<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/AI-Halftime-Report-H1-2026-featured-image.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="AI Halftime Report- H1 2026 - featured-image" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/AI-Halftime-Report-H1-2026-featured-image.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/AI-Halftime-Report-H1-2026-featured-image-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/AI-Halftime-Report-H1-2026-featured-image-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/AI-Halftime-Report-H1-2026-featured-image-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>AI search grew, token spending surged, software stocks fell, and publishers lost traffic. Here’s what H1 2026 revealed about AI’s impact.

Every six months, I take a sharp look at the latest developments in AI and Search. Based on how quickly things are developing, I would almost need to increase that cadence to monthly. (And maybe I will.) But first, here’s what happened in H1 2026.
H1 2026 moved money, traffic, jobs, and market cap before anyone could prove how much value AI created. Search behavior changed, token budgets exploded, software stocks sold off, and companies blamed layoffs on AI.
Every major AI story in H1 2026 was really a story about attribution.
We’re still figuring out how to improve accuracy in measuring AI visibility.
Companies spent billions on inference, but there is no obvious answer to “What’s the ROI?”
Public markets punished software companies, but were investors reacting to actual or perceived disruption?
We’re hearing “AI caused layoffs,” but when you look deeper, the real causes aren’t connected.
It’s clear where the traffic loss is coming from, but it’s not clear what content marketplace model will replace it.
The common thread: AI’s economic impact is expanding faster than we can attribute it.
View embedded content



AI Search
In the H1 2025 report, I predicted Google would roll AI Mode out further, and that turned out to be true. AI Mode is now a click away from AI Overviews, which means it’s just two clicks away from regular search results.
AI Mode reached 1 billion MAU with queries around 3x longer than classic search. 
Google called it the biggest search box upgrade in 25 years at I/O 2026. 
Gemini 3 auto browse is shipping inside Chrome. 
Nick Fox says Google’s AI Mode sends out billions of clicks to the open web. 
To understand the impact of this shift, I published a series of user behavior studies and data analyses in the first half of 2026.
The through line of Growth Memo research in H1 2026:
Tracking a brand’s presence in AI Search is highly complex. You need to factor in the engine, personalization, reasoning levels, model updates, stochastic variability, etc. Measurement is fragmented. The citation/mention overlap between engines is minuscule: 91% of citations appear in only one of ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews. Prompt tracking should be closer to polling and focus groups than SEO rank tracking.
Brand mentions in AI answers are more impactful on business outcomes than citations. Don’t get me wrong, citations shape the answer, and for some businesses, that’s most important. But the majority of vendors and merchants need to pay attention to how often they show up in a panel of prompts, in which context, what sentiment, and whether they’re recommended or not (ahead of competitors).
Trust is the highest currency in AI search. Close to 75% of consumers pick the number one result in an AI shortlist. But if they see a trusted brand anywhere on that list, they will pick it.
The average U.S. adult has high trust in AI recommendations. 88% of the time, users accepted AI Mode product recommendations as best there is. In AI Overviews, on the other hand, users click, evaluate, and compare a lot. That’s classic search behavior, but it doesn’t carry over to AI chatbots.
Writing style, token budget, and technical factors matter for agents. If you want to be present in AI Search and agentic recommendations, you need to lead with unique information, write in a direct, easy-to-understand way, remove fluff and keep your site technically fast and easy to access.
AEO/GEO is a brand channel disguised as a performance channel. AI recommendations shape demand (not citations). The unit of optimization is whether AI names, trusts, and recommends your brand.
The grAIpes are sour
November 2025 was a pivotal turning point in AI. Claude’s Opus 4.5 was the first model that was perceived as reliable and robust enough for agentic workflows. A month later, Peter Steinberger went viral with Clawdbot, which led to millions of installs, long lines in China, and Nvidia building a Nemoclaw clone.




Then, things got even crazier. Shopify, Uber, Meta, and many other tech giants built token leadership boards that incentivized engineers to light as many tokens on fire as possible. 
“Let me give you a thought experiment. Let’s say you have a software engineer or AI researcher, and you pay them $500,000 a year. At the end of the year, I’m going to ask him how much did you spend in tokens. And [if] that person said $5,000, I will go ape something else. If that $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 worth of tokens, I am going to be deeply alarmed.”
 — Jensen Huang
A Meta engineer created an internal leaderboard dubbed “Claudeonomics” that ranked over 85,000 employees by the number of AI tokens they burned. It led to massive waste as employees left AI agents running on idle or useless tasks just to climb the ranks and earn titles like “Token Legend”.
Reportedly, Meta engineers consumed 73.7 trillion tokens in just 30 days. (I wonder how much of OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s growth was ignited just by workslop.)
Good times. But in April, CFOs pumped the brakes after discovering that employees had burned through their annual token budget in 4 months. TokenMAXXXING shifted to valueMAXXXING. 
Meta’s leaderboards were shut down in April (along with leaderboards at other companies), but not before the #1 user on the board averaged 281 billion tokens, which would cost over $1.4 million at standard API rates.
But what remains from the all-you-can-eat token craze is a step change in productivity that we cannot yet measure. As I wrote, AI changed my work. And yours, too:
I have used AI to raise my impact by a magnitude.
I designed landing pages end-to-end for a major travel brand that made it into production.
I automated topic prioritization, SEO testing, and SEO reporting for my clients with full-blown apps.
I built an array of useful applications for myself, from automating the SSI (SEO Site Index found in the bimonthly Growth Intelligence Briefs) to Openclaw agents that help me with research and charts.
One outcome of the token tsunami is that a lot more people started using Claude, which in return fired up the growth engines for AI infrastructure companies that Claude recommended, like Supabase.
Source: Supabase Series F



SaaS bloodbath
In February 2026, as a consequence of the Opus 4.6 release and Claude Cowork, the software-as-a-service industry saw a severe market downturn that wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap over just a few trading sessions. The SaaS vertical saw a steep annual decline of +30% in the markets. Valuations for high-growth software companies collapsed, with revenue multiples shrinking dramatically compared to their pandemic highs.
If you’re working in B2B, you’ve probably felt the impact in the form of lower conversion rates, longer sales cycles, and softening brand searches.
The Brand Tax Calculator gives you the dollar figure for the gap between branded paid spend and reported ROAS, and the AI SEO Budget Reallocation Planner turns it into 5 growth-priority scenarios in under 7 minutes. Both live in the Premium Resource Library. 
Source: It’s Time to Build, July 17, 2026 



It turns out not all software was (or is) forsaken. It’s the bottom quartile of software companies that pulls the market down. Interestingly, the decline is purely associated with how “the market” views a company’s AI robustness. Company valuation drops are not related to performance, but rather to whether people think AI will disrupt their product.
Over the last 30 trading days, both the top quartile and median IGV stock have outperformed the ETF as a whole — it’s the bottom quartile (which include some of the largest companies) that’s pulling down overall performance. 
So, if you’re in B2B and either forced or privileged to take a new job, pick a company the market is optimistic about.
AI washing in the labor market
You might have read or heard this recently: “We’re laying off x% of our workforce due to AI.” It’s the narrative du jour. Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that AI was the leading cited reason for May 2026 job cuts and had been cited in 87,714 cuts year-to-date, equal to 22% of all 2026 announced layoffs through May.
Source: May 2026 Challenger Report



And don’t get me wrong. Layoffs are real:
Tech layoffs up ~66% year over year, toward 150K
Oracle cut 21,000 citing AI
Challenger lists AI as the top cited reason (~87,700 YTD by May)
Block cut 40% and its stock rose (Bloomberg’s “AI washing” framing)
The only problem is that AI is not the cause. I’ve written extensively about the Big Labs using AI replacement as a marketing narrative. But it hasn’t come true yet. A lot of AI layoffs were really to offset capital expenditures, pandemic overhiring, and economic turbulence. We can all imagine a future in which AI is so good that it makes certain roles obsolete, but that time is not now.
A year ago, in the H1 2025 report, I predicted that AI layoffs were a PR stunt. And I was right: Despite clear productivity gains from AI, the recent waves of layoffs show no indication of AI being the underlying cause. In fact, companies using AI as a reason to lay employees off are rehiring them.
The agent market fragmented
ChatGPT’s market share decreased from 78% in July 2025 to 56% in July 2026, while Gemini went from 15% to 30% and Claude from 2% to 10%.




Google is now the most likely player to win the AI consumer market, and ChatGPT has lost its significance in AI Search to Google:
ChatGPT still has ~1.1B users, but OpenAI refocused on an enterprise pivot and shut down Sora, dropped video in ChatGPT and killed Instant Checkout. Enterprise makes up ~40% of revenue, heading to ~50% ahead of a potential IPO. I’m skeptical that we’ll be able to buy OpenAI stock. According to Ed Zitron, OpenAI spends $2.8 billion USD every month to make $1.1B.
Anthropic’s fight with the Pentagon pushed Claude to No. 1 among free apps on Apple’s U.S. App Store. A few months later, users seem less sure if Anthropic can resist attacks from open-source models.
The Big Labs massively subsidize tokens. SemiAnalysis found a $200 USD plan of the frontier models gives you 8-14K USD worth in tokens. 
Lately, open-source models like Kimi K3, GLM 5.2, or Deepseek V4 have put pressure on the big US labs because of those subsidies. Open-weight and open-source models also show that the model itself becomes commoditized, while the harness and application layer gain more importance. 
Forward-deployed-engineer job postings rose 800% in the first 9 months of 2025 and were still up 729% year over year in April 2026. Frontier Labs now pays more than $500,000 in total compensation for people who can turn a model demo into a working system inside a customer’s business.
Never have marketers faced a faster evolving environment with more platforms to measure… which is why understanding what platforms matter most for your audience is important. But from an execution perspective, model availability has become a business risk, as we can see at the hand of Fable 5. Having options is good.
Publishers and the law
I predicted up to 70% of 2024 organic traffic could be gone by 2026, but that was overeager. In the end, the numbers land at ~33% referral loss year over year, with 68% of Google searches now ending without a click. Still, as a result, publishers are moving the fight to the courts and regulators.
USA Today CEO Mike Reed explained: “We’re getting close now to the point where we’ll block Google as well and abandon the traditional search traffic that we get today.” 



Here are just a few lawsuit-related highlights:
A court in Munich ruled Google liable for false statements generated by AI Overviews (June 2026).
400 newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft over unauthorized content use (June 2026).
The UK CMA ordered Google to give publishers greater control and transparency over how content is used in AI search (including opt-outs from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover summaries), along with clearer attribution and improved reporting on how content appears in AI-generated results.⁠ Google responded by adding an impression-based AI report in Search Console.
In response to the intense publishing landscape changes, Parallel AI and Cloudflare are both trying to build publishing marketplaces for content owners and AI companies. 
“Assume there’s no search. You have to have your businesses planned as if search is zero.”
— Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch
Publishers are trying to replace the content-for-traffic bargain with a content-for-training market. This leaves several open questions:
Who sets the price and how? 
How can you prove that an article contributed to an AI agent’s answer or purchase? 
Do publishers have negotiation power? 
Are smaller publishers even needed by AI labs?
Dig in: Full list of Growth Memo research completed in H1 2026
Dig deeper into the patterns covered in this halftime report below:
User behavior studies:

How consumers navigate high-stakes purchases in AI Mode
Users behave differently in AI Overviews vs. AI Mode
What to do now that AIOs turned search into reading sessions
Data analyses:

The Consensus Gap
The ghost citation problem
Reasoning lift: What happens to AI visibility when AI thinks harder
The science of how AI pays attention
The science of how AI picks its sources
The science of what AI actually rewards
Shorter, Focused Content Wins in ChatGPT
GSC data is 75% incomplete
Organic rankings vs. product grids: The new e-commerce divide
The AI skills salary premium
Where AI agents get stuck on your site
Why most original data never gets cited
As we pass the halfway point in the year, a big thanks to my editorial and research partners, Amanda Johnson and Eric van Buskirk. And an extension of gratitude to my data partners who make these analyses possible: Semrush, AirOps, Gauge, Citation Labs, Siteline, SalaryGuide, and AudienceKey. 
This post first appeared on the author’s website and is republished here with permission.

AI search grew, token spending surged, software stocks fell, and publishers lost traffic. Here’s what H1 2026 revealed about AI’s impact.

AI halftime report: H1 2026

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How SEO scope creep happens and 7 ways to prevent it" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Small, unbilled SEO requests add up fast. Use these seven steps to control scope creep, price extra work, and protect your profitability.


