that-you-used-ai-it-cares-what-you-did-with-it" class="wp-block-heading">Google doesn’t care that you used AI. It cares what you did with it.</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Despite what some folks desperately want to believe, Google has never said that AI-generated content is automatically penalized or even “bad”.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In fact, <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google’s own guidance</a> acknowledges that generative AI can be useful for researching topics and adding structure to original content.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The issue here is when businesses use automation to create pages at scale without adding any meaningful value. The internet has enough copycats; if you&#8217;re letting AI generate it solely on its own, it&#8217;s going to copy all the copycats…</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google’s <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">scaled content abuse policy</a><strong> </strong>aims to target large volumes of low-value content created to trick Google into achieving higher search rankings. This isn’t new; before AI, Google fought garbage content. AI just injected the spam with steroids.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">AI content isn’t the problem. Unoriginal content created primarily to manipulate rankings is the problem. (I’m frothing at the mouth for the AI-Penguin type rollout, crushing those who laid off their teams and pushed 100% AI content live.)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">(Funny enough, Google <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-august-2026-spam-update-done-rolling-out-485471">just completed the August 2026 spam update</a>!)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When given full autonomy, AI makes it easier to produce generic advice, unsupported claims, near-duplicate pages, recycled search results, and thousands of pages nobody asked for… let alone see value in.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yes, creating garbage can definitely hurt your SEO. <strong>The watermark itself is not what causes this.</strong>



<h2 id="h-geo-isn-t-an-ai-purity-contest-either" class="wp-block-heading">GEO isn’t an ai purity contest either</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There is no universal rule that “Claude watermarked content will be excluded from AI-generated answers.”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Answer engines still need information that is <em>useful to people.</em>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>The relevant question isn’t:</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“Can the model tell that AI helped create this?”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>It’s:</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“Does this page contribute anything worth retrieving, citing, or synthesizing?”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Author bylines are a common starting point to build consistency for AI bots. However, by itself, it <strong>can&#8217;t</strong> make repetitive information “citation-worthy.” On the other end of the spectrum, an AI watermark doesn’t erase the value of original research, firsthand experience, or even opinions that generate human interest.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“A human wrote it” isn’t a competitive advantage if a thousand other humans already wrote the same thing. (I won’t even start on AI and copyright infringement.)</p>



<h2 id="h-go-ahead-scan-this-post" class="wp-block-heading">Go ahead. Scan this post.</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Substack will now let you scan posts on its platform using Pangram integration and get an idea of just how “AI” that content is. (<a href="https://pangram.substack.com/p/how-does-pangram-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">They share how it works here</a>.)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So, go ahead. Scan this post. Here I’ll screenshot it myself.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="673" height="350" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Nick-LeRoy-post-Pangram.jpeg" alt="Nick LeRoy post - Pangram" class="wp-image-485857"/></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">8%, 18%, maybe it says 80% AI. (OMGz!)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I genuinely don’t care. </strong>(Although 31% feels very high for how many keystrokes I’ve added to write this post, but meh!)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I never promised that every sentence of this article was written in the wilderness with no internet connection. You read it because the title caught your attention, you’ve valued my previous work, or simply get entertainment from my spicy takes on all things search/AI/business.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">An AI score cannot tell me whether you finished the post, shared it, subscribed, clicked my sponsor’s link, or hired me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“Eighteen percent AI” is a random number. Attention, trust, subscribers, and revenue are <strong>winning.</strong>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If this post produces those outcomes, it did its job. If it’s useless, a “100% human” score doesn’t instantly give me 10,000 more subs (bummer!)</p>



<h2 id="h-care-about-what-you-re-willing-to-publish" class="wp-block-heading">Care about what you’re willing to publish</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The rules never changed. Garbage, written by a human or AI, isn’t permission to scale to a gazillion pages. It makes your name/brand look like garbage, and you lose trust.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">AI doesn’t negate your responsibility in providing quality work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Before publishing, ask whether the work is accurate, original enough to justify existing, useful to its intended audience, and something you’re willing to defend with your name attached. <em>(Now you understand why people are building the “remove whitelisting products)</em>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.seoforlunch.com/p/ai-vs-human" target="_blank" rel="noopener">If it is, publish it and stand behind it</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If it isn’t, manipulating the AI score won’t make it any better. (Come on, we all learned in our SEO 101 days about “duplicate content,” and the rules aren’t any different for AI.)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You need to focus on <strong>winning</strong>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I mean, don’t want the watermark? You could [gasp] write the entire content on your own!?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I use AI to generate #SEOForLunch hero images and help edit these articles. Otherwise, my rants would routinely exceed 1,500 words.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So, really, you should thank AI for making me shut up sooner.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>This post first appeared on the author’s website and is republished here with permission.</em>


If you were anywhere near the internet last week, you likely heard that Anthropic announced machine-readable watermarks for Claude-generated text.




