Google's March 2026 Local SEO Purge: Why Your Competitor's GBP Got Suspended and What to Audit Now
Across my client portfolio, I counted six Google Business Profile suspension notices between March 27 and April 8.
SEO Agency Insights
Expert guides on choosing the right SEO agency, what to look for in an SEO audit, and how to evaluate proposals.
221 articles published
The Review Benchmarking Scorecard: Measuring SEO Impact Against Industry Standards in 2026
Every agency pitch deck I've seen this year includes a slide about reviews. Star rating, total count, maybe a screenshot of a glowing testimonial.
Three Global SEO Agency Launches Signal Enterprise Shift to Vertical Specialization—What This Means for Generalist Shops
Three agency launches in six weeks—Firegang Dental Marketing's expanded vertical platform on April 23, A-Train Marketing's behavioral health strategy framework on April 17, and GTECH's four-layer search optimization model on March 16—all share one structural feature that matters more than their indi
The Review Velocity Problem: Why Volume Matters Less Than Recency for Local SEO Rankings
Google's local pack algorithm treats a profile with 20 reviews from the past three months as a stronger signal than a profile with 50 reviews and nothing posted in six months. That single fact invalidates the strategy most local businesses are running.
Why 90% of SEO Agencies Fail the Pilot Test: What Enterprise Clients Should Demand Before Signing
Five criteria separate a genuine enterprise SEO partner from a mid-market agency with a Fortune 500 logo collection on its website: retention and longevity, proven outcomes, technical scalability, governance readiness, and team depth.
The ChatGPT Review Audit: How to Extract SEO Value From Your Google Reviews in 90 Minutes
Reviews with 200 or more characters carry significantly more ranking weight in local search than shorter ones, according to practitioner data compiled across local SEO communities.
Search Engine Journal Releases 90-Day GEO Framework as 68% of Brands Vanish from AI Search Recommendations
Nearly seven in ten brands are absent from AI-generated search recommendations in their own categories, prompting Search Engine Journal to publish a 90-day implementation framework for Generative Engine Optimization on April 30. The playbook addresses what the publication characterizes as a "fast-mo
Search Engine Journal Publishes 90-Day Framework for AI Search Optimization as $750 Billion Shifts to Generative Platforms
Search Engine Journal published a 90-day implementation framework for Generative Engine Optimization on April 30, positioning the discipline as a response to the $750 billion in consumer spending that has shifted toward AI-powered search platforms, according to the guide.
Recovering from Google's Local SEO Spam Purge: A Restoration Playbook for Suspended Small Business Profiles
Sterling Sky's monitoring data captured the first wave of local profile delistings on August 14, 2025, hours before Google officially confirmed its spam update was rolling out.
The Trust Verification Audit: Beyond Rankings to Prove Your SEO Agency Actually Drives Revenue
Majestic introduced its Trust Flow metric as a way to score link quality back in 2012. Fourteen years later, the concept of "trust" between a business and its SEO agency still runs on roughly the same logic: you're supposed to take their word for it.
Google AI Overviews Cut Organic Clicks 38% in Randomized Field Study
A randomized field experiment shows Google's AI Overviews reduce organic clicks to external websites by 38% on queries where the feature appears, according to a working paper published this month by researchers at the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University. The study tracked 1,065
AI Crawlers and Structured Data: Why Your 2025 Technical SEO Audit Misses 2026 Visibility Issues
The technical SEO audit your agency delivered nine months ago checked for problems that no longer determine whether AI systems can find, read, or cite your pages. That's the claim, and the evidence that's surfaced in the past two weeks makes it difficult to argue otherwise.