<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How SEO scope creep happens and 7 ways to prevent it" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-SEO-scope-creep-happens-and-7-ways-to-prevent-it-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Scope creep doesn&#8217;t show up as just one bad conversation. Instead, it creeps in through a dozen small ones. Each unbilled request is easy to say yes to — until a perfectly profitable retainer is left running at a loss.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo">SEO</a> is especially vulnerable to this problem because the work is rarely a fixed set of tasks. It&#8217;s an ongoing relationship built on interpretation. What counts as &#8220;technical SEO,&#8221; how deep an audit should go, whether a content refresh is part of a pre-existing strategy or an entirely new deliverable. That ambiguity is where scope creep thrives.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This article breaks down why SEO scope creep happens, section by section, and the specific operational steps that stop it before it starts chewing through your budget.</p>



<h2 id="h-what-is-seo-scope-creep-nbsp" class="wp-block-heading">What is SEO scope creep?&nbsp;</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Scope creep is any work added to a project after the scope has already been defined and agreed upon without a matching adjustment to cost or timeline.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This looks a little different in SEO than it does in other disciplines because the work itself can often be ambiguous. Sure, a client has just agreed to a &#8220;<a href="https://searchengineland.com/7-tips-for-delivering-high-impact-technical-seo-audits-446405">technical audit</a>,&#8221; but what&#8217;s included in that deliverable varies hugely from person to person.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Where one audit might only cover crawlability and indexing, another might focus on <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/core-web-vitals">Core Web Vitals</a>, structured data, internal linking, and a competitive gap analysis. Neither is wrong, but if the scope document didn&#8217;t specify which one was sold, the client would reasonably expect the more thorough version.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Scope creep isn&#8217;t the same as a client asking for more work. Additional work is normal — and welcome — because it shows that a relationship is working.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The problem is when that additional work gets absorbed into the original agreement instead of being priced and scheduled on its own.</p>


<a href="https://www.semrush.com/?utm_campaign=ic_sel_0101default&#038;utm_source=searchengineland.com&#038;utm_medium=overlay&#038;onboarding=off" target="_blank">
  <div>
    
    <div>
      
      <div id="semrush-one-headline" class="headline-responsive">
        Be the brand <span>customers find first</span>.
      </div>
      <p id="semrush-one-subhead">
        Track, grow, and measure your visibility across Google, AI search, social, local, and every channel that influences buying decisions.
      </p>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span id="semrush-one-cta">Start your free trial</span>
    </div>
    </div>
    </a>




<h2 id="h-how-seo-scope-creep-happens" class="wp-block-heading">How SEO scope creep happens</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Scope creep rarely happens all at once. It builds gradually, sinking in through small requests that feel reasonable on their own, until the workload no longer matches what was first quoted.</p>



<h3 id="h-vague-statements-of-work" class="wp-block-heading">Vague statements of work</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Many SEO engagements start with a scope document that defines outcomes — &#8220;improve organic visibility,&#8221; &#8220;grow qualified traffic&#8221; — instead of deliverables. Outcome-based language can sound client-friendly, but it means the actual work is left undefined.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If that scope doesn&#8217;t state the number of pages audited or briefs delivered, there&#8217;s no fixed line either party can point to when new requests come in. The client isn&#8217;t being unreasonable for asking for more because the document never defined what &#8220;more&#8221; was to begin with.</p>



<h3 id="h-just-one-more-thing-requests" class="wp-block-heading">&#8216;Just one more thing&#8217; requests</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A client wants a quick look at just one more page. Then one more keyword cluster. Then a review for a well-ranking competitor. Each request might only take 20 minutes and feel too small to invoice separately, which means nothing gets invoiced at all.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Individually, these requests are harmless. Stacked across multiple months and a full client roster, they add up to a second project&#8217;s worth of unpaid work.</p>



<h3 id="h-blurred-lines-between-strategy-and-execution" class="wp-block-heading">Blurred lines between strategy and execution</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">SEO strategy and SEO execution are frequently sold as a single package, even though they require very different time investments and skill sets. A client who now understands the strategy because the practitioner explained it clearly will often assume that the same person should implement it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Without a contract that clearly separates &#8220;here&#8217;s what to do&#8221; from &#8220;I will do it,&#8221; that assumption becomes the default. Implementation work quietly gets folded into a strategy retainer that was never priced to include it.</p>



<h3 id="h-no-defined-change-process" class="wp-block-heading">No defined change process</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Most scope creep persists because there&#8217;s no formal way to add new work. When a request falls outside the original agreement, someone has to say, &#8220;That&#8217;s an additional cost.&#8221; Without a process for that conversation, it&#8217;s often easier just to do the work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Every added request then has nowhere to go except into the existing scope, at the existing price, indefinitely.</p>



<h3 id="h-reporting-that-involves-more-questions-than-it-answers" class="wp-block-heading">Reporting that involves more questions than it answers</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A <a href="https://searchengineland.com/report-seo-results-executives-482497">performance report</a> that shows numbers without context tends to generate follow-up requests: more analysis, more explanation, one more angle the client wants to investigate. This is a common entry point for scope creep.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The report itself is a deliverable, but the additional analysis and investigation triggers usually aren&#8217;t. Answering them throughout every month can turn a 45-minute reporting call into hours and hours of unbilled analysis.</p>



<div class="nl-inline-form border py-2 px-1 my-2">
	
	<div class="row align-items-center nl-inline-container">
		<div class="col-12 col-lg-3 col-xl-4 pe-md-0 pb-2 pb-lg-0">
			<p class="inline-form-text text-center mb-0">Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.</p>
		</div>
		<div class="col-12 col-lg-7 col-xl-6  pe-lg-0">
			<div class="form-nl-inline">
				<form id="mktoForm_16298"></form> 
				
				
			</div>
		</div>
		<div class="col-12 col-lg-2 col-xl-2 ps-1">
			<p class="text-center mb-0"><a class="nl-terms" href="https://searchengineland.com/termsofuse" target="_blank" aria-label="opens in a new tab">See terms.</a>
		</div>
	</div>
</div>




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



<h2 id="h-how-to-prevent-seo-scope-creep-from-eating-your-time-and-money" class="wp-block-heading">How to prevent SEO scope creep from eating your time (and money)</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Preventing scope creep really comes down to processes. You don&#8217;t need to worry about saying no if you already have a system in place. These steps will be helpful whether you&#8217;re working in an agency, in-house, or as a freelancer.</p>



<h3 id="h-1-define-deliverables" class="wp-block-heading">1. Define deliverables</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Replace language like &#8220;improve rankings&#8221; with specific, countable deliverables:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Exact number of pages audited</li>



<li>Number of content briefs delivered per month</li>



<li>Specific reporting cadence and format</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That layer of specificity removes the room for interpretation that allows for scope creep.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Note:</strong> A scope document that reads like a checklist is far harder to argue with than one that reads like a mission statement.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-2-separate-strategy-from-execution-in-the-contract" class="wp-block-heading">2. Separate strategy from execution in the contract</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">List strategy and execution as distinct items with their own prices, even when the same person is delivering both. This makes the value of strategic work visible on its own and gives both sides a clear reference point when the client asks for implementation help.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">&#8220;That&#8217;s outside the strategy scope&#8221; is a much easier sentence to say when the contract has already stated it for you.</p>



<h3 id="h-3-build-a-change-order-process-before-you-need-one" class="wp-block-heading">3. Build a change order process before you need one</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A simple one-page template works just fine as a change order process. You only need these three things:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Estimated hours the request costs.</li>



<li>Additional costs.</li>



<li>Revised timeline.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Introduce this process in the kickoff call, not in the middle of a dispute six months in. Clients rarely push back on a process they agreed to upfront. They push back on one that appears out of nowhere.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-4-price-for-value" class="wp-block-heading">4. Price for value</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hourly pricing invites clients to negotiate scope down to the smallest billable increment, which increases the frequency of &#8220;it&#8217;s just a quick thing&#8221; requests.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Value-based or deliverable-based pricing makes each unit of work more substantial and less divisible. That naturally reduces the temptation to ask for one more small thing on the side.</p>



<h3 id="h-5-set-boundaries-around-communication" class="wp-block-heading">5. Set boundaries around communication</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Unlimited Slack access or ad hoc calls create an open channel for new requests to enter without ever going through the change process.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Define a clear communication cadence. This can be a weekly call, a shared document for questions, or even just a 24-hour response window. That contains requests to a predictable window instead of a constant stream that&#8217;s hard to track and harder to bill.</p>



<h3 id="h-6-audit-scope-every-quarter" class="wp-block-heading">6. Audit scope every quarter</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Set recurring internal check-ins specifically to compare what&#8217;s actually being delivered against what was originally scoped.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is the step that catches the creep as it&#8217;s starting. It&#8217;s especially important because it saves you from having to renegotiate an entire agreement. </p>



<h3 id="h-7-say-no-in-writing" class="wp-block-heading">7. Say no in writing</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When a request falls outside scope, acknowledge it and route it to the change order process immediately, in writing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A verbal &#8220;sure, we&#8217;ll figure it out&#8221; is where most scope creep quietly becomes permanent because there&#8217;s no record of it being treated as anything other than the original deal.</p>



<h2 id="h-how-much-unmanaged-scope-creep-actually-costs-you-nbsp" class="wp-block-heading">How much unmanaged scope creep actually costs you&nbsp;</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The math of unmanaged SEO scope creep compounds faster than it looks on paper. A moderate amount of unbilled scope creep on a healthy-margin project can happily cut that margin by more than half.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The engagement still gets delivered, and the client stays happy — but the <a href="https://searchengineland.com/increase-seo-revenue-without-losing-clients-451738">profit</a> that was supposed to come with it quietly disappears. Multiply that across a full client roster over a year, and scope creep stops being an annoyance and becomes the difference between a sustainable practice and one that&#8217;s running at a loss.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The fix isn&#8217;t refusing extra work. It&#8217;s creating a process where that extra work is always seen, priced, and agreed to whenever it&#8217;s requested, not just when it&#8217;s convenient to ask.</p>


<a href="https://www.semrush.com/?utm_campaign=ic_sel_0102default&#038;utm_source=searchengineland.com&#038;utm_medium=overlay&#038;onboarding=off" target="_blank">
  <div>
    
    <div>
      
      <div id="semrush-one-headline" class="headline-responsive">
        Own the conversation <span>before your competitors</span>.
      </div>
      <p id="semrush-one-subhead">
        See where your brand appears, where it doesn&#8217;t, and exactly how to win more visibility across search, AI, local, social, and every channel that matters.
      </p>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span id="semrush-one-cta">Start your free trial</span>
    </div>
    </div>
    </a>




<h2 id="h-a-scope-process-only-works-if-the-pricing-behind-it-does-too" class="wp-block-heading">A scope process only works if the pricing behind it does too</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">All of the scope creep tips above assume the original agreement was priced correctly to begin with. A tight change order process won&#8217;t save an engagement that was underpriced from the start. It just means creep gets caught faster, not that the math suddenly works.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Before setting scopes, freelancers and agencies need a clear understanding of the work required and <a href="https://searchengineland.com/how-to-become-an-seo-freelancer-without-underpricing-or-burning-out-470323">how to avoid underpricing</a> anything from technical issues to optimization opportunities. SEO auditing tools can help identify the areas that require attention and create a stronger foundation for defining deliverables.</p>

Scope creep doesn’t show up as just one bad conversation. Instead, it creeps in through a dozen small ones. Each unbilled request is easy to say yes to — until a perfectly profitable retainer is left running at a loss. 
SEO is especially vulnerable to this problem because the work is rarely a fixed set of tasks. It’s an ongoing relationship built on interpretation. What counts as “technical SEO,” how deep an audit should go, whether a content refresh is part of a pre-existing strategy or an entirely new deliverable. That ambiguity is where scope creep thrives.
This article breaks down why SEO scope creep happens, section by section, and the specific operational steps that stop it before it starts chewing through your budget.
What is SEO scope creep? 
Scope creep is any work added to a project after the scope has already been defined and agreed upon without a matching adjustment to cost or timeline.
This looks a little different in SEO than it does in other disciplines because the work itself can often be ambiguous. Sure, a client has just agreed to a “technical audit,” but what’s included in that deliverable varies hugely from person to person.
Where one audit might only cover crawlability and indexing, another might focus on Core Web Vitals, structured data, internal linking, and a competitive gap analysis. Neither is wrong, but if the scope document didn’t specify which one was sold, the client would reasonably expect the more thorough version.
Scope creep isn’t the same as a client asking for more work. Additional work is normal — and welcome — because it shows that a relationship is working.
The problem is when that additional work gets absorbed into the original agreement instead of being priced and scheduled on its own.
customers find first.
      