Come on! Why do you really care about watermarks, or honestly, any other signal indicating that AI touched a piece of content?
Are you worried that people will discover you’re publishing crap? Or is the real “issue” that you think search engines and AI answer engines will penalize you for using it?
You should absolutely be concerned about the first question.
But let’s discuss why so many people are really panicking:
“Da rankingz, Nick!”
You’re not afraid of the watermark. You’re afraid of being found out.
For many people, the fear isn’t the watermark itself. It’s what others might assume after seeing it: that they lack expertise, didn’t do the work, or charged for an idea a machine produced.
You can’t control those assumptions. You can only control what you publish. (Don’t worry, people are working hard to not get caught)




If being “found out” would embarrass you, the problem probably isn’t the watermark. It’s that you don’t believe the finished work can withstand scrutiny.
There’s also a massive difference between using AI to organize your ideas, challenge your thinking, or improve a draft and blindly publishing its first response.
A watermark may indicate that Claude participated in the process somewhere. It can’t tell us who originated the idea, how much AI contributed, or whether the finished work is accurate or valuable.
Evidently, anti-watermarks are a business now, too. I share, for example, but I know at least one of you is going to test/purchase it.




A watermark might identify part of the production process. It can’t evaluate the finished product.



But reputation isn’t the only concern. Marketers are already asking whether search engines will treat that signal as a reason to suppress the content.
Google doesn’t care that you used AI. It cares what you did with it.
Despite what some folks desperately want to believe, Google has never said that AI-generated content is automatically penalized or even “bad”.
In fact, Google’s own guidance acknowledges that generative AI can be useful for researching topics and adding structure to original content.
The issue here is when businesses use automation to create pages at scale without adding any meaningful value. The internet has enough copycats; if you’re letting AI generate it solely on its own, it’s going to copy all the copycats…
Google’s scaled content abuse policy aims to target large volumes of low-value content created to trick Google into achieving higher search rankings. This isn’t new; before AI, Google fought garbage content. AI just injected the spam with steroids.
AI content isn’t the problem. Unoriginal content created primarily to manipulate rankings is the problem. (I’m frothing at the mouth for the AI-Penguin type rollout, crushing those who laid off their teams and pushed 100% AI content live.)
(Funny enough, Google just completed the August 2026 spam update!)
When given full autonomy, AI makes it easier to produce generic advice, unsupported claims, near-duplicate pages, recycled search results, and thousands of pages nobody asked for… let alone see value in.
Yes, creating garbage can definitely hurt your SEO. The watermark itself is not what causes this.



GEO isn’t an ai purity contest either
There is no universal rule that “Claude watermarked content will be excluded from AI-generated answers.”
Answer engines still need information that is useful to people.



The relevant question isn’t:



“Can the model tell that AI helped create this?”
It’s:



“Does this page contribute anything worth retrieving, citing, or synthesizing?”
Author bylines are a common starting point to build consistency for AI bots. However, by itself, it can’t make repetitive information “citation-worthy.” On the other end of the spectrum, an AI watermark doesn’t erase the value of original research, firsthand experience, or even opinions that generate human interest.
“A human wrote it” isn’t a competitive advantage if a thousand other humans already wrote the same thing. (I won’t even start on AI and copyright infringement.)
Go ahead. Scan this post.
Substack will now let you scan posts on its platform using Pangram integration and get an idea of just how “AI” that content is. (They share how it works here.)
So, go ahead. Scan this post. Here I’ll screenshot it myself.




8%, 18%, maybe it says 80% AI. (OMGz!)
I genuinely don’t care. (Although 31% feels very high for how many keystrokes I’ve added to write this post, but meh!)
I never promised that every sentence of this article was written in the wilderness with no internet connection. You read it because the title caught your attention, you’ve valued my previous work, or simply get entertainment from my spicy takes on all things search/AI/business.
An AI score cannot tell me whether you finished the post, shared it, subscribed, clicked my sponsor’s link, or hired me.
“Eighteen percent AI” is a random number. Attention, trust, subscribers, and revenue are winning.



