The trade press reports what changed; this is where people who run the tests write up what happened. SearchPilot publishes SEO A/B tests with results that regularly contradict accepted best practice. Lumar, Oncrawl, Onely and Screaming Frog cover crawling and indexing at a depth no news desk goes to. Sterling Sky is one of the few serious sources on local search, and Marie Haynes has tracked algorithm updates and quality signals for years. Slower than the news feeds by design — these publish when they have something, not daily.
Technical SEO, split-testing, local search and algorithm analysis from independent practitioners and specialist agencies — SearchPilot, Lumar, Sistrix, Sterling Sky, Marie Haynes and others.
We connect three stories that are really one story: Apple's launch of ads in Maps, Google's move to charge for more Local Services Ads leads and expand ads across the results page, and Meta's ~$18…
Read on Near Media →A session in partnership with Page 2 Podcast
Read on SearchPilot →TL;DR We realized AI platforms were relaying an inaccurate narrative about Seer Interactive, so we ran a full analysis to find out what else they were saying — and whether the info was accurate Of…
Read on Seer Interactive →The evolution of NLP methods and what that means for AI search Before AI,…
Read on Oncrawl →Welcome back to our GEO series! Your content can be highly relevant to a query and still never make it into an AI-generated response. In the previous article, we touched on one reason why: a relevant…
Content & Quality AI Search & Visibility
Read on Lumar →This regularly updated list of the top 100 domains in US search includes analysis and highlights. The list is created using the SISTRIX Domain Visibility Index values, an indicator of footprint and…
Read on Sistrix →Welcome back to our GEO series! In the previous article, we explored candidate page selection and how AI systems determine which pages are eligible for retrieval. Semantic relevance helps inform that…
Read on Lumar →We end the brand-building series with Greg walking through our original research: the "Choosing a Lawyer" study of the Atlanta personal lawyer market. Survey data, ad-creative testing, and a…
Read on Near Media →TL;DR I reviewed our traffic-decline-analysis skill's and found four real problems: a traffic number from the wrong source, a real drop mislabeled "stable," no way to trace where a number came from,…
Read on Seer Interactive →TL;DR Brands are measuring AI visibility without tracking if the perception of their brand is even accurate We recommend building a brand canon, which tracks facts, differentiators, brand claims,…
Read on Seer Interactive →We close the run of solo interviews with a working session on what "brand" means for a local business and which tactics move the needle now that answers are generated, not just ranked. Join Paula…
Read on Near Media →Keyword research no longer works in AI Search. Prompt Research solves this with a new level of abstraction: topics instead of keywords, based on over 62 million real user questions. In classic Google…
Read on Sistrix →I wanted to do something a little different with this webinar. Usually, these sessions are conversations. This one is me laying out where we have got to with GEO testing, what we have learned from…
Read on SearchPilot →Candidate page selection can determine whether your content is considered for retrieval in AI search. Learn how it works, what influences page eligibility, and what it means for GEO.
Read on Lumar →Every day, your customers tell Google exactly what they want. They describe problems in their own words. They compare products, ask questions, explore ideas and look for businesses they can trust. On…
Read on Screaming Frog →If you want to know how search engines and AI systems really move through…
Read on Oncrawl →We looked back at hundreds of sales calls about GEO and looked for the questions people are asking, the pressures they are under, and decided to write up the questions people are asking and the…
Read on Seer Interactive →Businesses move all the time, and updating the Google Business Profile to the new address is essential for ranking in the new area. In the case when a business moves to a new state, unfortuantly…
Ranking & Algorithms Local SEO
Read on Sterling Sky →You’ve probably noindex-ed pages you don’t want showing up in search. It’s a solid practice for product variants or paid destination pages, and it works for Google rankings.
Crawling & Indexing E-commerce
Read on Seer Interactive →Cyrus Shepard joins us on the Near Memo to connect what the Google antitrust trial and API leak revealed about click data to the questions local operators care about: how Google decides a result was…
Local SEO AI Search & Visibility
Read on Near Media →Local Search Still Starts with GoogleAccording to our research, somewhere between 60% and 70% of AI users have used AI for local search. There are questions about frequency and trust. But regardless…
Read on Near Media →Ranking & Algorithms Local SEO
Read on Sterling Sky →AI search has created a new wave of tactics, tools, dashboards, and very confident advice.
Read on SearchPilot →Prompt Research brings the keyword exploration for AI search, AI Deep Dives deliver data-based analyses directly into the Toolbox and the MCP server is now available to all, no need for API credits.…
Read on Sistrix →Gyi Tsakalakis, of AttorneySync, joins us for Part 3 of our brand-building series — bringing the brand conversation down to earth in professional services, and specifically in legal, where a client…
Read on Near Media →Rankings still matter, but they no longer tell the whole story in AI-powered search. Learn how GEO builds on traditional SEO and what influences visibility in AI-generated responses.
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Lumar →Your monthly roundup of search industry news, brought to you by the Lumar team.
Read on Lumar →What SearchPilot Does For enterprise retailers, e-commerce businesses, and large-scale digital teams, organic search is one of the highest-value channels in the mix, but it can be unpredictable and…
Read on SearchPilot →Googlebot does not crawl every page on your site every day. It works within…
Read on Oncrawl →When we first published this on July 15, we were working from three days of ChatGPT ads data. Revisiting the data this week, our main takeaways haven't changed, but ecosystem is evolving. Share of…
Read on Seer Interactive →LSAs Now P-Max PPL Local Services Ads (LSAs) are merging into Google Ads and will run as Performance Max campaigns optimized for pay-per-lead goals. Google says, "This transition allows you to manage…
Read on Near Media →Google shared some interesting information about the future of Search and AI in their most recent earnings call. While many are focusing on the first negative cash flow since their IPO 20 years ago,…
Read on Marie Haynes →Does recency still matter in AI search? How much?
Read on Seer Interactive →Discover how the Lumar MCP server connects your AI assistant to Lumar, enabling faster SEO audits, AI Visibility analysis and workflow automation.
Read on Lumar →Cyrus Shepard, founder of Zyppy, joins Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal for Part 2 of the Near Memo brand-building series — this time on the technical side: how Google and AI systems actually model…
Read on Near Media →Last refreshed Aug 29, 2026 · 6:51 PM · Subscribe to our combined RSS feed