Start your free trial
    
How SEO scope creep happens
Scope creep rarely happens all at once. It builds gradually, sinking in through small requests that feel reasonable on their own, until the workload no longer matches what was first quoted.
Vague statements of work
Many SEO engagements start with a scope document that defines outcomes — “improve organic visibility,” “grow qualified traffic” — instead of deliverables. Outcome-based language can sound client-friendly, but it means the actual work is left undefined.
If that scope doesn’t state the number of pages audited or briefs delivered, there’s no fixed line either party can point to when new requests come in. The client isn’t being unreasonable for asking for more because the document never defined what “more” was to begin with.
‘Just one more thing’ requests
A client wants a quick look at just one more page. Then one more keyword cluster. Then a review for a well-ranking competitor. Each request might only take 20 minutes and feel too small to invoice separately, which means nothing gets invoiced at all.
Individually, these requests are harmless. Stacked across multiple months and a full client roster, they add up to a second project’s worth of unpaid work.
Blurred lines between strategy and execution
SEO strategy and SEO execution are frequently sold as a single package, even though they require very different time investments and skill sets. A client who now understands the strategy because the practitioner explained it clearly will often assume that the same person should implement it.
Without a contract that clearly separates “here’s what to do” from “I will do it,” that assumption becomes the default. Implementation work quietly gets folded into a strategy retainer that was never priced to include it.
No defined change process
Most scope creep persists because there’s no formal way to add new work. When a request falls outside the original agreement, someone has to say, “That’s an additional cost.” Without a process for that conversation, it’s often easier just to do the work.
Every added request then has nowhere to go except into the existing scope, at the existing price, indefinitely.
Reporting that involves more questions than it answers
A performance report that shows numbers without context tends to generate follow-up requests: more analysis, more explanation, one more angle the client wants to investigate. This is a common entry point for scope creep.
The report itself is a deliverable, but the additional analysis and investigation triggers usually aren’t. Answering them throughout every month can turn a 45-minute reporting call into hours and hours of unbilled analysis.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
How to prevent SEO scope creep from eating your time (and money)
Preventing scope creep really comes down to processes. You don’t need to worry about saying no if you already have a system in place. These steps will be helpful whether you’re working in an agency, in-house, or as a freelancer.
1. Define deliverables
Replace language like “improve rankings” with specific, countable deliverables:
Exact number of pages audited
Number of content briefs delivered per month
Specific reporting cadence and format
That layer of specificity removes the room for interpretation that allows for scope creep.
Note: A scope document that reads like a checklist is far harder to argue with than one that reads like a mission statement. 
2. Separate strategy from execution in the contract
List strategy and execution as distinct items with their own prices, even when the same person is delivering both. This makes the value of strategic work visible on its own and gives both sides a clear reference point when the client asks for implementation help.
“That’s outside the strategy scope” is a much easier sentence to say when the contract has already stated it for you.
3. Build a change order process before you need one
A simple one-page template works just fine as a change order process. You only need these three things:
Estimated hours the request costs.
Additional costs.
Revised timeline.
Introduce this process in the kickoff call, not in the middle of a dispute six months in. Clients rarely push back on a process they agreed to upfront. They push back on one that appears out of nowhere. 
4. Price for value
Hourly pricing invites clients to negotiate scope down to the smallest billable increment, which increases the frequency of “it’s just a quick thing” requests.
Value-based or deliverable-based pricing makes each unit of work more substantial and less divisible. That naturally reduces the temptation to ask for one more small thing on the side.
5. Set boundaries around communication
Unlimited Slack access or ad hoc calls create an open channel for new requests to enter without ever going through the change process.
Define a clear communication cadence. This can be a weekly call, a shared document for questions, or even just a 24-hour response window. That contains requests to a predictable window instead of a constant stream that’s hard to track and harder to bill.
6. Audit scope every quarter
Set recurring internal check-ins specifically to compare what’s actually being delivered against what was originally scoped.
This is the step that catches the creep as it’s starting. It’s especially important because it saves you from having to renegotiate an entire agreement. 
7. Say no in writing
When a request falls outside scope, acknowledge it and route it to the change order process immediately, in writing.
A verbal “sure, we’ll figure it out” is where most scope creep quietly becomes permanent because there’s no record of it being treated as anything other than the original deal.
How much unmanaged scope creep actually costs you 
The math of unmanaged SEO scope creep compounds faster than it looks on paper. A moderate amount of unbilled scope creep on a healthy-margin project can happily cut that margin by more than half.
The engagement still gets delivered, and the client stays happy — but the profit that was supposed to come with it quietly disappears. Multiply that across a full client roster over a year, and scope creep stops being an annoyance and becomes the difference between a sustainable practice and one that’s running at a loss.
The fix isn’t refusing extra work. It’s creating a process where that extra work is always seen, priced, and agreed to whenever it’s requested, not just when it’s convenient to ask.
before your competitors.
      
Start your free trial
    
A scope process only works if the pricing behind it does too
All of the scope creep tips above assume the original agreement was priced correctly to begin with. A tight change order process won’t save an engagement that was underpriced from the start. It just means creep gets caught faster, not that the math suddenly works.
Before setting scopes, freelancers and agencies need a clear understanding of the work required and how to avoid underpricing anything from technical issues to optimization opportunities. SEO auditing tools can help identify the areas that require attention and create a stronger foundation for defining deliverables.

Small, unbilled SEO requests add up fast. Use these seven steps to control scope creep, price extra work, and protect your profitability.

How SEO scope creep happens and 7 ways to prevent it

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Ghost-citations-Why-AI-search-cites-your-content-not-your-brand.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Ghost citations- Why AI search cites your content, not your brand" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Ghost-citations-Why-AI-search-cites-your-content-not-your-brand.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Ghost-citations-Why-AI-search-cites-your-content-not-your-brand-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Ghost-citations-Why-AI-search-cites-your-content-not-your-brand-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Ghost-citations-Why-AI-search-cites-your-content-not-your-brand-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Around 40% of AI citations leave the source brand unnamed, exposing a blind spot in how companies measure visibility in AI search.


Across roughly 16 million brand appearances, new data from Writesonic found that around 40% of AI citations didn’t name the source brand in the generated answer. On Perplexity, the rate reached 52%. (Disclosure: The article co-author, Samanyou Garg, is the founder and CEO of Writesonic.)



Getting cited by an AI engine is often touted as a win. You did the work, and now your page appears in the sources, your URL shows up in citation reporting, and the engine has found your content useful enough to support its answer.
But one thing people in our field aren’t often talking about is the fact that even with a citation, the reader may never see your brand name.
We call this a ghost citation: an AI engine links to your page as a source but doesn’t mention your brand in the answer itself.
That distinction changes what a citation actually tells you. It confirms that your content contributed to the answer, but not that your brand was visible to the reader.
Key findings




Around 40% of citations didn’t name the source brand in the answer.
Ghost citation rates ranged from 19% to 52% across engines.
Perplexity had the highest rate at 52%, followed by Google AI Mode at 49%.
Google AI Overviews reached 41%, while ChatGPT reached 37%.
Gemini, Grok, and Microsoft Copilot had lower rates at 25%, 22%, and 19%, respectively.
The engines broadly split between those that link frequently and those that name brands more consistently.
Citation rate and brand visibility should therefore be measured as separate outcomes.
A citation doesn’t mean your brand was seen
A citation means an AI answer links to your page as a source. It may appear as an inline reference, a footnote, or a link inside a sources panel.
A mention means your brand name appears in the generated answer text. Consider these two answers:




With a citation and a mention, the finding is connected directly to Writesonic, and the underlying research is also linked:
“Writesonic’s analysis of roughly 16 million brand appearances found that approximately 40% of AI citations didn’t name the source brand.”
But a ghost citation looks different. The Writesonic page still appears in the sources, but unless the user notices and opens the citation, there’s nothing in the answer connecting the finding to the company that produced it.
“One analysis found that approximately 40% of AI citations didn’t name the source brand.”
Both answers could link to the same Writesonic page. But only the first one tells the reader who produced the research.
That is the ghost citation gap: your content is visible to the engine, while your brand may remain invisible to the reader.
This gap becomes measurable when citations and mentions are tracked separately. Instead of treating every source link as the same result, teams can see where they were cited, where they were named, and where the two signals separated.
AI recommends.
      
See your AI visibility
    
Perplexity drops the brand name in 52% of citations
The ghost citation rate varied sharply by engine.




Ghost citation rate by AI engine. Note: Google AI Mode (49%) is omitted for clarity. Its behavior closely mirrors AI Overviews.



Perplexity had the highest rate in the study. In 52% of its cited appearances, the engine linked to a brand’s page without naming the brand in the answer.
Google AI Mode followed at 49%, while Google AI Overviews reached 41%. ChatGPT sat slightly below the overall average at 37%.
The rate fell to 25% for Gemini, 22% for Grok, and 19% for Microsoft Copilot.
This means two brands can earn the same number of citations and receive very different levels of recognition depending on the engine.
Out of 100 cited appearances on Perplexity, the brand would be absent from the answer text in approximately 52. On Copilot, it would be absent in approximately 19.
So the citation count could look identical in a report, but the number of times the reader actually sees the brand wouldn’t.
AI engines split into namers and citers
The difference becomes clearer when citation rate and mention rate are compared.
Namers, including Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, are more likely to include brands in the answer text but link to their pages less frequently.
Citers, including Perplexity and Google’s answer engines, link to pages more frequently but are less consistent about naming the brands behind them.
ChatGPT and Grok fall between the two groups. Neither outcome is ideal.




A mention without a citation makes the brand visible but may not provide the supporting source and encourage referral clicks to the website. A citation without a mention makes the page available but may leave the brand out of the response, arguably missing the more important outcome: brand recognition.
The strongest outcome is receiving both. This split also means that to improve visibility across AI engines, your optimization strategy should differ by engine, which other industry research backs up, too.
Chasing more citations on Perplexity may increase your source count without increasing how often your brand appears in the answer. On Gemini or Copilot, however, you’re more likely to be named, but you need to be cited more consistently to drive referral traffic.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
Why do ghost citations happen
Ghost citations are likely the result of how different AI engines process and synthesize sources rather than any deliberate choice to omit brand names.
But the honest answer is: our field doesn’t have a complete explanation yet.
One possible explanation is that some engines treat the linked citation as sufficient attribution and then present the information in their own “voice.” 
Take this example below. Google’s AI-generated answer to “how to make GEO profitable” offers tips and takeaways similar to those in the highlighted citations, but its style, tone, and phrasing are unique.
Example query where the brands cited are not mentioned within the AI Overview



The engine has absorbed the source materials and rewritten them, leaving the citation in the footnotes but the brand name out of the answer.
Content structure may also play a role. When a brand name isn’t closely paired with the claim it produced on the source page, synthesis has more room to sever them.
A statistic buried three paragraphs below the company name that generated it is probably easier to anonymize than one where attribution is built into the sentence itself. This is not a proven rule, but something I’d suggest testing.
What we don’t yet know is the relative weight of each factor, or whether there are others. What the engine-level variance does confirm is that the rates aren’t uniform, which gives us patterns worth investigating even if we can’t yet explain what drives them. 
How to turn citations into brand recognition
There’s no proven method that guarantees an AI engine will name a brand whenever it cites its URL. But research and data we’ve seen point to these practical steps:
Start with measurement, because you can’t fix what you’re not tracking.
Build proprietary data as your brand moat.
Make attribution explicit on your pages.
Reinforce your brand name across third-party sources.
1. Measure mentions and citations separately
Sample AI search report with a competitive view of both AI visibility (mentions) and citations



Classify tracked appearances into four groups:
Cited and mentioned.
Cited but not mentioned.
Mentioned but not cited.
Neither cited nor mentioned.
Then segment those outcomes by engine. The study shows that an aggregated citation score can hide large differences between platforms.
2. Build named research your brand can own
Proprietary research or data can become your brand moat because it may be harder to ghost than generic advice. When a study, index, framework, or methodology carries your brand’s name, the data and the brand become harder to separate because the finding references you by definition.
Named research also gives journalists a stronger hook to cover, since reporters are more likely to pick up studies with a clear methodology name.
That earned coverage matters doubly now: third-party content gets cited more heavily by AI engines, so the offsite PR your named research generates compounds into more AI citations over time.
3. Pair your brand name directly with the claim, not just nearby 
One likely factor worth testing is the proximity of your brand name to a key stat or finding on the page. The hypothesis is that a statistic that appears a few paragraphs away from the company name that produced it is easier to anonymize than one where attribution is built into the sentence itself.
So instead of:
“Our analysis found that around 40% of AI citations didn’t name the source brand.”
Use:
“Writesonic’s Ghost Citation Study found that around 40% of AI citations didn’t name the source brand.”
Named studies, datasets, indexes, and frameworks can make the relationship between an insight and its creator clearer.
That association shouldn’t live only on your own site. Independent coverage, expert commentary, customer content, and industry discussions across the sources that most influence AI answers can repeatedly connect your brand with the ideas it wants to own.
4. Investigate the answers behind the metric
The ghost citation rate identifies areas of low brand mentions, and the next step is to assess the individual answers to help diagnose what to test. For important prompts where your page is cited but your brand is missing, review:
Which page was cited?
What information was extracted?
Where did the brand name appear on the source page?
Were other brands named in the answer?
Does the pattern repeat across related prompts?
Does it differ by engine?
Then test whether clearer attribution, consistently named research, or changes to page structure affect the result over time.
The next GEO metric is recognition
A source link confirms that an AI engine used your content. It doesn’t confirm that the reader saw your brand. That’s why citation rate can’t be the only measure of AI visibility.
GEO measurement needs to track not only whether a company appeared somewhere in the sources, but whether it was recognized in the answer. Citation rate tells you that an engine found your content. Mention rate tells you whether your brand actually traveled with it.
We track both separately for every client because a citation your reader never sees is visibility that only exists in a dashboard.
customers won’t either.
      