If this post produces those outcomes, it did its job. If it’s useless, a “100% human” score doesn’t instantly give me 10,000 more subs (bummer!)
Care about what you’re willing to publish
The rules never changed. Garbage, written by a human or AI, isn’t permission to scale to a gazillion pages. It makes your name/brand look like garbage, and you lose trust.
AI doesn’t negate your responsibility in providing quality work.
Before publishing, ask whether the work is accurate, original enough to justify existing, useful to its intended audience, and something you’re willing to defend with your name attached. (Now you understand why people are building the “remove whitelisting products)



If it is, publish it and stand behind it.
If it isn’t, manipulating the AI score won’t make it any better. (Come on, we all learned in our SEO 101 days about “duplicate content,” and the rules aren’t any different for AI.)
You need to focus on winning.
I mean, don’t want the watermark? You could [gasp] write the entire content on your own!?
I use AI to generate #SEOForLunch hero images and help edit these articles. Otherwise, my rants would routinely exceed 1,500 words.
So, really, you should thank AI for making me shut up sooner.
This post first appeared on the author’s website and is republished here with permission.

AI watermarks don’t determine search performance. What matters is whether your content is original, useful, accurate, and worth publishing.

If an AI watermark scares you, your content may be the real issue

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Google said it deploys technical measures against evolving forms of abuse and this is one of those.

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-protection-logo-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google has <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-goto-tracking-41957.html">confirmed</a> it is rolling out new &#8220;technical measures&#8221; to protect against abuse of its search results and protect its services.  Google is rolling out the addition of goto URL parameter redirects to the links in its search results.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What Google said.</strong> A Google spokesperson told us:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>&#8220;We have a long history of deploying technical measures against evolving forms of abuse, and we regularly take steps to protect our services and users.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What changed. </strong>Previously, when you clicked on a search result, it would show the page&#8217;s full URL and take you to that URL. It looked like this:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1772" height="506" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-search-normal-urls-Qk4tixP2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485928" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-search-normal-urls-Qk4tixP2.png 1772w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-search-normal-urls-Qk4tixP2-768x219.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-search-normal-urls-Qk4tixP2-1536x439.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1772px) 100vw, 1772px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The new technical measure to protect against abuse, adds a redirect hope to google.com/goto?url=[hashURL] and then takes you to the page.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1628" height="510" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-goto-tracking-urls-FnMyqEa2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-485929" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-goto-tracking-urls-FnMyqEa2.png 1628w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-goto-tracking-urls-FnMyqEa2-768x241.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/google-goto-tracking-urls-FnMyqEa2-1536x481.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1628px) 100vw, 1628px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why is Google doing this. </strong>Google said it is doing this as a technical measure to protect against abuse of its search results and protect its services.  Technically, this should make it harder for third-party tools, services, scrapers, and AI engines to scrape the Google search results.   Such as companies like <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-sues-serpapi-466541">SerpAPI, which Google sued</a> over scraping and <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-loses-key-dmca-claims-against-serpapi-in-scraping-lawsuit-483185">lost</a> the latest motion.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>More details. </strong>Derek Perkins from Nozzle told me on <a href="https://x.com/Derek_Perkins/status/2092715097743556736">X</a> that Google has been pushing this change live and he sees it at &#8220;nearly a 100% rollout across several residential ip providers.&#8221; </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care. </strong>If you are using third-party Google Search tracking tools, those tools may be impacted in some way. Keep an eye on your data and what your tools are reporting. If something seems off in the coming days, maybe reach out to those tool providers to see if they have a plan.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google has been testing this for a <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-com-goto-as-tracking-urls-41647.html">couple of months</a> now, and you have to assume that Google Search Console data is not impacted by this change. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">From a searcher&#8217;s perspective, this probably has almost no impact, outside of them not being able to preview the full URL in the browser bar before clicking. But Google does show the URL under the title of the snippet. But if there is some sort of hack or phishing exploit on the site, then it might cause some issues, although Google is generally pretty good at removing those pages from its search results pretty quickly.</p>


Google has confirmed it is rolling out new “technical measures” to protect against abuse of its search results and protect its services.  Google is rolling out the addition of goto URL parameter redirects to the links in its search results.
What Google said. A Google spokesperson told us:
“We have a long history of deploying technical measures against evolving forms of abuse, and we regularly take steps to protect our services and users.”
What changed. Previously, when you clicked on a search result, it would show the page’s full URL and take you to that URL. It looked like this:




The new technical measure to protect against abuse, adds a redirect hope to google.com/goto?url=[hashURL] and then takes you to the page.




Why is Google doing this. Google said it is doing this as a technical measure to protect against abuse of its search results and protect its services.  Technically, this should make it harder for third-party tools, services, scrapers, and AI engines to scrape the Google search results.   Such as companies like SerpAPI, which Google sued over scraping and lost the latest motion.
More details. Derek Perkins from Nozzle told me on X that Google has been pushing this change live and he sees it at “nearly a 100% rollout across several residential ip providers.” 
Why we care. If you are using third-party Google Search tracking tools, those tools may be impacted in some way. Keep an eye on your data and what your tools are reporting. If something seems off in the coming days, maybe reach out to those tool providers to see if they have a plan.
Google has been testing this for a couple of months now, and you have to assume that Google Search Console data is not impacted by this change. 
From a searcher’s perspective, this probably has almost no impact, outside of them not being able to preview the full URL in the browser bar before clicking. But Google does show the URL under the title of the snippet. But if there is some sort of hack or phishing exploit on the site, then it might cause some issues, although Google is generally pretty good at removing those pages from its search results pretty quickly.

Google said it deploys technical measures against evolving forms of abuse and this is one of those.

Google confirms deploying goto URL redirects to search results links

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>Google Ads API Developer Assistant v4.0.0 brings specialized API dev, troubleshooting and reporting tools into AI workflows.

<div><img width="1672" height="941" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard.png 1672w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/Google-API-assisntant-dashboard-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google released Google Ads API Developer Assistant v4.0.0, rebuilding the tool around a unified plugin architecture that brings specialized Google Ads API capabilities directly into AI coding workflows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The major release adds support for Antigravity and Claude Code while promising faster performance, lower resource usage and more reliable Google Ads API development.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What’s new.</strong> The Developer Assistant is moving away from the standalone, local workspace project structure used in previous versions. Version 4.0.0 is instead installed as a globally available plugin, allowing its Google Ads-specific rules, skills and diagnostic commands to be used across multiple projects and development environments.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google says the new architecture is not compatible with previous releases.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>AI coding gets Google Ads expertise.</strong> The assistant is designed to bring specialized Google Ads knowledge into AI coding environments rather than relying entirely on what an underlying AI model already knows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It can generate integration code across Python, Java, PHP, .NET and Ruby, with Google saying the output follows tested Google Ads API best practices.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It can also answer API questions using embedded architectural rules combined with local Protobuf schema inspection, grounding answers in API definitions and client library source code.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>GAQL validation.</strong> One of the more practical capabilities is automated validation of Google Ads Query Language queries.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The assistant can check GAQL syntax, field compatibility, date segmentation and zero-impression rules before a query is executed.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Instead of an AI model repeatedly attempting to diagnose a broken query over several interactions, Google says the local validator can check fields, resources, metrics and date clauses in a single step.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Ad hoc reporting.</strong> Developers can also request Google Ads performance data using natural language.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The assistant can construct and validate the necessary GAQL query, run it against the advertiser&#8217;s Google Ads account and return live results as formatted tables directly within the conversation.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Users can also ask it to save those results as a CSV for further analysis in a spreadsheet.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Troubleshooting gets conversational.</strong> The Developer Assistant can diagnose API problems including offline conversion upload failures, manager account hierarchy issues and Performance Max listing filters.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That means developers can ask broader questions such as which ads in an account have problems and how they could be fixed, rather than manually working through individual API errors.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Schema inspection.</strong> The assistant can inspect Protobuf schemas on demand to discover available resource fields, data types and enum definitions for active Google Ads API versions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The aim is to make its guidance version-specific and reduce the risk of an AI assistant suggesting fields or configurations that aren&#8217;t valid for the API version being used.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>More AI environments.</strong> Version 4.0.0 introduces dual-platform support for <strong>Antigravity and Claude Code</strong>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Claude Code integration includes custom slash commands for tasks such as validating GAQL, inspecting objects, troubleshooting conversions and retrieving customer IDs. Antigravity supports global and workspace plugin registration.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google is also providing unified installation scripts for Linux, macOS and Windows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Performance improvements.</strong> Google says the new architecture reduces token consumption by loading only the rules and schemas needed for a particular task rather than supplying everything to the model upfront.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It also promises faster responses, lower CPU and memory usage, less disk I/O and zero daemon overhead while idle. API version and Protobuf schema information can also be cached to avoid unnecessary repeat lookups.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care.</strong> Google is moving its developer tooling closer to the AI agents developers are increasingly using to build and maintain advertising integrations. More importantly, the assistant isn&#8217;t just generating code: it&#8217;s validating queries against Google Ads-specific rules and inspecting actual schemas. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That could make AI-assisted API development more reliable and reduce the amount of time developers spend debugging hallucinated fields, invalid GAQL or version-specific problems.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bottom line.</strong> <a href="https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2026/08/google-ads-api-developer-assistant-v400.html">Google Ads API Developer Assistant v4.0.0</a> turns the tool into a reusable AI coding plugin capable of generating and validating code, troubleshooting integrations and querying live advertising data — while grounding more of that work in Google Ads&#8217; actual API definitions rather than relying solely on an AI model&#8217;s existing knowledge.</p>