See your AI visibility
    
Methodology
Writesonic analyzed a recent 30-day window of AI answer data across thousands of brands.
The ghost citation analysis covered approximately 16 million brand appearances. The engine-level rates presented in this article cover Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Microsoft Copilot.
A citation was recorded when an AI answer linked to a brand’s page as a source. A mention was recorded when the brand’s name appeared in the generated answer text.
A ghost citation was recorded when a page was cited, but the brand wasn’t named in the answer.
Percentages were rounded. The results represent a snapshot of engine behavior during the measurement window and don’t establish the causes of ghost citations or their effect on clicks, brand recall, trust, or conversions.

Around 40% of AI citations leave the source brand unnamed, exposing a blind spot in how companies measure visibility in AI search.

Ghost citations: Why AI search cites your content, not your brand

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Plus, Google released new help documentation on how to analyze the social and video data.

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-social-icons-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google has now rolled out the Platform properties feature globally to all Google Search Console accounts. This feature lets you track the performance of your <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-gains-reporting-on-social-and-video-platforms-481696">social media and video content platforms in Google Search</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google Search Console&nbsp;<a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/17148418">platform properties</a> is a way to see how well your social and video content is performing within Google Search. Google will let you see the performance of your content on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube performs on Google Search.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What is new. </strong>Google <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/07/platform-properties-social-video-guide">announced</a> this morning that this feature is now available to all globally.  Google said:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>&#8220;Earlier this month, we announced&nbsp;<a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/07/search-console-social-video-platforms">platform properties for Search Console</a>, allowing you to track how your social and video posts on Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube perform on Google Search, Discover, and Google News. Today, platform properties are globally available to everyone.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1360" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/search-console-platform-property-joIzu6UU-scaled.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483924" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/search-console-platform-property-joIzu6UU-scaled.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/search-console-platform-property-joIzu6UU-768x510.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/search-console-platform-property-joIzu6UU-1536x1020.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>New help document. </strong>Google also released a new help document to help you understand the data in these reports. Google said, &#8220;we&#8217;re also publishing a new guide on&nbsp;<a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/analyze-social-video-content">how to analyze your social and video content performance</a>.&#8221;  This explains how to understand your search audience, find trending content, analyze that content across platforms, optimize existing content and compare formats.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care. </strong>Previously, Google has not given us a real way to see how our content performs on domains/properties we do not own. But now, we are going to have access to see how our content performs of domains/properties we do not have developer access to.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So dig in and start exploring your content on these third-party platforms.</p>


<a href="https://www.semrush.com/?utm_campaign=ic_sel_0101default&#038;utm_source=searchengineland.com&#038;utm_medium=overlay&#038;onboarding=off" target="_blank">
  <div>
    
    <div>
      
      <div id="semrush-one-headline" class="headline-responsive">
        Be the brand <span>customers find first</span>.
      </div>
      <p id="semrush-one-subhead">
        Track, grow, and measure your visibility across Google, AI search, social, local, and every channel that influences buying decisions.
      </p>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span id="semrush-one-cta">Start your free trial</span>
    </div>
    </div>
    </a>



Google has now rolled out the Platform properties feature globally to all Google Search Console accounts. This feature lets you track the performance of your social media and video content platforms in Google Search.
Google Search Console platform properties is a way to see how well your social and video content is performing within Google Search. Google will let you see the performance of your content on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube performs on Google Search.
What is new. Google announced this morning that this feature is now available to all globally.  Google said:
“Earlier this month, we announced platform properties for Search Console, allowing you to track how your social and video posts on Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube perform on Google Search, Discover, and Google News. Today, platform properties are globally available to everyone.”




New help document. Google also released a new help document to help you understand the data in these reports. Google said, “we’re also publishing a new guide on how to analyze your social and video content performance.”  This explains how to understand your search audience, find trending content, analyze that content across platforms, optimize existing content and compare formats.
Why we care. Previously, Google has not given us a real way to see how our content performs on domains/properties we do not own. But now, we are going to have access to see how our content performs of domains/properties we do not have developer access to.
So dig in and start exploring your content on these third-party platforms.
customers find first.
      
Start your free trial

Plus, Google released new help documentation on how to analyze the social and video data.

Google Search Console Platform properties are now globally live

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-to-scale-SEO-content-updates-with-Claude-Code.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to scale SEO content updates with Claude Code" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-to-scale-SEO-content-updates-with-Claude-Code.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-to-scale-SEO-content-updates-with-Claude-Code-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-to-scale-SEO-content-updates-with-Claude-Code-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-to-scale-SEO-content-updates-with-Claude-Code-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>See how a 14-step workflow diagnoses content decay, protects rankings, and drives measurable traffic and revenue gains.

SEO teams spend plenty of time creating new pages while existing pages quietly lose rankings, clicks, and revenue. Updating those pages can recover performance, but rewriting too much can wipe out the SEO equity they’ve already built.
Here’s the 14-step process we use to diagnose content decay, make targeted updates, and measure the results — plus how we turned it into a scalable system with Claude Code.
Why existing pages deserve more attention
One of the brands I manage is a ground transportation marketplace with pages covering airports, resorts, and popular routes across multiple countries and languages. The methodology in this piece is the one we use there, which is why it’s the example throughout.
Every one of those pages decays over time. Not dramatically: no penalty, no algorithm update to blame. Just a slow drift. A ranking creeps down, impressions hold steady while clicks quietly fall, and an AI Overview eats the top of the search results. Google notices before your analytics dashboard does.
Take our Antalya Airport transfers page. Before we touched it, the 56-day diagnostic showed:
148,537 impressions.
An average position of 14.89.
A 1.49% CTR.
2,215 clicks to show for all that visibility.
Buried, not invisible. Nothing was broken. It was just stale.
New pages start at zero, so you can do whatever you want with a blank slate. That’s the fun, easy part of SEO to talk about. 
Updating a page that already ranks is a different job entirely, let alone a commercial, revenue-driving page. You’re working with a live asset:
Internal links already pointing at it.
Schema already in place.
A historical baseline you can break if you’re careless.
I’ve watched teams “refresh” a decaying page by rewriting it top to bottom and losing every ranking it had. That’s not a refresh but a self-inflicted demotion.
Dig deeper: 4 types of content decay and how to fix each one



  
AI recommends.
      
See your AI visibility
    
The manual process

			
				
The full sequence, diagnostic to measurement.



Step 1: Read the 56-day GSC window
Every update starts with a 56-day window in Search Console, not 90 days or a full year. It’s wide enough to be reliable and narrow enough to stay within one season. 
In this instance, the site is seasonal enough that a wider window just means averaging June against January and drawing the wrong conclusion from the blend. That locked window is also the baseline against which the eventual test gets measured.
Another reason we use 56 days is that the same time window is used when the content update is pushed live, and we set up the SEO test to track its impact. SEOTesting, the tool we use to set up SEO tests, offers four test periods: 2, 4, 6, or 8 weeks. Eight weeks equals 56 days, which is why we use that same time window as the baseline.
Inside the data, three things matter most:
Top queries: These have to be preserved, whatever else changes.
Striking-distance queries (Positions 5-20, weak CTR): These are the cheap wins.
Zero-click queries (high impressions, almost no clicks): These show the page being served for an intent it isn’t answering.
Step 2: Tag every section
This tagging discipline is really the whole game:
Keep: Still ranks, still accurate. Don’t touch it.
Fix: Right idea, stale execution. Rewrite in place.
Remove: Wrong, redundant, or actively hurting.
Add: The data says something’s missing.
Steps 3-5: Read competitors, refresh keywords, rebuild personas
This is where it stops being generic. For Antalya, the query data turned up:
A striking-distance opportunity: “antalya airport transfer” sitting at position 7, with real volume behind it.
A private-hire gap: “private transfer antalya” pulling 1,091 impressions and 14 clicks, a 1.28% CTR, because the page had nothing for travelers wanting a private transfer rather than a shared shuttle.
A comparison gap: “best antalya airport transfers” sitting at position 10.5, with no comparison content on the page at all.
How the personas get built



The personas come from a two-source process rather than a single dataset. The foundation is a sitewide taxonomy: a Google Search Console export covering the last 16 months, with every query across the site clustered into a master set of personas that holds across the whole portfolio, not just one page.
For any specific update, that sitewide set is paired with SEOTesting’s Query Fan-Out tool and fed a seed term for the destination. It generates synthetic queries that people would plausibly ask within an LLM interface rather than type into a search box, and those are clustered into personas in the same way.
The two datasets — one built from 16 months of real GSC behavior, one from synthetic fan-out queries for that specific destination — then get combined into the final, destination-specific set. For Antalya, that combination landed on four personas:
The standard shuttle shopper.
The private-hire shopper.
The group traveler.
The day-tripper.
Steps 6-7: Refresh local knowledge, decide the angle
What changes at an airport destination every 18 to 24 months:
Terminal assignments.
Taxi rank locations.
Scam patterns.
Tipping conventions.
Peak congestion.
Review themes on Trustpilot.
All of it gets checked against current sources, not assumed from the original brief.
Then the angle. The original angle on a commercial page like this tends to start generic: something like “we make airport transfers easy.” That’s not an argument. It’s a brochure, and it said nothing to the four different personas whose data just surfaced. 
Antalya’s new angle: Different travelers need different transfers, and the page should surface the right answer based on who’s actually looking, instead of presenting every option to everyone and hoping they self-sort.
Step 8: Write the delta brief
Not a brief for the whole page: a delta brief covering only what changes. Each section gets one of the four labels from Step 2, explicitly, with a reason attached. It runs roughly 1,500 words for a page this size and reads more like an engineering change request than a writer’s brief, which is the right tone for the work.
Step 9: Write the delta
Only the sections tagged “fix” and “add” get written. That meant refreshed copy and keyword coverage across the “fix” list, plus one new “add” — a persona chooser, “Expert Airport Transfer Finder.” 
A visitor picks the option closest to their situation, and the module surfaces the vehicle recommendation, price range, and detail that matters to that persona.

			
				
“Expert Airport Transfer Finder “: the live component on the Antalya Airport page.



The component itself doesn’t add new information: all of it already existed somewhere on the page, spread across the vehicle explainers, the group-size guide, and the FAQ. 
It just gives each visitor a direct path to the part that’s already theirs, instead of asking them to scan the whole page to find it. It shipped as one part of the delta, not on its own, alongside the fix work above. Worth keeping in mind for the results in a few steps from now.
Step 10: Fact-check everything
Including the “keep” sections. Staying doesn’t mean it’s still accurate, so every numeric claim (distances, prices, transit times, terminal assignments) gets reverified against current sources, including old content. 
Most “AI-refreshed” pages skip this part and update the surface text while leaving the underlying facts untouched.
Steps 11-12: Audit images, preserve the SEO equity
Every image gets checked for three things:
Still accurate.
Still on-brand.
Still meeting current performance spec (WebP/AVIF, properly sized, lazy-loaded).
Anything that fails gets replaced.
Meanwhile, the rule for everything else is preserved unless there’s a specific reason not to:
The URL slug never changes.
The meta title stays if it’s earning CTR.
Schema gets extended rather than replaced.
Internal links are checked in both directions: into the page and out of it.
Step 13: Build the UI components
When the brief calls for something visual rather than prose, we vibe-code it:
Describe the behavior in natural language.
Let Claude or Gemini generate the component.
Iterate live until it works.
Server-render it so LLMs can read the content without executing JavaScript.
The old workflow for a custom component was Figma mockup, design review, dev sprint, QA: call it two weeks, best-case scenario. This is closer to an hour for something of moderate complexity, which is the only reason a persona chooser is feasible per page across a portfolio this size rather than a rare, special-case build.
Step 14: Measure the change
Every update runs through SEOTesting, which we’ve connected to both Google Search Console and GA4. The GSC side gives us clicks, impressions, position, and CTR. The GA4 side gives us whatever actually matters commercially: the purchase event, in this case, or any other GA4 event worth tracking.
The same locked window and control-versus-test structure are used on both sides simultaneously, so a content update is judged by revenue and sales, not just rankings.
Here’s what the whole update produced on Antalya on the search side, measured against the 56-day baseline locked before a single word changed:

MetricControlTestChange
Clicks/day39.5549.00+23.88%
Impressions/day2,6522,744+3.44%
Avg. position14.8910.87▲ improved
CTR1.49%1.79%+0.30pp
Queries/day366389+6.28%





Every single metric moved the right way: clicks up, impressions up, CTR up, position improved, and query coverage up. Most updates that move one number quietly cost you on another. This one didn’t, and it wasn’t down to any single piece of the delta. 
It’s what the diagnostic, the angle, the rewritten sections, and the new component produced together. That’s really the whole point of locking a baseline before touching anything: it’s the only way to know an update did something, rather than getting lucky with a publish date.
Dig deeper: Refreshing content: How to update old content to drive new traffic




	
	
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
Turning it into a system through Claude Code
That whole process, done properly by hand, is about two focused days per page. hoppa runs thousands of pages across nine languages, and two days a page is fine math until you multiply it across a portfolio that size. Even at a conservative one update per page per year, the arithmetic doesn’t survive contact with reality. 
The real cost isn’t the time, either. It’s the opportunity cost: every month a page like Antalya sits at position 14.89 instead of 10.87 is a month of impressions that never got the chance to convert.
So we mapped the 14 steps above into Claude skills and had Claude Code run the process instead of a person running it with AI help on the side. The judgment didn’t move to the machine. The enforcement of that judgment did.
The foundation is a dedicated Claude project, preloaded with:
Our brand book.
Terms and conditions.
Pricing policy.
A library of brand-specific reference material.
Every skill that touches content runs inside that project, so brand constraints are always in context instead of being re-explained on every run.