Google released Google Ads API Developer Assistant v4.0.0, rebuilding the tool around a unified plugin architecture that brings specialized Google Ads API capabilities directly into AI coding workflows.
The major release adds support for Antigravity and Claude Code while promising faster performance, lower resource usage and more reliable Google Ads API development.
What’s new. The Developer Assistant is moving away from the standalone, local workspace project structure used in previous versions. Version 4.0.0 is instead installed as a globally available plugin, allowing its Google Ads-specific rules, skills and diagnostic commands to be used across multiple projects and development environments.
Google says the new architecture is not compatible with previous releases.
AI coding gets Google Ads expertise. The assistant is designed to bring specialized Google Ads knowledge into AI coding environments rather than relying entirely on what an underlying AI model already knows.
It can generate integration code across Python, Java, PHP, .NET and Ruby, with Google saying the output follows tested Google Ads API best practices.
It can also answer API questions using embedded architectural rules combined with local Protobuf schema inspection, grounding answers in API definitions and client library source code.
GAQL validation. One of the more practical capabilities is automated validation of Google Ads Query Language queries.
The assistant can check GAQL syntax, field compatibility, date segmentation and zero-impression rules before a query is executed.
Instead of an AI model repeatedly attempting to diagnose a broken query over several interactions, Google says the local validator can check fields, resources, metrics and date clauses in a single step.
Ad hoc reporting. Developers can also request Google Ads performance data using natural language.
The assistant can construct and validate the necessary GAQL query, run it against the advertiser’s Google Ads account and return live results as formatted tables directly within the conversation.
Users can also ask it to save those results as a CSV for further analysis in a spreadsheet.
Troubleshooting gets conversational. The Developer Assistant can diagnose API problems including offline conversion upload failures, manager account hierarchy issues and Performance Max listing filters.
That means developers can ask broader questions such as which ads in an account have problems and how they could be fixed, rather than manually working through individual API errors.
Schema inspection. The assistant can inspect Protobuf schemas on demand to discover available resource fields, data types and enum definitions for active Google Ads API versions.
The aim is to make its guidance version-specific and reduce the risk of an AI assistant suggesting fields or configurations that aren’t valid for the API version being used.
More AI environments. Version 4.0.0 introduces dual-platform support for Antigravity and Claude Code.
Claude Code integration includes custom slash commands for tasks such as validating GAQL, inspecting objects, troubleshooting conversions and retrieving customer IDs. Antigravity supports global and workspace plugin registration.
Google is also providing unified installation scripts for Linux, macOS and Windows.
Performance improvements. Google says the new architecture reduces token consumption by loading only the rules and schemas needed for a particular task rather than supplying everything to the model upfront.
It also promises faster responses, lower CPU and memory usage, less disk I/O and zero daemon overhead while idle. API version and Protobuf schema information can also be cached to avoid unnecessary repeat lookups.
Why we care. Google is moving its developer tooling closer to the AI agents developers are increasingly using to build and maintain advertising integrations. More importantly, the assistant isn’t just generating code: it’s validating queries against Google Ads-specific rules and inspecting actual schemas. 
That could make AI-assisted API development more reliable and reduce the amount of time developers spend debugging hallucinated fields, invalid GAQL or version-specific problems.
Bottom line. Google Ads API Developer Assistant v4.0.0 turns the tool into a reusable AI coding plugin capable of generating and validating code, troubleshooting integrations and querying live advertising data — while grounding more of that work in Google Ads’ actual API definitions rather than relying solely on an AI model’s existing knowledge.

Google Ads API Developer Assistant v4.0.0 brings specialized API dev, troubleshooting and reporting tools into AI workflows.

Google Ads API Developer Assistant gets major AI agent upgrade

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="The SEO blind spot is what happens after the click" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Getting the click is only the first step. Here’s how to make SEO content help users move through the funnel and toward conversion.


<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="The SEO blind spot is what happens after the click" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/08/The-SEO-blind-spot-is-what-happens-after-the-click-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A few weeks ago, I spoke with a colleague about connecting <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo">SEO</a> content to conversions. We agreed there’s a blind spot in SEO: getting people to the website has traditionally been treated as the goal, even as LLMs change how users find and enter websites. We’re seeing more branded traffic, less organic SERP traffic, and users entering at different stages of the funnel.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My colleague called it “the SEO blind spot” because everything on a website should work together toward conversions and KPIs.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When I first started in this industry, I was told to drive traffic to get people on the page. We wanted our traffic numbers to grow. After that, the sales team would take care of it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s not the right strategy. I learned that the hard way, but hopefully you won’t have to.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Your SEO content should drive traffic, but it should be the right traffic — people with a strong chance of converting. It should work with the full funnel to drive traffic and support conversions.</p>



<h2 id="h-ai-overviews-changed-what-an-organic-click-is-worth" class="wp-block-heading">AI Overviews changed what an organic click is worth</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-zero-click-searches-2026-study-479717">Around 68%</a> of searches on traditional search engines yield no clicks, per a Semrush study. Think about that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It’s now harder than ever to get traffic to the webpage. More and more, we’re not even seeing it come from the top of the funnel but rather as branded or direct traffic.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This means SEO content has to be more intentional than ever, because if you get that click-through and the user doesn’t convert, it’s a waste of your hard work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There’s so much white noise on the internet today, so many products, so many things, that if you’re not standing out from your competitors and creating an experience for your user, chances are you’re drowning in the sea of sameness.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Even still, traffic alone rarely yields meaningful results for business KPIs. Conversions do.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/measuring-visibility-in-zero-click-world">Measuring zero-click search: Visibility-first SEO for AI results</a></em></strong>


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<h2 id="h-why-seo-can-t-stop-at-traffic" class="wp-block-heading">Why SEO can’t stop at traffic</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Job descriptions are changing. We’re seeing titles like content and growth engineers. These titles come with job descriptions that encompass SEO, CRO, sometimes AEO, and other E-I-E-I-Os. Organic growth for the SEO star used to mean just driving traffic to the website. Past that, it was someone else’s problem to make the sale. Not anymore.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There are too many competitors in every industry to say, “Just grow our traffic numbers.” User experience and conversion rate optimization are being added to job descriptions more and more.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Both of those skills help a brand stand out and grow the business. As an SEO specialist, think about how to drive traffic with content and how to use that same content to support conversions.</p>



<h2 id="h-what-happens-when-you-create-traffic-but-not-conversions" class="wp-block-heading">What happens when you create traffic but not conversions?</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You’ll see different trends and patterns across your content. It’ll be the usual suspects.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Vanity metrics rise, but revenue doesn’t.</li>



<li>Landing pages rank, but aren’t getting a decent CTR.</li>



<li>Time on page is low for well-ranking pages.</li>



<li>Visitors are landing, but not scrolling below the fold.</li>



<li>Blog traffic grows, but there’s no lift in visits to product, pricing, or services pages.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You can find more trends through your analytics reports, heat maps, and more. When this happens, your customer or user isn’t moving through the funnel. They’re getting stalled because of your SEO content.</p>



<h2 id="h-what-happens-when-you-optimize-for-both" class="wp-block-heading">What happens when you optimize for both?</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When you optimize for both traffic and conversions, you’re reconnecting the funnel and helping move the user smoothly through it. You’ll see some different, positive trends that you can report on and impress leadership with.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Demo/trial requests climb.</li>



<li>Return visitor rate goes up.</li>



<li>Branded search volume grows.</li>



<li>Assisted conversions show up in GA4.</li>



<li>Sales report more leads from organic growth.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You can go back to those same reports and check to see what’s working and what’s not. You can use tools like SEOTesting.com or Convert.com to create A/B tests and see what’s driving your users. Now, instead of stalling the funnel, you’re actively helping move the user along toward the goal.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/new-seo-kpis">New SEO KPIs you’re missing: How to measure SEO beyond clicks</a></em></strong>