			
				
The same 14 steps, mapped onto the skill chain that runs them at batch scale.



Step 1 → hoppa-intelligence
Pulls the 56-day GSC window automatically and locks the baseline before anything else happens: the same four metrics, top queries, striking-distance queries, and zero-click queries a person would pull by hand.
Step 2 → the Audit Skill
Runs the keep/fix/remove/add tagging automatically, classifying every section against actual query performance.
Steps 3-4 → the Competitor-Gap Skill
Pulls defended queries, gap-close queries, and new intents from Ahrefs, plus a SERP read on who’s outranking us and what ground they’ve taken.
Steps 5-7 → Editorial Intelligence
Persona revalidation and query fan-out gap detection, plus the local-knowledge refresh. This is where the hard gates sit: the update can’t proceed without:
A validated persona set.
Current local knowledge.
A defined angle.
Skip those and you get generic AI output, which is exactly why so much AI-assisted content reads the same regardless of who published it.
Step 8 → the Delta-Brief Skill
Generates the brief in the same delta shape as Step 8 above (keep/fix/remove/add explicit) and won’t produce one without a defined angle attached.
Step 9 → hoppa-editorial
Writes only the “fix” and “add” sections, inside the same project, calibrated against gold-set tone benchmarks. If the new content’s voice drifts from the kept content’s, it refires until they match.
Step 10 → hoppa-scientific-refiner
Fact-checks new and kept content. A failed check on a “keep” section automatically bumps it to “fix.” No human has to ask, “Is this still true?” first.
Step 11 → the Image-Auditor
Runs the same three checks automatically (accurate, on-brand, spec-compliant) and flags whatever needs replacing.
Step 12 → seo-preservation
Locks the URL slug, protects a meta title that’s earning CTR, and extends schema rather than replacing it, the same preserve-by-default rule as Step 12 above.
Step 13 → the Component Generator
Turns the brief’s spec for anything new (a persona chooser, a comparison table) into the actual working component, running the same describe-generate-iterate loop, just inside the skill rather than a person driving it by hand.
Measurement (Step 14) isn’t a separate skill so much as the discipline that wraps around all of it. We still set up the tests manually. The baseline is locked in Step 1 before anything else runs, and every batch is read against that same baseline once it’s live.
Dig deeper: 6 content audit workflows to build in Claude



Closing the loop: Deployment
Getting the content right was only ever half the job. The other half was getting it live, and until recently, that still meant a person copying finished sections into our CMS, checking that the formatting held, and hitting publish.
We’ve since closed that gap. Claude connects directly to our CMS, Strapi, through an MCP server we run for Strapi, and deployment itself now runs as its own step:
Staging deploy
A full section-by-section diff against the live page
Internal and anchor link verification
Schema validation
If any check fails, the deploy halts and flags it rather than silently shipping something broken. When everything passes, it produces a single ready-to-publish report for a human to approve before it goes live.
Content production and CMS deployment are now a single continuous pipeline, rather than two separate jobs with a person bridging them by hand.
What running this at scale actually taught us
Once the pipeline worked for one page, the obvious next question was how many it could run at once without compromising quality to the bare minimum.
We tested two content updates running in parallel. It works, technically: nothing errors out, and nothing breaks. But the quality drops on both. 
The two runs share the same underlying agents, and pushing two batches through the same agents at the same time visibly softens the output on each: the diagnostics get shallower, the delta briefs get looser, and the writing needs more editing on review.
So we don’t run it that way, and we can’t without giving something up. One update runs at a time, start to finish, and the system works through a batch sequentially. 
However, many URLs are on the list that week. It’s slower on paper. It’s also the difference between output we trust on the first read and output that needs a second pass to catch what got rushed. At this stage of the tooling, that trade isn’t close.
Dig deeper: 7 feedback loops for self-improving AI content workflows



What the difference looks like on the page
Here’s the same underlying discipline applied to two other real pages, one still waiting in the queue and one through the full cycle:

			
				
Same template. Very different depth.



Not yet updated:




Generic copy
No local content
No FAQ
None of the newer components
Fully updated:




Rich local detail
A banner tied to a real current event
Review proof
Structured sections that route different visitors to what applies to them
Nothing about that gap required a rewrite from scratch. It required the delta.
The results at portfolio scale
None of this matters if it only works on one page. We don’t call an update a win because it feels better. Every one of these runs as a proper test, with a 56-day baseline locked before a single change ships and measured against the same window after. That’s the difference between a measured update and a lucky publish.

			
				
Aggregate results across all 59 completed tests.



Seven in 10 updated pages saw organic clicks increase, one in four saw them decrease (going out of season was the case for some of those pages), and a couple came back flat. 
Across all 59 tests, normalized to comparable 56-day windows, this netted 2,284 additional organic clicks overall, all landing on a commercial transfer page, not a blog article. 
Organic purchases finished up 24.9% against baseline, and organic revenue was up 20.1%, both read straight off the GA4 side. 
That’s the argument for treating content updates as one of the highest-ROI line items on an SEO roadmap, rather than as maintenance work that happens only when there’s nothing more exciting left to do.
customers won’t either.
      
See your AI visibility
    
What actually transfers to your team
None of the specifics above is the point. Our prioritization weights, our persona schema, our tone benchmarks, and our gate thresholds won’t mean anything on your site, and they shouldn’t. Rebuild it all for your own domain.
What transfers is the shape of the system:
A human sets the list and priorities and approves the output. Automation enforces judgment. It doesn’t replace it.
Hard gates sit in the middle, and they’re allowed to block progress. Skip persona validation or a local-knowledge refresh, and you get generic AI output, which is exactly why so many AI content pipelines sound identical to each other.
Preservation rules protect whatever’s already earning. Breaking a ranking isn’t an update. It’s a demotion with better branding.
Every change is measured against its own locked baseline, not a vague sense of how a page is “doing.”
Right now, revenue picks which pages we look at first, and the diagnostic tells us what’s wrong with them. That’s the correct order for a team defending high-value pages, but it’s reactive: decay has usually already cost something by the time revenue flags it. The signals exist earlier than that:
CTR softening.
Position drift.
Coverage gaps opening up before they show up in a P&L.
The next version of this continuously monitors the portfolio and surfaces pages about to bleed, not just those already bleeding.
Content updates on commercial pages can be some of the highest-ROI SEO work available, yet most teams still treat them as maintenance. Doing them properly, one page at a time, doesn’t scale. 
Ours didn’t either, until we stopped asking the model to write and started asking it to enforce judgment we’d already made, at whatever volume the queue actually needed.
If you’re staring at a queue of decaying pages and wondering where to start, start with the diagnostic, not the rewrite. Everything else follows from that.
None of this would have happened without the person who turned it from a manual playbook into a working Claude skill chain: Yvette Ramirez, our content strategist, who built the implementation and kept iterating on the gates and tone benchmarks until the automated version stopped needing a second pass.

See how a 14-step workflow diagnoses content decay, protects rankings, and drives measurable traffic and revenue gains.

How to scale SEO content updates with Claude Code

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How prompt injection puts your brand and AI workflows at risk" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Prompt injection attacks put your customers, AI agents, LLM referral share, and vendor stack at risk. Here’s where the threats are emerging.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How prompt injection puts your brand and AI workflows at risk" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/How-prompt-injection-puts-your-brand-and-AI-workflows-at-risk-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/hidden-prompt-injection-black-hat-trick-ai-outgrew-462331">Simple hidden prompt injection</a> — white-on-white text, HTML comments, and invisible Unicode — no longer works against modern LLMs. Pattern recognition, boundary isolation, and spotlighting have closed those loopholes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But more sophisticated attacks still work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">LLMs can&#8217;t reliably distinguish between content and instructions. That’s a structural property of how they process text, not a bug waiting to be patched. The attack surface has expanded to include your brand assets, AI agents, vendor stack, and customer-facing workflows.</p>



<h2 id="h-how-your-help-center-becomes-a-phishing-trap" class="wp-block-heading">How your help center becomes a phishing trap</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://permiso.io/blog/chatgpt-markdown-rendering-vulnerability" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ChatGPhish is the clearest example</a>. Attackers embed malicious payloads in ordinary webpages (your blog, your help center, and your product documentation). </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When a user asks an AI to summarize that page, the hidden instructions cause the AI to generate a fake account alert alongside a malicious QR code, rendered natively inside the chat interface.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Because it appears inside ChatGPT or Perplexity rather than at a suspicious external URL, it bypasses URL blocklists and password manager warnings entirely.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1820" height="1066" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/ChatGPhish-The-Page-Is-the-Payload-.png" alt="Screenshot of a browser window demonstrating a ChatGPT prompt injection vulnerability, where a webpage forces the AI sidebar to display a spoofed account alert containing a large malicious QR code." class="wp-image-483826" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/ChatGPhish-The-Page-Is-the-Payload-.png 1820w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/ChatGPhish-The-Page-Is-the-Payload--768x450.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/ChatGPhish-The-Page-Is-the-Payload--1536x900.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1820px) 100vw, 1820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em><strong>Source:</strong> &#8220;<a href="https://permiso.io/blog/chatgpt-markdown-rendering-vulnerability" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ChatGPhish: The Page Is the Payload</a>,&#8221; Permiso</em></figcaption></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Your customer gets phished. Your brand gets blamed. You had no idea the page was being used as a delivery mechanism.</p>


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




<h2 id="h-hijacking-llm-referral-share-via-semantic-embedding" class="wp-block-heading">Hijacking LLM referral share via semantic embedding</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Semantic embedding is the most effective attack method against top models. Attackers weave malicious instructions into legitimate-sounding paragraphs. The LLM can&#8217;t distinguish between the content it should summarize and the instructions it should follow. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A competitor could embed instructions in an industry comparison article that tell web-browsing AI agents to recommend their product over yours. No hack, no breach, just a paragraph that looks like prose.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1365" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Source-Indirect-Prompt-Injection-in-Web-Browsing-Agents.png" alt="A screenshot of a mock SaaS blog homepage titled 'Scalify Cloud Solutions' with a purple gradient hero banner, demonstrating an indirect prompt injection vector designed to hide malicious instructions from human eyes while targeting AI web parsers." class="wp-image-483827" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Source-Indirect-Prompt-Injection-in-Web-Browsing-Agents.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Source-Indirect-Prompt-Injection-in-Web-Browsing-Agents-768x512.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Source-Indirect-Prompt-Injection-in-Web-Browsing-Agents-1536x1024.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em><strong>Source:</strong> &#8220;<a href="https://www.promptfoo.dev/blog/indirect-prompt-injection-web-agents/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indirect Prompt Injection in Web-Browsing Agents</a>,&#8221; Promptfoo<br><br>Legend: “The blog post contains a hidden prompt injection payload in an HTML comment invisible to human readers but fully readable by an agent parsing the page.”</em></figcaption></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is a direct threat to your LLM referral share, and it doesn&#8217;t require getting to your infrastructure at all. LLM models are slowly acknowledging the threat, including Claude, which warns users that malicious conversation content could cause their data to be leaked.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="943" height="463" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Claude-question.png" alt="Claude interface chatbox with a user prompt requesting a summary of an external marketing URL triggers a prominent pink security warning banner at the bottom, cautioning the user that malicious content on the page could trick the AI into attempting harmful actions or sharing data." class="wp-image-483829" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Claude-question.png 943w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Claude-question-768x377.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 943px) 100vw, 943px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/black-hat-geo-pay-attention-463684">Black hat GEO is real – Here’s why you should pay attention</a></em></strong>