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<h2 id="h-seo-meets-user-experience-to-increase-conversions" class="wp-block-heading">SEO meets user experience to increase conversions</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We’re seeing more and more that every user wants an experience. They don’t just want any company to provide them with a product or service. They want the company that shows it understands their problem, what it takes to make their life easier, and how it can do it better than anyone else.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So, how do you take generic SEO content and turn it into epic content that drives conversions?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here are a few things to get you started.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Know your ideal customer profile (ICP). Talk to the sales teams, read reviews, and listen to calls. You’ll be surprised how much they talk about why they need this. The story behind it. You can take trending language and worries and put that right into your content.</li>



<li>Speak to the one. It’s an oldie but a goodie. Your SEO content should be a close-up for someone reading it. It should let them know that the brand sees them, understands their problem, and is the best choice to solve it. That means directly speaking to the one to make them feel seen rather than lost in the masses.</li>



<li>Make the next step obvious and easy. Use clear CTAs. Repeat them at logical points throughout the page. If they have to scroll to find how to act, whether up or down, you’ve most likely lost them.</li>



<li>Cut the friction. This can be both in the content, such as using jargon or inflated language, and forms. Simplify what you can. Most people don’t want academic reports unless they’re in that industry.</li>



<li>Structure content so users can act without reading everything. Eye fatigue is real, and so is the short attention span. Make your content scannable so they can find a context clue that leads them to what they need. Scannable headers. TL;DR at the top, etc. Sure, some people read long landing pages, but most just want to know you can solve their problem and how to take the next step.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">These are just a few steps. Depending on what your ICP needs, you have to do the research to figure out how to make your SEO content work to solve that problem. That’s where knowing a little bit about A/B testing will come in useful.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I highly recommend learning the basics of CRO. Talia Wolf (GetUplift), Joanna Wiebe (CopyHackers), and Steve Toth (CXL) are all great places to start when it comes to that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/seo-visibility-systems-469169">SEO leaders: stop chasing rankings, start building visibility systems</a></em></strong>



<h2 id="h-make-seo-accountable-for-more-than-traffic" class="wp-block-heading">Make SEO accountable for more than traffic</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">SEO is leaning more and more into search experience optimization. This combines SEO and CRO to make sure that every user coming to the page has the experience they need to take the next step in the funnel.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If your SEO content brings traffic but has a full stop on anything after that, leadership may not find your role valuable.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If your SEO content truly understands the user, their needs, and what will drive them to take that next action, well, now you’ve gone from just having people click through to the page to clicking where it counts — that next step toward conversion.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When leadership or your clients see that you’re able to move the KPI needle, you’re helping the business succeed. That makes you a much more valuable SEO marketer than one who stops at just trying to drive traffic.</p>

A few weeks ago, I spoke with a colleague about connecting SEO content to conversions. We agreed there’s a blind spot in SEO: getting people to the website has traditionally been treated as the goal, even as LLMs change how users find and enter websites. We’re seeing more branded traffic, less organic SERP traffic, and users entering at different stages of the funnel.
My colleague called it “the SEO blind spot” because everything on a website should work together toward conversions and KPIs.
When I first started in this industry, I was told to drive traffic to get people on the page. We wanted our traffic numbers to grow. After that, the sales team would take care of it.
That’s not the right strategy. I learned that the hard way, but hopefully you won’t have to.
Your SEO content should drive traffic, but it should be the right traffic — people with a strong chance of converting. It should work with the full funnel to drive traffic and support conversions.
AI Overviews changed what an organic click is worth
Around 68% of searches on traditional search engines yield no clicks, per a Semrush study. Think about that.
It’s now harder than ever to get traffic to the webpage. More and more, we’re not even seeing it come from the top of the funnel but rather as branded or direct traffic.
This means SEO content has to be more intentional than ever, because if you get that click-through and the user doesn’t convert, it’s a waste of your hard work.
There’s so much white noise on the internet today, so many products, so many things, that if you’re not standing out from your competitors and creating an experience for your user, chances are you’re drowning in the sea of sameness.
Even still, traffic alone rarely yields meaningful results for business KPIs. Conversions do.
Dig deeper: Measuring zero-click search: Visibility-first SEO for AI results



  
customers find first.
      
Start your free trial
    
Why SEO can’t stop at traffic
Job descriptions are changing. We’re seeing titles like content and growth engineers. These titles come with job descriptions that encompass SEO, CRO, sometimes AEO, and other E-I-E-I-Os. Organic growth for the SEO star used to mean just driving traffic to the website. Past that, it was someone else’s problem to make the sale. Not anymore.
There are too many competitors in every industry to say, “Just grow our traffic numbers.” User experience and conversion rate optimization are being added to job descriptions more and more.
Both of those skills help a brand stand out and grow the business. As an SEO specialist, think about how to drive traffic with content and how to use that same content to support conversions.
What happens when you create traffic but not conversions?
You’ll see different trends and patterns across your content. It’ll be the usual suspects.
Vanity metrics rise, but revenue doesn’t.
Landing pages rank, but aren’t getting a decent CTR.
Time on page is low for well-ranking pages.
Visitors are landing, but not scrolling below the fold.
Blog traffic grows, but there’s no lift in visits to product, pricing, or services pages.
You can find more trends through your analytics reports, heat maps, and more. When this happens, your customer or user isn’t moving through the funnel. They’re getting stalled because of your SEO content.
What happens when you optimize for both?
When you optimize for both traffic and conversions, you’re reconnecting the funnel and helping move the user smoothly through it. You’ll see some different, positive trends that you can report on and impress leadership with.
Demo/trial requests climb.
Return visitor rate goes up.
Branded search volume grows.
Assisted conversions show up in GA4.
Sales report more leads from organic growth.
You can go back to those same reports and check to see what’s working and what’s not. You can use tools like SEOTesting.com or Convert.com to create A/B tests and see what’s driving your users. Now, instead of stalling the funnel, you’re actively helping move the user along toward the goal.
Dig deeper: New SEO KPIs you’re missing: How to measure SEO beyond clicks




	
	
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
SEO meets user experience to increase conversions
We’re seeing more and more that every user wants an experience. They don’t just want any company to provide them with a product or service. They want the company that shows it understands their problem, what it takes to make their life easier, and how it can do it better than anyone else.
So, how do you take generic SEO content and turn it into epic content that drives conversions?
Here are a few things to get you started.
Know your ideal customer profile (ICP). Talk to the sales teams, read reviews, and listen to calls. You’ll be surprised how much they talk about why they need this. The story behind it. You can take trending language and worries and put that right into your content.
Speak to the one. It’s an oldie but a goodie. Your SEO content should be a close-up for someone reading it. It should let them know that the brand sees them, understands their problem, and is the best choice to solve it. That means directly speaking to the one to make them feel seen rather than lost in the masses.
Make the next step obvious and easy. Use clear CTAs. Repeat them at logical points throughout the page. If they have to scroll to find how to act, whether up or down, you’ve most likely lost them.
Cut the friction. This can be both in the content, such as using jargon or inflated language, and forms. Simplify what you can. Most people don’t want academic reports unless they’re in that industry.
Structure content so users can act without reading everything. Eye fatigue is real, and so is the short attention span. Make your content scannable so they can find a context clue that leads them to what they need. Scannable headers. TL;DR at the top, etc. Sure, some people read long landing pages, but most just want to know you can solve their problem and how to take the next step.
These are just a few steps. Depending on what your ICP needs, you have to do the research to figure out how to make your SEO content work to solve that problem. That’s where knowing a little bit about A/B testing will come in useful.
I highly recommend learning the basics of CRO. Talia Wolf (GetUplift), Joanna Wiebe (CopyHackers), and Steve Toth (CXL) are all great places to start when it comes to that.
Dig deeper: SEO leaders: stop chasing rankings, start building visibility systems



Make SEO accountable for more than traffic
SEO is leaning more and more into search experience optimization. This combines SEO and CRO to make sure that every user coming to the page has the experience they need to take the next step in the funnel.
If your SEO content brings traffic but has a full stop on anything after that, leadership may not find your role valuable.
If your SEO content truly understands the user, their needs, and what will drive them to take that next action, well, now you’ve gone from just having people click through to the page to clicking where it counts — that next step toward conversion.
When leadership or your clients see that you’re able to move the KPI needle, you’re helping the business succeed. That makes you a much more valuable SEO marketer than one who stops at just trying to drive traffic.

Getting the click is only the first step. Here’s how to make SEO content help users move through the funnel and toward conversion.

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