<h2 id="h-weaponized-multimodal-inputs-podcasts-video-and-voice-agents" class="wp-block-heading">Weaponized multimodal inputs: Podcasts, video, and voice agents</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Multimodal attacks extend the threat to every format you produce and every channel you publish on.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://christian-schneider.net/blog/multimodal-prompt-injection/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neural steganography</a> allows attackers to hide instructions in images that are visually indistinguishable from normal photos. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://i10x.ai/news/audio-prompt-injection-ai-agents" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Psychoacoustic masking</a> allows hidden commands to be embedded in audio at frequencies humans can&#8217;t detect. Branded podcasts, YouTube videos, and sponsored audio content are all active attack vectors. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A listener on your sponsored podcast could have instructions silently delivered to their always-on AI assistant, and neither of you would know.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/The-agentic-AI-security-gap.png" alt="The Agentic AI Security Gap' illustrating a 48% gap between enterprises deploying AI agents (69%) and those with full security controls (21%). It also lists statistics on risky agent behaviors, prompt injection success rates, and future adoption projections." class="wp-image-483830" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/The-agentic-AI-security-gap.png 1024w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/The-agentic-AI-security-gap-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em><em><strong>Source:</strong> &#8220;</em><a href="https://i10x.ai/news/audio-prompt-injection-ai-agents" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Audio Prompt Injection: Hidden Risks for AI Voice Agents</em></a><em>,&#8221; i10X</em></em></figcaption></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2511.10692v1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">StyleBreak</a> takes this further. Researchers showed that manipulating the emotional tone of a voice (angry, sad, or fearful) can bypass an audio-language model&#8217;s safety filters without any code or hidden text. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For brands running voice-first call centers or IVR systems, this is an attack threat built directly into the format itself.</p>



<div class="nl-inline-form border py-2 px-1 my-2">
	
	<div class="row align-items-center nl-inline-container">
		<div class="col-12 col-lg-3 col-xl-4 pe-md-0 pb-2 pb-lg-0">
			<p class="inline-form-text text-center mb-0">Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.</p>
		</div>
		<div class="col-12 col-lg-7 col-xl-6  pe-lg-0">
			<div class="form-nl-inline">
				<form id="mktoForm_16298"></form> 
				
				
			</div>
		</div>
		<div class="col-12 col-lg-2 col-xl-2 ps-1">
			<p class="text-center mb-0"><a class="nl-terms" href="https://searchengineland.com/termsofuse" target="_blank" aria-label="opens in a new tab">See terms.</a>
		</div>
	</div>
</div>




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



<h2 id="h-rogue-ai-agents-in-customer-support" class="wp-block-heading">Rogue AI agents in customer support</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Marketing and RevOps teams are deploying autonomous agents faster than security teams can audit them. These agents are vulnerable to what researchers call the <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/confused-deputy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confused deputy problem</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Any agent with access to both an untrusted input (incoming emails or web content) and a privileged tool (sending emails, modifying CRM records, or issuing refunds) can be hijacked through that input.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">An attacker sends your customer service agent an email with a hidden prompt. The agent reads it as a legitimate request and executes the payload, thus leaking user data, spamming your list, or wiping CRM records.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In a stark example of AI weaponized against brand social presence, attackers recently <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/01/hackers-hijacked-instagram-accounts-by-tricking-meta-ai-support-chatbot-into-granting-access/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hijacked high-profile Instagram accounts</a> by manipulating Meta&#8217;s own AI support chatbot. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hackers opened a chat with the Meta AI Support Assistant and asked it to add a new email address to the victim&#8217;s account. The chatbot sent a verification code to the attacker&#8217;s email. Once confirmed, it handed over a &#8220;Reset Password&#8221; button and full account access, including government and military profiles.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Autonomous support agents can be talked into bypassing core security protocols. Vibe coding makes it worse. If you&#8217;re building internal tools with AI-assisted code generation, you may deploy them without adequate security review.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If a rogue agent reads its own error logs after a crash, a payload embedded in that error message can hijack the system from within.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/ai-best-of-n-jailbreaking-475031">AI safety risk: How Best-of-N jailbreaking bypasses safeguards</a></em></strong>



<h2 id="h-supply-chain-sabotage-the-risk-of-unvetted-ai-vendors" class="wp-block-heading">Supply chain sabotage: The risk of unvetted AI vendors</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Your security posture is only as strong as the least-secure vendor in your AI stack.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Mercor <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/31/mercor-says-it-was-hit-by-cyberattack-tied-to-compromise-of-open-source-litellm-project/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed a March 31 incident</a> tied to malicious versions of LiteLLM, an open-source AI API tool used widely across enterprise stacks. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">OWASP noted the breach raised concerns that sensitive information about model-training methods and contractor operations may have been exposed.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Meta paused operations as a result. If you use third-party AI vendors to process customer data or run campaign analysis, a compromised vendor puts your campaign strategies, customer segments, and pricing logic directly in front of threat actors.</p>



<h2 id="h-what-you-should-demand-from-it" class="wp-block-heading">What you should demand from IT</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The most widely recommended structural defense is the Dual-LLM pattern: one quarantined model reads untrusted inputs, a separate privileged model executes business logic, and the two never share a processing layer.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Researchers from MIT CSAIL, Google DeepMind, and ETH Zurich — including lead authors Edoardo Debenedetti and Ilia Shumailov — show in their paper “<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.18813" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Defeating Prompt Injections by Design</a>” that this approach has a specific blind spot: &#8220;while the control flow is protected by the Dual LLM pattern, the data flow can still be manipulated.&#8221; </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Even with a safe plan executed on poisoned data, your confidential files still reach an attacker.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Four requirements for any AI deployment that touches marketing workflows:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Map AI access across five thresholds:</strong> retrieval, memory, planning, tool selection, and output. Every privilege point is an injection surface.</li>



<li><strong>Human-in-the-loop for high-stakes actions:</strong> Any agent that can send emails, modify databases, issue refunds, or publish content must require explicit human confirmation before executing.</li>



<li><strong>Isolation architecture:</strong> Implement Dual-LLM separation, but audit the data flow, not just the control flow.</li>



<li><strong>Vendor vetting as security practice:</strong> Treat every third-party AI tool in your stack as a potential attack vector. Demand transparency on isolation patterns and incident response before signing any contract.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">LLMs can&#8217;t tell the difference between a genuine command and a malicious one. Your brand assets, your podcasts, your help docs, and your vendor relationships are now the attack surface. Governance needs to catch up.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/ai-prompt-patterns-industry-search-visibility-479876">How AI prompt patterns vary by industry and shape search visibility</a></em></strong>

Simple hidden prompt injection — white-on-white text, HTML comments, and invisible Unicode — no longer works against modern LLMs. Pattern recognition, boundary isolation, and spotlighting have closed those loopholes.
But more sophisticated attacks still work.
LLMs can’t reliably distinguish between content and instructions. That’s a structural property of how they process text, not a bug waiting to be patched. The attack surface has expanded to include your brand assets, AI agents, vendor stack, and customer-facing workflows.
How your help center becomes a phishing trap
ChatGPhish is the clearest example. Attackers embed malicious payloads in ordinary webpages (your blog, your help center, and your product documentation). 
When a user asks an AI to summarize that page, the hidden instructions cause the AI to generate a fake account alert alongside a malicious QR code, rendered natively inside the chat interface. 
Because it appears inside ChatGPT or Perplexity rather than at a suspicious external URL, it bypasses URL blocklists and password manager warnings entirely.
Source: “ChatGPhish: The Page Is the Payload,” Permiso



Your customer gets phished. Your brand gets blamed. You had no idea the page was being used as a delivery mechanism.
AI recommends.
      
See your AI visibility
    
Hijacking LLM referral share via semantic embedding
Semantic embedding is the most effective attack method against top models. Attackers weave malicious instructions into legitimate-sounding paragraphs. The LLM can’t distinguish between the content it should summarize and the instructions it should follow. 
A competitor could embed instructions in an industry comparison article that tell web-browsing AI agents to recommend their product over yours. No hack, no breach, just a paragraph that looks like prose.
Source: “Indirect Prompt Injection in Web-Browsing Agents,” Promptfoo
Legend: “The blog post contains a hidden prompt injection payload in an HTML comment invisible to human readers but fully readable by an agent parsing the page.”



This is a direct threat to your LLM referral share, and it doesn’t require getting to your infrastructure at all. LLM models are slowly acknowledging the threat, including Claude, which warns users that malicious conversation content could cause their data to be leaked.




Dig deeper: Black hat GEO is real – Here’s why you should pay attention



Weaponized multimodal inputs: Podcasts, video, and voice agents
Multimodal attacks extend the threat to every format you produce and every channel you publish on.
Neural steganography allows attackers to hide instructions in images that are visually indistinguishable from normal photos. 
Psychoacoustic masking allows hidden commands to be embedded in audio at frequencies humans can’t detect. Branded podcasts, YouTube videos, and sponsored audio content are all active attack vectors. 
A listener on your sponsored podcast could have instructions silently delivered to their always-on AI assistant, and neither of you would know.
Source: “Audio Prompt Injection: Hidden Risks for AI Voice Agents,” i10X



StyleBreak takes this further. Researchers showed that manipulating the emotional tone of a voice (angry, sad, or fearful) can bypass an audio-language model’s safety filters without any code or hidden text. 
For brands running voice-first call centers or IVR systems, this is an attack threat built directly into the format itself.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
Rogue AI agents in customer support
Marketing and RevOps teams are deploying autonomous agents faster than security teams can audit them. These agents are vulnerable to what researchers call the confused deputy problem.
Any agent with access to both an untrusted input (incoming emails or web content) and a privileged tool (sending emails, modifying CRM records, or issuing refunds) can be hijacked through that input. 
An attacker sends your customer service agent an email with a hidden prompt. The agent reads it as a legitimate request and executes the payload, thus leaking user data, spamming your list, or wiping CRM records.
In a stark example of AI weaponized against brand social presence, attackers recently hijacked high-profile Instagram accounts by manipulating Meta’s own AI support chatbot. 
Hackers opened a chat with the Meta AI Support Assistant and asked it to add a new email address to the victim’s account. The chatbot sent a verification code to the attacker’s email. Once confirmed, it handed over a “Reset Password” button and full account access, including government and military profiles.
Autonomous support agents can be talked into bypassing core security protocols. Vibe coding makes it worse. If you’re building internal tools with AI-assisted code generation, you may deploy them without adequate security review. 
If a rogue agent reads its own error logs after a crash, a payload embedded in that error message can hijack the system from within.
Dig deeper: AI safety risk: How Best-of-N jailbreaking bypasses safeguards



Supply chain sabotage: The risk of unvetted AI vendors
Your security posture is only as strong as the least-secure vendor in your AI stack.
Mercor confirmed a March 31 incident tied to malicious versions of LiteLLM, an open-source AI API tool used widely across enterprise stacks. 
OWASP noted the breach raised concerns that sensitive information about model-training methods and contractor operations may have been exposed. 
Meta paused operations as a result. If you use third-party AI vendors to process customer data or run campaign analysis, a compromised vendor puts your campaign strategies, customer segments, and pricing logic directly in front of threat actors.
What you should demand from IT
The most widely recommended structural defense is the Dual-LLM pattern: one quarantined model reads untrusted inputs, a separate privileged model executes business logic, and the two never share a processing layer. 
Researchers from MIT CSAIL, Google DeepMind, and ETH Zurich — including lead authors Edoardo Debenedetti and Ilia Shumailov — show in their paper “Defeating Prompt Injections by Design” that this approach has a specific blind spot: “while the control flow is protected by the Dual LLM pattern, the data flow can still be manipulated.” 
Even with a safe plan executed on poisoned data, your confidential files still reach an attacker.
Four requirements for any AI deployment that touches marketing workflows:
Map AI access across five thresholds: retrieval, memory, planning, tool selection, and output. Every privilege point is an injection surface.
Human-in-the-loop for high-stakes actions: Any agent that can send emails, modify databases, issue refunds, or publish content must require explicit human confirmation before executing.
Isolation architecture: Implement Dual-LLM separation, but audit the data flow, not just the control flow.
Vendor vetting as security practice: Treat every third-party AI tool in your stack as a potential attack vector. Demand transparency on isolation patterns and incident response before signing any contract.
LLMs can’t tell the difference between a genuine command and a malicious one. Your brand assets, your podcasts, your help docs, and your vendor relationships are now the attack surface. Governance needs to catch up.
Dig deeper: How AI prompt patterns vary by industry and shape search visibility

Prompt injection attacks put your customers, AI agents, LLM referral share, and vendor stack at risk. Here’s where the threats are emerging.

How prompt injection puts your brand and AI workflows at risk

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>A year-long study of 15.7 million AI Mode citations across 148 industries shows exactly which passages Google highlights — and reuses.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div><div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483394" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-featured_1920x1080-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></figure>
</div>


<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Click a citation inside Google&#8217;s AI Mode and watch what happens. You don&#8217;t land at the top of the page. The URL carries a text-fragment directive (it ends in #:~:text=&#8230;), and your browser scroll-jumps to a passage highlighted in purple. Google didn&#8217;t cite the page. It cited roughly 117 words of the page.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I first noticed those purple highlights piling up in my clients&#8217; citation data about a year ago. Once I started counting, I couldn&#8217;t stop.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The final tally: 15,699,298 AI Mode citations across 148 industries. Nearly half (47.7%) were scroll-to-text highlights rather than plain links.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That number changed how I think about “getting cited.” AI Mode’s working unit isn’t your URL. It’s the passage.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Analyze citations at the passage level, not the page level, and actionable patterns emerge.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-01_prevalence_800x450.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483395" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-01_prevalence_800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-01_prevalence_800x450-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>
</div>


<h2 id="h-google-recycles-the-passages-it-likes-relentlessly" class="wp-block-heading">Google recycles the passages it likes. Relentlessly.</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Those 15.7 million citations resolved to 4.6 million unique highlighted passages across 2.7 million pages. Most passages (80.9%) were cited once. But about 2,300 were reused 61 or more times. The most-recycled passage in my dataset was cited 661 times.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s the signature of this phenomenon: when Google trusts a passage, it doesn’t cite it once and move on. It returns to the same highlight again and again.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-02_recycling_longtail_800x450.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483396" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-02_recycling_longtail_800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-02_recycling_longtail_800x450-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>
</div>


<h2 id="h-one-passage-answers-dozens-of-different-questions" class="wp-block-heading">One passage answers dozens of different questions</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And no, that’s not one query asked 661 times. My top passage was reused across 483 distinct queries. One promotional-products retailer’s best paragraph answered 221 different questions from a single highlight. A paragraph on building a free HOA website was cited across 91.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One strong paragraph can become Google’s go-to answer for an entire cluster of phrasings. That overturns an instinct drilled into us for years: you don’t need 10 thin pages for 10 versions of a question. You need one passage strong enough to answer them all.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-03_one_passage_many_queries_800x450.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483397" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-03_one_passage_many_queries_800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-03_one_passage_many_queries_800x450-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>
</div>


<h2 id="h-highlight-accumulation-tracks-with-1-rankings" class="wp-block-heading">Highlight accumulation tracks with #1 rankings</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Pages accumulate distinct highlights over time, and the count strongly correlates with organic position. In my data, pages with one to four highlighted passages had a median organic rank of 11. Pages with 21 or more had a median rank of #1, with 67% ranking first outright. Among passages reused 100+ times, 76% came from pages ranking #1.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I want to be careful about causality. This is correlation, not a proven mechanism. I can’t see inside Google’s head any better than you can.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But the association is strong enough to say this: the passages AI Mode relies on overwhelmingly live on pages that already win in classic organic search. AI visibility isn’t separate from SEO. It compounds on it.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-04_highlights_vs_rank_800x450.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483398" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-04_highlights_vs_rank_800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-04_highlights_vs_rank_800x450-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>
</div>


<h2 id="h-what-the-recycled-passages-have-in-common" class="wp-block-heading">What the recycled passages have in common</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Counting citations only tells you the phenomenon exists. I wanted to know why certain passages win. So I reconstructed more than 1,000 of the actual highlighted passages (text fragments only store the first and last few words, so this meant fetching the live pages and extracting the exact spans) and classified each one&#8217;s format and structure.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Four traits stood out:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>They&#8217;re full paragraphs, not snippets.</strong> The median highlighted passage was 117 words: a complete, multi-sentence answer. If you&#8217;ve been picturing AI grabbing a one-liner, stop. It lifts whole paragraphs.</li>



<li><strong>They lead with the answer.</strong> Eighty percent of extracted passages put the answer in the first sentence. That held for both my clients&#8217; pages and a benchmark of the web&#8217;s most-recycled passages (81%). It was the most consistent pattern in the study. Bury your answer mid-paragraph, and it probably won&#8217;t get extracted.</li>



<li><strong>They stand alone. </strong>About 85% of highlighted passages were fully self-contained. No &#8220;as mentioned above.&#8221; No reliance on the surrounding page. If a passage only makes sense in context, it can&#8217;t be lifted out of it.</li>



<li><strong>Question-led passages get recycled about twice as often. </strong>Among repeatedly cited passages, 48% opened with an explicit question (usually as a heading), versus 22% of one-off passages. Q&amp;A and how-to formats dominated the highest-reuse tiers. Narrative explainers were reused less, and standalone statistics were rarely reused across queries. One caveat: the highest-reuse tiers are small samples, so treat the exact ratio as directional. The overall pattern, though, was consistent everywhere I looked.</li>
</ul>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-06_answer_first_bars_800x450.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483399" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-06_answer_first_bars_800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-06_answer_first_bars_800x450-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>
</div>


<h2 id="h-anatomy-of-a-winning-passage" class="wp-block-heading">Anatomy of a winning passage</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here’s a real passage from the dataset, cited 158 times from a page ranking #1:</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>How to create an HOA website for free?</strong> Creating an HOA website for free can be accomplished using platforms like WordPress, Wix, or Google Sites. These platforms offer free templates and hosting services. Start by selecting a template…</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Every trait is there. The heading matches the literal question a user would ask. The answer comes in the first sentence. The paragraph stands on its own, with no surrounding context required. And it&#8217;s a full 75–150 words.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Nothing about it is exotic. Nobody&#8217;s winning a Pulitzer here. It&#8217;s simply structured to be lifted.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-05_anatomy_winning_passage_800x450.png" alt="" class="wp-image-483400" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-05_anatomy_winning_passage_800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pillar-20260729-05_anatomy_winning_passage_800x450-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>
</div>


<h2 id="h-what-to-do-about-it-this-week-not-this-quarter" class="wp-block-heading">What to do about it (this week, not this quarter)</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Turn key H2s into literal questions.</strong> Not &#8220;HOA Website Options.&#8221; &#8220;How do you create an HOA website for free?&#8221; Use the phrasing your audience actually types.</li>



<li><strong>Answer in the first sentence under every question.</strong> Then support it. Write the full paragraph (75–150 words), not a one-line teaser that forces readers to keep scrolling.</li>



<li><strong>Make each answer self-contained.</strong> Read every key section out of context. If it references &#8220;the steps above&#8221; or assumes an earlier section, rewrite it until it stands alone.</li>



<li><strong>Favor Q&amp;A and how-to structure on pages you want cited.</strong> Narrative essays have their place, but they get cited once and forgotten. Structured answers get recycled.</li>



<li><strong>Keep playing the ranking game.</strong> Recycled passages come disproportionately from #1 pages. Passage structure gets you extracted; authority gets you re-extracted.</li>



<li><strong>Audit passage by passage, not page by page.</strong> Take your 10 most important pages and score every H2 section against the four traits: question heading, answer-first, self-contained, full paragraph. Most teams discover their content covers the right topics in the wrong shape. The fix is restructuring, not rewriting.</li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-the-bigger-shift" class="wp-block-heading">The bigger shift</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For 20 years, we’ve optimized pages. AI Mode evaluates and reuses passages, just like every retrieval-based AI system that chunks pages before answering.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I believe that’s good news for content teams. It rewards clear, well-structured writing over volume, and most of the work is editorial, not technical. The same restructuring often wins featured snippets, too.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To see where you stand today, <a href="https://www.pillarbase.ai/ai-citation-readiness?utm_source=searchengineland&amp;utm_medium=sponsored_content&amp;utm_campaign=text_fragment_study" target="_blank" rel="noopener sponsored nofollow">get your free AI citation readiness report</a>. It shows whether AI engines cite your domain, which competitors they cite instead, and how your pages score for citation readiness. When you get yours, I’d love to hear what surprises you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You can read the full study (methodology, distributions, and all the honest limitations) <a href="https://app.pillarbase.ai/static/text-fragment-study-2026.html?utm_source=searchengineland&amp;utm_medium=sponsored_content&amp;utm_campaign=text_fragment_study&amp;utm_content=full_study" target="_blank" rel="noopener sponsored nofollow">here</a>.</p>


Click a citation inside Google’s AI Mode and watch what happens. You don’t land at the top of the page. The URL carries a text-fragment directive (it ends in #:~:text=…), and your browser scroll-jumps to a passage highlighted in purple. Google didn’t cite the page. It cited roughly 117 words of the page.
I first noticed those purple highlights piling up in my clients’ citation data about a year ago. Once I started counting, I couldn’t stop.
The final tally: 15,699,298 AI Mode citations across 148 industries. Nearly half (47.7%) were scroll-to-text highlights rather than plain links.
That number changed how I think about “getting cited.” AI Mode’s working unit isn’t your URL. It’s the passage. 
Analyze citations at the passage level, not the page level, and actionable patterns emerge.




Google recycles the passages it likes. Relentlessly.
Those 15.7 million citations resolved to 4.6 million unique highlighted passages across 2.7 million pages. Most passages (80.9%) were cited once. But about 2,300 were reused 61 or more times. The most-recycled passage in my dataset was cited 661 times.
That’s the signature of this phenomenon: when Google trusts a passage, it doesn’t cite it once and move on. It returns to the same highlight again and again.




One passage answers dozens of different questions
And no, that’s not one query asked 661 times. My top passage was reused across 483 distinct queries. One promotional-products retailer’s best paragraph answered 221 different questions from a single highlight. A paragraph on building a free HOA website was cited across 91.
One strong paragraph can become Google’s go-to answer for an entire cluster of phrasings. That overturns an instinct drilled into us for years: you don’t need 10 thin pages for 10 versions of a question. You need one passage strong enough to answer them all.




Highlight accumulation tracks with #1 rankings
Pages accumulate distinct highlights over time, and the count strongly correlates with organic position. In my data, pages with one to four highlighted passages had a median organic rank of 11. Pages with 21 or more had a median rank of #1, with 67% ranking first outright. Among passages reused 100+ times, 76% came from pages ranking #1.
I want to be careful about causality. This is correlation, not a proven mechanism. I can’t see inside Google’s head any better than you can. 
But the association is strong enough to say this: the passages AI Mode relies on overwhelmingly live on pages that already win in classic organic search. AI visibility isn’t separate from SEO. It compounds on it.




What the recycled passages have in common
Counting citations only tells you the phenomenon exists. I wanted to know why certain passages win. So I reconstructed more than 1,000 of the actual highlighted passages (text fragments only store the first and last few words, so this meant fetching the live pages and extracting the exact spans) and classified each one’s format and structure.
Four traits stood out:
They’re full paragraphs, not snippets. The median highlighted passage was 117 words: a complete, multi-sentence answer. If you’ve been picturing AI grabbing a one-liner, stop. It lifts whole paragraphs.
They lead with the answer. Eighty percent of extracted passages put the answer in the first sentence. That held for both my clients’ pages and a benchmark of the web’s most-recycled passages (81%). It was the most consistent pattern in the study. Bury your answer mid-paragraph, and it probably won’t get extracted.
They stand alone. About 85% of highlighted passages were fully self-contained. No “as mentioned above.” No reliance on the surrounding page. If a passage only makes sense in context, it can’t be lifted out of it.
Question-led passages get recycled about twice as often. Among repeatedly cited passages, 48% opened with an explicit question (usually as a heading), versus 22% of one-off passages. Q&A and how-to formats dominated the highest-reuse tiers. Narrative explainers were reused less, and standalone statistics were rarely reused across queries. One caveat: the highest-reuse tiers are small samples, so treat the exact ratio as directional. The overall pattern, though, was consistent everywhere I looked.




Anatomy of a winning passage
Here’s a real passage from the dataset, cited 158 times from a page ranking #1:
How to create an HOA website for free? Creating an HOA website for free can be accomplished using platforms like WordPress, Wix, or Google Sites. These platforms offer free templates and hosting services. Start by selecting a template…
Every trait is there. The heading matches the literal question a user would ask. The answer comes in the first sentence. The paragraph stands on its own, with no surrounding context required. And it’s a full 75–150 words.
Nothing about it is exotic. Nobody’s winning a Pulitzer here. It’s simply structured to be lifted.




What to do about it (this week, not this quarter)
Turn key H2s into literal questions. Not “HOA Website Options.” “How do you create an HOA website for free?” Use the phrasing your audience actually types.
Answer in the first sentence under every question. Then support it. Write the full paragraph (75–150 words), not a one-line teaser that forces readers to keep scrolling.
Make each answer self-contained. Read every key section out of context. If it references “the steps above” or assumes an earlier section, rewrite it until it stands alone.
Favor Q&A and how-to structure on pages you want cited. Narrative essays have their place, but they get cited once and forgotten. Structured answers get recycled.
Keep playing the ranking game. Recycled passages come disproportionately from #1 pages. Passage structure gets you extracted; authority gets you re-extracted.
Audit passage by passage, not page by page. Take your 10 most important pages and score every H2 section against the four traits: question heading, answer-first, self-contained, full paragraph. Most teams discover their content covers the right topics in the wrong shape. The fix is restructuring, not rewriting.
The bigger shift
For 20 years, we’ve optimized pages. AI Mode evaluates and reuses passages, just like every retrieval-based AI system that chunks pages before answering. 
I believe that’s good news for content teams. It rewards clear, well-structured writing over volume, and most of the work is editorial, not technical. The same restructuring often wins featured snippets, too.
To see where you stand today, get your free AI citation readiness report. It shows whether AI engines cite your domain, which competitors they cite instead, and how your pages score for citation readiness. When you get yours, I’d love to hear what surprises you.
You can read the full study (methodology, distributions, and all the honest limitations) here.

A year-long study of 15.7 million AI Mode citations across 148 industries shows exactly which passages Google highlights — and reuses.

What 15.7 million AI Mode citations reveal about getting quoted by Google by Pillarbase

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="SMX Advanced 2027" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>More opportunities to learn from expert speakers, join in-depth Q&#038;A, and connect with top SEO and PPC professionals at two 2027 conferences.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="SMX Advanced 2027" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/smx-advanced-2027-dates-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s official: There will be <strong>two</strong> SMX Advanced events in 2027. The shows are scheduled for March 17 to 19 in San Diego and Sept. 20 to 22 in Boston. This is the first time SMX Advanced will run twice in one year.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Two coasts, two events. </strong>The expanded schedule will give you two chances to join the advanced search marketing conference, with one event on the West Coast and one on the East Coast.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Since 2007, SMX Advanced has focused on advanced, actionable tactics designed for experienced search marketers looking for ideas, strategies, tactics, insights, and tools they can use when they return to work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What to expect.</strong> The programming will include expert-led sessions, deeper discussions, and in-depth Q&amp;A. Both SMX Advanced shows will include structured and informal networking, giving you time to meet peers, potential hires, employers, and other people across the search community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care. </strong>SMX Advanced is built for experienced practitioners who want more than basic search advice. By adding a second in-person SMX Advanced event in 2027, we&#8217;re giving more people access to advanced programming without requiring everyone to travel to one coast. Next year will also be the 20th anniversary of SMX Advanced, which launched in 2007 in Seattle.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Exclusive programming</strong>. The team behind Search Engine Land, along with a programming committee of SEO and PPC experts, will put together the agenda. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Stay updated.</strong> Visit <a href="https://searchengineland.com/smx/advanced" data-type="link" data-id="https://searchengineland.com/smx/advanced" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SMX Advanced</a> to receive updates about the San Diego and Boston shows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Sponsors.</strong> To learn more about sponsoring the event(s), you can <a href="https://searchengineland.com/smx/advanced#sponsor-contact">complete this form</a>.</p>


It’s official: There will be two SMX Advanced events in 2027. The shows are scheduled for March 17 to 19 in San Diego and Sept. 20 to 22 in Boston. This is the first time SMX Advanced will run twice in one year.
Two coasts, two events. The expanded schedule will give you two chances to join the advanced search marketing conference, with one event on the West Coast and one on the East Coast.
Since 2007, SMX Advanced has focused on advanced, actionable tactics designed for experienced search marketers looking for ideas, strategies, tactics, insights, and tools they can use when they return to work.
What to expect. The programming will include expert-led sessions, deeper discussions, and in-depth Q&A. Both SMX Advanced shows will include structured and informal networking, giving you time to meet peers, potential hires, employers, and other people across the search community.
Why we care. SMX Advanced is built for experienced practitioners who want more than basic search advice. By adding a second in-person SMX Advanced event in 2027, we’re giving more people access to advanced programming without requiring everyone to travel to one coast. Next year will also be the 20th anniversary of SMX Advanced, which launched in 2007 in Seattle.
Exclusive programming. The team behind Search Engine Land, along with a programming committee of SEO and PPC experts, will put together the agenda. 
Stay updated. Visit SMX Advanced to receive updates about the San Diego and Boston shows.
Sponsors. To learn more about sponsoring the event(s), you can complete this form.

More opportunities to learn from expert speakers, join in-depth Q&A, and connect with top SEO and PPC professionals at two 2027 conferences.

SMX Advanced expands in 2027: See you in San Diego and Boston

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google AI Mode cites Google" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Google's AI content label helps advertisers disclose AI-generated or edited creatives as transparency requirements expand worldwide.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google AI Mode cites Google" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google is rolling out AI content labels within asset studio, giving advertisers a new way to disclose when image and video assets have been generated or modified using AI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The update is designed to help advertisers comply with emerging AI transparency regulations in markets including the European Union, India and New York.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What&#8217;s new</strong>. Advertisers can now add text or visual AI labels directly to eligible image and video creatives or enable a new AI label setting within Google&#8217;s advertising platforms.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The setting is rolling out gradually across:</p>



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



<li>Display &amp; Video 360.</li>



<li>Campaign Manager 360.</li>



<li>Merchant Center.</li>



<li>Google Ads Editor.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google said it may also automatically apply labels to certain assets created with its own AI tools. These labels won&#8217;t violate existing policies that prohibit text overlays or watermarks on ad creatives.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">PPC specialist Hana Kobzova has already spotted the rollout across Google Ads, Merchant Center and Ads Editor. In affected accounts, a new AI Label column indicates whether labelling has been enabled. Ads using labelled assets display an AI disclosure icon wherever they appear.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1280" height="720" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ads-rolls-out-ai.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-483817" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ads-rolls-out-ai.jpg 1280w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ads-rolls-out-ai-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ads-rolls-out-ai-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google noted that using the AI label setting alone does not guarantee compliance with local regulations and advised advertisers to seek legal guidance where necessary.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care.</strong> As governments introduce rules requiring greater transparency around AI-generated content, advertisers will increasingly need a scalable way to disclose when AI has been used in their creative. Google&#8217;s built-in labelling tools simplify that process by integrating disclosures directly into campaign workflows, reducing the need for manual creative edits while helping advertisers prepare for evolving compliance requirements.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Ai Ad disclosure.</strong> This update comes alongside Google&#8217;s announcement that they would start <a href="https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-ads-ai-transparency-labels/">expanding AI transparency in Ads</a>. By clicking a How this ad was made, user can see whether an ad was created or edited with AI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bottom line</strong>. <a href="https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/17257106?hl=en&amp;ref_topic=16794025">Google is making AI content disclosures a native part of its advertising ecosystem</a>, giving advertisers new tools to label AI-generated creatives while helping them navigate a growing patchwork of AI transparency regulations. </p>


<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">
  <div>
    
    <div>
      
      <div id="semrush-one-headline" class="headline-responsive">
        If AI can’t find you, <span>customers won’t either</span>.
      </div>
      <p id="semrush-one-subhead">
       Track your visibility across AI search, uncover missed opportunities, and grow your presence where customers are asking questions.
      </p>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span id="semrush-one-cta">See your AI visibility</span>
    </div>
    </div>
    </a>



Google is rolling out AI content labels within asset studio, giving advertisers a new way to disclose when image and video assets have been generated or modified using AI.
The update is designed to help advertisers comply with emerging AI transparency regulations in markets including the European Union, India and New York.
What’s new. Advertisers can now add text or visual AI labels directly to eligible image and video creatives or enable a new AI label setting within Google’s advertising platforms.
The setting is rolling out gradually across:
Google Ads.
Display & Video 360.
Campaign Manager 360.
Merchant Center.
Google Ads Editor.
Google said it may also automatically apply labels to certain assets created with its own AI tools. These labels won’t violate existing policies that prohibit text overlays or watermarks on ad creatives.
PPC specialist Hana Kobzova has already spotted the rollout across Google Ads, Merchant Center and Ads Editor. In affected accounts, a new AI Label column indicates whether labelling has been enabled. Ads using labelled assets display an AI disclosure icon wherever they appear.




Google noted that using the AI label setting alone does not guarantee compliance with local regulations and advised advertisers to seek legal guidance where necessary.
Why we care. As governments introduce rules requiring greater transparency around AI-generated content, advertisers will increasingly need a scalable way to disclose when AI has been used in their creative. Google’s built-in labelling tools simplify that process by integrating disclosures directly into campaign workflows, reducing the need for manual creative edits while helping advertisers prepare for evolving compliance requirements.
Ai Ad disclosure. This update comes alongside Google’s announcement that they would start expanding AI transparency in Ads. By clicking a How this ad was made, user can see whether an ad was created or edited with AI.
Bottom line. Google is making AI content disclosures a native part of its advertising ecosystem, giving advertisers new tools to label AI-generated creatives while helping them navigate a growing patchwork of AI transparency regulations. 
customers won’t either.
      
See your AI visibility

Google's AI content label helps advertisers disclose AI-generated or edited creatives as transparency requirements expand worldwide.

Google rolls out AI content labels in asset studio

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google Ads may be over-crediting your conversions- A 7-day test tells a different story" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Google is giving Smart Bidding targets greater visibility, potentially making bidding strategy selection easier for advertisers.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google Ads may be over-crediting your conversions- A 7-day test tells a different story" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/03/Google-Ads-may-be-over-crediting-your-conversions-A-7-day-test-tells-a-different-story-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Google appears to be changing how Smart Bidding strategies are presented during campaign setup, surfacing Target CPA and Target ROAS as standalone bidding strategies instead of optional targets within Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">While the change doesn&#8217;t appear to alter how the bidding strategies function, it could make campaign setup more intuitive for advertisers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>What&#8217;s happening</strong>. Advertisers have started spotting a revised bidding strategy selection menu in Google Ads.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="539" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Google-target-CPA.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-483787" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Google-target-CPA.jpeg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Google-target-CPA-768x517.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In affected accounts, Target CPA and Target ROAS now appear as dedicated bidding strategy options alongside:</p>



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



<li>Maximize Conversions.</li>



<li>Maximize Conversion Value.</li>



<li>Target Impression Share.</li>



<li>Manual CPC.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Previously, advertisers typically selected Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value before optionally applying a Target CPA or Target ROAS goal.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The updated interface makes those strategies more prominent during campaign creation.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Why we care</strong>. Even seemingly small interface changes can influence how advertisers configure campaigns. Presenting Target CPA and Target ROAS as standalone options makes it clearer that they&#8217;re distinct bidding approaches rather than secondary settings. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Target based bidding update.</strong> The change may also be laying the groundwork for upcoming Google Ads updates. Google Ads trainer Charlotte Osborne suggested the revised layout could be related to <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-updates-target-based-bidding-for-budget-limited-campaigns-480752">changes scheduled for 17 August</a>, making it clearer for advertisers who want to switch between Target CPA/Target ROAS and Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Bottom line</strong>. Google appears to be simplifying Smart Bidding selection by giving Target CPA and Target ROAS greater visibility during campaign setup. Whether it&#8217;s a permanent redesign or preparation for August&#8217;s bidding updates, it&#8217;s another sign that Google continues to refine how advertisers interact with its automated bidding tools.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>First spotted.</strong> The new options was spotted by Google Ads expert Natasha Kaurra, who shared the view on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/navpreetk_googleads-ppc-paidsearch-share-7487619122529402880-eQdi/">LinkedIn</a>. </p>


<a href="https://www.semrush.com/analytics/traffic/paid-search?utm_campaign=ic_sel_0102ppc&#038;utm_source=searchengineland.com&#038;utm_medium=overlay&#038;onboarding=off" target="_blank">
  <div>
    
    <div>
      
      <div id="semrush-one-headline" class="headline-responsive">
        Every click they win is <span>a customer you lose</span>.
      </div>
      <p id="semrush-one-subhead">
        See where competitors are investing, which keywords drive their results, and how to capture more of the market.
      </p>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span id="semrush-one-cta">See who’s stealing your traffic</span>
    </div>
    </div>
    </a>



Google appears to be changing how Smart Bidding strategies are presented during campaign setup, surfacing Target CPA and Target ROAS as standalone bidding strategies instead of optional targets within Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value.
While the change doesn’t appear to alter how the bidding strategies function, it could make campaign setup more intuitive for advertisers.
What’s happening. Advertisers have started spotting a revised bidding strategy selection menu in Google Ads.




In affected accounts, Target CPA and Target ROAS now appear as dedicated bidding strategy options alongside:
Maximize Clicks.
Maximize Conversions.
Maximize Conversion Value.
Target Impression Share.
Manual CPC.
Previously, advertisers typically selected Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value before optionally applying a Target CPA or Target ROAS goal.
The updated interface makes those strategies more prominent during campaign creation.
Why we care. Even seemingly small interface changes can influence how advertisers configure campaigns. Presenting Target CPA and Target ROAS as standalone options makes it clearer that they’re distinct bidding approaches rather than secondary settings. 
Target based bidding update. The change may also be laying the groundwork for upcoming Google Ads updates. Google Ads trainer Charlotte Osborne suggested the revised layout could be related to changes scheduled for 17 August, making it clearer for advertisers who want to switch between Target CPA/Target ROAS and Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value.
Bottom line. Google appears to be simplifying Smart Bidding selection by giving Target CPA and Target ROAS greater visibility during campaign setup. Whether it’s a permanent redesign or preparation for August’s bidding updates, it’s another sign that Google continues to refine how advertisers interact with its automated bidding tools.
First spotted. The new options was spotted by Google Ads expert Natasha Kaurra, who shared the view on LinkedIn. 
a customer you lose.
      
See who’s stealing your traffic

Google is giving Smart Bidding targets greater visibility, potentially making bidding strategy selection easier for advertisers.

All About
Digital Marketing

Read the Latest Trends and Headlines in Digital Marketing.

Here are some of the latest headlines on digital marketing insights, search, and ecommerce:

Free Consultation

Reach out with any questions you might have regarding how RSO can help you with digital marketing.

All About Digital Marketing

Read the Latest Trends and Headlines in Digital Marketing.

Here are some of the latest headlines on digital marketing insights, search, and ecommerce:

Free Consultation

Reach out with any questions you might have regarding how RSO can help you with digital marketing.

All About
Digital Marketing